Oh, absolutely.
But you’ve just articulated an additional reason why better trained (which requires higher status and salary) TSA officers would make a huge difference: they’re the weak point in our system, rendering all the technology less effective.
But that’s a general argument: better trained – and paid, and respected – employees are the best long term solution for any company.
Indeed, but the TSA is simply too big to hire well trained people. I hate to keep using NYC as an example, but it’s where I fly a lot. But let’s say you have one well trained officer for every security lane. I typically see ten lanes. Now there’s two shifts a day. So I need twenty well trained people. For a single terminal. In a single city. Without thinking about vacations or weekends.
We can’t even get our police to be properly trained and stop shooting people and they literally drive around in cars labelled with their mission statement involving PROTECT AND SERVE, how can get a few thousand well trained TSA agents in NYC alone? The cost isn’t worth the benefits.
Something looked suspicious about the laptop.
So, they’ve got several possible courses of action:
Have a closer look at the laptop, to see if its a bomb in disguise. When it turns out that it is really just a laptop, wish everyone a pleasant journey.
Have a closer look at the laptop, and when it turns out that the initial suspicion was baseless, still treat the travelers as suspect and see if you can find something else.
Ignore the potential bomb, it’s probably nothing anyway. However, you do get to grope a teenager, if you are into that kind of stuff.
Ignore the potential bomb for now and check the potential terrorist first. The suspected terrorist might be smuggling other incriminating items, and is less likely to explode on the spot than the suspected bomb.
Option 1 seems reasonable. Option 4 is reasonable if your paranoid.
Thus*, I guess the real reason is Option 2, Option 3, or a combination of the two.
* This mode of logical reasoning has been known since the late Middle Age as argumentum ab stultitate agentum TSA, or “argument from the stupidity of TSA agents”.
How do you get from twenty to “a few thousand?”
Assuming fifty lanes across all NYC airports, with two shifts, and doubling the number to account for vacations and weekends, I get only two hundred.
I don’t see where the other order of magnitude is coming from.
JFK has six terminals. So that’s 120.
EWR has three, so that’s another 60.
LGA has another four terminals, so that’s another 80.
I’m at 260, so let’s double that and say we only need five hundred. Fine. Only five hundred steely eyed Jack Bauers in New York. Still a number that’s impossible.
the prime example of a reasonable, empathic person with contact to the general public
eta
isn’t this mostly a question of priorities? the three air ports around NY handle a lot of passengers, but the metropolitan area is highly populated. Israel was able (and - probably more important - willing) to find and train enough candidates out of the Israeli residents to staff the security check points.
To me, that video should have come with a trigger warning.
When I was in college, there was a great charity hair cutting event at the school. For $10 you could get a haircut. The salons donated their time and there were some great places there - places you’d pay mega bucks for a haircut if you were to go to their spaces. The deal was you paid $10 and then you got the place at random. Could be SuperCuts. Could be John Jay. When they had an opening and it was your turn, you went wherever you got tapped to go.
Of course it wasn’t really random. The salons were in charge. I knew this and always made sure to dress up and look nice for the event.
One day I got “lucky” and a dude from one of the fancy salons picked me.
And that’s how I ended up in a huge room full of people being molested. He turned me away from the crowd and just kept repeatedly and unnecessarily running his hair brush over my boob. It seemed he liked getting away with it in a public space. I didn’t know then how to speak up and stop it, the way I do now.
I watched that video and it seemed damn familiar. The TSA person is using his power to molest the boy right out in public. Or is it molesting? Or checking for terror? It’s hard to really know and he’s using that fuzzy line to his advantage. The mother is powerless to stop it.
This isn’t security, this is compliance training.
he is not terrored enough, keep molesting. 
The goal is to appear like they have things in control to avoid people worrying about flights getting hijacked.
I know one of the people who was tasked with sneaking actual guns past TSA, and did so 100% of the time. Fortunately he or she was under the direction of a US Senator. These new rules are not the response I think they were looking for, but there are sensible people in government trying to fight the tide of makework jobsworth security theater.
Israel has two things going for it:
1 - A population that has everyone in the armed forces, so you’ve got a much larger pool of trained personnel.
2 - Compliant visitors willing to assist security personnel at every step of the way.
The US doesn’t take advantage of any of the military personnel when they leave, they have higher unemployment rates. We don’t have people who are willing to be compliant.
Oddly enough, it’s the second part that is why we don’t need TSA at this point. We used to just go along with demands and get a free trip to Cuba or whatever. Now people tackle the shit out of anyone lighting their shoes on fire. The TSA has never stopped a single terrorist, the best they have ever done is take away guns that people had forgotten about.
I don’t think this is a valid point. Military training does not exactly help, the mind-set of person at an airport check point needs a focus on “soft” characteristics like psychology and empathy*. The ability to use guns and follow orders is not a prerequisite, and maybe even disadvantageous**
again: priorities. if security is the goal the TSA wouldn’t have created all the loopholes
* both not exactly the words I am looking for, “Menschenkenntnis” would be my choice if we discussed this in German
** could be bias, though. I don’t think that veterans make automagically good police officers, but the consensus in the US society seems to be different
Get a load of how Peele uses TSA in “Get Out”. No spoilers, sorry! Go see it in theaters, now. No, do not watch the trailer, it gives too much away. There is some gore, mostly just creepy, but the TSA character is awesome.
And there is a very relevant point that I don’t want to make, because I want everyone to go see the movie. basically that the psychological states of the main characters are pretty obvious, but that he was best friends with a TSA agent, and also fell for the female lead (who considered and rejected the agent for some unstated reason)(I suspect the fat man at the party wasn’t interested), isn’t so enormous a leap, if you stop and think about how we’re trained, and Peele has done that extensively, clearly. I don’t think the main character is all that much safer at the end of the movie.
I’d say that needle has moved. I’d say the tail has wagged the dog pretty hard on that one, too.
The best police officers in the 1950s:
Absolutely, for so many reasons: go see “Get Out”!!! I’m not a fan of horror movies, but this is its own genre. And excellently written, directed, and acted.
TSA guy forgot the last step: inserting his penis. Why stop at sexual harassment when you can go for sexual assault?
Remember, you have the same right to buy your own plane as a wealthy person does.
This must be what went on the various times I was pulled aside for extra screening (having my carryon opened up and everything examined) after I told TSA screeners that I had type 1 diabetes and was carrying juice (which is allowed). I was clearly not hiding anything (not even juice!) and the metal detector / porn scanner / whatever was AOK. But on (I think) three occasions just having juice meant I was somehow suspicious.
Yes ^-^ lol
[quote=“SteampunkBanana, post:85, topic:97874, full:true”] Still a number that’s impossible.
[/quote]
You appear to be conflating “impossible” with “expensive”.
