But that’s exactly what I look like naked!!
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I had exactly the same experience in Tegel airport last August.
I spontaneously decided to opt out when I saw the big sign stating that scanning was “optional”. Some people in the staff were surprised, I think it was relatively new back then and I was obviously the first one to opt out in their shift. One of them went back to confirm that there was indeed the “optional” sign I was telling them. Pretty ridiculous, actually.
They called the federal police (Bundespolizei), and the officer got me through the whole process, body search, bag search, unpacking, separately testing each and every item in my bag for explosives, etc. From the officer’s comments, it was obvious that it was a form of punishment rather than a security measure.
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I was traveling for work with a suitcase full of electronics components. The TSA person legit thought it was a bomb. My reaction to their reaction was to laugh uncontrollably. Fortunately my boss was there to defuse the situation (no pun intended).
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I haven’t regularly traveled for work in years. When I did, it was the mid-2000s during Peak Security Theater. I’ve seen these and pretty much every other piece of security theater whizbangery there is. I now only travel to visit family, and it looks like security measures vary wildly from airport to airport.
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I don’t worry much about the minimal risk of being blown up by some rando. There seems to be much greater risk in being hurt by armed “security” people whose business it is apparently to not know anything about explosives or electronics.
I make electronic artwork and dread the thought of travelling with the stuff only to have my hard work impounded or destroyed because some flake is scared of it.
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the yellow bits look really sexy
Once, I was traveling with my regular work gear of laptop, tablet, phone and all the chargers, plus a battery pack and a camera. On the way out, it was fine, but on the way home I packed in a hurry. Meaning, of course, that I shoved everything into the bag and ran out the door.
Apparently, the tangle of wires of every charger and battery was suspicious looking on the xray. The TSA dude gave me such an eye-rolling look when he saw that I was just disorganized.
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We are in an ocean of non-ionizing radiation. Millimeter wave machines are about as risky as the RF scanners the library uses to detect people stealing books. The risks are not zero and we weigh those risks against the benefit of having the machines.
It would be interesting to see a study comparing the costs and safety of the current system vs the pre-911 system. If you were to add up all the costs of the system today, how many crashed airplanes would it take to equal that cost? We might be better off accepting an additional crashed airliner every 5 years compared with the hassle of going through security every time you get on the plane. I really don’t know what the answer is.
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Actor Judge Reinhold was released from a Dallas jail late on Thursday night following his arrest for causing a disturbance at a local airport after refusing to be screened at a security checkpoint, police said on Friday. (reuters)
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Multiple studies of this technology have concluded that the number of airplanes it prevents from crashing is zero, because these scanners, like pretty much all activities carried out by post-911 security theatre, do not accomplish their stated goals.
Which means that a precise answer to your question isn’t required. The meaningful answer is “more than zero, which is what all this nonsense achieves.”
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I actually met the person who did such an analysis, but for the rule about not bringing liquids on planes. It turns out that it needs to prevent a crash about every 50 years to be worth it according to their calculations based on wasted time in lines, statistical value of humans life, etc… But the catch is that this was done in Canada, so that would be a crash every 50 years from planes departing Canada alone. Somehow that convinced people that the law was a good idea (“If we can prevent one crash…”) rather than a bad idea (“Compared to the rate at which major airlines crash worldwide, it’s unrealistic that…”).
It is very hard for me to believe these things are effective. For large passenger planes (the kind of planes that terrorists target) there are only a couple of major aviation incidents a year worldwide, and only a tiny minority of those are caused by terrorism. I think to be effective these would have to reduce terrorism by more than 100%.
I had heard this as well, but can’t confirm; but several years ago I was traveling a lot between Denver and DC and always opted out, just to be safe. It was never a big deal in Denver; in Dulles it was usually OK as well, but every once in a while they were assholes about it, though not to the extent mentioned in this article.
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Human psychology is a real wild card though. People like to call airport security theater because it’s all for show. That may or may not be true, but what is true is that some portion of the population is comforted by it.
If you were to remove most of the changes made in the past 15 years in the name of security and even a small percentage of flyers decided to drive rather than fly because of unease, the number of additional traffic deaths would certainly go up. So maybe airport security prevents enough traffic fatalities to justify the show.
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I have a scar on my right knee from a too-close encounter with a rusty car fender years ago. Every time they put me through the microwave I get patted down on my right knee, anyway.
Am I the only one who skips the scan simply because I don’t think we should have the scans?
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My stepson took an “underwater robotics” course one summer. He made a great little submersible… that he had to leave at our house when he went back to his mom’s. It was a tupperware container with a bunch of wires, switches, and a big battery. No way he was getting that on a plane.
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This is a valid point, but I do think a big part of it is that governments have chosen to play up the fear part instead of downplaying it. Other things being equal some security theater may be making us better off for the reasons you state, but I’m not sure other things could really be equal. Plus, for all we know people are more people are driving now because the amount of security makes them think, “Wow, there must be a really big threat.”
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I’m with you! I actually fear more for the agents who have to stand next to these. Oh, and the health care we’ll be paying for.
Why not? They’d likely need to swab it for explosives, but random electronics and wires don’t cause explosions.
