Almost like security isn't the point...

Inconsistent within the same airport.

One time the line split into two, with announcers for each line shouting different instructions. One had you take all electronics out of bags, the other didn't. One lines instructions included taking your shoes off, the other didn't. The line without shoes off instruction had agents insulting people for taking their shoes off for not listening to instructions. 10M away there is an agent shouting at people to take your shoes off.

That reminds me of when the Los Angeles Clippers (an NBA team, originally from San Diego, named after the famous clipper ships) had a mascot named "Scissors". Very popular mascot up until they started using him to promote exercise programs for children, including the now-infamous "Run With Scissors".

Casual reminder: Materials such as magnesium or PETN are perfect for smuggling through airport security. Reason being, they only show up as an anorganic material in the x-ray thanks to their density. They lack any sort of smell that dogs could detect as well. Israel and Russia have used both of these successfully for terrorist attacks in the past, all of the explosives have been smuggled successfully through the security theater. Israel sent pagers with 2g of PETN in the batteries to Hezbollah and Russia wanted to get a magnesium explosive onto an DHL aeroplane to make it detonate during flight.

In both of these cases, the airport "security" did absolutely nothing to stop this. Better empty your bags everyone, because you are the security risk. Once you start allowing this type of nonsense, it will stick around forever.

Edit: I should mention, while the explosives for the Russian terrorist attack successfully got through airport security, because of a delay in loading the aeroplane, it never got on it and instead detonated in the container on the ground, luckily.

And also, if someone wants to come at me with some safety-security nonsense, this is all public knowledge. This has happened factually.

And if it’s busy and you’re in hurry say goodbye to your small electronics in the bin

TSA is moving away from ion mobility detection to mass spec detection. Mass specs are great at detecting it.

I had an online disagreement in the TSA subreddit about how moronic taking shoes off was. Those fascist pawns believe that shoe bomber reaction for years was justifiable.

I'm doubtful that this would solve anything, because for example in the case of Israel, the explosives went through multiple independent security theatres, and the PETN still successfully arrived at the victims. Like, if it happens once, okay, maybe it's a fluke, but if it happens multiple times throughout the supply chain and every single time it's A-okay, that's a problem. Israel heavily relied on regular commercial transport for their bombs. There were countless instances where they could have been stopped, but they weren't. And that is a worrying signal.

And even if all explosives would be detected with perfect accuracy, from now on, it still would be vulnerable to other points of attack. Just pay off a throwaway goon squad, let them smuggle ceramic weapons in their trousers into an aeroplane, and there you go. And I do believe Mossad and the FSB can come up with better ideas than that. IMO, there needs to be a more effective alternative, than this security theater nonsense.

Edit: And the reason why I'm against it is not only because it has been disproven so many times that it's impossible to enumerate. It's also the principle of "guilty until proven innocent", that is slowly but surely infesting our society.

they are inconsistent airport to airport

Forget TSA, international travel with my baby for the first time, anxiety problems, little time between connections, laptop and pram fucking freaked me the fuck out.

It isn't wholely the point. It's also a massive jobs programs.

But specifically for not knowing what to expect is a feature not a bug.

If you don't know the exact procedure every time - then you can't plan for every countermeasure. You cannot plan 100% when the variables are always changing.

It also distracts any would-be bomber because they need to waste attention on following whatever rules they decided apply today only.

Wait what? You guys had to take your shoes off? Never encountered that even though I already reached my plane limit for my life

I just had this experience the other day. Flying SFO to BOS and it was like the security people didn't even care. Leave everything in your bags, leave your shoes on, leave your belt on. The only thing they asked was empty your pockets, and it could all go in one bin. I thought that finally TSA was getting a bit better about not being such pricks about every little thing.

And then on my return flight, I got pulled out of the security line three times. Once for a mistake printed on my boarding pass (not my fault, but I had to get it corrected at the service kiosk anyway), once for my CPAP machine that I left in my carry on bag (which is exactly how I did it in SFO and they didn't give a shit), and once a bottle of liquid that was 8.5oz (limit is 8.4oz), so they made me pour out 0.1oz of fucking liquid.

They yelled at me all three times and said that I should know the rules by now, but none of those things came up during my first flight. The rules change literally every time I fly somewhere, so there's no point in memorizing them anymore. There are the "hard" rules which are sometimes not enforced and then there are the "soft" rules that seem to vary from airport to airport, or even individual TSA agents having a bad day or going on a power trip or something. I hate it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Reid

Wouldn't ms require actual mass of material? Volatiles, sure, but how many magnesium ions do we have free floating that doesn't have an organic source?

Also ms is expensive af. Tax dollars folks.

It used to be consistent for years post-9/11. Rules were enforced more or less consistently. Especially the liquids rules. Some variations but not to the degree that it is at today. This chaos is only the past few years.

Strongly suspect it has nothing to do with security and everything to do with the system breaking down due to abysmal leadership.

Also probably the paid extortion programs like CLEAR which have separate relaxed rules standards for people who pay the extortion fee.

I imagine they asked you to power the baby off and on whilst they hid behind a blast shield.

Had TSA take me aside and X-ray my laptop for a good 20 minutes last time I flew.

To be fair, the laptop had a sticker that insinuated drug use, but it's not like I had hidden a thousand doses of Mega LSD under the SSD (which it really looked like they were scanning for).

I've got nothing to hide ;)...

Using Augusten Burroughs for their marketing was their first mistake.