5 years later…

“Well, they’re randomly scanning people driving to Canada now. Maybe I just won’t go to Montreal anymore.”

10 years later…

“Well, they’re doing inter-state scanning now, maybe I’ll just stay in New York.”

Does it really have to come to that? Or can you just drop the devil’s advocate bullshit and admit like the rest of us that it’s ridiculous (and ineffective)?

Mind you, as ridiculous and pointless as I find these security procedures, rhetoric like this is exactly the sort of jumped up, hyperbolic screeching that the Teapartiers have used to kick holes in the real, common sense uses of government.

The trope of “It wasn’t this way back when…” is almost always pointless and silly, since “back when” almost certainly had just as many, though markedly different problems, about which the people then exclaimed just as angrily “why, back in MY day…”

Nostalgia is not a sufficient base for sound policy.

Also… what lectroid said.

Looks like this particular question has its own post now though.

http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/744199—israelification-high-security-little-bother

Not really anything beyond what I’m getting now. I’m a simple guy and I don’t ask for much. What you may call cynicism, I just look at as low expectations.

Many would consider “cancer surviving flight attendants getting to keep their breast prostheses in their bras” to not be asking for much. This isn’t about expecting the government to do more FOR us, it’s about expecting them not to do new, needlessly invasive things TO us.

– T. S. Eliot, “The Hollow Men” (1925)

“I don’t think there are any Russians, and there ain’t no Yanks,just corporate criminals, playing with tanks”

Seriously, if there really were such a severe terrorist threat in the USA, some really determined folks would have been able to pull it off by now. Hell, you don’t even have to get on the plane to take it out. You could do a lot of damage from the parking lots that are usually right next to the runways,seperated only by a chain link fence in most cases.

It’s all security theatre, plain and simple.

I hope you get the rest you need, Richard!

And I count 2 TSA related articles from yesterday…

I’ve seen this comment all across the Internet, and it ticks me off. As if flying was always an expendable luxury, and entitled, fat, bourgeoisies just needed to STFU and take what the TSA was giving.

I am required as a part of my employment to fly, an average of perhaps five to ten times a year. For me, the “choice” not to fly involves quitting my job. I may or may not be a fat, entitled, bourgeoisie, but my decision to fly is hardly expendable.

This attitude is utterly digusting and downright dangerous. What is freedom if you’re going to subject innocent people to massive violations of personal privacy and try to normalise it? Are you prescribing George Dubya’s “new” freedom- which means the freedom to do what you’re told and bow to the will of the State?

The person putting forth the “price of freedom” line needs a good slapping and a reminder of what liberty actually means. You’re all sheep and the country is gradually becoming a police state. By the time you realise this it will be too late to do anything about.

Good luck.

Your arrogance and disregard for human dignity disgusts me.

Pilot Screenings To End Amid TSA Privacy Clashes