No evidence airport security make planes safer-study

[sabra]

Source: Reuters

WASHINGTON, Dec 20 (Reuters) - Airport security lines can annoy passengers, but there is no evidence that they make flying any safer, U.S. researchers reported on Thursday.

A team at the Harvard School of Public Health could not find any studies showing whether the time-consuming process of X-raying carry-on luggage prevents hijackings or attacks.

They also found no evidence to suggest that making passengers take off their shoes and confiscating small items prevented any incidents.

The U.S. Transportation Security Administration told research teams requesting information their need for quick new security measures trumped the usefulness of evaluating them, Eleni Linos, Elizabeth Linos, and Graham Colditz reported in the British Medical Journal.

"We noticed that new airport screening protocols were implemented immediately after news reports of terror threats," they wrote.

"Even without clear evidence of the accuracy of testing, the Transportation Security Administration defended its measures by reporting that more than 13 million prohibited items were intercepted in one year," the researchers added. "Most of these illegal items were lighters."

Read more: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N20210240.htm

[Trillo]

1. Wow. That's interesting.

So I guess all the security checks function as pecking order?

[LibDemAlways]

2. All the taking your shoes off and having your bra felt up nonsense

just serves to keep the sheep in line and in fear. If someone is determined to create havoc aboard an aircraft, those kind of band-aid "security" measures won't be a deterrent.

[razors edge]

7. Lawful feeling up of the customer

also helps with employee retention.

:sarcasm: (i think ?)

[ixion]

3. Airports are the testing/conditioning grounds for the new police state

They're bogus, unconstitutional BS.

The TSA should be disbanded, and our rights as private and free citizens should be returned to us post haste.

[harmonicon]

4. I'm not the least bit surprised

I hate flying so much now.... I'm flying tomorrow, and I have anxiety for hours, if not a day before. I hate the "security" process so much. It was so much better before all of this crap.... I remember when e-tickets were new, it was so easy to fly. Go to the airport, walk through security (a metal detector) and go to your gate. I don't drive anymore (no car), but when I did I figured something had to be more than an 8 hour drive to make flying worth it, after having to deal with going to the airport, check in hours before, wait in loads of lines, possibly have delays.... no thanks. I've always thought this was all about scaring people, and now I know that's all it does (though I'm not scared of terrorists, just airports).

[AdHocSolver]

5. They harass the passengers to make them think they are protecting them.

I periodically see news articles where security firms test airport security and find it not very difficult to subvert the process.

For trips of about 400 miles, I recommend taking a train. I took such a trip this summer. I didn't want to go by airline, for several reasons including airport hassles and cost. I didn't want to drive because I was traveling alone and wouldn't have someone with whom to share the driving. So I took the train. It was relatively inexpensive, there were no hassles, the conductors and other train staff were friendly, I wasn't tired out at the end from driving, I met some nice people, and I would do it again.

[DLnyc]

6. Busses are good, often, too.

Often cheaper, faster and more flexible schedule. I travel by bus a lot, on 5 hour to 8 hour trips, did some longer ones (longer ones not recommended for the faint-hearted).

Bus is sometimes a little funky, but the pleasure of not having to deal with ridiculous airport military atmosphere, not to mention being crammed onto the plane, stuck on runways, hours to and from airport, having to get the ticket way in advance, no flexibility in travel (one-way not really allowed, stop-overs raise your fare, . . . ) to hell with that I will take a bus (or a train) in all but the most extreme situations.

[pitohui]

23. i seldom find a bus that goes to narita

some unusual routing you must find

all kidding aside, in an international world, people need to fly, and if anyone really thinks they are safer on a bus full of crackheads and crazies too impaired to drive a car, assuming you do have to somehow enter and exit the neighborhoods where the bus stations are located, bless their heart

we've all taken buses at some point and maybe except in the northeast, for the most part, you're blowing smoke to say that buses are "good" when we've all experienced for ourselves how shitty they are

[DLnyc]

26. Excuse me, please don't include me in your "all".

I feel safer with the people in bus terminals all across this country then I do with the armed and dangerous nuts searching people in our airports.

Sorry, you feel safe where you feel safe and I']ll feel safe where I feel safe. Armed military freaks scare me. Poor people don't.

Also, your characterization of people who ride busses as "crackheads and crazies too impaired to drive a car" is inaccurate and offensive, IMHO.

[Brrrp]

21. I'm with you. I hate flying now because of this nonsense. nt

[Gormy Cuss]

8. Here's a scary quote late in the article

With $5.6 billion spent globally on airport protection each year, the public should be encouraged to query some screening requirements -- such as forcing passengers to remove their shoes, the researchers said.

"Can you hide anything in your shoes that you cannot hide in your underwear?" they asked.

PLEASE ---DON'T GIVE THE TSA ANY IDEAS.

[Ian David]

10. Just wait until terrorists start hiding explosives inside hollow breast implants. n/t

[Javaman]

11. Boxers only, no more briefs. nt

[LibDemAlways]

12. They already have their grubby paws on women's bras. I've

seen men have to loosen their belts and been felt up around the mid-section. Wondering how much farther the goons would have to go before people began strenuously objecting.

[Gormy Cuss]

13. They don't do it automatically yet.

The bra and men's belt screening are only if the person triggers the metal detector or is selected for secondary screening. I for one will tell them to go screw if they ever ask me to submit to a full body pat down. I'm surprised that so few people offer any objection.

Imagine if they changed it to mandatory screening like the shoe check. What I predict would happen is there would be an outcry from the public and the TSA would offer the solution of everyone submitting to a full body scan instead because there's be no touching involved. Game, set, match.

[LibDemAlways]

14. I have metal in my ankle from an old surgery. One time at the

Seattle airport I tripped the alarm. I showed the screener the 6 inch scar on my ankle/leg and invited him to wand it. He refused. Instead he called over the female Nazi for a full bra fell up in view of everyone else in line. He stood there and gloated while she did it. Nearby a frail very elderly woman had her shoes yanked off and was hoisted up out of her wheelchair for similar bra feel up treament. Very sick goons.

[Gormy Cuss]

15. That's exactly why I'm surprised that so few object.

They did the full view pat downs as if it was a display of power. In the pre-9/11 days, had your surgical metal tripped off the detector you would have been pulled aside for a full length wanding. I've had that done myself. There is no reason to feel breasts searching for metal other than training people to be submissive.

[LibDemAlways]

18. I did verbally object, but my 10-year-old daughter had

already gone through and was waiting, so I didn't dare raise too much of a stink. I was fuming, however.

[Maeve]

9. It is part of the misAdministration's job program

"Homeland security" and prisons--Dubya's growth industries.

And how many of those "terror threats" were something someone made up under torture? Just asking.

[Brrrp]

22. Yes. It provides jobs for feel-up artists and S & M doms...

...who would otherwise be out on the streets endangering the public. :)

[Maeve]

28. Ah, be fair. Most are just average shmoes like the rest of us

Trying to do a job that's minimally worthwhile...

[bikebloke]

16. Security?!!

It has nothing to do with security. It's to keep people afraid. Don't you know, if you're not afraid, then you're with the terrists!

With limited holiday time, I hate wasting a day each way hanging around airports for the pantomime security farce. I'm glad I've already seen a lot of the world already. Though I've been itching to get out of the country.

[DavidDvorkin]

17. Great! Now they'll get rid of those security lines and metal detectors

And we'll go back to the old ways of doing things! Right? Right?

Any day now, right?

I suddenly remembered the spaceport scene in the Schwarzenegger movie Total Recall. I wonder if the TSA got their ideas from that.

[pitohui]

24. screening won't stop because this study can't be taken entirely seriously

they should have made it a little believable, instead of trying to claim that screening accomplishes "nothing" -- or maybe it's just a bad headline writer?

no screening can stop the dedicated PROFESSIONAL terrorist, however, most folks who hijacked or attempted to hijack planes prior to screening were such people as crazies and copycats who wanted to go to havana, not to mention such extortionists as the folks who threatened to pilot a plane into a nuclear reactor if they weren't paid $2 million

screening does serve a purpose, imagine if every depressed attention-seeker could get on a plane with a gun, they could make the virginia tech massacre look small time

i agree that security screening does little to deter a true professional but there are very, very, VERY few true professionals out there or we'd be having hijackings for profit/terrorist events all the time -- instead, hijacking for profit these days is going to be some trucker, because it's a soft targer and the chances of being stopped are so nil compared to hijacking an airliner and holding it for ransom

[hunter]

19. When you accept the idea that our government is "protecting you" in these fashions...

...then you are totally screwed.

That's how the fascists weasel their way in.

If we threw it all out tomorrow for much less onerous sorts of "security" the dangers wouldn't be any greater and the lines at the airports and U.S. borders would be a lot shorter and friendlier.

[Orsino]

20. But it does ensure that would-be terrorists...

...board too tired and demoralized to mount any sort of attack.

[Neecy]

25. this is all for show...

I spent my career working for an international airline as a manager of airport services and I was based at major airports throughout the United States. Believe me when I say that these thuggish activities are pointless unless everyone who has access to the airport operations area - meaning the ramp areas, planeside - are screened and wanded and felt up when they report for duty or return from a non-secure area. And that will never happen because it'll cost the companies who do the catering, aircraft maintenence, fueling, cargo, ramp services and cabin cleaning big bucks and delay flights for the carriers. Most of these services now aren't provided by airline employees but by cheap contracted employees hired by slave-wage employers. The turnover is huge in these companies. All the background checks in the world won't guarantee that one of these rent-an-employees won't take a huge bribe and leave a lethal weapon in the passenger cabin. That's where the real danger is and nothing that happens in the passenger screening makes a dent in that. Not to mention that cargo and baggage still isn't fully screened for explosives.

Still, we do need a TSA, but we need a smarter, more effective one and not this ridiculous 'lighters as dangerous weapons' one. Before the TSA each security checkpoint was manned by a company paid by the carriers and it was always the company that lowballed the bid. As a result, again the turnover was massive, many of the employees spoke very little english, and almost none gave a shit. I once did an FAA security check with a gun in the belt of my skirt, walked through a checkpoint, and set it off. No one stopped me. The gun actually fell out of my skirt as I was walking past the screeners, I picked it up, put it on my clipboard and kept walking. No one stopped me. No one paid a bit of attention. That's something we don't need to go back to, frankly. When 9/11 happened I wasn't a bit surprised and I say that with some shame because I was knowingly part of a system that I knew was a sham.

[Maeve]

27. similar incidents happen whenever security knows it's just for show

I've known of several--off-duty cops accidentally taking guns past check points and the like.

[killbotfactory]

29. It's more about getting people used to an authoritarian police state

than it is about protecting people.

IMO, anyway.