What's to prevent terrorists from going through TSA, waiting in the scanning line when everyone is still going through, and then planting a bluetooth device into someone else's bag? I never open my carryon once I have packed it.
This reminds me of the SNL sketch where TSA employees had no answer for someone bringing two separate bottles of 3.9 ounces onto the plane.
I'm sure Sean Duffy, of Real World and now Sec of Transportation, will fix this.
Nothing. TSA is a joke. At first, the security theater arguably had a legitimate psychological purpose. The airline industry nearly collapsed after 9/11 because people were so scared of filing. But that was a generation ago—the psychological trauma in the aftermath of 9/11 dissipated ago. But we’re still stuck with the TSA because in the meantime it turned into a massive jobs program.
We’d be better off spending TSA’s $8 billion budget on paying people to dig holes and fill them back in.
Why would a terrorist want to plant a Bluetooth device on someone else's bag when all it would accomplish is a minor delay of one flight and would result in a prison sentence after security camera review??
Remember: Kim Jong-Un’s brother was not killed directly by North Korean goons. They hired two women they convinced they were working on a prank show to spray him with the poisons.
You’d do something like that.
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Why stop at one bag for one flight?
> would result in a prison sentence
That doesn’t seem like a significant deterrent here.
This is the type of prank you’d see some idiot do to try and get followers on TikTok, not something a terrorist would bother with.
You sure about that?
>> "All that we have to do is to send two mujahidin to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al-Qaida, in order to make the generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic, and political losses without their achieving for it anything of note other than some benefits for their private companies."
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/11/continuing-anxi...
They were bragging that they could provoke this type of response as a result of having flown two planes into the World Trade Center and one into the Pentagon, killing thousands, and causing fear, panic, and self-sabotaging outsized reactions like pouring trillions into wars that accomplish nothing.
Getting a dozen of their operatives arrested for an idiotic prank that just resulted in a handful of planes being turned around would make them a laughingstock overnight.
I am baffled that we are even having this argument.
There’s evidence that not all people involved in 9/11 knew they were going to die. Yet, they were still used effectively.
Significantly less dedicated supporters are generally used as a funding source, but actual terrorist organizations have also used them for publicity events on the anniversary of attacks.
People accidentally sneak weapons through TSA all the time.
There are many anecdotal examples out there. More scientifically, they had a horrific detection rate in some audits.
Seems like an effective DoS attack - ground all planes in the US by sneaking cheap bluetooth speakers into people's luggage with provacative device names
Doesn't even need to be a speaker. Just a battery and transmitter.
Even worse, what's to prevent the terrorists from temporarily renaming their Bluetooth bombs to something innocuous just before going through security and only renaming it back when they need to conveniently find them again while pairing?
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If you’re a terrorist, I’m pretty sure you can think of dramatically more consequential things to do than cause a handful of planes to potentially divert. That’s a wildly pointless prank for something that will invariably wind up with you being arrested.
Why do that when you could simply attack people waiting in the security line? That would actually cause terror and shut down an entire airport for days.
A saboteur might want to cause disruption without violence against people, and such cases would still likely be labeled terrorism.
Only because we have labeled anything and everything terrorism these days.
Even then this is an extremely lame and ineffective form of sabotage, compared to the kind of prison sentence you’d be risking.
This is the SNL sketch in question: https://www.tiktok.com/@hamtelevision/video/7276358099089231...
The same thing that is stopping them from suicide bombing the super crowded security checkpoint line before ID checks.
Nothing really.
Or going into the baggage claim area with a bag containing an explosive device, then acting like they grabbed the wrong bag and putting it back on the carousel, and then leaving.
As an aside, this is something I've only seen in the US. At least in my country the domestic baggage claim area is not accessible unless from an arriving aircraft.
I'm guessing that has more to do with theft though than security.
No, that's because in the US they're handling the international flights separately. It's also the reason why even when you have a layover, you need to clear customs.
Domestic flights in the US are like busses/trains elsewhere. Most people fly without a checked bag
Most of the world handles international flights separately without needing to do that unless it is an international-domestic connection.
However I agree that in purely domestic airports I don't see how you'd prevent general public from accessing bags. Except India, wherein you need a booked flight to even enter the airport.
> I don't see how you'd prevent general public from accessing bags.
People are routinely prevented from being where they are not supposed to be. Whether you put the baggage pick-up point in a publicly accessible area or on a restricted area is a design choice.
> Domestic flights in the US are like busses/trains elsewhere. Most people fly without a checked bag
That sounds like bullshit to me.
Absolutely true and you can tell at least in the old days when you'd fly southwest. Every other airline the overhead bin fills up. It is an inevitable drama when the flight attendants have to say "overheads are full now we are gate checking bags."
Southwest, at least before they changed their bag policy, would let you fly with two free checked bags. Finally everything worked as intended and those overheads were seldom used. Maybe for a jacket or purse or something, but no one was shoving a roller bag up there.
Spirit was another airline with ample overhead space, because they charged you nearly the same rate for overheads as checked bags.
Most domestic flights are short duration trips, a week's worth of clothes fit in carry-on suitcase, and the other stuff (laptop etc) can go in a backpack.
In all my domestic flights in the past year they've had to ask people at the gate to volunteer their carry-on suitcase to be checked into the hold because they didn't expect to have enough room in the overhead bins.
I usually volunteer because: it's free, I don't mind waiting at the pickup, and it's slightly more comfortable when getting off the plane.
I don't know if we are the level of "most people" but I'd say we are defintely at a "signficant percentage of ppl". Due to cost of checked luggage the popularity of one bag carry on flying has exploded.
> That sounds like bullshit to me.
Have you taken a US domestic flight? Everyone wants to bring their massive roll-ons into the cabin, nobody wants to check if they can avoid it.
Indeed, although today I got on a plane at LaGuardia and they made me check my carry on at the gate even though there was plenty of space in the overhead bins ( 60% capacity flight, about half of us had to do this) so YMMV.
No idea why they made us do that, but I had to grab my bag at the luggage claim.
Do people collect their bags from the baggage claim area and then immediately reboard an aircraft to exit the terminal?
How do the arrivals exist the terminal
Are you not allowed to have a friend who is picking you up assist with baggage claim?
often baggage pickup is on the terminal side of the ‘one way exit’.
We need to put a checkpoint before the checkpoint so that never happens!
In Uganda they make you get out of your car and go through a metal detector before getting to the pre-security security screening at the actual airport... 3-4 layers...
> What's to prevent terrorists from going through TSA, waiting in the scanning line when everyone is still going through, and then planting a bluetooth device into someone else's bag? I never open my carryon once I have packed it.
I make it a point to hold up the whole line until it is my turn to go through the xray. It gets fun when they mandate a pat down in lieu of the millimeter wave scanner but refuse to have someone available for it.
It’s the only way to honestly say you have kept your bags under watch. If anybody tries to send in my bags without me , I immediately speak up in a loud stern voice, “That is not your bag!”
I’m not saying this as an ad hominem and simply to throw insults, but with the hopes that it will encourage you to change your behavior.
The only thing this accomplishes is making you the kind of asshole who interferes with other people that are just trying to make their flight on time. You are not highlighting flaws in the security system. You are not taking a principled ethical stance against tyranny. You are just acting like an asshole for the sake of being an asshole and making life just a little bit worse for everyone else around you.
This is not something to brag about. This is something to be ashamed of.
Some people deserve to be insulted. It’s fine.
> make it a point to hold up the whole line until it is my turn to go through the xray
How? I’ve seen idiots do this. I just go around and ahead of them.