Flying

First, hopefully the FAA won't read this before my flight tomorrow and not let me get on it. :) Since I've been flying more than I ever have before, I'm struck by the total ineptitude of the "safety" provided by the TSA screening.

The current "saftey" regulations are so full of it , it is not funny. I'll just throw out the favorite gun control quote here, "If you outlaw guns, only the outlaws will have guns."

Look at these scenarios:
Why can't I take my pocket knife on the plane anymore? Because some terrorists hijacked the 9-11 planes with box cutters/knifes. Will this work again? NO. It should be plainly obvious that 9-11 changed the way people look at hijackings. Instead of sitting there, people will take out someone trying to hijack a plane using something that's not a gun/bomb. Even then it is questionable.

Here's what the FAA should do: let me carry my pocket knife. I'm not going to try to hijack the plane, and if someone else does, I can use it to defend myself or attack the hijackers.

Next scenario: Someone tried to light his shoe on fire. Now because of this you can't take matches or lighters on the plane, and you have to have your shoes X-Ray'd. If you're x-raying all the bags I take on board, and scanning my shoes, that doesn't leave many other places left for me to hide explosives. Except for oh, any place inside/on my body. As far as I know, the detectors you walk through at the airport are only metal detectors currently. They would not detect any explosive fixed to one's self. It would be easy to hide several pounds of a plastic explosive on/in your body in a non-descript way if you were driven enough to want to destroy a plane.

Next: Wire cutters! I forgot I had a pair of wire strippers/cutters from my college lab course in my backpack. I even searched it before I packed it, and missed them. Oh well. But first, what am I going to do with blunt nose wire cutters/strippers(you know, the little red handled ones you could get at radio shack that everyone had in the labs), slowly snip someone to death? I doubt you could even cut off a finger with them, they're a little to small...

This leads me to the new machines they have. They take a little pad, and wipe down things, and place it in a machine which gives them some results. I'm not sure what this thing is actually testing for, but I can guess. First, it is on a stainless steal table, with what looks like air intake vents on the computer portion. I'm fairly sure these are "sniffing" for explosive traces, possibly drug traces as well. (Why not multi-task?) I think the wipe they use is also looking for trace amounts of explosive. Here's the thing though, the first time I was stopped they wiped down my laptop and my bag. The bag sort of makes sense, but I'm not sure why they wiped down the laptop. The second time they only wiped down my laptop, and didn't do anything on my bag.

WHY ARE YOU LOOKING FOR TRACE EXPLOSIVES ON THE LAPTOP?!?! Look on my jacket, shoes, socks, pants, not my laptop. Sure, I've heard that laptop batteries look close to the same as C4, but has anyone smuggled a bomb onto the plane using a laptop battery? What's more, they don't ask you to turn on your laptop, so if it does look the same there's probably a 90% chance you could get away with that. I've thought about writing "this is not a bomb" on an index card in metallic ink and sticking it in my laptop battery compartment, but that might just be asking for body cavity searches every time I fly.

Lastly at the Philadelphia Airport, I could buy a *very* effective weapon after i passed security. The weapon was a glass bottle of root beer. This isn't to mention the other items you can carry right through the check point: CD's (very sharp when broken), Pen/Pencil (Grosse Pointe Blank anyone?), shoestrings, guitar(strings), belt, Bottle of wine, your hands...

I heard a comment recently stating the fact that the TSA is currently obsessed with false positives on their tests, someone sets off the alarm, they get searched and nothing turns up. The only thing worse than this is the false negative, which WILL happen despite all there planning. Once the TSA screeners(aka Freedom Nazi's) become so use to certain things setting off the system that they just don't care any more. If there aren't new screening technologies in place in a year or two, it will again be easy to sneak enough material through airport security. In fact, I know an excellent way to do it now, with certain assumtions which would be easy enough to test out if you had a terrorist cell with expendable assets.

Oh well, enough almost stream of concious writing for tonight, and hopefully I don't set off the alarms since I'm sure my pants and jacket have explosive residue on them. (Which I may have done on purpose, just to see what happens.)