Security Checkpoints = Smoke Screen

Excellent Vanity Fair article:

http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2011/12/tsa-insanity-201112

 

Thank you for posting this, Doober.

I've quoted Bruce Schneier till I'm blue in the face. The sheeple don't want to hear it.

 

Best quote of the article:

 

While this is nothing to us here in this forum, Vanity Fair does have a large readership. I really hope this articles gets people thinking, talking, discussing and waking up.

 

I wrote a post on it for TSA News. It's going up momentarily. Will cross-post here when it does.

Edited to add:
Okay, here it is. Unfortunately, the title had to be changed for SEO (search engine optimization) purposes. It had been: "Sing it, Bruce -- no, not that Bruce."

Anyway ...

 

This was one of the best and most comprehensive articles on TSA this year, which isn't surprising with Bruce Schneier's input.

Having it posted at Drudge will certainly help boost the number of hits.

I hope this gets run in installments or summarized elsewhere since may be too long for the average reader's attention span.

 

What's interesting is that there is nothing new in this article. Nothing. Schneier -- and other security experts -- and many of us -- have been saying these same things, over and over and over, for years. I'm glad it's in Vanity Fair and that's why I wrote about it at TSA News, but it kills me that even after all the publicity, this stuff will come as news to millions of people (who still won't believe it, by the way; they're impervious).

 

On a related subject...

I was listening to an SF news station this morning and they were discussing travel out of SFO. Seems that it's lighter than usual. They cited a statistic that of the people who are traveling for Christmas this year, 90% were going by car (that seemed high to me). The reasons cited for driving were higher costs of plane tickets and hassles at the airport.

I thought it was interesting.

 

I have heard that on average cost of air travel is up about 10%. I doubt that is enough of a price hike to deter most travelers but continuing news reports of TSA thieves, rapist, drug dealers, child porn purveyors plus others, and the chance of getting a TSA Strip Search becoming more likely is the type of information that will make people choose other means of travel.

Who is their right mind would subject themselves to the TSA Goons?

 

These:

 

Interesting as I heard a report this morning that at DTW cars were 3 deep at the curbs dropping off passengers and the lines inside the terminal to security were packed. Not sure I believe all that, however.

 

Not holiday specific, but at Delta's investor presentation a couple days ago, they forecast a 2-3% reduction in capacity for 2012.

We need to keep in mind that not flying is an effective strategy, but also remember that the stategy won't succeed overnight. We must continue to avoid flying.

And we are doing our part: Down from approx. 30 round trips a year (125-150K miles) for each of us to zero: We have not been on an airplane since 27 Dec 2010.

 

All reports I have heard recently have clearly stated that airlines are parking aircraft to reduce capacity. No reason to park aircraft unless they aren't flying full.

 

When people used to talk about travel and the great places they'd been to, I'd enthusiastically join in. I wanted to hear all about what they'd seen, heard, tasted, touched, experienced. Their stories inspired me, made me excited to go on my next trip.

Now I just want to yell at them, "WTF is your problem?!" But of course I don't. I nod politely and stay silent and look to get out of the conversation as quickly as possible. Because I already know that to bring up the TSA and its abuse is pointless. These people don't care. They don't care. And though I find their complacency and cluelessness offensive, I know that I can't risk "offending" people by telling the truth. Unless it's at my house. Then I'm in my domain and I'll damn well do what I want. But at someone else's house, I just have to shut up and ignore it.

I'm sick of these idiots.

 

If your car is full it might be cheaper, but with the price of gas, my trip to the Bay Area would have been considerably cheaper by air. I think the TSA-hassle-factors cannot be underestimated.

 

It was funny. The person they were interviewing said that at the price level where gas is now it wasn't affecting how people drove. The person also said that the price of airfare has gone up more than 10% - I can't remember the figure he quoted now, but it was more than 10%. Also quoted as a problem with air travel is the unexpected nature of the fees. People get surprised at the airport with more fees for checking bags and sometimes that's a deal breaker. They also mentioned the TSA -- you could tell he didn't want to bring it up by the tone of his voice, but it's clearly an issue.

But yeah, I agree with you, the TSA-hassle-factors cannot be underestimated.

 

Including the "hassle" of having your presents stolen!

 

I know!!

 

While it's probably unrealistic to try to convince people to stop flying altogether, persuading folks to reduce air travel or explore other options helps.If loads were to drop 25% the airlines would be screaming.

I'm negotiating a contract and the consultant had included roughly ten round trips each for twelve specialists over two years. Three of them are in Europe and the rest in North America. I insisted they cut this to five trips each and attempt to reduce it further by using video conferencing instead. They still get to bill for the time for the meetings but without the added travel cost and lost time. I argued that the cost of the sixty round trips would easily pay for pay for a decent video system.

While some face to face meetings are needed, my experience has been that three out four meetings can be just as effective being done by video.

 

I wonder if there will be a spiral effect to the boycott and reduction of capacity. I would suspect that reducing scale (capacity) results in higher cost per passenger, which means higher fares, which means less people fly simply because of greater expense, which leads to further reduced capacity that leads to higher prices, and so forth down the spiral. Where's Barbell when you need him?