With TSA, Are We Safer Or Sorry?

I tried posting a comment. Of course, no foul language, no blah blah blah. It is the same comment I have posted hundreds of times in other forums, at other sites, newspapers, etc. -- I just copy & paste it from a word doc -- easier than typing it out anew every time. Yet it's been censored here:

Maybe one of you will have better luck:
With TSA, Are We Safer Or Sorry?
by Brian Naylor

 

I just tried again, stripped out the link to TUG. It's being held up in moderation. Let's see what happens.

 

Second attempt also censored. Unreal.

 

Okay, they just allowed a completely benign comment to appear. Which means they're censoring based on content. This is more damning in my book.

 

"Safer or Sorry"? Is that a trick question?

 

Comment left there (obviously not censored):

 

Grenades, like the inert ones you can buy at any surplus store?

Stop trying to make it out like we are under siege, Mike. Back in the 90s in the old terminal in SAV there was a huge display on the wall of all the weapons that had been found at the checkpoint, from normally law-abiding citizens that had an "Oh, crap!" moment at the airport.

The chrome plated 20mm ordinance round on my desk is a paperweight; put it in my rollaboard and I'm suddenly a terrorist.

 

So if someone is holding a grenade in his hand demanding everyone to move to the back of the plane or else he'll detonate it, you have the eagle-eye expertise to determine whether or not it's an inert surplus store variety "pull pin for next number" novelty fake and then call his bluff by charging him?

Ballsy.

Stupid but ballsy.

 

Obviously grenades, fake or otherwise, can't be allowed on aircraft. However, when TSA seizes snow globes with the same alacrity that they would a grenade, this causes one to wonder whether this is a security measure or simply a mindless exercise.

 

Or cake servers, leather paperweights, etc...

The part I'm waiting to hear is why AIT is required to detect Bart's hypothetical grenade.

 

Yeah, I am somewhat chagrined by that policy. I thought by now we would have a procedure in place to mitigate the liquid explosives threats enough to allow more liquids and gels into the checkpoint. I don't know if that's around the corner, but for now, it seems that it's not going to change.

 

Funny thing is that all those dangerous liquids go into the magic trash can right by the checkpoint where they become instantly safe.

 

You're chagrined by the supposed need to confiscate snow globes, but not by the supposed need to "...'lift and separate' my testicles, three times on each leg."

Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.

 

I hear you. Can't say that I disagree with you.

 

Well, at least we're agreeing on something. Now I have to go slap some paint on my shack. A bientot!

 

Im still waiting for the chlorine or ammonia gas cloud event to happen at a checkpoint from the random mixing of these "oh so dangerous, but yet left in then open" that sends a couple hundred people to the hospital just to prove TSA is stupid and doesnt have a F'n clue and is more hazardous to our safety then anything. That and the resulting lawsuits would stop alot of this bull.

 

Well, I don't think we quite need that to prove the point. Either the liquids are potentially hazardous and should be treated as such even at the checkpoint, or they should drop the whole charade.

 

I wasnt saying do something like that im just surprised it hasnt happened yet. Something like that would cause more damage and injuries then a airliner going down as the CP are major choke points.

 

The greater danger is a firearms attack on the checkpoint, but I agree that the garbage bins are a potential hazard.