@ Super Six Four: That SUCKS. Agreed:
CREWPASS NOW
Originally Posted by
duvie
I don't enjoy being hassled, but it is for the greater good. Inefficiencies are inherent in government agencies so I accept that and I attempt to be all the more vigilant in my own travels instead of spending my time griping about others' shortcomings.
Maybe. Maybe not.
The big problem I have is that, from a passenger perspective (and taxpayer): TSA doesn't really do anything that the private sector was doing on or before 11 September 2001. Sure, passenger screening may be more 'thorough' (a little groping, shoes off, and so forth), but the
concept and process itself is still fundamentally the same—Person walks up to checkpoint, person walks through weapons detector, maybe gets patted down, and walks off. There are varying degrees of harassment, of course (3-1-1 rule for liquids), but none of it is fundamentally any different than what the private sector companies were doing on 9/11.
TSA, of course, does it a lot slower, and in a lot more expensive fashion, and aggravates just about everyone who goes through the checkpoint. TSA also overreacts to incidents (such as the whole reason behind the liquid limits—a ridiculously unfeasible plot that would've been annoying rather than actually downing the aircraft).
If TSA would revolutionize screening through magic, I'd be much happier about it. We shouldn't waste time in the terminal—air travel is SUPPOSED to be fast.
We have lost the high-power, high-paying business traveller partially because of TSA. We can't have Executives Almighty putting up with that crap, so they all bought jets of their own. (Of course, this was probably going to happen anyway.)
Compare this to going through security in, say, Finland. Laptop out, yes. Shoes off? No. Belt off? No. Liquid limits? Notta chance unless you're bound for the US, and they don't even really check that. If you happen to alarm the detector you get wanded and patted down, but the whole process takes
maybe 30 seconds if they give you a second pass and is a lot less intrusive (Finns wouldn't put up with something that had their personal space *REALLY* violated, of course, so a cultural difference might explain it) and is just as effective. At HEL, you can literally be boarding your airplane 20 minutes after you step into the terminal, and they're pretty damned sure that you don't have anything dangerous on your person.
Effective? Probably.