Screenwriter (and recovering attorney) David H. Steinberg writes about his recent TSA experience flying home to the U.S. from Aruba. Among other things, his family was frisked by a baggage handler and a flight attendant snatched the pillow from under his 2-year-old daughter one hour before descent.
A lunatic tries to blow up an airplane, so now my 2-year-old daughter can’t sleep on her pillow. If this is how we respond as a nation to terror threats, then maybe the terrorists really are winning. . . .
I get that the threat of terrorism is real. But if these hastily thrown-together rules are how we respond to new threats, then something is seriously wrong with us (or at least the TSA). If two X-rays, a bomb-sniffing dog, a frisk and a bag search can’t detect the next terror attack, then how is turning off the DVD player an hour early and grabbing pillows from sleeping children going to help? Keep in mind that the new rules only apply to the last hour of the flight (presumably because Friday’s particular lunatic decided to set off his bomb only on descent). Won’t the no-pillow policy just cause Al Qaeda to issue orders to detonate at T minus 1:01?
I flew domestically with my 2-year-old on December 30, and did not have a confidence-inducing security experience either. We alerted the TSA screeners that we had juice bottles in the diaper bag, and removed them for separate screening (as we’ve been instructed to do on all of our trips with her in the last several months). Yet after the bottles were x-rayed, noone came to test the liquid (as is usually done these days). Is this part of the new TSA randomness that is supposed to keep would-be terrorists off guard? Nor, for that matter, did anyone catch the small containers of hand sanitizer we had forgotten to remove from two of our bags. But, rest assured, Madeline Joyce was not permitted to wear her tiny booties through the metal detector. At least she didn’t need a pillow.
RowerinVA says:
When you ask people to do things that they know are stupid and pointless, then do them poorly and with anger. Security personnel (which includes, in some capacities, flight crew) know that is ridiculous to treat American 2-year-olds with the same scrutiny as 22 year old men from Yemen. But they also know that their chances of being killed by the latter are slim no matter what they do, while the chances of the latter (or someone who makes a practice of become outraged on the Yemeni’s behalf) suing or otherwise raising a stink over “disparate treatment” is comparatively high, and could easily cause them huge problems or even get them fired. Therefore, the security personnel react to the most likely threat (outrage by the Yemeni, real or strategically feigned) to a greater degree than the rare but lethal threat.
This is human nature. It is inevitable. It is the guaranteed result of treating a military/security situation with the same hand-wringing political correctness of a kindergarten class. It almost killed people on the recent flight to Detroit, it has killed people before, and it will kill people again.
January 2, 2010, 7:49 pmPragmaticist says:
We need to “Israelify” airport security, and profile, profile, profile! See this link.
January 2, 2010, 7:57 pmjuris imprudent says:
This just shouldn’t surprise anyone. This is the reductio of the absurd need to be seen as doing something about every and any thing. The very existence of TSA is an expression of that need, so this just can’t come as a shock. Nor will this be the last time such a stupid response is made, because the American people expect their govt to DO something in response to every little thing.
Let’s face it, the only Americans who did anything real about the panty-bomber were the ones on that plane that helped subdue him. The rest is just theater.
January 2, 2010, 8:10 pmwm13 says:
What we see here is the silliness of fancy law professors, who spend their lives never even talking to anyone with an SAT score below 750, and then are stunned with how high school graduates implement rules designed to pass Constitutional muster.
Why doesn’t Prof. Adler, if he is so smart, get a job where everyone who works for him is a time-serving high school graduate, and try designing a set of rules that his new subordinates can implement in the teeth of lawsuits from his lawprof colleagues?
January 2, 2010, 8:26 pmSam says:
Steinberg’s complaints about flying home from Aruba, the day after a terrorist attack are one long whine. The TEMPORARY measures inconvenienced him? Is he serious?
Then he criticizes them for not inconveniencing him enough. They should have (according to him) not allowed him to play his stupid DVDs the whole flight or given him any pillows or blankets the whole time.
If he can’t imagine any reasons for having clear sight lines in responding to a very particular and proven threat, it’s no wonder that Hollywood screenwriting is so lacking. Perhaps he would have preferred that all flights be shut down so he could still be lounging in his “Happy [Oblivious] Island.”
Or he could just be glad that there were no further incidents this holiday week, perhaps because steps were taken.
January 2, 2010, 8:53 pmOren says:
Just to add to bizarre randomness, I flew from Munich to Boston on the 28th sans this “clean lap” policy.
January 2, 2010, 8:54 pmHans says:
TSA screeners failed to detect fake bombs 75% of the time in L.A., and 60% of the time in Chicago — compared to only 20% of the time for non-TSA private screeners in San Francisco.
And yet, Obama’s Homeland Security chief, Janet Napolitan, claims “the system worked” despite failing to keep tabs on the Nigerian terrorist; the TSA praised itself for a “very good year” in airline security in a year-end message
January 2, 2010, 8:58 pmMark Field says:
Below 750? Combined?!
January 2, 2010, 9:00 pmCharlie B says:
The silliness continues until we stop this politically correct looking for bombs in baby diapers and start using profiles to look for bombers.
January 2, 2010, 9:05 pmHans says:
Maybe they can unionize the TSA and make it even more mindlessly inflexible and ineffective — as the Obama Administrative apparently now seeks to do.
For all this hassling of passengers, the TSA typically fails to detect fake bombs, as I noted above, unlike private screeners.
The Obama Administration is putting the security of railroad passengers at risk by undermining an expert, highly-rated, anti-terror agency at Amtrak, which Amtrak’s unions hate, despite its efficiency, because it is not unionized. Political cronyism is also playing a role in the gutting of Amtrak’s Office of Security Strategy and Special Operations (OSSSO). Ultimately, OSSSO’s “highly-specialized officers” will likely be replaced by unionized employees with “alarmingly low pass rates” in “basic” classes.
January 2, 2010, 9:06 pmjuris imprudent says:
Ah, I see, between the unionization schtick and the ceiling of 750 on the SAT, we are getting a picture of what the next generation of TSA crew will look like.
January 2, 2010, 9:21 pmSW says:
Hans: This is about the fifth time this week you’ve posted the identical substanceless comments in these threads. The old study you refer to and misrepresent from USA Today, found that San Francisco screeners were tested more often and therefore had better pass rates. It has nothing to do with Unions or Public vs Private enterprise.
Is it true you are a corporate and anti-union lobbyist, as someone else mentioned on one of these threads?
January 2, 2010, 9:24 pmClark E Myers says:
Notice the one hour rule is not new but has long existed where the airport and community has been seen as a particularly high profile and therefore likely target, e.g. the District of Columbia, although unevenly enforced.
Granted that shifting detonation to more than one hour out will have little effect on what happens to the passengers and to that particular airplane the time shift will likely have a major impact (pun intended) on what happens on the ground by changing where it happens.
January 2, 2010, 9:30 pmAbdul Abulbul Amir says:
January 2, 2010, 9:34 pmSun Tzu's Nephew says:
And the guy who was most responsible for the takedown was dutch…..
Too bad the doors don’t open inflight…
January 2, 2010, 9:38 pmChem_geek says:
Would you have them wearing sackcloth and ashes?
No, actually, you’d not have them at all, right?
January 2, 2010, 9:39 pmSun Tzu's Nephew says:
If testing more often results in higher (per chance) detection rates then why isn’t TSA testing multiple times PER SHIFT????
January 2, 2010, 9:41 pmSW says:
According, to the USAToday article, they began testing more often, as a result of the 2005 report.
January 2, 2010, 9:45 pmCareless says:
My family’s flight security experiences these past two weeks:
A large pair of scissors made it in a carry on bag from Medan to Jakarta to Singapore to Tokyo to San Francisco to Chicago without anyone noticing them. SF security failed to notice the juice boxes in the bag on the last flight. My shoes were repeatedly chosen for “random” testing, but I don’t have a problem with that since they’re enormous and could hold large amounts of explosive.
My wife brought a couple of cartons of milk on the international flights, but they were taken by security in Tokyo because they said “sugar” on the label (it means “pure” in Indonesian. I don’t know what they would have done if she had bottled water on her, which is “air” in Indonesian.) and apparently they’re afraid of sugar.
It did not inspire confidence in me.
January 2, 2010, 10:29 pmDuracomm says:
SW and Chem_geek,
Maybe the take home from Hans posts is that the TSA should get their bomb detection failure rate below 75% before they worry about passengers having a blanket on their lap.
And chem-geek if the TSA bomb detection failure rate remains at 75% no reasonable person is going to be interested in having them at all either.
January 2, 2010, 10:32 pmOrin Kerr says:
wm13 writes:
Math or verbal?
January 2, 2010, 10:33 pmpc says:
It seems that Hans is link bombing to increase the relevancy of his articles in search engines, and maybe get some nice referrer links and traffic for his employer. Of course Hans likes to selectively quote, so he fails to point out Napolitano’s full statement:
But what else would one expect from a link bomber? Many sites consider such behavior uncouth. Self-promotion is okay as long as it is within reason. Shameless self promotion so you can increase your page rank in search engines? Not so much.
January 2, 2010, 10:43 pmSW says:
So that’s why he links his article over and over again, in these identical posts. Isn’t that spam?
You shouldn’t take his five year old study home, unless it’s for bird cage lining.
January 2, 2010, 11:00 pmHans says:
The responses to my observations were just nitpicking. I noted, accurately, that:
“TSA screeners failed to detect fake bombs 75% of the time in L.A., and 60% of the time in Chicago — compared to only 20% of the time for non-TSA private screeners in San Francisco.
And yet, Obama’s Homeland Security chief, Janet Napolitano, claims ‘the system worked‘ despite failing to keep tabs on the Nigerian terrorist; the TSA praised itself for a ‘very good year’ in airline security in a year-end message.”
The full statement by Napolitano is if anything more damning in its smugness and obtuseness than the snippet I quoted from it.
And there is no evidence that most (or even a substantial fraction) of the disparity in success rates in detection of fake bombs was attributable to greater experience in testing by the private screeners.
January 2, 2010, 11:00 pmSW says:
Hans: From the USA Today article(your only source for the old study):
“The recent TSA report says San Francisco screeners face constant covert tests and are “more suspicious.”
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-10-17-airport-security_N.htm
January 2, 2010, 11:06 pmBruce Boyden says:
Jonathan, my distinct impression is that the liquids ban is not strictly enforced against families with small children. If that’s an actual decision that’s been made somewhere, it strikes me as a reasonable one.
January 2, 2010, 11:14 pmHans says:
If constant covert tests are supposedly the reason why private screeners do a better job than TSA screeners (a 75% failure rate by the TSA in L.A., compared to 20% by private screeners in S.F.), then why doesn’t the TSA arrange to test its own screeners?
Either the TSA is incompetent in not increasing testing of its staff, or, more likely, the differential testing frequency only accounts for but a fraction of the massive disparity in detection rates, not most of the disparity. (Testing is useful in promoting vigilance, but probably not THAT useful).
Either explanation is unflattering to the TSA. Of course, it is the TSA itself whose report posited the less unflattering of the two alternative explanations: “The recent TSA report says San Francisco screeners face constant covert tests and are “more suspicious.”
January 2, 2010, 11:15 pmSun Tzu's Nephew says:
And thats a good thing. Unionized TSA goons would have contractual limits on how often they could be tested, what they could be tested with, and have very few penalties for failure, just like building a crappy GM automobile.
January 2, 2010, 11:17 pmHans Clapton says:
Get real- like, the president had to interrupt his vacation to talk to us about this and help us learn from it. C’mon.
January 2, 2010, 11:23 pmBlue says:
To preserve the right of young Somali refugees to fly the friendly skies without being discriminated against, my 18 month old had to have his shoes removed passing through security.
Truly, a worthwhile tradeoff.
January 2, 2010, 11:32 pmSW says:
No they would not. You obviously don’t know Federal workers union laws.
Moreover, the SF screeners that you like so much were unionized.
January 2, 2010, 11:34 pmSW says:
As the old USATODAY article says, TSA increased testing because of the study.
January 2, 2010, 11:40 pmbob says:
I know some Federal workers union laws, I’m studying it right now.
January 2, 2010, 11:42 pmBABH says:
I would suggest that what we need is less security, not more. We don’t get excited about the 40,000 deaths and 100,000 serious injuries annually on our highways, with the attendant economic cost of $230 billion a year. We could easily slash these numbers by fitting cars with devices to limit their speed to 65mph. We don’t because it would be un-American.
An airplane is just a bus that happens to travel through the air rather than on roads. Air travelers should understand that they are more likely to die of natural causes during the flight than to be killed by a fellow passenger. People living in buildings near commercial flight paths are adequately protected by hardened cockpit doors.
We all know that anyone can bring as many weapons as they like onto an airplane. The TSA exists only to provide make-work for its employees. I do not begrudge them their jobs (perhaps they could be reassigned to USPS), but I do resent having to arrive at the airport 2 hrs early for a flight, being unable to bring toothpaste, and being forced to submit to arbitrary authority.
January 2, 2010, 11:48 pmAllan Walstad says:
How many people have been killed in terrorist hijackings since 9/11? Or before 9/11? How does that compare with the number killed in airline accidents? Or in other accidents? Or murdered by common everyday murderers? Or troops killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, for that matter?
January 3, 2010, 12:04 amDuracomm says:
SW said,
1. Correct me if I’m wrong but it looks like the usa today article is dated october 2007 which makes it around two years old, not five.
2. Do you have a link to another study showing that TSA detection rates have improved?
January 3, 2010, 12:12 amBABH says:
Allan: on flights originating or terminating in the US from 1999-2009, 246 passengers were killed by terrorists. That’s out of about 7 billion passengers total.
I haven’t compiled the figures for airline accidents, but Google tells me that only 10% of airline fatalities are due to “Sabotage or Other” (pilot error and mechanical failure are responsible for most fatal crashes).
Meanwhile, in the same period there were about 160,000 homicides in the US, over 5,000 US deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq, and 400,000 deaths in car crashes.
Airline terrorism is a non-issue.
January 3, 2010, 12:38 amBABH says:
A further 2,730 innocents were killed on 9/11, of course.
Hardened cockpit doors protect against a repeat of that.
January 3, 2010, 12:48 amIlya Somin says:
This is tangential. But I just thought I would point out that David Steinberg is a former clerk of 5th Circuit Judge Jerry E. Smith, just like me and co-blogger Todd Zywicki.
January 3, 2010, 12:53 amRoger the Shrubber says:
What are we talking here? Like clown shoes? Explosive clown shoes?
January 3, 2010, 1:03 amEH says:
It seems that Hans is link bombing to increase the relevancy of his articles in search engines
If that’s the case, then the joke’s on him. Links in Volokh comments are not indexed.
January 3, 2010, 1:06 amThe Volokh Conspiracy » Blog Archive » More Tradeoffs in Airport Security says:
[...] Archives « Security or Silliness [...]
January 3, 2010, 1:35 amjukeboxgrad says:
Hans, so far in this thread you’ve linked to your article 11 times.
In this thread you also linked to your article 11 times, and then you stopped (so far).
Just a coincidence, or is 11 a magic number? Something in your contract with CEI? So does that mean there will be no further links (to that same article) in this thread? Or does the drinking game continue?
January 3, 2010, 2:50 amTweets that mention The Volokh Conspiracy » Blog Archive » Security or Silliness -- Topsy.com says:
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Bob Connors and tim gier, topsy_top20k. topsy_top20k said: http://volokh.com/2010/01/02/security-or-silliness/ maybe the terrorists really are winning… [...]
January 3, 2010, 3:04 amjosil says:
The cost of airline security must be enormous, with the smallest part being the budget of TSA. The time of travellers involved in the security apparatus is–even costed at minimum wage–very likely staggering. I really think it is time to seriously consider alternative approaches. For instance, I’ve heard there are very sensitive devices that can detect any evidence of explosives on a person…and are not set off by smelly feet.
January 3, 2010, 4:05 amSW says:
The Report USAToday discusses was old at the time it was obtained by the paper.
January 3, 2010, 7:28 amRicardo says:
What happens when one of the pilots needs to use the toilet?
Except the latest attempted attack was by a 23-year old black man from Nigeria. It’s always been pretty difficult for Yemenis to even get U.S. visas, on the other hand. At least one Yemeni al-Qaeda operative part of the 9/11 operation was denied a U.S. visa even under the old pre-9/11 rules.
Al-Qaeda is a global organization meaning that they are hardly limited to using Arab men in terrorist attacks. This attack could be a sign that already Al-Qaeda is concerned about the threat of Arab men being subjected to extra security measures, even if that threat doesn’t exist in reality. It’s certainly the case that the 9/11 hijackers were told to wear Western clothing and shave their beards for exactly this reason. Maybe the next attack will come from a Filipino Muslim (Muslim names in the Philippines would not be recognizable as such to an average American), a Bosnian or even a Caucasian American convert like John Walker Lindh.
January 3, 2010, 8:31 amrpt says:
Another vote for unionizing the TSA so as to provide better compensation and better trained workers, as demonstrated in the Hudson River incident, featuring, among others, the grand marshall of our Rose Parade.
January 3, 2010, 9:23 amrpt says:
January 3, 2010, 9:25 amDuracomm says:
SW said,
How old was it? Do you have a link to the date of the original report?
January 3, 2010, 9:34 amzuch says:
Of course, it’s theatre. And sometimes cheap political theatre, at that.
One of the primary goals of such programs is to reassure a public that all too often have no realistic quantitative idea of the various risks they face every day.
When nuclear magnetic image imaging was first coming into clinical use, the industry made the decision to change the name from “NMR scanner” to “MRI scanner” ["magnetic resonance imaging scanner"] because the public is scared acopric of the word “nuclear”. Same machine. Different label. Much happier.
With Terra-ism it works extremely well. Certain politicians tell you you need to be deathly afraid of the Big Bad Moooslims, who are smarter that Lex Luthor and will break out of Supermaxes just with their evil glares. And then they will rant and rave and cuss because the opposing party is Asleep At The Job Fighting Terra-ism. They assume their target audience has the LTM of a nematode, and won’t remember exactly who it was that actually was asleep when the biggest terrorist attack was carried out (well, unless you count OKC, where the corpses per terrorist ratio was pretty much the same as the 9/11 attacks).
As for personal experiences with security, we just returned from El Salvador, and outside of a mandatory pat-down and manual search of carry-ons for all passengers, little is different. But I’m not concerned; we always seem to be fighting the last war (which is easier than having the imagination to predict what form the next attempts will take). Someone ought to ask when we’ll put active SAM defences on our airline fleet … or start screening our municipal water supplies….
Cheers,
January 3, 2010, 10:20 amJoseph Slater says:
bob:
Good for you for trying to actually learn about the labor laws that govern federal workers, as many of these threads that contain the gratuitous and substance-less union bashing on this issue feature a bunch of folks who know nothing or less about them. Although Hans does get the prize for re-posting the most ignorance.
January 3, 2010, 10:31 amSara says:
And good for bob, for creative linkage to drive up traffic on Baskin Robbins Australia website. Unlike, Hans’ useless links, at least it’s tasty. (Although, why they study US labor laws at ice cream sellers in Australia is a bit of a mystery.)
January 3, 2010, 10:43 amJoseph Slater says:
Well, that’s what I get for not clicking on the links. Guess I got discouraged by trying to find some support for Hans’s claims in his links.
January 3, 2010, 10:50 amRandy says:
Evidently, people around here never seem to read News of the Weird. It’s a weekly column that details the never ending stupidity of criminals.
Yes, it’s true that TSA is not 100% effective. Yes, it’s true that a criminal mastermind could easily find ways around existing security threats. There will never be 100% security! Everyone knows that — I’m just surprised that some people think it’s possible, and possible to do without inconveniencing the 99.9% of the traveling public that just wants to get there safely.
We should not base our security on a theory that if a rule isn’t 100% effective, then it cannot be used at all. If you want rules that are 100% effective that you have to give up a lot more liberty and traveling will become virtually unbearable.
But most criminals are not the type we see on James Bond. Many are stupid, many can’t think their way out of a paper bag. Any rule that makes it more difficult to blow up a plane will reduce the instances in which plane get blown up.
Of course, some rules are just theater, and we should be constantly monitoring for which have some effectiveness and which do not. Furthermore, although TSA isn’t 100% effective, neither was the dreadful situation that existed prior, with the private companies doing the job. They were much worse.
It’s time we realize that there is no such thing as a 100% gaurantee that no plane will ever be hijacked or otherwise ‘terrorized’ and that we will have to live without our dvds for one hour.
January 3, 2010, 10:50 amHans says:
Unlike many commenters, who expect readers to take what they say on faith, I actually provided links, both to one of my own commentaries (which in turn contains many further links) and to other articles.
Why this attempt to rely to provide supporting citations attracted so much vitriol (such as the absurd claim that I am a “lobbyist”, which I am not), I have no idea. Given that I am a lawyer, and know something about employment law (having formerly practiced it for years), I thought it perfectly reasonable to comment on the issue.
January 3, 2010, 10:50 amRicardo says:
Randy, while I certainly agree with you that there is no such thing as 100% security, the other side of this is that al-Qaeda generally does not recruit stupid people for terrorist operations. This particular terrorist was the son of a wealthy Nigerian banker who was generally described as a very bright student and who was studying at University College London, which is a fairly good university. The four pilots on 9/11 were engineering students at European universities. This is not to say any of these people would qualify as criminal geniuses but they probably have higher-than-average IQs.
January 3, 2010, 11:05 amSara says:
Hans: The first time, you link to yourself, it maybe bad form. The second time you repeat the same identical comment on Volokh (in the same week), it’s annoying. The 3rd through 21st time (etc) you repeat the same comment, you deserve vitriol.
January 3, 2010, 11:07 amJoseph Slater says:
Hans:
Did you ever respond to the contradiction in your argument that favors privatization and opposes collective bargaining rights? Because, as I assume you know, if TSA functions were privatized, screeners would be covered under the NLRA (or possibly the RLA), and thus have much more robust collective bargaining rights than the TSA employees would get under the federal sector labor law.
January 3, 2010, 11:12 amHans says:
My argument is not contradictory. In private firms, the profit motive on the part of the employer, and its need to compete with other firms to provide the service, provides some check on the excesses of collective bargaining. Among public employees, it doesn’t. That’s not to say unionization can’t be bad in the private sector, too — in highly-concentrated oligopoly markets such as the auto industry, it has had very bad consequences — only that the results are worse among public employees.
January 3, 2010, 11:23 amHans says:
Each of my comments above contained material not found in the comments preceding it, as you can see from reviewing them above.
Thus, my comments above are not, contrary to what one commenter claimed above, the “same identical comment” resubmitted over and over again.
It is true that many of my comments link to the same commentary, but that is because the commentary is much longer and contains more extended discussion (and supporting links) that support my various comments above.
I think it is better to cite to the supporting commentary than to reproduce it in its entirety in the comment thread to this blog, when some of it may not be relevant to the preceding comments (especially since reinserting the internal links would be time-consuming).
January 3, 2010, 11:28 amJoseph Slater says:
Hans:
What exactly are your worried about in federal sector bargaining? Federal employees can’t bargain over the sorts of things that private sector employees can. They can’t bargain over compensation, hours of work, or job assignments, for example.
Also, did you ever come up with any examples of collective bargaining interfering with emergency, security, or public safety work among the many unionized public employees (police, fire, other DHS workers, etc., etc.)?
January 3, 2010, 11:28 amSara says:
Private firms, who do airport screening in local markets are an oligopoly. There is no competition.
January 3, 2010, 11:30 amSara says:
You made the identical comments on multiple threads on Volokh, which naturally leads people to have the same conversation, over and over again. This does not advance the discussion or improve this community. It detracts from it.
Unlike these last few substantive comments, which further the conversation.
January 3, 2010, 11:50 amjukeboxgrad says:
hans:
Your links are worthless. You have linked to your own article literally dozens of times. That article, in turn, contains dozens of links. Trouble is, most of those links are to Glenn Reynolds, Michelle Malkin, Washington Examiner, and/or yourself. If you’re trying to convince anyone who doesn’t already agree with you, you should put a bit more emphasis on using trustworthy sources.
In that article of yours, you also use the same links over and over again (which of course is your typical style). For example, you linked to the same USA Today article eight times. So it seems that you are trying to create the impression that you are presenting lots of proof, when in fact you are simply presenting the same bogus ‘proof’ over and over again.
There can be legitimate reasons to reuse a link, but when you reuse the same link eight times in one article, this tends to create the impression that you are trying to impress people who are easily impressed.
You are “CEI’s Counsel for Special Projects.” (I’m using google cache because for some strange reason the CEI web site is currently broken.) CEI has received funding from the usual rich right-wing families, with names such as Scaife, Koch and Olin. Other contributors include “the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, Exxon Mobil, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America … Pfizer, General Motors, the American Petroleum Institute, the American Plastics Council, the Chlorine Chemistry Council … Arch Coal” and various parties in the tobacco industry. See here, here, here and here.
If you’re not a lobbyist, you’re something indistinguishable from a lobbyist. But given the lameness of your efforts, your corporate sponsors are not getting their money’s worth.
What you did in the other thread is repost the same material essentially verbatim, at least three times. This is normally described as spam.
January 3, 2010, 11:59 amJoseph Slater says:
Beyond what Jukebox Grad says (all correctly), none of Hans’s links (at least the ones I could get to work) have any specific, relevant data, facts or examples. Again, do you have examples of collective bargaining interfering with emergency, security, or public safety work among the many unionized public employees (police, fire, other DHS workers, etc., etc.)?
There is a rich literature on unions and efficiency, and some of us even write about federal sector labor law and labor relations in this context specifically discussing these sorts of things. Those interested could see my article, “Homeland Security vs. Workers Rights? What the Federal Government Should Learn from History and Experience, and Why,” 6 Penn. J. of Lab. & Emp. Law 295 (2004). I promise, no repeated spamming of this though.
January 3, 2010, 12:06 pmBABH says:
Perhaps that’s part of the problem. If airports offered two security lines, the process would become efficient very quickly.
From 1970 to 2007, there were 432 fatal incidents on American airliners and foreign airliners operating in the US. Terrorism was the cause of about 10% of these, or an average of 1 a year over the 38 year period. Out of millions of flights per year, how can anyone say with a straight face that this is unacceptable? If anything, our security is way too tight (c.f. what we are willing to put up with in highway casualties).
Interestingly, terrorism accounted for 5% of crashes in the 1950s and 60s, jumping to 10% in the 70s where it has remained ever since. This may have something to do with improvements in aircraft, but the timing seems to coincide with the rise of middle-eastern oil powers.
January 3, 2010, 12:17 pmSara says:
I have been thinking about why San Francisco screeners (whom Hans holds up the preferred model) were private, not TSA. I suspect it’s because San Francisco (which is owned and run by the City) requires its employees to be union organized by City ordinance.
January 3, 2010, 12:27 pmJoseph Slater says:
Sara:
Respectfully, a city can’t require that its employees be represented by a union (or, more specifically, that would be directly contrary to all U.S. labor laws, so I doubt it’s the case here.). A city can grant certain employees the right to be represented by a union if (and only if) a majority of those employees so choose.
January 3, 2010, 12:33 pmSara says:
I don’t doubt what you say Joseph. But I do believe that City ordinance requires that it’s contractors (employees was a sloppy term) be union shops.
January 3, 2010, 12:39 pmFrank says:
Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.
Jukeboxgrad attacks Hans for supposedly working for a think-tank, CEI, funded by corporations (are there any think tanks — liberal or conservative — that don’t get money from corporations? Respected think-tanks like Brookings receive such funding), while citing to a a notoriously unreliable blog (Think Progress) of the left-wing Center for American Progress, which was set up by the companies and billionaires responsible for the financial crisis and the subprime mortgage crisis, like the Sandlers behind lender Golden West (which made tens of billions in bad subprime mortgage loans and got parodied on Saturday Night Live as a result) and billionaire speculator George Soros.
Joseph Slater endorses this absurd line of attack (saying “Beyond what Jukebox Grad says (all correctly) . . .”), which makes you wonder why he is even posting at this site, given that Professor Adler, and others who have posted at this blog, have apparently worked for the same think-tank, CEI (judging from one of the sites linked to by jukeboxgrad).
The crowning irony is that Hans at least cites to neutral sources, like USA Today (as well as to more ideological ones like the Washington Examiner, Glenn Reynolds, and Michelle Malkin), whereas Slater cites ony to his own 2004 article. Yet Slater faults Hans for citing to himself.
January 3, 2010, 12:48 pmJoseph Slater says:
Sara:
You may be referring to what are often called Project Labor Agreements. Not really a requirement that contractors be union shops, but arguably related. See here.
January 3, 2010, 12:49 pmA. Criminal says:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects is a really great idea and it’s good that the government decided that searches and seizures without warrants or probable cause, unsupported by Oath or affirmation, and especially without describing the persons or things to be seized is a great way to accomplish it.
January 3, 2010, 12:59 pmSara says:
Thanks for the information, Joseph.
January 3, 2010, 1:11 pmSara says:
Or lead to anticompetitive behavior by both, which is in their natural interest.
January 3, 2010, 1:19 pmInstapundit » Blog Archive » AIR TRAVEL: security, or silliness?… says:
[...] AIR TRAVEL: security, or silliness? [...]
January 3, 2010, 1:24 pmJoseph Slater says:
Frank:
I did cite to myself, once. But I suggest that my article contains a lot of specific facts — and discussions of lots of specific studes on both sides of the issue. I’m still waiting for Hans to cite something, written by himself or others, that gets into real specific facts or examples about collective bargaining rights and safety issues.
January 3, 2010, 1:48 pmsubrot0 says:
Perhaps we can outsource this issue to the Israels. Heck Dubai runs ports, why can’t the Israeli’s take over this task. Then we could use the TSA for really important stuff (carrying bags, checking in luggage, brushing up on their SAT scores.
January 3, 2010, 1:53 pmholdfast says:
Well why are they more suspicious? Is it the frequent testing, or the knowledge that, as non-union employees, failing the test could result in their dismissal? If TSA employees are tested more, but suffer no serious consequences from the testing, then does the increased testing even help?
January 3, 2010, 2:00 pmSW says:
Hold fast: The SF0 screeners who were tested more often, and were thus suspicious, WERE union. The LAX and ORD screeners who did not do well, were NOT union.
January 3, 2010, 2:08 pmzuch says:
FWIW, I think I was more perturbed by the guy that brought aboard a BBQ rib dinner and slurped it down across the aisle yesterday, than I was with any security precautions (or lack thereof). TOBAL!
Cheers,
January 3, 2010, 2:23 pmzuch says:
And on another note: In India, they prohibit (to my dismay) carrying any pepper sauce, powder, or peppers on board. Big signs explaining that in the airports….
Cheers,
January 3, 2010, 2:25 pmzuch says:
More unsupported allegations. Yes, TP (and its shadow cadres) is responsible for the financial meltdown … not. You forgot to say that Soros is a self-hating billionaire capitalist commie Jew (as well as show that Soros has anything to do with TP or the financial meltdown).
Cheers,
January 3, 2010, 2:43 pmRich Vail says:
It’s long past time that we stop the “security sillyness” and begin to actually use “racial profiling” in airport security…when was the last time an Isreali/Saudi Airline was actually bombed/highjacked/etc? That’s because they don’t even bother with being PC. They actively profile any and all possible terrorists and thus don’t have the problems. While all Muslims are obviously not terrorist, most recent terrorist have in fact been muslims…so, it goes without saying that TSA needs to cut the BS and actually take a look at WHO could possibly perform terrorist acts, and target them, and those who are SIMILAR!
January 3, 2010, 2:45 pmJoe Haskins says:
They will be pretty much like the crew that will be managing out health care, don’t you think?
January 3, 2010, 3:06 pmjosil says:
An abstract possibility is to allow airlines to opt for screening using profiles if they choose. Then, offended travellers can indulge the other (PC-oriented)airlines, thereby putting their principles into practice…at some risk. That’s something I favor for everyone with principles…like physical well-being, “no pain,no gain”.
January 3, 2010, 3:07 pmBABH says:
What risk, exactly? You are more likely to be struck by lightning than to be involved in a terrorist attack.
January 3, 2010, 3:22 pmA Better Way to Airport Security « says:
[...] don’t have the energy today to summon up much to add to it. But a link via Instapundit, via Volokh Conspiracy led to the Toronto Star and an article too good to not pass on. “Israelis, unlike Canadians [...]
January 3, 2010, 3:23 pmOrder of the Coif says:
I flew from London to the USA on December 31. Security screening at Heathrow was its usual joke.
At the gate they hand “pawed” through every carry on (but they didn’t know what to look for or how to find it). They didn’t open any inner packaging, for example. Then there was the “pat down” which studiously avoided my groin (where the failed Detroit bomber carried his explosive codpiece). There was no extra restrictions once we boarded.
Cabin security is, as it always has been, in the hands of the passengers. The cabin crew on this flight wasn’t up to hand-to-hand combat with someone intending murder (other than on El Al, the stewardesses never are). Stay alert, watch for weirdness, and be ready to act forcefully. The life you save WILL be your own!
Back that up with vigorous Israeli-style profiling and you might get somewhere.
January 3, 2010, 3:47 pmyankee says:
How do you propose to have the TSA profile Muslims, short of requiring all Muslims to wear little yellow crescents?
January 3, 2010, 4:03 pmzuch says:
That explains why I and my partner at the time were stopped at the door at JFK and separated from our luggage, searched, individually questioned, our answers compared, and such, when us Northern Europeans took El-Al to London one year….
You ought not talk about what you do not know.
Cheers,
January 3, 2010, 4:04 pmHans says:
The courts recognize that there is a big constitutional difference between racial profiling (generally forbidden under a constitutional strict-scrutiny test) and other forms of profiling, like age-based profiling (generally constitutional, under the Supreme Court’s Garrett, Murgia, and Kimel decisions).
But the government’s transportation security regulations foolishly forbid government screeners to use profiling of either the legitimate or the illegitimate variety, forbidding the use of legal forms of profiling as well as presumptively illegal, racial profiling.
January 3, 2010, 4:48 pmjcm says:
In Venezuela , the forbidden items include books. The national Guard will take the dogs if you have one because they dont show in the screener. And some years ago someone carried cocaine in a book
January 3, 2010, 7:16 pmSir ,when your measures are like the venezuelan government , the current and the formers , use to take , you are in a huuuge problem
SW says:
Really?
WASHINGTON — Citizens of 14 nations, including Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Nigeria, who are flying to the United States will be subjected indefinitely to the intense screening at airports worldwide that was imposed after the Christmas Day bombing plot, Obama administration officials announced Sunday. . . .
In the United States, a requirement for “second screening” has for a number of years already been in effect for a dozen countries, a fact that is not widely known.
Charles Oy, 28, of Chicago is an American who was born in Nigeria. He said that he detected heightened security over the weekend — not in Nigeria but upon his arrival Sunday at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago. He was one of a few passengers taken aside for an individual interview, and his bags and passport were examined.
The suspect arrested in the Northwest Airlines episode, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23, was Nigerian, but Mr. Oy said that the added scrutiny did not leave him discouraged. “I feel it is very isolated, and is something not characteristic of Nigeria,” he said. “I had no particular feelings of unpleasantness. I understand it is part of the world we live in. I factor all that into my traveling. If it happens, I roll with it.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/04/us/04webtsa.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&src=igw
January 3, 2010, 9:54 pmRicardo says:
Well for one thing, Israeli security doesn’t come cheap. Are you volunteering to pay for it? You can look forward to maybe an extra $60-$70 “security fee” being tacked on to every airline ticket you buy for each segment.
Do you wear padding and a helmet every time you cross the street?
January 3, 2010, 9:57 pmRicardo says:
This makes more sense than profiling based on skin color which I have to gather is what people here are advocating. There are lots of Iranians who could easily pass for being of Spanish or Italian extraction. On the other hand, some Greeks or Hindus from India look a lot like Arabs.
But Mr. Oy’s description of what happened is vague. It sounds to me like he was taken aside at Customs or Immigration for secondary questioning when returning to the U.S. which is much different than the airport security measures the article discusses. There isn’t much dispute that Customs and Immigration profile people all the time. For a while, there was a problem with Korean women being trafficked into the U.S. through Mexico: sure enough, Koreans at the U.S.-Mexico border were subjected to extra scrutiny. In any case, sometimes being a young single man traveling alone is enough to warrant extra scrutiny when returning to the U.S.
January 3, 2010, 10:10 pmjukeboxgrad says:
frank:
Not exactly. I attacked Hans for claiming he wasn’t a lobbyist even though he’s a lobbyist. Your reading comprehension needs work.
There isn’t necessarily anything wrong with working for a think-tank, corporate-financed or otherwise. But there is something wrong with being a hack, and there’s something wrong with pretending not to be what you are. Hans has done both.
You might have a basis for saying that if you could demonstrate that I’m a hack, and/or if you could demonstrate that I am something other than what I purport to be. But you haven’t, and you can’t, and you won’t.
Do you have any proof that they are “notoriously unreliable?” Can you demonstrate any errors in the article I cited? Both of those things would be helpful. Can you provide either?
As others have explained, he misrepresented that article. Misrepresenting a neutral source is no better than presenting a biased source. It’s arguably worse.
What sources does Slater use in his article? Mostly himself? Mostly biased sources? If you are not in a position to answer these questions, then your criticism is invalid.
January 3, 2010, 10:59 pmJoseph Slater says:
Again, I agree with Jukebox Grad. Also,for the record, my article (which I’ve cited a total of one time in the multiple threads on this issue), discusses the works of many other folks, including folks who disagree with me.
January 4, 2010, 9:17 amHans says:
I am not a lobbyist, contrary to what JukeBoxGrad claims. Nor have I ever been. I have no idea why he thinks I am a lobbyist, or why Joseph Slater chooses to “agree” with him about this. The fact that they believe I am a lobbyist without any basis for so believing leads me to believe that everything they say should be taken with a grain of salt.
January 4, 2010, 10:53 amJerry in Detroit says:
Bruce Schneier calls TSA “Security Kabuki” or “Security Theater”. It something that’s created to make you feel safe so long as you don’t look behind the curtain.
January 4, 2010, 11:30 amJoseph Slater says:
Hans:
Still waiting on you providing ANY example at all of collective bargaining rights interfering with responses to security or public safety issues. I’ve suggested the response of the unionized firefighters, police, and other emergency rescue workers on 9/11 helps show that they don’t. And in the whole history of federal agencies and police and fire departments being unionized, you would think you could come up with some examples to support your knee-jerk anti-union ideology. Pretty revealing that in your multiple posts you haven’t come up with one.
January 4, 2010, 11:59 amLumpy says:
I think a more effective tactic would be to scrutinize circumcised men of non northern European
January 5, 2010, 1:14 amappearance.
jukeboxgrad says:
hans:
The only way to describe you as something other than a lobbyist is to use a definition of that word that is so pedantically narrow that it’s useless.
And the “basis for so believing” was presented here. The fact that you would not lift a finger to address the facts that were presented and instead deny that “any” facts were presented is yet another reason to conclude that your corporate overseers are not getting their money’s worth from you. Your work performance corresponds with your own caricature of a union-member’s work performance.
January 6, 2010, 8:41 am