It's-a me, Mario!

hahah, for charles.

Amtrak?

I can be flexible if there's a good meal in the equation.

Really? You're doing to deny yourself a personal experience due to this horseshit?

There is no allowance for age.

Been to the USA 20+ times by plane. Had my share of abuse. Will go to less anal countries. Or drive.

BAHAHAHAHAHAHA!! Less anal countries. nice.

There are also good academic papers that state how much better dogs are at detecting explosives than these new machines that cost 0K a pop. It's also so obvious that no papers need to be written on how much cheaper dogs are.

Of course, I'm sure some senator/congresscritter used to run/is best friends with the guy who runs the company that makes the body scanning machines; common sense doesn't apply when you can use security theater to enrich yourself based on peoples' irrational fears.

No. Most of the "Wah wah wah this is disgusting why would they pat down a toddler/old lady/wheelchair amputee" people just think this is illustrative of how paranoid, xenophobic, and otherwise fucking retarded anti-terror measures have become.

This needs a 'why the terrorists won' tag.

I'll admit, it's tricky. There are stories about car bombs being allowed through checkpoints because there were children in the vehicle. People that horrible are out there.

But I'm not sure this is really the solution. Airport security feels so uneven to me. We pat down toddlers for Spider-Man underoo-bombs, but anyone can get on the subway or a train without so much as a glance.

There needs to be a happy medium between tightening up security and "letting the terrorists win". This does not feel like a happy medium to me.

Claiming that most people who point out the irrational aspects of TSA security theater support racial profiling if foolish, insulting, and wrong. Nobody here has said anything along those lines.

There are tons of good academic papers pointing out explaining how easy it is to get things through security regardless of the procedure used, because it costs hundreds of millions and worldwide enforcement to unreliably stop one method of smuggling on a weapon, but nothing at all for terrorists to shift methods or targets.

Smellvin's right, by the way. The body scanner manufacturers are/were paying the former head of Homeland Security.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122018593

I think brown people should punch TSA employees in the face for touching their junk, as should white people, yellow people, red people, blue people, Betazoids, Klingons, camels, hyenas, and, especially, straw men.

Wait, wait. Why is this illustrative of xenophobia, phalsebob?

The only problem I have with TSA agents touching my junk is that they're probably going to hit on me afterward.

In Cena-Mark's absence I will show my support for racial profiling.

So far all of the terrorists attacking our planes have been of middle eastern or African descent. When an 80 year old nun or a 3 year old kid from Wisconson blows up a plane then sure, strip search them all. Until then, why are we looking up nuns skirts and down kids pants?

Short answer: No they haven't. They have been African, Middle-Eastern, Hispanic and Caucasian. That encompasses such a broad spectrum of what people look like, you cannot reasonable eliminate any but a tiny percentage of the population through such profiling.

More importantly, the attackers are united by an ideology, not a racial connection, so there's no point basing it on that characteristic. We've seen in the past that terrorists simply adapt their tactics to the vulnerabilities, and Israel has had to adjust their profiling to include women, children, the elderly, and people of all races for exactly that reason.

Finally, this level of scrutiny is a punishment and suspension of liberty, and enacting it based on race is a fundamental attack on our democratic principles without a corresponding increase in our security. As I mentioned in a prior video, the most common factor in American foreign terrorist attacks is gender, yet for obvious reasons, lawmakers are more interested in discriminating on the darkness of skin.

Also while you specified "attacks on planes", domestic terrorist attacks on other targets include pretty much all races, and there's no realistic reason why someone who blows up a building or plants pipe bombs won't choose to target a plane if the option is available. The TSA doesn't just exist for Al-Qaeda. The basic rule of counter terrorism to prepare for the upcoming threat, not to simply respond to the last attack.

It's like everyone's brain just skips over McVeigh.

Agreed. Five stars for everyone who is nude.

Think about packing things into 3 year olds a lot don't you?

No, but I do think allot about making stupid comments. You know that goes right?

Your taint? You're still thinking small. You know that drug mules don't usually tape their cargo to the outside of their body, right?

Not to mention that there are often more people crammed into the lines outside TSA checkpoints than there are on any one plane. Combine that with a lingering biological agent, rather than a one-shot explosion, and you've just routed the entire system.

Hopefully none of the terrorists are smarter than you, I guess.

I loled and learned something about myself. It's not a good thing.

osama bin droolin

Of course that'll just bother minimum wage TSA employees who have no control over the policy and allow the lobbyists greater chances to sell multimillion dollar groping machines through Chertoff.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for it both as a protest and to try and usher in a fashion style that involves more comfort and freedom of movement. But these decisions long ago stopped being about security or common sense; its all about the money.