• Someonelol@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    ·
    3 months ago

    The TSA is something that shouldn't exist in its current form. They very often fail their audit checks and normalize invading your privacy to an extreme degree like body scanners and pat downs. If water bottles are considered potentially explosive then why dump them on a bin next to a line of people where they can go off? This is low grade security theater that inconveniences passengers at best.

    • psivchaz@reddthat.com
      ·
      3 months ago

      It's basically the only type of jobs program that both sides of our broken government can agree on: petty nonsense that looks like it might do something useful, but really doesn't, and only inconveniences the poors.

    • jol@discuss.tchncs.de
      ·
      3 months ago

      The main reason that rule still exists is to sell overpriced water. Otherwise they could just ask you to drink some of it to prove it's water.

    • CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      ·
      3 months ago

      The main reason why it exists is to provide jobs. The number of people who work at the TSA at every airport in every state...no representative wants to cut those jobs.

      • Bumblefumble@lemm.ee
        ·
        3 months ago

        I mean if a state removed the TSA and spent the money on something else, surely they could use the money to create as many jobs as they removed but in an actual useful field.

    • fermionsnotbosons@lemmy.ml
      ·
      3 months ago

      According to the story I heard as to the origin of the "no liquids over X amount" rule, years ago there was a terrorist that tried to smuggle hydrogen peroxide and acetone - which can be used to rather easily synthesize triacetone triperoxide (TATP, a highly sensitive explosive) - onto a plane in plastic toiletry bottles. They got caught and foiled somehow, and then the TSA started restricting liquids on planes. This was in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, if I recall correctly.

      And I happen to know, from a reliable source, of someone who accidentally made TATP in a rotary evaporator in an academic lab. So it seems plausible.

      Not that the rule is actually effective prevention against similar attacks, nor that the TSA even knows what the reason is behind what they do at this point, haha. I just thought it was an interesting story.

    • Lets_Eat_Grandma@lemm.ee
      ·
      edit-2
      3 months ago

      They treat people like cattle because they are protecting the airplanes and the airline's liability, not the people onboard or in line to board.

      If people think it's unsafe people won't pay up to fly.

    • LunchMoneyThief@links.hackliberty.org
      ·
      3 months ago

      It just hasn't had the right public messaging behind it. I can think of a few historically recent things that are security theater but have been successfully accepted by the public because of slogans, social engineering and authoritative messaging. TSA just needs their own marketing blitz.