Airport Security Question.

K2

I don't fly much anymore but yesterday I went through Ft. Laud airport. I asked a question about a knife and that got me the full bag and body search which I had no problems with.
As I'm waiting for the plane I'm noticing how much tube steel and flat spring steel are in the frames of backpacks and carry-ons all around me. There was a lady sitting close by and she had 16 inch wooden knitting needles. I asked her about her needles and she said she flys all the time and never gets questioned about them.
Looks to me like there might be too much potential for trouble getting through the gates. Or could I be watching to many MacGyver reruns???

Woz the Painter

I think your watching way too many McGyver reruns, and from what you said are afraid of old ladies with knitting needles. If that's the case, I would build a very deep bomb shelter, stock it with 4 years worth of food and water, and pull a Howard Hughes. People like you, are why we have people like George W Bush as president. And if you stay down in that shelter with like minded people for 4 years or more, we may get a president who actually knows his ass, from a hole in the ground.

Kristina

Wow, that was harsh. As long as items are being questioned I think it's reasonable that no one assumes anything about anyone. Terrorists don't always show up cloaked in black and wielding automatic weapons anymore than child molesters have "PEDOPHILE" stamped on their foreheads. Whodda thunk a sneaker could hold a bomb? I don't think in this climate we can take anything for granted. Have you ever SEEN a 16 inch knitting needle?? That **** ain't no joke if you want to stab someone with it.

If we make generalizations and profile we risk our safety. I had my swiss army knife key chain taken from me when I was just going to the GATE to meet a friend!! What? I'm going to hijack the airport with a nail file or a fork?? But they couldn't take anything for granted.

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Tscarborough

It is a legite question. My travel bag has 2 pieces of spring steel, 1/2"x18" that I could easily sharpen and use as a weapon. Only once has it even been noticed, and I fly a lot.

Teetorbilt

When my daughter graduated in MA, we went to the shore and Ol#2 gathered up about 10#s of rocks. They let them go through with the carry-on, a couple of them in a sock could wreak some havoc in the confines of an airplane cabin.

Matches, yes. Lighters, no. Who knows how they are thinking?

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K2

Probably would be best not to mention any of this to TSA at the airport as when I used the word "knife" in a sentence they came down on me.

I actually never watched the show. I'm really not afraid of much. I've got the bomb shelter but it came with the house. I never pulled the lever for a repub in my life. My point was actually something other than what you read into it.

Woz the Painter

Sorry if i took it the wrong way, Rob 53, but people think the TSA or homeland security is going to protect them, while the reality is that only a small percentage of airline cargo is ever checked. As Teetor says why allow matches, but not lighters? The TSA is going to start allowing knives, nail clippers etc. back on board. And Kristina, backthe 90's a jet over Lockerbee, Scotland was blown to bits by a pound or so of plastic explosive hidden in a small radio or something.

K2

I'm always suspicious of beauracrats and there motives but you can't rule out the "stupidity factor". Last month the city came and paved my alley after 100 years of it being dirt/ gravel. Last week the city decided to replace the sewer line under the alley. I don't know how these guys can look a tax payer in the eye.

Kristina

I wasn't sure if this was meant as an agreement or disagreement of what I said. I'm know all about the Scottish crash though.

That was my point. Too many people think only the obvious items are used to commit crimes, in fact quite the opposite is true.

I'd rather my knitting needles be confiscated than for some news reporter to be reporting about my plane crash and how "amazed" they are at the creativity of the attackers, using knitting yarn to blow up my plane.

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Woz the Painter

Kristina, I was only trying to point out that your comment on who woulda thunk about a shoe bomber, is that the Lockerbee incident happened years earlier and our security guru's acted like they were shocked, same as they were about planes flying into buildings on 9/11, when most know how lethal Japanese kamikazi's were in WW2.

Kristina

Well, what's funny is that now they scan shoes, but they will skip over knitting needles until someone stabs a flight attendant with one.

Instead of thinking ahead, they wait until something happens and THEN say, "oh yeah, we had an incident with knitting needles, those are banned from flights too."

It's all a big joke. As is usual with government, a buncha buttwipes spinning their wheels trying to LOOK busy and important and doing nothing more than running in circles.

Did anyone read the 9/11 Investigation?!?! I was HORRIFIED by the level of ineptness. Seriously. So blown away by all the avoidable screw ups that several times I had to put it down and shake my head.

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joasis

Ok...this is for Woz...and it isn't personal...lets just say slick willie would have appeared on TV to announce terrorists had missiled TWA 800 out of the air.(maybe the truth will be known someday).and safety can no longer be assured? How about the inept peanut farmer who destroyed the operational readiness of our military and gave away national security, watching 444 days of the calendar go by while Americans were held in Tehran?

I read the 9-11 report, (all of it, every page), not just the condensed versions), and one thing I am convinced of is HINDSIGHT is 20/20. Like the most enlightened people know, who would have seriously considered what would happen? Well, now we know, just as FDR learned in 1941, Kennedy in 1963, Johnson for the Vietnam escalation, Nixon for the artificial peace, Carter for the idealistic world of his dreams, Reagan for the America of pride, and on and on....No one said Bush is perfect, and since the government only changes managers, not the workforce, the same people were interpreting the data and making the assumptions. Heck people, I am a pilot and I would have not gave it a lot of thought if someone wanted to learn to fly an airliner. If I saw an Arab in a flight school, I would not have guessed what they were up to...but now I know. We all do......lets hope we learn from the mistakes and prevent the next round.

Floorwizard

I flew from Cali to Alaska.
Was bored so I popped in a DVD or 2 along the way.

Do you know how easy it is to snap those bad boys in half? we are talkin being able to shave with em!
one DVD snapped in half is all it would take.
I had 10 of em

If someone wants to do something, they will.

these measures help prevent.

that's all you can do.

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CGofMP

The truth of the matter is that if you want a weapon onboard an aircraft you will get one onboard an aircraft. I can think up ways of making a firearm type device pretty simply especially if I can get an accomplice.

Let us not even talk about using 'benign' items as effective makeshift weapons. It is easy to disguize something to look like something else or to make use of a legitimate object (many of which I can think of that would be allowed on aircraft) in order to make a stabbing or blugeoning weapon.

Even your steel toe boots could be used to great advantage if need be.

The idea that you can keep people safe by limiting tweezers at the gate is a lie. It is a myth propagated to make people feel safe.

Those who want to can get weapons on an aircraft or make them from ... It is just that simple.

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Mike Finley

What about me? Being an ex- secret agent I was trained to kill a man with my thumb. Let em try to take my thumbs when I board the plane!

CGofMP

Adds a WHOLE new meaning to Thumbs Up eh Mike?

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AAPaint

9/11 was the day we found out how many people are really paying attention, and sadly, it is very few.....Millions of US citizens were scammed into believing they are being attacked by some mysterious, and as of yet, unstoppable faction. One that can't even be touched by the most sophisticated military and intelligence agencies on the planet..one man. We easily caught the RULER of a country, but we can catch a guy on a camel in the mountains because he was trained and funded by our own CIA??

I better stop there......no politics, but please, WAKE UP AMERICA!

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Mike Finley

careful where you are pointing those thumbs, those are fightin words!

CGofMP

No sir!
Not thinking that sort of thought at all!
I mean afterall this aint the Patty and Tom show!

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Woz the Painter

OK this is for joasis.... nothing personal... Did FDR know the Japs were going to Pearl Harbor? He most likely did, and knew that this would be the impetus to throw the US into WW2. Right or wrong it was most likely inevitable. Truman, rolled the dice and decided that dropping the atom bombs on Japan, which had to be the most heart wrenching decision in history, would save untold American lives. Eisenhower, right before leaving office, implored America to beware of the military-industrial complex, of which he was a member. Kennedy had great visions of the greatness of America, which were snuffed out prematurly. LBJ, did he have anything to dowith Kennedy's demise? We most likely will never know. HE took the path of a certain senator from Wisconsin namely Joseph McCarthy, who believed that communism should be snuffed out at all costs, including those of liberty and freedom, because of something called the dominoe theory. Next we have Richard M Nixon, someone who would spy and cheat on his best friend, to get realected, and brought down many with him. Then Gerry Ford, a likeable guy who told us to WIN [whip inflation now], to bad he had no clue what that really meant. Next we had Jimmy Carter a god fearing man, who inherited a military brought down by our fiasco in Viet Nam, by the overthrow of the Shah whom we trumped up since the Eisenhower administration, and run away inflation caused by Arab oil embargoes, and I"d like to point out, said in one of his State of The Union Addresses, we have to as a country develop solar, wind and other alternative energy sources and become independant from foreign energy, and he started government funded efforts to promote these alternatives. Then we get Ronny Reagan, a bad actor at best, who harkened back to old Tail Gunner Joe McCarthy, let's fight communism at any and all costs, give all rich people all the tax breaks [cause they need all the help they can get], let corporations merge, comingle, co-habitate, with junk bonds, so the American taxpayer can foot the bill, send Marine's to Lebanon, with orders to sit behind sandbags, don't fire back, and 320 of them get blown up while they sleep in their barracks, invade a small Carribean island and issue more medals than were handed out in WW2, and who was probably senile for who knows how long during his time in office. Bill Clinton, who early in his adminisration tried to push for National Health Insurance, which by the way is accepted as the norm by every major industrialized nation in the world, was beaten back by the Republicans as a socialist plot. Clinton leaned too far right and pushed NAFTA through, and as sure as Ross Perrot said, there was a giant sucking sound of jobs out of the USA. Then he screwed around with some chubby chick, and you would have thought, that he nuked Canada. Then there was George 'W' Bush, who never was president to begin with [remember the election when Gore won?] He has systematically screwed up each and every thing he has touched, lied and cheated the American people, and never admitted once that he has done wrong. Oh I forgot about his daddy George "H' Bush, who originally invaded Iraq and had a wide open path to take out Saddam's evil regime, but had brain farts or such [must run in the family], I'll always remember a thousand points of light, and read my lips no new taxes.