- Someonelol ( @Someonelol@lemmy.dbzer0.com ) English207•1 month 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.
- leisesprecher ( @leisesprecher@feddit.org ) English66•1 month ago
It’s security theater through and through.
Apart from the obvious failings of these checks, think about what kind of damage a single backpack of explosives can do to a packed airport during holiday season. You can literally put a ton of explosives on one of those trolleys, roll it into the waiting area and kill 200 people easily. No security whatsoever involved.
Reality is, most security measures are designed to keep the illusion of control. Nothing more. Penetration testers show again and again that you can easily circumvent practically all barriers or measures.
- Tamo240 ( @Tamo240@programming.dev ) English15•1 month ago
The goal is not to stop the people in the queue being attacked, its to stop someone boarding a plane with the means to hijack it
- nednobbins ( @nednobbins@lemm.ee ) English33•1 month ago
They fail gloriously at at that too.
Whenever they get tested the red teams manage to smuggle in everything needed to hijiack a plane plus a kitchen sink.
The few times that terrorists tried to board planes, they made it through security and were caught by other passengers.
- Liz ( @Liz@midwest.social ) English17•1 month ago
Yeah, and you don’t need the TSA for that. Just do as they already do: lock the cockpit.
- KyuubiNoKitsune ( @KyuubiNoKitsune@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) English16•1 month ago
They had to do something about the plague of people hijacking planes with bottles of water.
- Tamo240 ( @Tamo240@programming.dev ) English8•1 month ago
IIRC water happens to appear similarly to a lot of explosives on the metric they use for what the composition of items in the scanner is.
Improvements are being made though so soon we may be allowed to take water through unrestricted:
Why Airport Security Suddenly Got Better (13:01) https://youtu.be/nyG8XAmtYeQ?si=RTjA8GRuZaMIJs9d
- psivchaz ( @psivchaz@reddthat.com ) English63•1 month 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.
- interdimensionalmeme ( @interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml ) English1•1 month ago
Ouch, owie, my democracy
- jol ( @jol@discuss.tchncs.de ) English31•1 month 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.
- TWeaK ( @TWeaK@lemm.ee ) English18•1 month ago
It’s because all the shops inside want you to buy their shit.
- fermionsnotbosons ( @fermionsnotbosons@lemmy.ml ) English16•1 month 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.
- m4xie ( @m4xie@slrpnk.net ) English10•1 month ago
hydrogen peroxide and acetone
So there are worse cleaning chemicals to mix than bleach and vinegar
- fermionsnotbosons ( @fermionsnotbosons@lemmy.ml ) English2•1 month ago
Requires an acid catalyst for the reaction to actually proceed, but yeah, could definitely ruin your day - although a lungful of chlorine gas is nothing to sneeze at either.
- CosmicTurtle0 ( @CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.com ) English13•1 month 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.
- AltheaHunter ( @AltheaHunter@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) English39•1 month ago
I fucking hate that this is a thing. “We can’t stop doing this useless and/or detrimental thing, look at all the work it makes for other people to do!!!” Absolutely bonkers that it’s just a standard political argument.
- BurningRiver ( @BurningRiver@beehaw.org ) English4•1 month ago
“The government made 25% of my district unemployed, why didn’t I get reelected?”
Ask it from that side and you have your answer.
- AltheaHunter ( @AltheaHunter@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) English8•1 month ago
I wasn’t asking a question. I understand why politicians do it, I just think it’s a sign of a terrible system.
- Bumblefumble ( @Bumblefumble@lemm.ee ) English13•1 month 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.
- frezik ( @frezik@midwest.social ) English12•1 month ago
Could we pay them to dig a ditch and fill it back in again? It’d be just as useful.
- interdimensionalmeme ( @interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml ) English1•1 month ago
We could pay them to do nothing* that would be just as effective.
*not nothing but do whatever they want
- Lets_Eat_Grandma ( @Lets_Eat_Grandma@lemm.ee ) English9•1 month 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.
- akakunai ( @akakunai@lemmy.ca ) English3•1 month ago
I recently realized that I have been boarding planes for years with multiple boxes of razor blades in my carry-on.
…Not a single checkpoint picked them up.
- LunchMoneyThief ( @LunchMoneyThief@links.hackliberty.org ) English3•1 month 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.
- Vilian ( @Vilian@lemmy.ca ) English2•1 month ago
To be fair a explosion in a on the side of a line not gonna kill anyone, now a explosion in the airplane windows, maybe?, i get their argument, not that’s a good argument
- RBG ( @RootBeerGuy@discuss.tchncs.de ) English66•1 month ago
The longer they discuss the less it is allowed.
- Zwiebel ( @Zwiebel@feddit.org ) English57•1 month ago
Do you think they get mad if I bring plasma
- BlackLaZoR ( @BlackLaZoR@kbin.run ) 18•1 month ago
As long as it’s being held in magnetic confinement!
- Transporter Room 3 ( @Transporter_Room_3@startrek.website ) English10•1 month ago
They tend not to care so much about “how safely the hazardous material is stored”
Just ask anyone who’s tried to smuggle on 5lbs of mercury…
- zero_spelled_with_an_ecks ( @zero_spelled_with_an_ecks@programming.dev ) English17•1 month ago
Nah, that’s because five pounds would be about 6 fluid ounces of mercury and you’re only allowed 3 ounces of a fluid.
- Transporter Room 3 ( @Transporter_Room_3@startrek.website ) English6•1 month ago
Hey now, no need to bring math into this like a civilized person! You changed the outcome by measuring it!
- AlexWIWA ( @AlexWIWA@lemmy.ml ) English2•1 month ago
If they don’t then you can call them xenophobes for not respecting Sangheili tradition to carry an Energy Sword at all times
- StThicket ( @StThicket@reddthat.com ) English45•1 month ago
I’ve actually done this successfully. TSA agent knocked on it, and said no problem.
If i somehow would be stopped, I’d love to argue what is liquid or not, and what could be liquid if it’s just hot enough.
- kjaeselrek ( @kjaeselrek@lemmy.ml ) English17•1 month ago
Getting denied at security because you’re trying to bring steel beams
- m4xie ( @m4xie@slrpnk.net ) English5•1 month ago
You start that argument and they will take you straight to Guantanamo Bay.
- jlow (he/him) ( @jlow@beehaw.org ) English1•1 month ago
Is there a reasoning for this? The whole liquid thing has to do something with explosives?
- ma11ie ( @ma11ie@lemmy.one ) English3•1 month ago
It’s because of a particular incident. Similar to what happened with the shoe bomber and why you have to take off your shoes. Things like this are why we can’t have nice things. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_transatlantic_aircraft_plot
- MonkderVierte ( @MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml ) English9•1 month ago
Btw, why not water?
- Admetus ( @Admetus@sopuli.xyz ) English6•1 month ago
So how about a bottle of dry ice?
- Sphks ( @Sphks@lemmy.dbzer0.com ) English5•1 month ago
A friend has been challenged when trying to bring a nordic cheese (from Norway to France). The TSA equivalent said that it could be liquid if hot enough. Yeah… glasses too.
- 1rre ( @1rre@discuss.tchncs.de ) English3•1 month ago
They didn’t want France getting wind of their cheese and declaring war on Norway for having the audacity to have non-french cheese
- OldWoodFrame ( @OldWoodFrame@lemm.ee ) English2•1 month ago
Lemme Google the freezing temp of whatever explodey juice they think we all have.
- DozensOfDonner ( @DozensOfDonner@mander.xyz ) English1•1 month ago
The best kind of correct
I believe the rule limits the actual container size if it contains liquid. Even if you have a nearly empty water bottle or are nursing the last dregs of a full size tube of toothpaste, it gets dumped or thrown out. So technically, if any water has melted at all, it counts.
- 1rre ( @1rre@discuss.tchncs.de ) English1•1 month ago
Or just bring an empty bottle through and fill it up at the tap/water fountain?
- jlow (he/him) ( @jlow@beehaw.org ) English2•1 month ago
If it exists and you can find it …
- AscendantSquid ( @AscendantSquid@lemm.ee ) English1•1 month ago
Some people think tap water tastes bad
- teletext ( @teletext@reddthat.com ) English4•1 month ago
I wouldn’t drink tap water outside of continental Europe. Maybe the original OP is simply in a third world country like the US.
- Hegar ( @Hegar@fedia.io ) 4•1 month ago
The tap water in Canberra, Australia is the tastiest I’ve tried out of the ~20-50 municipalities I’ve sampled in Australia, Western and Southern Europe, the US, China, Taiwan and Vietnam.
Also the US is not a third world nation, it’s a developing nation. Or under-developed would be more accurate, but that’s not a popular term. The US is a first world nation by definition, since first world just means the US global empire and it’s allies.
- psud ( @psud@aussie.zone ) English1•1 month ago
It tasted better in Canberra before the 2013 bushfire, back when it was filtered through pine needles, before they removed all the pine farms
- Hegar ( @Hegar@fedia.io ) 1•1 month ago
Ah, dang. Yeah I was there before 2013 and it was so noticably delicious. The friend I was visiting said it was the first thing her mother had said when visiting as well, how good the tap water was.
Bummer to hear that’s changed!
- Revan343 ( @Revan343@lemmy.ca ) English2•1 month ago
Canadian tap water is generally good
- 1rre ( @1rre@discuss.tchncs.de ) English1•1 month ago
Outside of Continental Europe
Oddly specific when of the 10 countries judged to have the equal best tap water quality, 4 are European islands (UK, Ireland, Iceland, Malta) and many Continental European countries score behind the US:
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/water-quality-by-country
- teletext ( @teletext@reddthat.com ) English1•1 month ago
I wouldn’t trust the plumbing in the UK. They do crazy two-faucet stuff.
- psud ( @psud@aussie.zone ) English2•1 month ago
That two tap stuff makes the cold water safe. Don’t drink from the hot tap where they don’t dare mix hot and cold
- Goodtoknow ( @Goodtoknow@lemmy.ca ) English1•1 month ago
Canada’s is good in major cities