TSA apologizes after family told wheelchair-bound daughter would get p

Amtrak Unlimited Discussion Forum

Help Support Amtrak Unlimited Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
You got to be kidding me......

-3 years old

-going to Disney for the first time

-Military vet father

This story brings tears to my eyes thinking of what that poor girl went through. Thing is, TSA will keep being TSA. Nothing's going to change.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Sorry, I agree with it. I am an airport employee and get searched everyday. These people are no different. Lets not forget, terrorists, will use anything to get there work done.
 
Unless you're implying a terrorist put a bomb in her wheelchair when the family wasn't looking. Does that family look like a terrorist at all?
 
This isn't the first time a wheelchair bound perfer has flown. Those metal detects detect the specific metal and location as it passes through. If it was the earrings it would have shown to not come the wheelchair location or her lap area.
 
Unless you're implying a terrorist put a bomb in her wheelchair when the family wasn't looking. Does that family look like a terrorist at all?
Never know, I'd rather be safe then sorry, they don't like it, try Amtrak or Greyhound. HOWEVER, I will say flight crews/attendants should not be exempt from random checks, but that is a whole new topic..
 
I was referring to your "Does that family look like a terrorist at all?", not the wheelchair.
 
Without taking any specific position on what TSA does or does not do.... as you know I have issues with a few of their misadventures.... I would like to point out that very often Terrorists don't look like a stereotypical Terrorist. Looks can be deceptive and completely innocent people can inadvertently become part of an instrument of terror too.
 
Looks can be deceptive and completely innocent people can inadvertently become part of an instrument of terror too.
Which is why the TSA Pre Check program makes no sense to me. Sure the people themselves are low risk, but...
EDIT: Not that I think the TSA security theater does a lot of good, as it is mostly a deterrent that keeps honest people honest.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I wonder, how exactly would the TSA have prevented 9/11? So far as I can remember none of the previous airport security missed anything that was banned at that time. Also, even if we presume that the TSA is 100% successful at preventing harm in an airport or on an airplane what is there to stop today's terrorists from shooting up our schools, our theaters, our universities, our shops, and our offices? Just curious how the pro-TSA side sees this.
 
In my experience my Israeli friends tell me that the bombings that went on before the fence was built involved many pretty innocent looking people, specially women carrying body bombs and blowing themselves up in restaurants and such places in and around Tel Aviv. But I must admit, I have never been a personal witness to any. Then again, I have not been a first hand witness to any act of terrorism from a distance of less than at least a few hundred miles either. I am no expert at this, but I have noticed that each time I check in for an international flight abroad I am always asked in detail whether I have been given anyting to carry by someone else or not, presumably because there have beenc cases where that was a vector for introduction of dangerous stuff via unsuspecting well meaning and otherwise innocent individuals.

While TSA going overboard is a problem, I doubt that the total absence of any security check at airports is going to be a terribly good idea either. Memories of massive number of hijackings back in the late 60s and early 70s come to mind.

For example the sort of incident described in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawson%27s_Field_hijackings would be much much harder to pull off today, though admittedly not impossible, and therefore one can surmiase that such are prevented by the presence of airport security checks to a large extent.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Thought y'all would enjoy this one :) courtesy The Liberal Page's:

734925_582064888471452_340608439_n.jpg
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I wonder, how exactly would the TSA have prevented 9/11? So far as I can remember none of the previous airport security missed anything that was banned at that time. Also, even if we presume that the TSA is 100% successful at preventing harm in an airport or on an airplane what is there to stop today's terrorists from shooting up our schools, our theaters, our universities, our shops, and our offices? Just curious how the pro-TSA side sees this.
And the Lockerbie bombers, I believe, checked their bomb in luggage of the American fiancee of one of the evil-doers. He was quite willing to sacrifice the love of his life to take out certain individuals on the plane (I've heard that some US government agents traveling on the flight were the specific targets). So, yes, the point is EXACTLY that someone might have been able to slip a bomb into the personal effects of the three-year old. And unless the TSA checks out carefully any "hits" that their detection system gets on the initial searches, then there is no safety.

The process could be done in an enclosed area away from the prying eyes of the general public, but it can (and should) be done.
 
I wonder, how exactly would the TSA have prevented 9/11? So far as I can remember none of the previous airport security missed anything that was banned at that time. Also, even if we presume that the TSA is 100% successful at preventing harm in an airport or on an airplane what is there to stop today's terrorists from shooting up our schools, our theaters, our universities, our shops, and our offices? Just curious how the pro-TSA side sees this.
And the Lockerbie bombers, I believe, checked their bomb in luggage of the American fiancee of one of the evil-doers. He was quite willing to sacrifice the love of his life to take out certain individuals on the plane (I've heard that some US government agents traveling on the flight were the specific targets). So, yes, the point is EXACTLY that someone might have been able to slip a bomb into the personal effects of the three-year old. And unless the TSA checks out carefully any "hits" that their detection system gets on the initial searches, then there is no safety.

The process could be done in an enclosed area away from the prying eyes of the general public, but it can (and should) be done.
You can't compare a stranger putting something in your baggage to be the same thing as your partner doing it. Your partner can touch your bag all they want in front of your face without you giving it another look.
 
And the Lockerbie bombers, I believe, checked their bomb in luggage of the American fiancee of one of the evil-doers. He was quite willing to sacrifice the love of his life to take out certain individuals on the plane (I've heard that some US government agents traveling on the flight were the specific targets).
Source? The official investigation concluded that the suitcase with the bomb in it originated in Malta on a different airline and was transferred unaccompanied onto Pan Am 103 at Heathrow. Where does the fiancee come into play? Passenger on the flight from Malta?
 
I wonder, how exactly would the TSA have prevented 9/11?
It wouldn't have. All of the hijackers had essentially clean records and none of them would have shown up on "no-fly lists", not even if the lists were constructed using the ethnic profiling popular in the government at the time. (As opposed to the ethnic profiling popular now -- always fighting the last war....)

Right now, if you want to hijack an airplane, just get some people who look and sound like Timothy McVeigh together and you'll be able to do almost everything the 9/11 hijackers did. There's one difference, which has nothing to do with the TSA: because people now know about the "flying planes into buildings" tactic, any attempt to hijack a plane would have a "United Flight 93" response from the passengers. In 2001, people were trained to cooperate with hijackers.

As for Lockerbie, the current methods of scanning checked luggage still wouldn't prevent a Lockerbie-type bomb from being checked on a passenger plane. Meanwhile, checks on air cargo are nonexistent, and air cargo does run on passenger planes, so that's the "reliable" way of blowing up an airliner with a bomb.

Practically everything introduced since 9/11 is security theater, decorative shows designed to make people think they're safer, but not actually making people safer. Everything except for the locked cockpit doors.

Actually, given standards of hiring at the TSA, one way for a terrorist to bomb a plane would be to get a TSA job.
 
Sitting in CHI for so many hours waiting for the LSL recently, I cannot tell you how many times I heard the safety recording. Do not take anything onto the train given to you by someone else. This is just common sense, but people can be convinced to take something onto a plane for someone else? I would hope people would not do that on planes either.

It is sad that the girl in the chair had to be patted down, but as has been said, terrorists have used children in the past to get bombs thru and lets not forget all the drugs that are smuggled in baby carriages or diaper bags. The criminal will hide their evil in anything and on anyone they think it can get past TSA with.
 
Sitting in CHI for so many hours waiting for the LSL recently, I cannot tell you how many times I heard the safety recording. Do not take anything onto the train given to you by someone else. This is just common sense, but people can be convinced to take something onto a plane for someone else? I would hope people would not do that on planes either.
It is sad that the girl in the chair had to be patted down, but as has been said, terrorists have used children in the past to get bombs thru and lets not forget all the drugs that are smuggled in baby carriages or diaper bags. The criminal will hide their evil in anything and on anyone they think it can get past TSA with.
I like the one in STL

Do not leave your baggage unattended. Unattended baggage will be taken and destroyed without warning.
There's so many other places that have less harsh policies in place like WAS and NYP
 
Back
Top