Security vs. Privacy

[Inui]

Don't like it, don't fly. Nobody is forcing these people to fly. If you want to fly, you go through the security shit. Nobody likes it, but oh well.

One flight crew member traveling with his eighteen-year-old daughter heard an officer tell his colleague in the screening room over the headset, "Heads up, got a cutie for you." Nobody should have to go through that

This type of crap is wrong. I'll give you that.

[Inactive Account]

Don't like it, don't fly. Nobody is forcing these people to fly. If you want to fly, you go through the security shit. Nobody likes it, but oh well.

This is something that I (as a broke college student) can actually follow, and it saves me money, but there are businesspeople whose jobs force them to fly multiple times per week. What do they do if they don't want to go through this?

[Balcerzak]

Don't like it, don't fly. Nobody is forcing these people to fly. If you want to fly, you go through the security shit. Nobody likes it, but oh well.

How else do you suggest one to travel from the US to, say, Geneva in a timely fashion. Please, do explain.

[Inui]

How else do you suggest one to travel from the US to, say, Geneva in a timely fashion. Please, do explain.

Then don't go.

If you want to travel, you really should submit to whatever screenings the government and private companies require you to go through. The only way people on the anti-scanner/pat-down side are going to win against the government and airlines is to boycott them or vote people in that will change/create laws with regards to this. Money talks; make them make less money, and they'll change something.

Personally, I don't care what they see when they scan me. I just want to feel safe when I fly.

[Zanarkin]

The same reason we wear clothes anywhere. Clothing is practical.

Pretty sure most people wouldn't go out naked, if clothes weren't as practical.

[Hero]

Then don't go.

If you want to travel, you really should submit to whatever screenings the government and private companies require you to go through. The only way people on the anti-scanner/pat-down side are going to win against the government and airlines is to boycott them or vote people in that will change/create laws with regards to this. Money talks; make them make less money, and they'll change something.

Personally, I don't care what they see when they scan me. I just want to feel safe when I fly.

No offense, but people like you are the reason that the US has gotten to be such a fucked up place. You'd get along splendidly with the Minutemen in Arizona and all their Tea Party and Libertarian allies. Their ideology is pretty much the same as yours: "If you don't like it here get the fuck back to whatever shit-hole you came from."

The US faces a fortuitously small number of terrorist threats per year when you consider how huge this country is compared to other countries, and how much the government has done to make enemies of the whole world. If all these millions and billions of dollars that I can't even imagine were put into actually foiling terrorist plots instead of buying these strip search machines which each cost as much as houses, I'm sure the TSA and DHS could achieve even greater successes without bothering anyone unnecessarily more than they did a year ago. Most other countries are able to do so.

The real reason behind these changes in procedure is to prevent people like me from taping a bag of weed and some ground up pills to my ballsack when I go on a plane. It's all for the benefit of the prison industrial complex, prosecutors' associations, correctional officers' unions, etc. And the contractor that manufactures the infamous machines themselves. OSI Systems lobbied for the adoption of their machines for almost a year, and those efforts are really paying off for them now.

[Defeatist Elitist]

Honestly, if I'm going to be serious about this, these security measures are mostly pointless, and have been for a while. The problem in 9/11 is that people were able to smuggle deadly weapons on to planes and use them to hijack them. It was less a factor of not enough security, and more a factor of inneffective security. Since 9/11, has there even been a single successful terrorist attack? We respond and change our rules immediately AFTER a failed attack occurs. You are safe when you fly. If terrorists really wanted to cause damage, they would blow up airports themselves, or one of a myriad of other potential targets that would be much easier to access and would potentially cause more damage. Honestly, the original measures, and some since them have been completely reasonable, but the threat posed by terrorists on planes is now pretty much zero, and significantly more lives would be saved by investing this type of time and money in a myriad of other things.

In short, after 9/11 every "terror" plot failed (honestly, terror is a terrible word, one of them was basically just a guy trying [and failing] to light himself on fire), and planes are a terrible target anyway if you can't hijack them. From my perspective, it just seems to be needlessly invasive, and ultimately wasteful.

[Excellen Browning]

I'm going to ignore all discussion before this to bring up another interesting point of view. Most people who travel by airline are old(40+) and ugly. Who the hell would want to see nude pictures of them?

[lolDeath]

What part of your ass did you pull that figure from?

[Inui]

The average age of business travelers is officially documented as being "early 40's" or something like that, but I'm unsure about travelers on average overall. I am a very frequent flier myself for Smash tournaments and to visit long-distance friends, and I'm usually one of the youngest people on the plane. Most fliers do seem to be middle-aged people from my own experiences.

Edited December 6, 2010 by Inui

[Strawman]

I think people should stop bombing planes/bombing with planes/taking bombs on planes so we can all enjoy travel by flight without retarded annoying security.

Of course I have never been on a plane before so it hasn't affected me in a negative way or anything it just get annoying hearing about it.

I mean I'm sure there were plane related bombings/terrorist attacks before 9/11 and all the recent ones that are causing such an increase in security. Its inevitable that as long as people want to bomb, and they want to use a plane, they will somehow find a way to get a bomb on that plane. Why postpone the inevitable? Of course that argument can backfire so easily so yeah, I don't mean that completely seriously, but it kind of makes sense. It just seems like the security makes it inconvenient, or so I hear.

[Jaybee]

Why postpone the inevitable?

So you're pretty much telling people to fuck planes and travel by land/sea?

That's the stupidest statement I've ever heard in my life. Or at least, one of the stupidest.

[Phoenix Wright]

I mean I'm sure there were plane related bombings/terrorist attacks before 9/11 and all the recent ones that are causing such an increase in security. Its inevitable that as long as people want to bomb, and they want to use a plane, they will somehow find a way to get a bomb on that plane. Why postpone the inevitable? Of course that argument can backfire so easily so yeah, I don't mean that completely seriously, but it kind of makes sense. It just seems like the security makes it inconvenient, or so I hear.

I disagree. Your logic is severely flawed.

"Yeah, people will always hijack airplanes, so we should let them all on and get it over with."

Would it be better to trick terrorists and put them all onto one plane and have that blow up, successfully instilling fear into future suicide bombers?

Edited December 7, 2010 by Phoenix Wright

[Snowy_One]

Security vs. Privacy is a fickle balance to be sure. It is something easily swayed by the current going-ons. I don't know much about airport security levels over the years (I've only flown once, before 9/11 at that), but I suspect that if they were as 'secure' back then as they are now, people would have outright demanded that they become more lax. Yet with 9/11, people are more willing to give up privacy to allow for a slightly greater chance that airport security just might capture someone who could have potentially blown up a plane.

As I recall, Mr. Franklin once said "Someone who gives up a little bit of privacy for a little bit of security deserves neither". Of course, things were different back then. The colonies had just been through a war and were now being taxed because England decided to make the colonies secure and were raising taxes to help pay it off. Still this does not mean his statement is invalid; does it?

There are many things people consider to be 'wrong' and would gladly have the government crack down on. We probably all agree that sexual relationships with underage minors is wrong. So what happens when he gets carted off to jail and then gets released? He's forced to inform all his neighbors about it. Well, that's a good idea, right? Well... kind of... and kind of not. Being forced to inform people of this means he now has trouble forming links to the community and may struggle to get a job and most certainly won't be allowed into any job that may have prolonged contact with children. Of course, there's the chance he may have reformed, or he may have believed the person to be of legal age... or he may honestly have been set up.

Now, I'm not saying that it is a bad thing for this to happen. What I am doing is pointing out a problem with security vs. privacy with having too much security. Namely, that you protect yourself from both the guilty and the innocent.

There is no easy answer to this question that I can see. Even if one could be found for one area, like airport security, it probably would not work well in other facets of life. There is no one general answer, and it saddens me that it is like that.

[Narga_Rocks]

As I recall, Mr. Franklin once said "Someone who gives up a little bit of privacy for a little bit of security deserves neither". Of course, things were different back then. The colonies had just been through a war and were now being taxed because England decided to make the colonies secure and were raising taxes to help pay it off. Still this does not mean his statement is invalid; does it?

http://books.google.com/books?id=W2MFAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA270&lpg=PA270t#v=onepage&q&f=false

"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

The difference between the original quote and the paraphrase that you remember is important. I'm not quite certain that the liberty given up is "essential" in this case, nor that the safety is "little" and "temporary". As far as the quote goes, it would seem that if someone is giving up a non-essential liberty to obtain permanent safety, or a lot of temporary safety, he may not have a problem with it.

As for whether the system is actually 100% effective, I doubt it. And the threat isn't exactly all that large. The chances of proper terrorists deciding to do the same thing as they did 9 years ago are probably quite low. However, hypothetically if every 100th person going on a plane was trying to blow the plane up or something else with the plane, and the screening process could 100% guarantee that this wouldn't happen, I should think that even Benjamin would approve of the measures taken to prevent a problem.

In this case it's more giving up non-essential liberty for the illusion of increased safety. It's hard to say where Benjamin would land on Security vs. Privacy for this, though he'd probably fall on the Privacy side just based on the low probability of a threat and the (likely low) probability that these measures would actually succeed in thwarting an actual attempt.

[bunny: spider bitten]

Biggest issue with this is that it's random. If you can't do it for every single person(and they can't) why bother? Otherwise you end up with sick fucks getting their giddy and being over powered about it, and realistically, the same odds of dying in a plane bomb or a crash.

[Inactive Account]

In this case it's more giving up non-essential liberty for the illusion of increased safety.

Some would consider the right to not be looked at naked and/or touched all over an essential liberty.

Biggest issue with this is that it's random. If you can't do it for every single person(and they can't) why bother? Otherwise you end up with sick fucks getting their giddy and being over powered about it, and realistically, the same odds of dying in a plane bomb or a crash.

Some airports do put every single person through it, if they're not too busy that day. Not entirely the point though.

[Phoenix Wright]

Some would consider the right to not be looked at naked and/or touched all over an essential liberty.

Narga conceded that point in his first statement. I think the one you quoted is either a slip of the tongue, or was supposed to be implied that it's the person's opinion.

As for me, if you cared, I don't see clothes as an essential liberty, however I feel privacy is, and I don't want it violated. These measures do almost nothing to protect us further. I haven't even been on a plane before, but it's the principle of it all that matters.

[Lux Aeterna]

Fair question. Let's see... Personally, I don't like that security can see... more than I'd wish it to see. Really, that's just not my idea of fun.

On the other hand, it's for the sake of national security. It can't really be avoided (for me) unless they discriminate against other people. Beyond that, it's a stupid idea because of the fact that people of any gender, any color, any age can pose a threat to our safety. Even the infants, for people could use them to hide things, I suppose. So besides from it being morally wrong (from the perspective of most), it's also horribly impractical to eliminate people from the screening.

Though I do have a limit. If they start literally stripping me in public and try to shove something inside of me to show I have no nano bombs in my blood stream or something, then you can be sure as hell I'm not staying in this country (okay, extreme example but you get the point).

[lolDeath]

They use a machine that shows what everyone looks like naked. The truth is an extreme example.

[Snowy_One]

Fair question. Let's see... Personally, I don't like that security can see... more than I'd wish it to see. Really, that's just not my idea of fun.

On the other hand, it's for the sake of national security. It can't really be avoided (for me) unless they discriminate against other people. Beyond that, it's a stupid idea because of the fact that people of any gender, any color, any age can pose a threat to our safety. Even the infants, for people could use them to hide things, I suppose. So besides from it being morally wrong (from the perspective of most), it's also horribly impractical to eliminate people from the screening.

Though I do have a limit. If they start literally stripping me in public and try to shove something inside of me to show I have no nano bombs in my blood stream or something, then you can be sure as hell I'm not staying in this country (okay, extreme example but you get the point).

You're male. They will likely let you wear a manthong instead of being COMPLETELY naked.