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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.
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.
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
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.
That’s what’s changed. Before, a hijacking meant a free trip to south America or Cuba. Now it means you’re likely to die if you don’t stop the hijackers. A planeful of pissed off passengers determined to live are gonna stop a would-be hijacker.
Not if he has a bomb though
The Shoe Bomber and the Underwear Bomber don’t count? :)
They had to do something about the plague of people hijacking planes with bottles of water.
Yeah, and you don’t need the TSA for that. Just do as they already do: lock the cockpit.
Little known fact: many of the pilots behind those locked doors are armed as well.
The Flight Deck Officer program allows pilots to volunteer to become deputized Air Marshals. They receive training and are issued a badge and a gun.
Good guy with a gun, we’re not mentally ill at all !
So police officers are mentally ill? Interesting take.
Yes, they think they’re the good guys.
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.
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.
hydrogen peroxide and acetone
So there are worse cleaning chemicals to mix than bleach and vinegar
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.
It’s actually stated on the TSA website that frozen liquids are permitted. https://www.tsa.gov/travel/security-screening/whatcanibring/items/ice
Notice the footnote on every TSA webpage that their officers can always change the rules on the spot if they feel like it. So it’s always a gamble.
The longer they discuss the less it is allowed.
Do you think they get mad if I bring plasma
Or just bring an empty bottle through and fill it up at the tap/water fountain?
Some people think tap water tastes bad
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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
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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
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.
It tasted better in Canberra before the 2013 bushfire, back when it was filtered through pine needles, before they removed all the pine farms
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!
Update: It was actually 2003, I was in Theodore at the time. It’s recovered mostly from that bushfire as well as the 2019/2020, when I was visiting while it was happening.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_Canberra_bushfires
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019–20_Australian_bushfire_season
https://www.icrc.act.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0017/1247030/CRES_Submission_2.pdf
Search term from the immediately above link is, ‘why was Canberra’s water so good before the bushfire?’
I have been living in Melbourne since 2017. Canberra’s water still just pips it (Silvan Reservoir area), thanks to the Corin and Bendora dams. Googong water is still terrible (it has a slightly bitter taste, probably because of chlorination treatment) when water from it is required, but they haven’t had to use that for a while. It’s night and day to me, at least when Googong water is involved.
Big caveat
The final decision rests with the TSA officer on whether an item is allowed through the checkpoint.
Ah yes, the “rules only apply when I say they do” rule. Much legitimate.
Inconsistent enforcement of “the rules” is the most common form of systematic marginalization.
It’s also easy of centrists to excuse, since it could happen to anyone, even when the statistic show to it is overwhelmingly correlated with some protected trait.
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.
Getting denied at security because you’re trying to bring steel beams
You start that argument and they will take you straight to Guantanamo Bay.
🌴🌴🌴
