Threat Level: Keep Your Shoes On
In another sign that the entire federal bureaucracy tasked with keeping the skies safe -- the Transportation Safety Administration -- is wildly, desperately nuts, we can now apparently keep our shoes on when we go through security. From Bloomberg:
Air travelers won’t have to take their shoes off during security screenings in the future, said U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.
“One of the first things you will see over time is the ability to keep your shoes on,” Napolitano said today at a forum hosted by Politico Playbook in Washington. She didn’t specify when the change would take place.
Why now, ten years later? No reason:
TSA’s goal was to have shoe scanners deployed at airports by 2015, according to an October 2009 report by the Government Accountability Office, which audits programs for Congress.
My hope is that we're going to start seeing the general easing of these idiotic rules. But the TSA are federal employees. All those idiotic rules have done is create a federal jobs program. And when was the last time the federal government shed jobs?
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Aug '10
Re: Threat Level: Keep Your Shoes On
Uh oh, better dump the Bass Weejun stock.
Aug '10
Re: Threat Level: Keep Your Shoes On
The cynic in me says the whole TSA kabuki theater routine was just another "jobs program" all along. Now that they've got the jobs in place, they can ease up on the silly rituals.
Oct '10
Re: Threat Level: Keep Your Shoes On
Yes, but they're also collaborators.
The “jobs” of collaborators tend to be shed in cataclysmic events, and it isn't pretty.
Jul '10
Re: Threat Level: Keep Your Shoes On
Probably a job complaint about the smell. Once you have an entrenched and pugnacious bureaucracy you must acquiesce to their demands to grope without the odor of unwashed feet.
Wait until they actually stop someone. They'll be insufferable.
Dec '10
Re: Threat Level: Keep Your Shoes On
I'm not sure I'm going to live that long, but there's still hope for both happening.
Jun '10
Re: Threat Level: Keep Your Shoes On
My hope is that the TSA is dismembered, it's employees sacked, and its responsibilities privatized. Let individual airports be responsible for their own security.
Sep '10
Re: Threat Level: Keep Your Shoes On
My worry is that the phrase "please keep your shoes on" will then be immediately followed by "please remove your pants".
"But I have to take off my shoes to remove my pants!"
"Please remove your pants."
May '10
Re: Threat Level: Keep Your Shoes On
All this means is they are going to replace inconvenient, invasive search procedures with "convenient", invasive scanning technology, the latest example being those backscatter x-ray machines.
What I really want to know is when the threat level will go down so we can start acting like a free country again.
Mar '11
Re: Threat Level: Keep Your Shoes On
/sarcasm on/ You know what this means? Now we'll have those damnable xrays showing our naked feet. The TSA will go from being staffed with gropers and be staffed by foot-fetishers instead. What guarantee will I have that pictures of my naked feet won't end up on the internet? /sarcasm off/