• NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip
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    2 days ago

    The bottle of water actually has real reasons behind it.

    For the scanners the TSA (used to?) uses, it is REALLY hard to distinguish between liquids. Water looks like shampoo looks like hot sauce looks like the magic binary liquid that Bruce Willies had to solve riddles to save Hey Zeus from. So a bottle of “water” actually is a big safety concern… yet apparently a quart of miscellaneous liquids totally isn’t and I won’t expand on that because I am already on too many watchlists.

    Which makes it kind of unique in that it is (was?) a very valid safety concern AND extra hilarious in that it highlights the theatre of it all because of that. It also gets MUCH MUCH funnier when international flights pretend it is about protecting ecosystems even though everyone just chugs their water or empties it into a bin.

    For funsies, the shoes thing will probably end up being a huge headache but has different rationales. Back in the before times, everyone had metal buckles and eyelets and so forth on their shoes. That… really hasn’t been true for over 30 years where shoes are almost all rubber and plastics. But the former would trigger the metal detector.

    That said? People who wear nicer boots still tend to have enough metal to trigger it (the bane of the pre-check line). So either they turn off the metal detector below the knee or EVERY queue is going to be the pre-check line at seatac.

    • Blumpkinhead@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      Back in the before times, everyone had metal buckles and eyelets and so forth on their shoes.

      Ah yes, way back in 1995 when we all dressed like the Quaker Oats guy…

    • redsand@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      2 days ago

      Use Tor and onionmail to make your next account(this is Lemmy, we encourage alts on other instances). Orbot can proxy just a lemmy client on mobile if needed.

    • Raiderkev@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      My dude, the reason we had to take our shoes off was this guy

      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Reid

      He successfully got bombs in his shoes onto a transatlantic flight and was trying to light the fuse with a match. It wouldn’t light because they had gotten wet. Passengers ended up subduing him. There was / is an actual threat there. Imo this is just so they can get some false flag bombings going to expand executive overreach.

      • NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip
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        1 day ago

        Yes. That is the security theatre part of it.

        A metal detector would only matter if that were an electronically triggered shoe device. And the x-ray/“scanner”, as mentioned, has trouble distinguishing between different materials and also works best if it is an electronically triggered shoe device. A fuse and a lighter ain’t it.

        Again. There are ways to actually be secure. That isn’t what TSA (or their national equivalents) is about.