April 13, 2025 • 40 mins
We just got back from a little weekend trip, which got us thinking once again about how confusing and terrible it is to deal with the TSA. Despite all their yelling—the TSA does not make it clear about what you can or cannot bring on a plane, or what items you actually have to take out of your bag. So I spoke with Darryl Campbell, an aviation safety writer for The Verge and author of Fatal Abstraction, who did a deep dive on The Humiliating History of the TSA.
For more, check out our newsletter at www.nosuchthing.show, and if you have an argument you want us to settle, email us at mannynoahdevan@gmail.com.
Original music for this episode produced by Zeno Pittarelli!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I'm Manny, I'm Noah, and this is Devin and this
is no such thing. The show where we settle our
dumb arguments and yours by actually doing the research. On
today's episode, we figure out what is actually going on
with the TSA.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
I think the TSA's blanket response is always either we're
following the procedure exactly or we're preventing the next nine
to eleven.
Speaker 3 (00:20):
So just deal with it.
Speaker 4 (00:24):
There's no no such thing, no such thing such.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
So we're all about to take our first trip together
to an undisclosed location.
Speaker 4 (00:44):
First trip, Yeah, first flight. We've never been on a trip.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
We're all three of us.
Speaker 4 (00:51):
WHOA, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
You're right, done like day trips, but we haven't done
New Jersey overnight these New Jersey out.
Speaker 4 (01:01):
Of state actually to that's actually shocking.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
Yeah, so this is gonna be well. By time this
comes out, we would have been on this trip. Yeah,
that's true. So you know, got me thinking about the TSA,
which got me thinking about this is a core memory.
It was twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen, it just come out
that you could look at all your Google data and
(01:26):
see like all the information that Google had about you.
Speaker 4 (01:30):
Oh my god. So we were all.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Looking to say, like, all right, how old is Google think?
I am all that sort of stuff. And then we
also realized that you can get your voice recordings if
you have like a Google Home. So none of us
had a Google Home except Manny at the time, That's right,
So we were curious what was on Manny's Google Home
home recordings, which.
Speaker 4 (01:54):
Is an immediate violation of privacy. But continue, we all.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Gathered around your computer. You were about to go on
a trip, yeah, and you had asked the Google Home
maybe a dozen times, can I bring X on a plane?
Speaker 4 (02:13):
I remember this instance because I think I was literally packing,
and as I was packing, I just kept saying, you know,
I would pick something up and be like, hey Google,
and I take this, Well, SA, let me bring this.
And so when we when we looked at the the
like the saved responses, it was just like twelve in
(02:37):
a row, like back to back to back. Can I
bring like a razor? Can I bring my portable battery?
But I will say I had a great reason to
keep asking those questions because I still to this day
don't know what I can bring and what I can't bring.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
You know what That's what I was going to say.
You know, we're a little bit older now near you know,
nearly ten years later, like to apologize. I think we
were clowning you at the time. But Manny is not uniqueness. Now.
Every time I travel, I don't you know, I'm not
asking my goal a home, but I do. And you
(03:13):
sit and think, like, wait, how you know how much
liquid am I allowed to bring? Do I actually have
to put them in a plastic bag? You know, I
travel a few times a year. I'm not like someone
who's traveling like every other week. But I travel, I
guess not often enough to have to have that moment
where I have to stop and think about what I
can bring. Same here, this group is not alone and
(03:35):
being confused by the TSA rules. It is the sort
of thing that every time I think, okay, there's going
to be the time I get it right, and every
time I'm more and more confused. Every time I go.
The signs are different than what the TSA agents are
telling me to do. Yep, And half the things I'm like,
(03:55):
do I actually have to do that? Like now I
don't actually put my liquids in a large classic bag.
Speaker 4 (04:00):
Don't do that?
Speaker 1 (04:00):
Anymore.
Speaker 4 (04:01):
I mean, the laptop is another one. Like, I'm flying
way more often this year than I usually am, and
so I'm starting to track this stuff anecdotally. But I
was on my way from Atlanta to New York and
the sign says take your laptop out or any device
(04:24):
that's bigger than your phone. So I start to do that,
and then the TSA agent says, stop, you don't have
to take your laptop out. He's like yelling at me.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
Are you why it's confusing?
Speaker 3 (04:39):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (04:40):
And I guess in my head, I'm like, Okay, maybe
there are some shifts where they can be more lax,
but why don't you just say, hey, you don't have
to take it out? Why are you screaming at it?
Speaker 5 (04:51):
Well, that's it's frustrating. All due respect to though hard
work is a TSA, but it's like, I don't live
I don't live here. I'm not here every day like you,
So why should I be expected to understand this, especially
when signage and history has told me to do this?
It doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 4 (05:08):
I have respect because they see a billion people every day,
But what I don't have respect for is that I, like,
I can't expect what to do. Now, if the rule
was the same every time and I was still fucking
up every that's on, you go off on me. I
deserve it, you know, lock him up. But if it
says take your laptop out and I'm trying to do
(05:29):
it and you're yelling at me, where do we go
from here?
Speaker 1 (05:33):
Shoes crazy? I mean is that the rules are different.
They don't match the signs, they don't match what you
look up online, and it's not even the same, like
you know, it's not even like every time I go
to JFK, it's it's like, okay, this part of JFK
is different than this part of JFK. So it's like,
all right, it's confusing. So what I get? If you're
gonna tell me something different, sure I could follow that.
(05:54):
You just don't have to yell at me like I'm
a fucking idiot because the thing right here is telling
me to do something different and what you're telling me.
Speaker 4 (06:00):
And God forbid, if you point that out like I have,
I'll be like, I'm like, oh, that's interesting because look
at the sign that's literally right behind you. And then
they'll just get even more pissed.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
So this creator redecues did this TikTok. It's almost three
years old now, but I think it perfectly captures sort
of what we're talking about, taking laptops and electronics out
the bag.
Speaker 4 (06:24):
If you gotta hold it, you want to take it all,
take it all of traumatized. Listening to this feels like
like drill sergeants.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Yes, yes, And there's like a level of anxiety that
like going through security, I just have at all times.
And I'm someone who's very fucking good at following directions. Yeah,
you know, like I am one of those okay that
says that I'm ready. I got my ship ready to go.
My shoes are a little bit slipped off.
Speaker 4 (06:52):
Like oh yeah, I read in shoes that are easy
to take off. I don't even wear a belt to
the airport. Got my laptop separate from others, make it
easy to come out. And now you know, we're younger too, exactly,
We're not young, but we're younger. And like sometimes I'll
go through the line and see old people getting screamed,
yelled at, no fucking mercy.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
Granny is getting like, like you fucking idiot, granny, figure
it out. You know, I guess she doesn't have to
take our shoes off. Oh then they yell at granny
because she's old, so she doesn't have to take our
shoes off. She doesn't know that. Yeah, and it's just.
Speaker 4 (07:28):
Like meanwhile, planes weren't even around when this woman was war.
She's learning with the rest of the world.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
Her last flight was with the right brothers. This is
Amelia Earhart, and y'all are screaming at her. So, yeah,
this is it seems like there there could be a
better way to do this.
Speaker 5 (07:53):
I mean, I'm curious, like how TSA does decide if
it does decide the differences between airports. Is it domestic
for international? Is their system in place.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
Airport at the airport? Yea, Well I'm curious, like we
haven't even touched on this yet, but we go through
all this bullshit. Does this actually even work? Why can't
I bring a water bottle on a plane? Like come on,
you know, yeah, I know one guy tried to do
one water one time, but it's water.
Speaker 5 (08:22):
The universal solvent, and I can't carry it.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
You can bring water everywhere else.
Speaker 4 (08:27):
Now, you know. I'm okay if they ban dasani, my
regular water bottle should be fine.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
No, alright, so we'll get some answers to some of
those questions. After the break, and I chat with a
reporter who tells me the darkest you say story I
have ever heard. All Right, we're back. This is no
(09:01):
such thing. Have you been? So you're in Texas?
Speaker 4 (09:04):
Right?
Speaker 3 (09:04):
I am in Texas, Dallas.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
So I appreciate you taking the time to hop on.
Can I just have you introduce yourselves name and sort
of what you do.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
Sure.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
My name is Darryl Campbell. I'm an aviation safety writer
for the tech website The Verge, and I've also got
a book coming out. It's called Fatal Abstraction, Why the
Managerial Class Loses Control of Software.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
So a few years ago there I wrote this deep
dive for The Verge called The Humiliating History of the TSA.
I loved your article. I thought it was like so
much of the writing around TSA I feel like sort
of really walks around the fact that, like it's such
a bizarre experience.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
I really did want to capture the weirdness of it.
Speaker 6 (09:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
I think the key to it was that first anecdote.
So this person, her name is Jay Cooper. She's a
former ts SO who used to work at LaGuardia, and
the story she told me was, in a lot of
ways the perfect encapsulation of just how strange and bizarre
(10:08):
the TSA experience can be. So she was working at
her checkpoint she noticed someone was crying in the line,
and it's an airport that happens. But when the person
came through to her station, so she was the document
checker at the front of the line, someone was pushing
someone in a wheelchair and the person in the wheelchair
was supposed to hand over their ticket and she wasn't
(10:30):
really being responsive, so Jay asked her, Hey, can I
have your documents? Can you stand up to do the
security check? The person pushing her was crying and she said,
but she can't. She can't because it turns out the
person in the wheelchair was dead. What happened was they
had checked in a couple hours before, and it was
an international flight, so they were just being safe, and
the person in the wheelchair had died at some point
(10:52):
between check in and the time that they were going
through security. The problem is, once you've checked in, you
are entitled to go through security unless a doctor pronounces
you dead, and so at that point, airport rules being
what they are. There wasn't a doctor on station, so
they had to let the person through security. So Jay
(11:14):
asked her, Okay, well, here's what we have to do.
We actually have to take them physically out of the wheelchair,
do a pat down on them in a private room,
you know, put on the gloves. But they treated her
as if she was just another person going through security,
even though.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
They were a corpse at that point.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
It really is just kind of an example of how
the TSA has to do its job without question, no
matter what, even if the person isn't alive.
Speaker 4 (11:42):
Was it clear to TSA that the person passed away?
Speaker 1 (11:45):
They knew, they all knew, everyone knew, everyone knew the
person was dead.
Speaker 5 (11:48):
There just wasn't a doctor to officially say that.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
Wow, but it, you know, it sort of points to
this thing of like the TSA has their rules, yeah,
and everyone has to go through security even if you
are dead.
Speaker 4 (12:02):
That is the darkest ts Yeah, it's pretty you know,
you're right.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
Yeah, So I'm going to take a step back, and
I think a lot of people take for granted that
the TSA is just, you know, the way we do
airport security. But that hasn't always been the case, So
can you tell us a bit about how and why
the TSA was formed.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
So I'm old enough to remember a time before TSA.
My parents used to work for the airlines, so I
remember being little and actually being able to go up
to the gate when my dad had a flight and
meet him right at the gate side. After nine to eleven.
The TSA was formed first as part of the Department
of Transportation and then was kind of moved over to
(12:44):
the Department of Homeland Security once that was formed. But
it was really a response specifically to the nine to
eleven attacks and kind of an overreaction in my view
of what you really need to do to sort of
stop the next nine to eleven, which is the TSA's
primary goal.
Speaker 7 (13:01):
Today, we take permanent and aggressive steps to improve the
security of our airways, and a new team of federal
security managers, supervisor, law enforcement officers, and screeners. We'll ensure
all passengers and carry on bags are inspected thoroughly and effectively.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
The new security force.
Speaker 7 (13:17):
Will be well trained, made up of US citizens, and
if any of its members do not perform, the new
Undersecretary will have full authority to discipline or remove them.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
Before nine to eleven, though airport security was relatively uninvasive.
You had your metal detectors, you had just private security
guards at the checkpoints, just saying okay, if you've got
a gun or if you've got a big knife, then
you obviously can't take that. But otherwise you didn't need
a ticket to pass through security. And that was because
(13:50):
what we think of as hijacking today was actually very
different in kind of the nineteen fifties, nineteen sixties, nineteen seventies,
where people were hijacking airplanes, not to use them the
as suicide weapons, but really as political statements.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
Between nineteen sixty eight in nineteen seventy two, there were
over one hundred and thirty American planes that were hijacked,
with most of those hijackers wanting to go to Cuba.
Speaker 6 (14:13):
There was a man up in the cockpit with a
gun that we were going to Havana, that there was
nothing to panic about.
Speaker 7 (14:21):
Messengers calm during most of it.
Speaker 8 (14:24):
They were come.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
Most of them were totally come.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
During most of this.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
They were very nice.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
We had a nice dinner over there in the airport,
a couple of drinks, all on the house. It's hard
to complain of Potte where you're frightened at any point. Oh,
I don't think anybody was.
Speaker 4 (14:40):
You find out you're on a hijacksplane, You're like, oh,
gotta get a different city.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
Now, let it killed me. And then you know, getting
to the seventies, it got a lot out of hand.
And then Nixon came through and I was like, all right,
like we need to have a little bit more security.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
And so that's where installed the private security guards and
the metal detectors.
Speaker 6 (15:03):
President nexton there is an out several steps designed to
counter hijacking. The White House Anti hijacking plan is in
three parts. Starting tomorrow, armed guards will ride shotgun on
some domestic and international flights, Electronic surveillance at the airports
will be increased, and pressures will be brought on the
international community to ostracize those countries that do not punish
their hijackers.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
So, in this security system that you're talking about, pre
TSA really primarily just looking for weapons or is that
like the primary you know, now we're talking about liquids
and taking off our shoes and all.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
These Yeah, yeah, it's gotten crazy, but no, it was
two main things that they were looking out for. Number
one was bombs that could harm an airplane, so like
the lockerbie terrorist example, that happens in check baggage, So
that's something outside of the airport security that we see
every day. And then just individual armed hijackers who could
pose the threats. But looking for individual being the operative
(16:02):
thing like individual small groups, not you know, five or
six people at a time with box cutters. So it
was very specific to the threat that they saw it
in sort of the sixties and seventies.
Speaker 4 (16:21):
Good Morning America may never be the same. And this
is why a beautiful Tuesday turned tragic when American Airlines
Flight eleven crashed into the North Tower of the World
Trade Center. And that was just the beginning.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
The nine to eleven attacks are almost like the trojan Horse.
It's so successful but also so infamous that it's never
going to work again. And if you think about the
things that are preventing the next nine to eleven quote unquote,
there's really three things. Number one, reinforced cockpit doors. You
can't just walk your way up into a cockpit anymore.
(16:55):
You have to have the pilot's key you in, and
there's a whole system in place. The second isilot training.
Previous forms of hijacking were really just about making a
political statement, So pilots were trained to obey and basically
do whatever the hijackers wanted. That doesn't happen anymore, and
pilots are trained to get the airplane on the ground
as quickly as possible and let law enforcement take over.
(17:16):
And really the third thing is passengers are aware of
the threat now. And we've seen this in the case
of the shoe bomber, the underwear bomber, and I'm sure
you've seen all the videos. Are just people acting weird
on airplanes now and passengers are really on top of them,
restraining them and so on. So I think the whole
idea that the TSA was designed to respond to nine
to eleven is almost outdated from the moment that it
(17:39):
was created. Now there's obviously a kind of public relations
aspect to it, too, and that the government needed to
seem like it was doing something to respond. And the
best way to get people to give them credit, if
you like, is to invent a new security apparatus, invent
a new processes that touches everybody that wants to fly,
(18:01):
so that it looks like people are doing things, even
if what they're actually doing is not so effective. There's
a term that someone coined. It's called security theater. It's,
you know, the whole big show about it, even if
there's no kind of metrics that you can track. And
actually that's part of the problem is that there's really
no transparency around how TSA is effective. If you go
(18:24):
to the FBI or if you go to the Department
of Transportation and say, okay, how do you measure if
what you're doing is successful? Then they've got a list
of on time departures, arrests, whatever, whatever. For the TSA.
It's like, well, we haven't had another nine to eleven,
But how much of that is really because of the TSA.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
Darryl told me, when you go through a security checkpoint,
they're eight tasks the TSO might be performing.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
It's a very regimented process, and in part it's because
when you first become a transportation security officer, that's what
you're doing. So there's the ticket checking where you hand
your ticket to get scanned. There's the security they call
it divestiture, which is a fancy way of saying take
off your shoes, in your jacket and put it in
(19:16):
the bin. There's the person at the actual scanner, there's
the person who's operating the personal scanner, the baggage scanner,
and there's a bunch of different ones as supervisor. So
it's really kind of like you're Catholics, like the Stations
of the Cross. You kind of move around to each
individual one throughout your shifts, but you're supposed to be
trained on all of them, and each one has like
(19:38):
five hours of training for every station, so it's not
just a question of people yelling ask you to say,
take your shoes off, but they are actual steps that
they're supposed to follow.
Speaker 4 (19:48):
Real quick. He uh, he mentioned the stations of the Cross.
Do you guys know what that is? That's such an
obscure Catholic reference that now you break this, it's just
it's like, uh, it's in every Catholic church you have
like the Stations of the Cross around the room. It's
(20:08):
like the twelve or fourteen like little steps that Jesus
took on his way to get crucified. So it's like, Okay,
it makes number three, he kissed this woman on the cheek.
Number four, he fell down number five. It's like, but
I just thought that was so funny that I don't
think that people.
Speaker 5 (20:27):
Next time you watch Passion of the Christ, you know,
I'm sure you will be on Easter.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
Keep that in mind.
Speaker 5 (20:32):
It's like he's like going through tsa think.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
About what he did. And you also talk about like
the compliance factor of it, right of like constantly monitoring
these employees to making sure that you're saying they're following
the exact steps that they're taught, and how that bruise
a lot of anxiety within the workers, and then you
know with the travelers as well.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
Speaks yeah today, Yeah, it's I call it a complain
clients fetish. But you remember this whole thing a couple
of weeks ago about Doge firing a bunch of probationary workers.
So every time new TSO is hired, they're a probationary
worker for two years, which means they can get fired
for any reason. They don't need cause they don't need
to write up. I mean, if they just don't like
(21:17):
the look of you, if you get crossways with the supervisor,
you can get fired. So there's this huge fear and
anxiety about I don't want to mess up. I don't
even want to be perceived to mess up, which probably
makes them well, which does make them in my interviews anyway,
really just focused on going as much by the book
or getting on the good side of their supervisor as possible.
So that's one part of it, and then the second
(21:39):
part of it is there's a lot of ways to
screw up and only one way to be right. But
there's also a lack of standardization of processes, of equipment,
even of personnel training, which makes it difficult for the
average flyer to know is this the airport where I
take off my shoes and I put my jacket in,
or is this the one where I keep my laptop in.
(22:00):
There's no incentive for them to make it more traveler friendly.
There's a huge disincentive to make a mistake, and so
you're always going to get it to the point where
they're just like making it worse for the traveler because
that's how they keep their jobs, and so they're kind
of in an impossible position.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
But you see, like there's just a ton of incentive
for them to just, yeah, do what's right, right. There's
not a lot of flexibility. Yeah, even though it's confusing
to us, to them and they're like, let me just
say and do what I need to to make sure
my supervisor and yell at me or I don't get
in trouble.
Speaker 5 (22:33):
Yeah, it makes sense. Like they're obviously, at the end
of the day, just trying to do their job, and
obviously airport's going to be a super regimented sort of thing.
It's not like, yeah, it's not like a little mom
and pop.
Speaker 1 (22:43):
The operation where yeah, it's like all right, this guy's good,
Like yeah, let them bring about it. What's the big deal?
Speaker 5 (22:49):
And obviously makes sense, especially with the security element, like
they're going to be uptight in that way, and like
they just want to keep their job exactly.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
So Dara told me a story too that really exemplifies
it's like how strict they are.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
There is one story where a guy confronted someone who's
trying to smuggle a bag of cocaine through there, and
in order to try and get rid of the evidence,
this guy through the bag of cocaine in the TSO's face.
But the problem is if that guy gets picked for
a tok screen that same day and he has residual
cocaine in a system, he gets fired on the spot
and there's no appeal, there's no nothing, it's just like, Okay,
(23:25):
you fail the test, you're fired, And that's the kind
of environment that they have to deal.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
With, you know. I think this anxiety plays a big
part obviously in the fear they're going to get fired,
but they're also just like not paid, well, they're wanting
they'll always paid.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
Federal workers TSO's start at a lower pay scale than
anybody else in the government. They start at something like
thirty five thousand dollars a year, and then after their
probationary period they can get up to forty two thousand,
whereas most other government jobs start at that forty two
thousand stage and then they work their way up.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
So, like, what is the turnover rate for TSA agents?
Speaker 2 (24:04):
It's incredibly high. So for every four officers that it hires,
three of them are just backfills. So they're basically hiring
a twenty five percent faster than they can retain people.
And of those people who eventually do get hired, about
twenty percent of them quit in six months. So it's
just a massive turnover. And I think that's part of
(24:25):
the problem around lack of standardization and just how confusing
it is because a lot of these people are relatively
new to the.
Speaker 4 (24:30):
Job thirty k years insane for this sense why they're
screaming at meals?
Speaker 3 (24:37):
Yes, yeah, you know.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
You're getting McDonald's energy because that's the you know, that's
that's the pay that they're getting.
Speaker 4 (24:43):
Yeah, fun, and you don't even get McDonald's.
Speaker 5 (24:45):
No, at least get happy meals.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
So you know, we've been I think a little sympathetic
to the officers so far. But TSA is often accused
of profiling and discrimination. Don't support that. I'll be the
first to say it. Let it be known that the
white man on the podcast was the first to stand
up and say discrimination.
Speaker 5 (25:10):
Wait, god, you guys to say something like that.
Speaker 4 (25:12):
We really needed to hear this. No, I've seen it before.
My dad gets crazy searches. Yeah, just for being an older,
vaguely middle Eastern looking guy. He's always getting taken to
some room. You see him like fifteen minutes later.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
You also spent a lot of time talking to passengers, right,
and a lot of them have alleged profiling and discrimination.
Obviously TSAA denies these claims, But can you just walk
us through some of the reporting you did and some
of the stories that you heard from passengers.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
Yeah, I think the TSA's blanket response is always either
we're following the procedure exactly or we're preventing the next
nine to eleven, So just deal with it. And it's
been consistent in the twenty twenty three years that they've
been around. But we know that the TSA gets hundreds
of complaints every month for things as varied as civil
(26:09):
rights complaints to violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
And that's probably a small sliver of it, because it's
actually very difficult to make a complaint to the TSA.
So a couple of people that I profiled in my article,
there is one person named Katie Abdu who when she
was fourteen, she was pulled off an airplane and she
(26:30):
was traveling by herself, so she didn't really understand what
was going on. But she's of partial Arab descent, and
some random security guy takes her off the airplane, submits
her to a search, and then she tries to understand
exactly what's going on, and as soon as she asks
the question, this guy starts patting her down and putting
his hand up up her skirt and all of these
things that really would make anyone uncomfortable let alone a
(26:53):
fourteen year old woman traveling alone.
Speaker 1 (26:55):
And then you also had the game developer Ronnie Ismail.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
Yeah, Rommy me is half Egyptian, half Dutch. He's from
the Netherlands. He says he has seven Islamic names. And
it's not just that he gets stopped, but the way
in which he gets stopped. For example, he was saying
that he gets pulled aside at the gate to do
a security check, not in a private room like you
might be able to do at a security checkpoint, but
(27:20):
just at that like the little plastic folding table by
the gate, he gets padded down in full view of everyone.
And it is almost this humiliation ritual that he has
to endure. It's not because he's done anything wrong. It's
really just, oh, there's a guy who looks like the
people that everybody says are terrorists, so thank goodness, they're
patting him down.
Speaker 4 (27:40):
At the gate at the game. It's humiliating.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
I just don't understand why you would need to check
someone after they went through security.
Speaker 3 (27:45):
That's more.
Speaker 4 (27:46):
That seems like more of the theater of it.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
The security.
Speaker 4 (27:50):
Yeah, definitely, they're putting on a little show for people.
That's nuts.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
So even if you're not harassed by TSA, going to
airport security sucks. So I wanted to know is this
even worth it? You know, like, how effective aready actually?
Speaker 2 (28:13):
So if you ask the TSA directly, they will always
just point to one thing, which is that we haven't
had another nine to eleven. There's no other real good
measure that they say exists to do that. But I
don't think that's true. And in fact, there are security
researchers whose livelihood this is who also think that that's
not true. So going back to actuarial science, there's a
(28:35):
measure that governments use all the time to say is
this cost effective?
Speaker 3 (28:40):
Is this worth doing?
Speaker 2 (28:42):
It's called the cost per life saved metric, and it
essentially says, here's the amount of money that society has
to put in to create an intervention, and here's how
much it costs to actually save a life. So a
couple examples here enforcing mandatory seat belt laws. It's really cheap.
It's about one hundred and forty dollars per life save.
(29:02):
Paying for someone to have an impatient visit to a hospital,
even if they're not insured, it's about a million dollars
per intervention. But the government's threshold is around ten million
dollars per life saved, so that's kind of the metric
that they're they're sort of curving around. For the TSA,
the most generous estimate is that it costs about fifteen
(29:25):
million dollars per life saved. And that makes two really
big assumptions. Number one that the TSA is solely responsible
for stopping every terrorist attack against the air transport system,
and number two that there's a nine to eleven style
attack planned about once a decade.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
And unsurprisingly, the price goes way up once you remove
those assumptions.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
The cost per life saved really gets north of about
five hundred million dollars, which is, you know, fifty times
what the government's normal limit is. So I think that's
really that's probably closer to the ballpark of how effective
really is.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
So back to the question we started with, right, I
know we've touched on it here and there throughout the interview,
but I want to know why are the TSA rules
so confusing?
Speaker 3 (30:13):
So there's three reasons.
Speaker 2 (30:15):
The first one is just operationally, the TSA has to
deal with a huge amount of turnover. Their training takes
a long time, and you know, they're getting people who
are looking at the TSA as a stepping stone for
another law enforcement career, so not a lot of reason
for them to stick around. So the people in the
front line aren't super motivated to kind of be correct
(30:36):
versus pleasing their boss, and the procedures themselves are always
in flux, so I think that's number one. Number two
is equipment, so not every airport has the same equipment.
Your big ones like DFW, like JFK are always going
to have more of the top of the line stuff.
Some smaller ones, like if you ever fly out of
I don't know, Lubbuck or South Bend or whatever, they
(30:57):
may not have the fancy body scanner, so you may
have to go through an old school metal detector where
they have specific processes. So that's number two. And then
number three is there are actually some airports where they've
subcontracted it out to private security and so they have
their own types of requirements. They have to be TSA compliant,
(31:17):
but there's a lot of leeway and what exactly that
means as long as they hit some basic stuff. San
Francisco being the main example of that.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
And you're reporting, did TSA give you any reasoning on
why they don't just like make it clear even when
you're like on the line for it, right, I get
not knowing ahead of time, right, Like my experience has
been even when you're at the airport, the signage is
telling you different things than the TSA agents are telling you.
Or I've even had instances where two different TSA agents
in the same line are telling me conflicting information, where
(31:45):
one is saying take your hoodie off, I'm going to
take my hoodie off, and the other one is yelling
at me for taking off my hoodie, where it's like.
Speaker 4 (31:52):
What am I?
Speaker 8 (31:53):
Like?
Speaker 3 (31:53):
Yeah, it feels like how do I win my mind? Exactly?
Speaker 1 (31:56):
Because every time I go I'm like, this is going
to be the time that I do everything right, Right,
I'm going to be You're going to get your gold
star exactly. But every single time I'm like this feels
like they're just making it up as it goes along, right.
There's no consistency to it, and there's no messaging. I
get like you're saying, sometimes there's different machines, right, But
I'm just sort of like, why it would it not
(32:17):
be better for the TSA for people to know what
to do like, you know, even if the rules were
the same everywhere, Like people kind of suck at following directions,
especially adults, like don't isn't it more annoying for them
that we don't know what we're supposed to be doing
when we go to the lines.
Speaker 2 (32:32):
Yeah, there's no good answer, first of all, but I
think there's two reasons why. The first one is the
TSA just doesn't have any incentive to make the passenger
experience better their KPIs or things like, you know, when
they have someone coming through to test the quality of
the security systems, like percent of fake gun smuggled through,
which by the way, is still also unacceptably high. It's
(32:53):
like ninety percent of them get through, but that's what
they actually get measured on.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
So I looked into this, and after that reporting of
ninety five percent of weapons getting through on these tests,
a few years later, TSA made some huge improvements, uh,
and only seventy percent of the weapons were able to
get through with these tests.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
There's no incentive for them to make people five percent
happier just because they don't care. And the second thing
is there's no pressure from Congress or any elected official
to do it because you don't want to be the
guy who voted to defund the TSA and then there's
a terrorist attack and you're the guy who you know
voted to do it and you're out of there.
Speaker 4 (33:29):
Basically, the way to fix the TSAs by introducing tip culture.
They were working for tips. Things might be a lot
nicer in there.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
It is like the.
Speaker 5 (33:38):
Most power you have is like when you go through
and then there's a little smiley faces at the end,
but how do we do today? And you can press
that and that probably doesn't even do anything out it's
probably it's not.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
Even on It's just like it's like what you hand
the controller to a kid and it's not plus.
Speaker 4 (33:54):
Yeah, exactly, it's not saving anything.
Speaker 5 (33:57):
Yeah, all those points make sense, like on the politics
side of it, where like, yeah, you wouldn't want to
be the guy who's like campaigning on defunding TSA or
fixing it and then you know, however many people die
because of something, Yeah, and yeah it makes sense like
ultimately it is just an inconvenience more than anything else.
(34:19):
And it's like, yeah, it sucks, we'll complain about on
this podcast, but we're all gonna we're not gonna not
fly because of it, you know, yeah, just sad, sad sucks.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
So actually just this week through Republican senators Okay Center
and Mike lay In Center, Tommy Tupper Base, Mike Lee. Yeah,
sounds like they have introduced the bill to abolish the
TSA okay and have airports just go back to the
(34:55):
private security apparatus that happened before not eleve And you know,
it's only two centers sign on to it right now,
so I don't know how much momentum it has.
Speaker 5 (35:05):
Interesting, but being.
Speaker 1 (35:06):
More realistic, I wanted to ask there are like do
your reporting have you talked to people who have just
like ideas on how to make if not TSA version
of airport security better?
Speaker 8 (35:17):
Is there?
Speaker 1 (35:17):
You know, do people have like better ideas of how
we should be doing this.
Speaker 2 (35:24):
There's kind of two schools of thought. I think there's
the fairness objection and then there's the effectiveness objection. So
the fairness objection would be to remove all of the
things that unfairly burdened people who you know aren't your
standard rich business traveler. On the other side, there's the
efficiency argument, and you can actually see this in practice
in places like Europe, Canada, where they don't have TSA
(35:48):
type regimes, but their record of anti terrorism is pretty
much the same. You can do things like replacing these
expensive and unreliable machines. You can replace them with things
like dog sniffers where you can walk them up and
down the way they'll sniff for explosives. It's less intrusive. Obviously,
it doesn't you know, reward your big defense contractor donors,
but it's more efficient. You can remove some of these
(36:11):
absurd pat downs and security checks, keep the things that
are actually keeping us safe, like the explosive scanners in
check baggage, but don't go through all of this rigormarole
at the security line because we just know that a
lot of it's for show. But again, who's going to
have the electoral capital to really be able to do that,
especially if you know you've got all these people who
(36:32):
are just waiting to pounce on the minor security labs.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
So after hearing all this, do you all feel better
or worse about TSA? And I'll start by saying I
feel more forgiving of the agents in the attitudes because
they're not paid any money. Yep, they're like shit, So
(36:56):
therefore they are treating me like, shit, so you know what,
maybe I just got to take more for the team.
Let it go. Yeah yeah, but it just seems like
it's just so dumb to me. And this is like
so many things in this country that we are spending
so much money on the thing that we know is
not effective, but no one wants to do anything about.
Speaker 4 (37:17):
It because there's always a what if? Yeah, what if
you stop and then you.
Speaker 1 (37:23):
Know, but if yeah, but if there's another nine to
eleven because they didn't take our water bottles.
Speaker 4 (37:29):
It makes me think about what am I actually worried
about on a flight as security wise? It's a bomb?
So like if I go to the airport and a
dog comes up and smells me for two seconds, knows
I don't.
Speaker 3 (37:40):
Have a bomb.
Speaker 4 (37:42):
You know, I'm pretty happy. I'm pretty comfortable knowing, you know,
bring whatever the hell you want on the plane. If
it's not a bomb, I think we're going to be fine.
Speaker 1 (37:50):
Like the liquid stuff that takes off the shoes.
Speaker 5 (37:53):
The liquid stuff we need to get rid of that. Yeah,
I think I think a politician can.
Speaker 1 (37:57):
Bravely Yeah, let's do one thing.
Speaker 5 (38:01):
Like, yeah, let's focus in that we should all be
able to do. I should take any size shampoo on there,
no problem. Yep.
Speaker 1 (38:08):
Can you imagine how different out lives would be? Yeah,
you can just spring any It's crazy.
Speaker 4 (38:14):
Yeah. Every time I go somewhere, I go to Walgreens
and I get the little fucking travel kid.
Speaker 1 (38:18):
And it costs the same as the big.
Speaker 5 (38:20):
Sunscreen things like.
Speaker 4 (38:21):
It's like because they know it's for convenience.
Speaker 1 (38:30):
All right, that's our show this week. I was really
hoping by the time this came out that we would
hear from TSA, but they said they were not interested
in talking to us. If you want to figure out
a sneakyway to get around TSA, Darryl gave me some
insight during our interview that I'm going to include in
our newsletter. So if you want to hear the answers
to that, go to No Such Thing that show. We'll
(38:52):
also link to it in our show notes. No Such
Things produced by Manny Fidel Nor Friedman and me Devin Joseph.
The theme song is by Many. Original music for this
episode provided by Zeno Piorelli. Darryl Campbell was our guest.
His new book, Fatal Abstraction, is out now. If you
(39:13):
like No Such Thing, please rate us five stars. It
really does help share it on social tag us. We're
trying to get the word out, working hard on this.
As always, if you guys have a question you want
us to get to the bottom of, or if you
just got feedback for us, hit us up at Manny
Noah Devin at gmail dot com. We do read every
(39:35):
single email, uh and we'll see you guys next week.
Speaker 8 (39:53):
To what if We the Linux are s the elements cast,
the hats and topics are what if we do Linux
I'm Manny, I'm Noah, and this is Devin and this
is no such thing. The show where we settle our
dumb arguments and yours by actually doing the research. On
today's episode, we figure out what is actually going on
with the TSA.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
I think the TSA's blanket response is always either we're
following the procedure exactly or we're preventing the next nine
to eleven.
Speaker 3 (00:20):
So just deal with it.
Speaker 4 (00:24):
There's no no such thing, no such thing such.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
So we're all about to take our first trip together
to an undisclosed location.
Speaker 4 (00:44):
First trip, Yeah, first flight. We've never been on a trip.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
We're all three of us.
Speaker 4 (00:51):
WHOA, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
You're right, done like day trips, but we haven't done
New Jersey overnight these New Jersey out.
Speaker 4 (01:01):
Of state actually to that's actually shocking.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
Yeah, so this is gonna be well. By time this
comes out, we would have been on this trip. Yeah,
that's true. So you know, got me thinking about the TSA,
which got me thinking about this is a core memory.
It was twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen, it just come out
that you could look at all your Google data and
(01:26):
see like all the information that Google had about you.
Speaker 4 (01:30):
Oh my god. So we were all.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Looking to say, like, all right, how old is Google think?
I am all that sort of stuff. And then we
also realized that you can get your voice recordings if
you have like a Google Home. So none of us
had a Google Home except Manny at the time, That's right,
So we were curious what was on Manny's Google Home
home recordings, which.
Speaker 4 (01:54):
Is an immediate violation of privacy. But continue, we all.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Gathered around your computer. You were about to go on
a trip, yeah, and you had asked the Google Home
maybe a dozen times, can I bring X on a plane?
Speaker 4 (02:13):
I remember this instance because I think I was literally packing,
and as I was packing, I just kept saying, you know,
I would pick something up and be like, hey Google,
and I take this, Well, SA, let me bring this.
And so when we when we looked at the the
like the saved responses, it was just like twelve in
(02:37):
a row, like back to back to back. Can I
bring like a razor? Can I bring my portable battery?
But I will say I had a great reason to
keep asking those questions because I still to this day
don't know what I can bring and what I can't bring.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
You know what That's what I was going to say.
You know, we're a little bit older now near you know,
nearly ten years later, like to apologize. I think we
were clowning you at the time. But Manny is not uniqueness. Now.
Every time I travel, I don't you know, I'm not
asking my goal a home, but I do. And you
(03:13):
sit and think, like, wait, how you know how much
liquid am I allowed to bring? Do I actually have
to put them in a plastic bag? You know, I
travel a few times a year. I'm not like someone
who's traveling like every other week. But I travel, I
guess not often enough to have to have that moment
where I have to stop and think about what I
can bring. Same here, this group is not alone and
(03:35):
being confused by the TSA rules. It is the sort
of thing that every time I think, okay, there's going
to be the time I get it right, and every
time I'm more and more confused. Every time I go.
The signs are different than what the TSA agents are
telling me to do. Yep, And half the things I'm like,
(03:55):
do I actually have to do that? Like now I
don't actually put my liquids in a large classic bag.
Speaker 4 (04:00):
Don't do that?
Speaker 1 (04:00):
Anymore.
Speaker 4 (04:01):
I mean, the laptop is another one. Like, I'm flying
way more often this year than I usually am, and
so I'm starting to track this stuff anecdotally. But I
was on my way from Atlanta to New York and
the sign says take your laptop out or any device
(04:24):
that's bigger than your phone. So I start to do that,
and then the TSA agent says, stop, you don't have
to take your laptop out. He's like yelling at me.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
Are you why it's confusing?
Speaker 3 (04:39):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (04:40):
And I guess in my head, I'm like, Okay, maybe
there are some shifts where they can be more lax,
but why don't you just say, hey, you don't have
to take it out? Why are you screaming at it?
Speaker 5 (04:51):
Well, that's it's frustrating. All due respect to though hard
work is a TSA, but it's like, I don't live
I don't live here. I'm not here every day like you,
So why should I be expected to understand this, especially
when signage and history has told me to do this?
It doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 4 (05:08):
I have respect because they see a billion people every day,
But what I don't have respect for is that I, like,
I can't expect what to do. Now, if the rule
was the same every time and I was still fucking
up every that's on, you go off on me. I
deserve it, you know, lock him up. But if it
says take your laptop out and I'm trying to do
(05:29):
it and you're yelling at me, where do we go
from here?
Speaker 1 (05:33):
Shoes crazy? I mean is that the rules are different.
They don't match the signs, they don't match what you
look up online, and it's not even the same, like
you know, it's not even like every time I go
to JFK, it's it's like, okay, this part of JFK
is different than this part of JFK. So it's like,
all right, it's confusing. So what I get? If you're
gonna tell me something different, sure I could follow that.
(05:54):
You just don't have to yell at me like I'm
a fucking idiot because the thing right here is telling
me to do something different and what you're telling me.
Speaker 4 (06:00):
And God forbid, if you point that out like I have,
I'll be like, I'm like, oh, that's interesting because look
at the sign that's literally right behind you. And then
they'll just get even more pissed.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
So this creator redecues did this TikTok. It's almost three
years old now, but I think it perfectly captures sort
of what we're talking about, taking laptops and electronics out
the bag.
Speaker 4 (06:24):
If you gotta hold it, you want to take it all,
take it all of traumatized. Listening to this feels like
like drill sergeants.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Yes, yes, And there's like a level of anxiety that
like going through security, I just have at all times.
And I'm someone who's very fucking good at following directions. Yeah,
you know, like I am one of those okay that
says that I'm ready. I got my ship ready to go.
My shoes are a little bit slipped off.
Speaker 4 (06:52):
Like oh yeah, I read in shoes that are easy
to take off. I don't even wear a belt to
the airport. Got my laptop separate from others, make it
easy to come out. And now you know, we're younger too, exactly,
We're not young, but we're younger. And like sometimes I'll
go through the line and see old people getting screamed,
yelled at, no fucking mercy.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
Granny is getting like, like you fucking idiot, granny, figure
it out. You know, I guess she doesn't have to
take our shoes off. Oh then they yell at granny
because she's old, so she doesn't have to take our
shoes off. She doesn't know that. Yeah, and it's just.
Speaker 4 (07:28):
Like meanwhile, planes weren't even around when this woman was war.
She's learning with the rest of the world.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
Her last flight was with the right brothers. This is
Amelia Earhart, and y'all are screaming at her. So, yeah,
this is it seems like there there could be a
better way to do this.
Speaker 5 (07:53):
I mean, I'm curious, like how TSA does decide if
it does decide the differences between airports. Is it domestic
for international? Is their system in place.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
Airport at the airport? Yea, Well I'm curious, like we
haven't even touched on this yet, but we go through
all this bullshit. Does this actually even work? Why can't
I bring a water bottle on a plane? Like come on,
you know, yeah, I know one guy tried to do
one water one time, but it's water.
Speaker 5 (08:22):
The universal solvent, and I can't carry it.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
You can bring water everywhere else.
Speaker 4 (08:27):
Now, you know. I'm okay if they ban dasani, my
regular water bottle should be fine.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
No, alright, so we'll get some answers to some of
those questions. After the break, and I chat with a
reporter who tells me the darkest you say story I
have ever heard. All Right, we're back. This is no
(09:01):
such thing. Have you been? So you're in Texas?
Speaker 4 (09:04):
Right?
Speaker 3 (09:04):
I am in Texas, Dallas.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
So I appreciate you taking the time to hop on.
Can I just have you introduce yourselves name and sort
of what you do.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
Sure.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
My name is Darryl Campbell. I'm an aviation safety writer
for the tech website The Verge, and I've also got
a book coming out. It's called Fatal Abstraction, Why the
Managerial Class Loses Control of Software.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
So a few years ago there I wrote this deep
dive for The Verge called The Humiliating History of the TSA.
I loved your article. I thought it was like so
much of the writing around TSA I feel like sort
of really walks around the fact that, like it's such
a bizarre experience.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
I really did want to capture the weirdness of it.
Speaker 6 (09:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
I think the key to it was that first anecdote.
So this person, her name is Jay Cooper. She's a
former ts SO who used to work at LaGuardia, and
the story she told me was, in a lot of
ways the perfect encapsulation of just how strange and bizarre
(10:08):
the TSA experience can be. So she was working at
her checkpoint she noticed someone was crying in the line,
and it's an airport that happens. But when the person
came through to her station, so she was the document
checker at the front of the line, someone was pushing
someone in a wheelchair and the person in the wheelchair
was supposed to hand over their ticket and she wasn't
(10:30):
really being responsive, so Jay asked her, Hey, can I
have your documents? Can you stand up to do the
security check? The person pushing her was crying and she said,
but she can't. She can't because it turns out the
person in the wheelchair was dead. What happened was they
had checked in a couple hours before, and it was
an international flight, so they were just being safe, and
the person in the wheelchair had died at some point
(10:52):
between check in and the time that they were going
through security. The problem is, once you've checked in, you
are entitled to go through security unless a doctor pronounces
you dead, and so at that point, airport rules being
what they are. There wasn't a doctor on station, so
they had to let the person through security. So Jay
(11:14):
asked her, Okay, well, here's what we have to do.
We actually have to take them physically out of the wheelchair,
do a pat down on them in a private room,
you know, put on the gloves. But they treated her
as if she was just another person going through security,
even though.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
They were a corpse at that point.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
It really is just kind of an example of how
the TSA has to do its job without question, no
matter what, even if the person isn't alive.
Speaker 4 (11:42):
Was it clear to TSA that the person passed away?
Speaker 1 (11:45):
They knew, they all knew, everyone knew, everyone knew the
person was dead.
Speaker 5 (11:48):
There just wasn't a doctor to officially say that.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
Wow, but it, you know, it sort of points to
this thing of like the TSA has their rules, yeah,
and everyone has to go through security even if you
are dead.
Speaker 4 (12:02):
That is the darkest ts Yeah, it's pretty you know,
you're right.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
Yeah, So I'm going to take a step back, and
I think a lot of people take for granted that
the TSA is just, you know, the way we do
airport security. But that hasn't always been the case, So
can you tell us a bit about how and why
the TSA was formed.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
So I'm old enough to remember a time before TSA.
My parents used to work for the airlines, so I
remember being little and actually being able to go up
to the gate when my dad had a flight and
meet him right at the gate side. After nine to eleven.
The TSA was formed first as part of the Department
of Transportation and then was kind of moved over to
(12:44):
the Department of Homeland Security once that was formed. But
it was really a response specifically to the nine to
eleven attacks and kind of an overreaction in my view
of what you really need to do to sort of
stop the next nine to eleven, which is the TSA's
primary goal.
Speaker 7 (13:01):
Today, we take permanent and aggressive steps to improve the
security of our airways, and a new team of federal
security managers, supervisor, law enforcement officers, and screeners. We'll ensure
all passengers and carry on bags are inspected thoroughly and effectively.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
The new security force.
Speaker 7 (13:17):
Will be well trained, made up of US citizens, and
if any of its members do not perform, the new
Undersecretary will have full authority to discipline or remove them.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
Before nine to eleven, though airport security was relatively uninvasive.
You had your metal detectors, you had just private security
guards at the checkpoints, just saying okay, if you've got
a gun or if you've got a big knife, then
you obviously can't take that. But otherwise you didn't need
a ticket to pass through security. And that was because
(13:50):
what we think of as hijacking today was actually very
different in kind of the nineteen fifties, nineteen sixties, nineteen seventies,
where people were hijacking airplanes, not to use them the
as suicide weapons, but really as political statements.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
Between nineteen sixty eight in nineteen seventy two, there were
over one hundred and thirty American planes that were hijacked,
with most of those hijackers wanting to go to Cuba.
Speaker 6 (14:13):
There was a man up in the cockpit with a
gun that we were going to Havana, that there was
nothing to panic about.
Speaker 7 (14:21):
Messengers calm during most of it.
Speaker 8 (14:24):
They were come.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
Most of them were totally come.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
During most of this.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
They were very nice.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
We had a nice dinner over there in the airport,
a couple of drinks, all on the house. It's hard
to complain of Potte where you're frightened at any point. Oh,
I don't think anybody was.
Speaker 4 (14:40):
You find out you're on a hijacksplane, You're like, oh,
gotta get a different city.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
Now, let it killed me. And then you know, getting
to the seventies, it got a lot out of hand.
And then Nixon came through and I was like, all right,
like we need to have a little bit more security.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
And so that's where installed the private security guards and
the metal detectors.
Speaker 6 (15:03):
President nexton there is an out several steps designed to
counter hijacking. The White House Anti hijacking plan is in
three parts. Starting tomorrow, armed guards will ride shotgun on
some domestic and international flights, Electronic surveillance at the airports
will be increased, and pressures will be brought on the
international community to ostracize those countries that do not punish
their hijackers.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
So, in this security system that you're talking about, pre
TSA really primarily just looking for weapons or is that
like the primary you know, now we're talking about liquids
and taking off our shoes and all.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
These Yeah, yeah, it's gotten crazy, but no, it was
two main things that they were looking out for. Number
one was bombs that could harm an airplane, so like
the lockerbie terrorist example, that happens in check baggage, So
that's something outside of the airport security that we see
every day. And then just individual armed hijackers who could
pose the threats. But looking for individual being the operative
(16:02):
thing like individual small groups, not you know, five or
six people at a time with box cutters. So it
was very specific to the threat that they saw it
in sort of the sixties and seventies.
Speaker 4 (16:21):
Good Morning America may never be the same. And this
is why a beautiful Tuesday turned tragic when American Airlines
Flight eleven crashed into the North Tower of the World
Trade Center. And that was just the beginning.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
The nine to eleven attacks are almost like the trojan Horse.
It's so successful but also so infamous that it's never
going to work again. And if you think about the
things that are preventing the next nine to eleven quote unquote,
there's really three things. Number one, reinforced cockpit doors. You
can't just walk your way up into a cockpit anymore.
(16:55):
You have to have the pilot's key you in, and
there's a whole system in place. The second isilot training.
Previous forms of hijacking were really just about making a
political statement, So pilots were trained to obey and basically
do whatever the hijackers wanted. That doesn't happen anymore, and
pilots are trained to get the airplane on the ground
as quickly as possible and let law enforcement take over.
(17:16):
And really the third thing is passengers are aware of
the threat now. And we've seen this in the case
of the shoe bomber, the underwear bomber, and I'm sure
you've seen all the videos. Are just people acting weird
on airplanes now and passengers are really on top of them,
restraining them and so on. So I think the whole
idea that the TSA was designed to respond to nine
to eleven is almost outdated from the moment that it
(17:39):
was created. Now there's obviously a kind of public relations
aspect to it, too, and that the government needed to
seem like it was doing something to respond. And the
best way to get people to give them credit, if
you like, is to invent a new security apparatus, invent
a new processes that touches everybody that wants to fly,
(18:01):
so that it looks like people are doing things, even
if what they're actually doing is not so effective. There's
a term that someone coined. It's called security theater. It's,
you know, the whole big show about it, even if
there's no kind of metrics that you can track. And
actually that's part of the problem is that there's really
no transparency around how TSA is effective. If you go
(18:24):
to the FBI or if you go to the Department
of Transportation and say, okay, how do you measure if
what you're doing is successful? Then they've got a list
of on time departures, arrests, whatever, whatever. For the TSA.
It's like, well, we haven't had another nine to eleven,
But how much of that is really because of the TSA.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
Darryl told me, when you go through a security checkpoint,
they're eight tasks the TSO might be performing.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
It's a very regimented process, and in part it's because
when you first become a transportation security officer, that's what
you're doing. So there's the ticket checking where you hand
your ticket to get scanned. There's the security they call
it divestiture, which is a fancy way of saying take
off your shoes, in your jacket and put it in
(19:16):
the bin. There's the person at the actual scanner, there's
the person who's operating the personal scanner, the baggage scanner,
and there's a bunch of different ones as supervisor. So
it's really kind of like you're Catholics, like the Stations
of the Cross. You kind of move around to each
individual one throughout your shifts, but you're supposed to be
trained on all of them, and each one has like
(19:38):
five hours of training for every station, so it's not
just a question of people yelling ask you to say,
take your shoes off, but they are actual steps that
they're supposed to follow.
Speaker 4 (19:48):
Real quick. He uh, he mentioned the stations of the Cross.
Do you guys know what that is? That's such an
obscure Catholic reference that now you break this, it's just
it's like, uh, it's in every Catholic church you have
like the Stations of the Cross around the room. It's
(20:08):
like the twelve or fourteen like little steps that Jesus
took on his way to get crucified. So it's like, Okay,
it makes number three, he kissed this woman on the cheek.
Number four, he fell down number five. It's like, but
I just thought that was so funny that I don't
think that people.
Speaker 5 (20:27):
Next time you watch Passion of the Christ, you know,
I'm sure you will be on Easter.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
Keep that in mind.
Speaker 5 (20:32):
It's like he's like going through tsa think.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
About what he did. And you also talk about like
the compliance factor of it, right of like constantly monitoring
these employees to making sure that you're saying they're following
the exact steps that they're taught, and how that bruise
a lot of anxiety within the workers, and then you
know with the travelers as well.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
Speaks yeah today, Yeah, it's I call it a complain
clients fetish. But you remember this whole thing a couple
of weeks ago about Doge firing a bunch of probationary workers.
So every time new TSO is hired, they're a probationary
worker for two years, which means they can get fired
for any reason. They don't need cause they don't need
to write up. I mean, if they just don't like
(21:17):
the look of you, if you get crossways with the supervisor,
you can get fired. So there's this huge fear and
anxiety about I don't want to mess up. I don't
even want to be perceived to mess up, which probably
makes them well, which does make them in my interviews anyway,
really just focused on going as much by the book
or getting on the good side of their supervisor as possible.
So that's one part of it, and then the second
(21:39):
part of it is there's a lot of ways to
screw up and only one way to be right. But
there's also a lack of standardization of processes, of equipment,
even of personnel training, which makes it difficult for the
average flyer to know is this the airport where I
take off my shoes and I put my jacket in,
or is this the one where I keep my laptop in.
(22:00):
There's no incentive for them to make it more traveler friendly.
There's a huge disincentive to make a mistake, and so
you're always going to get it to the point where
they're just like making it worse for the traveler because
that's how they keep their jobs, and so they're kind
of in an impossible position.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
But you see, like there's just a ton of incentive
for them to just, yeah, do what's right, right. There's
not a lot of flexibility. Yeah, even though it's confusing
to us, to them and they're like, let me just
say and do what I need to to make sure
my supervisor and yell at me or I don't get
in trouble.
Speaker 5 (22:33):
Yeah, it makes sense. Like they're obviously, at the end
of the day, just trying to do their job, and
obviously airport's going to be a super regimented sort of thing.
It's not like, yeah, it's not like a little mom
and pop.
Speaker 1 (22:43):
The operation where yeah, it's like all right, this guy's good,
Like yeah, let them bring about it. What's the big deal?
Speaker 5 (22:49):
And obviously makes sense, especially with the security element, like
they're going to be uptight in that way, and like
they just want to keep their job exactly.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
So Dara told me a story too that really exemplifies
it's like how strict they are.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
There is one story where a guy confronted someone who's
trying to smuggle a bag of cocaine through there, and
in order to try and get rid of the evidence,
this guy through the bag of cocaine in the TSO's face.
But the problem is if that guy gets picked for
a tok screen that same day and he has residual
cocaine in a system, he gets fired on the spot
and there's no appeal, there's no nothing, it's just like, Okay,
(23:25):
you fail the test, you're fired, And that's the kind
of environment that they have to deal.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
With, you know. I think this anxiety plays a big
part obviously in the fear they're going to get fired,
but they're also just like not paid, well, they're wanting
they'll always paid.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
Federal workers TSO's start at a lower pay scale than
anybody else in the government. They start at something like
thirty five thousand dollars a year, and then after their
probationary period they can get up to forty two thousand,
whereas most other government jobs start at that forty two
thousand stage and then they work their way up.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
So, like, what is the turnover rate for TSA agents?
Speaker 2 (24:04):
It's incredibly high. So for every four officers that it hires,
three of them are just backfills. So they're basically hiring
a twenty five percent faster than they can retain people.
And of those people who eventually do get hired, about
twenty percent of them quit in six months. So it's
just a massive turnover. And I think that's part of
(24:25):
the problem around lack of standardization and just how confusing
it is because a lot of these people are relatively
new to the.
Speaker 4 (24:30):
Job thirty k years insane for this sense why they're
screaming at meals?
Speaker 3 (24:37):
Yes, yeah, you know.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
You're getting McDonald's energy because that's the you know, that's
that's the pay that they're getting.
Speaker 4 (24:43):
Yeah, fun, and you don't even get McDonald's.
Speaker 5 (24:45):
No, at least get happy meals.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
So you know, we've been I think a little sympathetic
to the officers so far. But TSA is often accused
of profiling and discrimination. Don't support that. I'll be the
first to say it. Let it be known that the
white man on the podcast was the first to stand
up and say discrimination.
Speaker 5 (25:10):
Wait, god, you guys to say something like that.
Speaker 4 (25:12):
We really needed to hear this. No, I've seen it before.
My dad gets crazy searches. Yeah, just for being an older,
vaguely middle Eastern looking guy. He's always getting taken to
some room. You see him like fifteen minutes later.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
You also spent a lot of time talking to passengers, right,
and a lot of them have alleged profiling and discrimination.
Obviously TSAA denies these claims, But can you just walk
us through some of the reporting you did and some
of the stories that you heard from passengers.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
Yeah, I think the TSA's blanket response is always either
we're following the procedure exactly or we're preventing the next
nine to eleven, So just deal with it. And it's
been consistent in the twenty twenty three years that they've
been around. But we know that the TSA gets hundreds
of complaints every month for things as varied as civil
(26:09):
rights complaints to violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
And that's probably a small sliver of it, because it's
actually very difficult to make a complaint to the TSA.
So a couple of people that I profiled in my article,
there is one person named Katie Abdu who when she
was fourteen, she was pulled off an airplane and she
(26:30):
was traveling by herself, so she didn't really understand what
was going on. But she's of partial Arab descent, and
some random security guy takes her off the airplane, submits
her to a search, and then she tries to understand
exactly what's going on, and as soon as she asks
the question, this guy starts patting her down and putting
his hand up up her skirt and all of these
things that really would make anyone uncomfortable let alone a
(26:53):
fourteen year old woman traveling alone.
Speaker 1 (26:55):
And then you also had the game developer Ronnie Ismail.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
Yeah, Rommy me is half Egyptian, half Dutch. He's from
the Netherlands. He says he has seven Islamic names. And
it's not just that he gets stopped, but the way
in which he gets stopped. For example, he was saying
that he gets pulled aside at the gate to do
a security check, not in a private room like you
might be able to do at a security checkpoint, but
(27:20):
just at that like the little plastic folding table by
the gate, he gets padded down in full view of everyone.
And it is almost this humiliation ritual that he has
to endure. It's not because he's done anything wrong. It's
really just, oh, there's a guy who looks like the
people that everybody says are terrorists, so thank goodness, they're
patting him down.
Speaker 4 (27:40):
At the gate at the game. It's humiliating.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
I just don't understand why you would need to check
someone after they went through security.
Speaker 3 (27:45):
That's more.
Speaker 4 (27:46):
That seems like more of the theater of it.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
The security.
Speaker 4 (27:50):
Yeah, definitely, they're putting on a little show for people.
That's nuts.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
So even if you're not harassed by TSA, going to
airport security sucks. So I wanted to know is this
even worth it? You know, like, how effective aready actually?
Speaker 2 (28:13):
So if you ask the TSA directly, they will always
just point to one thing, which is that we haven't
had another nine to eleven. There's no other real good
measure that they say exists to do that. But I
don't think that's true. And in fact, there are security
researchers whose livelihood this is who also think that that's
not true. So going back to actuarial science, there's a
(28:35):
measure that governments use all the time to say is
this cost effective?
Speaker 3 (28:40):
Is this worth doing?
Speaker 2 (28:42):
It's called the cost per life saved metric, and it
essentially says, here's the amount of money that society has
to put in to create an intervention, and here's how
much it costs to actually save a life. So a
couple examples here enforcing mandatory seat belt laws. It's really cheap.
It's about one hundred and forty dollars per life save.
(29:02):
Paying for someone to have an impatient visit to a hospital,
even if they're not insured, it's about a million dollars
per intervention. But the government's threshold is around ten million
dollars per life saved, so that's kind of the metric
that they're they're sort of curving around. For the TSA,
the most generous estimate is that it costs about fifteen
(29:25):
million dollars per life saved. And that makes two really
big assumptions. Number one that the TSA is solely responsible
for stopping every terrorist attack against the air transport system,
and number two that there's a nine to eleven style
attack planned about once a decade.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
And unsurprisingly, the price goes way up once you remove
those assumptions.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
The cost per life saved really gets north of about
five hundred million dollars, which is, you know, fifty times
what the government's normal limit is. So I think that's
really that's probably closer to the ballpark of how effective
really is.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
So back to the question we started with, right, I
know we've touched on it here and there throughout the interview,
but I want to know why are the TSA rules
so confusing?
Speaker 3 (30:13):
So there's three reasons.
Speaker 2 (30:15):
The first one is just operationally, the TSA has to
deal with a huge amount of turnover. Their training takes
a long time, and you know, they're getting people who
are looking at the TSA as a stepping stone for
another law enforcement career, so not a lot of reason
for them to stick around. So the people in the
front line aren't super motivated to kind of be correct
(30:36):
versus pleasing their boss, and the procedures themselves are always
in flux, so I think that's number one. Number two
is equipment, so not every airport has the same equipment.
Your big ones like DFW, like JFK are always going
to have more of the top of the line stuff.
Some smaller ones, like if you ever fly out of
I don't know, Lubbuck or South Bend or whatever, they
(30:57):
may not have the fancy body scanner, so you may
have to go through an old school metal detector where
they have specific processes. So that's number two. And then
number three is there are actually some airports where they've
subcontracted it out to private security and so they have
their own types of requirements. They have to be TSA compliant,
(31:17):
but there's a lot of leeway and what exactly that
means as long as they hit some basic stuff. San
Francisco being the main example of that.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
And you're reporting, did TSA give you any reasoning on
why they don't just like make it clear even when
you're like on the line for it, right, I get
not knowing ahead of time, right, Like my experience has
been even when you're at the airport, the signage is
telling you different things than the TSA agents are telling you.
Or I've even had instances where two different TSA agents
in the same line are telling me conflicting information, where
(31:45):
one is saying take your hoodie off, I'm going to
take my hoodie off, and the other one is yelling
at me for taking off my hoodie, where it's like.
Speaker 4 (31:52):
What am I?
Speaker 8 (31:53):
Like?
Speaker 3 (31:53):
Yeah, it feels like how do I win my mind? Exactly?
Speaker 1 (31:56):
Because every time I go I'm like, this is going
to be the time that I do everything right, Right,
I'm going to be You're going to get your gold
star exactly. But every single time I'm like this feels
like they're just making it up as it goes along, right.
There's no consistency to it, and there's no messaging. I
get like you're saying, sometimes there's different machines, right, But
I'm just sort of like, why it would it not
(32:17):
be better for the TSA for people to know what
to do like, you know, even if the rules were
the same everywhere, Like people kind of suck at following directions,
especially adults, like don't isn't it more annoying for them
that we don't know what we're supposed to be doing
when we go to the lines.
Speaker 2 (32:32):
Yeah, there's no good answer, first of all, but I
think there's two reasons why. The first one is the
TSA just doesn't have any incentive to make the passenger
experience better their KPIs or things like, you know, when
they have someone coming through to test the quality of
the security systems, like percent of fake gun smuggled through,
which by the way, is still also unacceptably high. It's
(32:53):
like ninety percent of them get through, but that's what
they actually get measured on.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
So I looked into this, and after that reporting of
ninety five percent of weapons getting through on these tests,
a few years later, TSA made some huge improvements, uh,
and only seventy percent of the weapons were able to
get through with these tests.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
There's no incentive for them to make people five percent
happier just because they don't care. And the second thing
is there's no pressure from Congress or any elected official
to do it because you don't want to be the
guy who voted to defund the TSA and then there's
a terrorist attack and you're the guy who you know
voted to do it and you're out of there.
Speaker 4 (33:29):
Basically, the way to fix the TSAs by introducing tip culture.
They were working for tips. Things might be a lot
nicer in there.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
It is like the.
Speaker 5 (33:38):
Most power you have is like when you go through
and then there's a little smiley faces at the end,
but how do we do today? And you can press
that and that probably doesn't even do anything out it's
probably it's not.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
Even on It's just like it's like what you hand
the controller to a kid and it's not plus.
Speaker 4 (33:54):
Yeah, exactly, it's not saving anything.
Speaker 5 (33:57):
Yeah, all those points make sense, like on the politics
side of it, where like, yeah, you wouldn't want to
be the guy who's like campaigning on defunding TSA or
fixing it and then you know, however many people die
because of something, Yeah, and yeah it makes sense like
ultimately it is just an inconvenience more than anything else.
(34:19):
And it's like, yeah, it sucks, we'll complain about on
this podcast, but we're all gonna we're not gonna not
fly because of it, you know, yeah, just sad, sad sucks.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
So actually just this week through Republican senators Okay Center
and Mike lay In Center, Tommy Tupper Base, Mike Lee. Yeah,
sounds like they have introduced the bill to abolish the
TSA okay and have airports just go back to the
(34:55):
private security apparatus that happened before not eleve And you know,
it's only two centers sign on to it right now,
so I don't know how much momentum it has.
Speaker 5 (35:05):
Interesting, but being.
Speaker 1 (35:06):
More realistic, I wanted to ask there are like do
your reporting have you talked to people who have just
like ideas on how to make if not TSA version
of airport security better?
Speaker 8 (35:17):
Is there?
Speaker 1 (35:17):
You know, do people have like better ideas of how
we should be doing this.
Speaker 2 (35:24):
There's kind of two schools of thought. I think there's
the fairness objection and then there's the effectiveness objection. So
the fairness objection would be to remove all of the
things that unfairly burdened people who you know aren't your
standard rich business traveler. On the other side, there's the
efficiency argument, and you can actually see this in practice
in places like Europe, Canada, where they don't have TSA
(35:48):
type regimes, but their record of anti terrorism is pretty
much the same. You can do things like replacing these
expensive and unreliable machines. You can replace them with things
like dog sniffers where you can walk them up and
down the way they'll sniff for explosives. It's less intrusive. Obviously,
it doesn't you know, reward your big defense contractor donors,
but it's more efficient. You can remove some of these
(36:11):
absurd pat downs and security checks, keep the things that
are actually keeping us safe, like the explosive scanners in
check baggage, but don't go through all of this rigormarole
at the security line because we just know that a
lot of it's for show. But again, who's going to
have the electoral capital to really be able to do that,
especially if you know you've got all these people who
(36:32):
are just waiting to pounce on the minor security labs.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
So after hearing all this, do you all feel better
or worse about TSA? And I'll start by saying I
feel more forgiving of the agents in the attitudes because
they're not paid any money. Yep, they're like shit, So
(36:56):
therefore they are treating me like, shit, so you know what,
maybe I just got to take more for the team.
Let it go. Yeah yeah, but it just seems like
it's just so dumb to me. And this is like
so many things in this country that we are spending
so much money on the thing that we know is
not effective, but no one wants to do anything about.
Speaker 4 (37:17):
It because there's always a what if? Yeah, what if
you stop and then you.
Speaker 1 (37:23):
Know, but if yeah, but if there's another nine to
eleven because they didn't take our water bottles.
Speaker 4 (37:29):
It makes me think about what am I actually worried
about on a flight as security wise? It's a bomb?
So like if I go to the airport and a
dog comes up and smells me for two seconds, knows
I don't.
Speaker 3 (37:40):
Have a bomb.
Speaker 4 (37:42):
You know, I'm pretty happy. I'm pretty comfortable knowing, you know,
bring whatever the hell you want on the plane. If
it's not a bomb, I think we're going to be fine.
Speaker 1 (37:50):
Like the liquid stuff that takes off the shoes.
Speaker 5 (37:53):
The liquid stuff we need to get rid of that. Yeah,
I think I think a politician can.
Speaker 1 (37:57):
Bravely Yeah, let's do one thing.
Speaker 5 (38:01):
Like, yeah, let's focus in that we should all be
able to do. I should take any size shampoo on there,
no problem. Yep.
Speaker 1 (38:08):
Can you imagine how different out lives would be? Yeah,
you can just spring any It's crazy.
Speaker 4 (38:14):
Yeah. Every time I go somewhere, I go to Walgreens
and I get the little fucking travel kid.
Speaker 1 (38:18):
And it costs the same as the big.
Speaker 5 (38:20):
Sunscreen things like.
Speaker 4 (38:21):
It's like because they know it's for convenience.
Speaker 1 (38:30):
All right, that's our show this week. I was really
hoping by the time this came out that we would
hear from TSA, but they said they were not interested
in talking to us. If you want to figure out
a sneakyway to get around TSA, Darryl gave me some
insight during our interview that I'm going to include in
our newsletter. So if you want to hear the answers
to that, go to No Such Thing that show. We'll
(38:52):
also link to it in our show notes. No Such
Things produced by Manny Fidel Nor Friedman and me Devin Joseph.
The theme song is by Many. Original music for this
episode provided by Zeno Piorelli. Darryl Campbell was our guest.
His new book, Fatal Abstraction, is out now. If you
(39:13):
like No Such Thing, please rate us five stars. It
really does help share it on social tag us. We're
trying to get the word out, working hard on this.
As always, if you guys have a question you want
us to get to the bottom of, or if you
just got feedback for us, hit us up at Manny
Noah Devin at gmail dot com. We do read every
(39:35):
single email, uh and we'll see you guys next week.
Speaker 8 (39:53):
To what if We the Linux are s the elements cast,
the hats and topics are what if we do Linux
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