Your shoes remain a threat to security
Sad news on the airport security front, especially for those who ponied up $99 a year for Clear, the “registered traveler” program that promised faster trips through security and the ability to keep your shoes on. No dice. You’ll still need to remove your shoes and feel the cold terminal floor on the soles of your feet as you shuffle through the metal detector in American airports. Here’s why.
The Transportation Security Administration said yesterday that it had rejected the use of a General Electric shoe-scanning machine that was supposed to provide a central benefit for members of the Clear version of the Registered Traveler program: the ability to pass through security with their shoes on. The machine would instead have scanned the shoes electronically for weapons or explosives.
Funny, these apparently ineffective machines have been in use for months now at Clear-equipped airports, so who knows what horrors the flying public has been exposed to…
(image)
RSS Feed / Subscribe
Subscribe to Posts by Email
October 11th, 2007 at 4:00 am |
Actually, I think you have the wrong end of that stick - good for them for deciding that a decision they’d already made was *wrong* and then publicly retracting it.
It would have been much easier to just have some good inside groupthink and use the machine anyway.
Airport security is like any security - it is not designed to make you comfy but to work.
-TF
October 11th, 2007 at 6:57 am |
Admitting they’re wrong: good.
Deploying ineffective and insufficiently tested equipment under the guise of enhanced security, especially at premium prices: bad.
October 11th, 2007 at 9:56 am |
Sorry commenters, I can’t side with you. While I understand everyone’s desire for safety, the absurd rigmarole we’re put through at security isn’t enhancing our security.
October 11th, 2007 at 7:58 pm |
Brian - People keep saying that, but as you can’t possibly prove that (nor the inverse) it’s not a very interesting thing to say.
Mark - It may well have worked fine in testing (see: Vega) but not so well in mass distribution. Like nationalized health care, things that work in small doses often fail when applied to larger systems.
-TF
October 11th, 2007 at 10:05 pm |
TierFlyer, and why would that be the case? It either detects explosives on a person, or it doesn’t.
And aren’t we at war? Can we afford mistakes like this? Surely we could have afforded a test under realistic conditions (but outside the airport), if that’s what it takes.
August 13th, 2008 at 10:12 pm |
[…] - A handy guide for luggage inspectors - TSA wants to know who’s flying 72 hours beforehand - Your shoes remain a threat to security - Would you pay a fee to reserve a time to pass through airport security? - Dangerous shirts see […]