A tampered with "tamper seal" from US Airways Flight #78
While my daughter and I were spared the indignity of the choosing between the porno-scanners and a TSA groping yesterday morning, according to the comment threads on Slog, other Sea-Tac travellers were not so lucky. Which got me thinking: if safety is really the overriding concern, are the feds bothering to inspect the airplanes as closely as the crotches of passengers?
Well… apparently not, at least judging from my casual inspection of the ubiquitous “tamper seals” on the access panel behind the toilet in the airplane lavatory. It’s hard to see from the photos, but both tamper seals had be plied from the top panel, and were hanging a fraction of an inch in the air.
I’ve seen this before, and I’ve always wondered about the purpose. I don’t know if there’s a regulation, but since all airplane lavatories seem to have these tamper seals across the back panel, I assume there must be some concern about tampering, right? And yet, I routinely find these seals unsealed.
Huh.
Of course, I’ve had other unpleasant experiences with airplane lavatories, like the the time I flew cross country with all of them leaking sweet-smelling, bluish effluent into the aisles. Which brings me to my main point: statistically, by far the largest danger to passengers comes not from crotch or shoe bombers, but from shoddy maintenance. And as I wrote at the time…
If this is the sort of stunning lack of pride the airlines now show in the most visible sections of their aircraft, how can we trust them to maintain the parts we can’t see?
And then of course there are the regional commuter airlines and their poorly-trained/underpaid/overworked pilots, like those responsible for the Continental Connection flight that crashed last year outside Buffalo NY, killing all 49 people onboard, and one on the ground.
But no, the only way to make us safer is to grab my thirteen-year-old daughter’s crotch. Or so the angry trolls keep telling me.
Deregulation fixes everything. St Ronnie said so.
Of course they don’t maintain the parts you can’t see! Remember the Alaska Airlines plane that crashed into the Pacific Ocean with total loss of life because of a worn-out jackscrew? Why do you think the Air France jet fell apart at 30,000 feet over the South Atlantic? What about all the planes lying somewhere out in the African rain forest? In commercial air traffic, as in war, a certain number of casualties is acceptable.
When I read this headline … “If only the feds inspected the airline industry as closely as they inspect our crotches” …
I think Goldy is really saying this …
I was wrong to tell you to elect Obama. He’s taking away our 4th amendment rights. Don’t listen to me anymore. I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about.
@3 “I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about.”
For once, I agree with you. You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.
Speaking of regulation …
“Insurance companies will have to spend 80 to 85 percent of consumers’ premiums on direct patient care or send a rebate if they don’t, under long-awaited rules issued today that were passed as part of the Obama administration’s health care law. …
“Health plans now spend as little as 60 percent of premium dollars on medical care. A big chunk goes for administrative costs such as marketing, lobbying, executive salaries and other non-health-related overhead.
“The new regulations … require companies to spend at least 80 percent of premiums delivering health care to consumers. In employer plans that cover more than 50 people, insurers would have to spend 85 cents of every premium dollar on medical care and efforts to improve health care quality.
“Companies that fail to meet those guidelines will have to provide rebates to customers starting in 2012 … 9 million Americans could get rebates worth up to $1.4 billion, with the average rebate totaling $164 for those without employer-provided health plans.”
http://www.aolnews.com/healthc.....e/19728502
Roger Rabbit Commentary: It’s hard to believe some folks are against this law, isn’t it? Why anyone would vote for Republicans is a mystery.
Porno scanning and junk fondling soon to be replaced by anal probes?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8276016.stm
Including 86 million dollars spent on the last election.
It always concerned me when I USED to fly that the maintenance people had their pay, benefits and pensions stolen from them while management got golden parachutes and the company (United) had 10 Billion in cash on hand.
What the hell airline were you flying, Goldy?
——
At this rate, I would think that if you must fly, drive to Vancouver, then fly a Canadian or international airline if possible.
Or Southwest.
Easiest way to change the TSA procedures: stop flying. But, that would mean the person doing the belly aching would have to sacrifice something and change their behaviors, so that isn’t going to happen.
Look, I think the TSA is stupid. I think the new procedures and the x-ray machines are stupid. But, I haven’t seen a damn thing from anyone that’s bellyaching about this that would actually change things. I think the bellyachers should be thanking the TSA for giving them this opportunity to vent.
Stop flying. It wouldn’t take long or a very big reduction in flights to get the procedures changed.
10 is right. stop fucking flying, goldy! use the savings to heat your house.
there a lot of trolls here, but the collective vibe of that slog comment thread is hey, as long as the person invading my privacy smiles, it’s all good. we’re doomed.
@10: I agree. But it’s not true that other options aren’t available.
He was ignored by Chertoff’s DHS and TSA. Chertoff is now known to have had a financial interest in the scanners being used.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/.....04456.html
It’s the End Times. God is Dead and the terrorists have won.
@5 – Roger Rabbit: If the Insurance industry was actually competitive, and not an oligopoly, that would work. What we have instead is a cost plus pricing method for an industry that already enjoys monopoly pricing power.
This law not only will not reduce health care costs, it is an incentive for insurers to pay more for health care. The more it costs them, the more profit they are allowed to make. The less it costs them, the less money they can make.
In conjunction with a public option, this would be a good requirement. Absent such competition, it is just a guarantee of continued health care cost escalation.
@13
As it stands now, the machines don’t produce anything that anyone’s going to be getting hot and bothered about and the overwhelming majority of screeners would rather not see anyone’s “junk” anyway. Firing the creepy ones would be a good move.
Have people forgotten that the shoe and crotch bombers failed?
As long as the machines are there the radiation issues are there. We can get rid of them.
[Deleted — see HA Comment Policy]
[Deleted — see HA Comment Policy]
@16: I disagree that the images are ok. The radiation part is insignificant — equivalent to two minutes of flight at 40kft.
The invasiveness of the scanners and the pat downs are the issue. And they aren’t effective if you’re really concerned about explosives which is the purported safety issue. Also note they don’t see inside the body and the terrorists are stuffing them up their ass now — just blew up in the presence of a Saudi royal and left a huge crater in the prince’s floor.
What they’re doing is stupid and counterproductive. So you really have no other choice but to conclude that they’re incompetent or evil fascists or both.
I also think it’s important to recognize that the bureaucracy has been systematically burrowed and is still controlled by bushbots — those attys hired by Monica Goodling are all still there at DOJ and I saw it up close at DoD. DHS/TSA are no different.
@18…
The cool thing is that the dumbfuck really thinks he’s right.
To the point…
http://www.americablog.com/201.....h-new.html
Goldy is just upset his crotch is already tamper proof, sticker or not :-)
“I’ve always wondered about the purpose [of lavatory tamper seals].”
IIRC, people sued to board international flights that continued into the US, hide drugs behind these panels, and then arrange for a compadre to board the flight at its first US stop and retrieve the drugs. Of course, a paper seal is all that it takes to prevent that.
Goldy,
That’s where they hid the gun for Michael Corleone.
@19
The thing that gets me about this is that we have no shortage of people that are willing to piss and moan, but they’re not willing to do the real work to change the situation.
@24: Me too.
Why am I not surprised that the oldest living whiny kid (Goldy) wants to see some planes drop from the sky?
People tried to kill us last Christmas. I’m sorry, it sucks, but this is the world we live in.
When you fly, you’re in the real world, not your madeup virtual reality where you have nonexistent rights to make us all unsafe
‘The pathetic mewing set off by the “Don’t touch my junk” airport screening incident tells you pretty much everything you you want to know about the teenage grudge-bearing and solipsistic whining of modern society.
.
This is the revenge of the How-Dare-You generation. How dare you tell me what to do! How dare you look at me! How dare you touch my junk! Sexual assault! I hate you mommy!
.
Relax, 40 year old man in business attire. If you think a TSA pat down is sexual assault then you don’t ever want to go on the New York subway at rush-hour. Modern life, especially in densely-populated cities, is full of such minor indignities.’
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comm.....t-searches
Congrats on being on the same side of an issue as the Drudge Report!
http://www.politico.com/blogs/....._wins.html
Idiocy, not politics, makes strange bedfellows
Zogby
39% Obama Approval Rating…..A total failure!
http://latimesblogs.latimes.co.....palin.html
@26
40,000 folks died in the USA in car crashes last year. How many died from terrorist attacks in the last decade?
The man who sold you the porno scans; has a way to whisk you past long lines and undignified checks reserved for the unwashed peasants for the low price of $179.00.
Michael Chertoff is now on the board of Clear, which is the private company which bought the assets of Verified Identity Pass. They will also be able to do anything they want (i.e., sell) with the data the collect on you, because they are a private company.
@28
far too many, & they coulda been stopped if we had these measures in place years ago
but you go ahead & whine about how your “rights” to take an optional form of transportation are more important than the base level of security needed in a modern world
or you can invent a steampunk time machine and go back to the 19th century where your concerns will be noted
@29
Yes, isn’t it a wonder — someone somewhere makes the scanners. They sell them at a profit. How horrible!
Are those tamper seals a federal device or are they something installed by USAIr for their own purposes? “QA” (Quality Assurance) type seals are not unusual in industry. I cannot read from the pic what it says. I have never seen them before. That is not something delivered on a plane.
By the way Goldy, you are far more likely to be killed due to error in the flight deck than shoddy maintenance on the plane. COmmercial transports are very fault tolerant…humans are not.
Hey Goldy,
You might want to checkout Supreme Court cases
U.S. v. Guest 383 U.S. 745 (1966) & Shapiro v Thompson, 394 U.S. 618 (1969). That is if you actually want to do something constructive about the TSA. Seems to me that you just want whine a little before doing what you’re told.