baby steps
Late last month, I was traveling for Rosh Hashanah, and saw a relatively new set of signs in the line for the TSA security theater at Logan. One was "Hey kids! Make sure your laces are tight. You can keep your shoes on in this line." Unlike most TSA signs, it wasn't repeated at many places along the line, nor repeated at different heights. I only saw it near the entrance, and only at 3-4 feet up. A sign with somewhat smaller lettering announced that Logan was only testing possible new security procedures, and the TSA was monitoring them closely to decide if other airports would eventually adopt them later.
I thought that even a temporary local decrease in time-consuming nonsense is better than nothing. The shoes don't particularly bother me, personally--it's straining my shoulder to get my arm high enough, and the agent's hands on my breasts when I fail, that freaks me out. But harm reduction is good, and I know the shoe thing is a lot more of a problem for some travelers than it is for me.
It turned out the "hey kids!" meant that only KIDS were allowed to keep their shoes on. Adults still had to remove them. It wasn't clear what boundary they were using to distinguish kids from adults. Old enough to walk? Old enough to vote? Old enough to hear thrilling stories of an Important Cause, and want to help? Or do they just go by the size of the shoes? Wherever they draw the line, each person who doesn't need to stop/remove shoes/put shoes on conveyor belt/be scanned in socks/retrieve shoes/put shoes back on--every single time they avoid that hassle, the line moves a little faster. More than a little, for families traveling with more than one child. So it looks like a nice little harm reduction project.
If this is a new procedure the TSA is testing at Logan (or at part of Logan), that implies they're trying to measure the effects in order to decide if it goes well. That made me think, "Oh, I'm glad they're finally thinking like quality enginee--Hey! I call shenanigans!" What would it mean for it to "go well" at Logan; what can they be measuring? what do they expect/hope the results might be?
Maybe the line will go much faster with kids wearing shoes, or maybe it will only go a little faster. It's possible that the line speed won't change noticeably, because parents will still need to take their shoes off. Would that be a reason not to change? It's not like "Ok, you can keep your shoes on" would cost a lot of money.
Absurd security procedures stay in place because people in authority claim it might be *dangerous* to relax them. What can they measure to prove kids-with-shoes-on are no more of a terrorist risk than kids-with-shoes-off? If they use their spiffy new procedure and scan kids in Logan's Terminal C with their shoes on, and find no little shoe bombers in a week, or a month...what does that prove? The old procedure found no little shoe bombers in all the airports in the country, for years...so how do we know that isn't safer?
This entry was originally posted at http://adrian-turtle.dreamwidth.org/5882.html. Please comment there using OpenID, or here as usual.
I thought that even a temporary local decrease in time-consuming nonsense is better than nothing. The shoes don't particularly bother me, personally--it's straining my shoulder to get my arm high enough, and the agent's hands on my breasts when I fail, that freaks me out. But harm reduction is good, and I know the shoe thing is a lot more of a problem for some travelers than it is for me.
It turned out the "hey kids!" meant that only KIDS were allowed to keep their shoes on. Adults still had to remove them. It wasn't clear what boundary they were using to distinguish kids from adults. Old enough to walk? Old enough to vote? Old enough to hear thrilling stories of an Important Cause, and want to help? Or do they just go by the size of the shoes? Wherever they draw the line, each person who doesn't need to stop/remove shoes/put shoes on conveyor belt/be scanned in socks/retrieve shoes/put shoes back on--every single time they avoid that hassle, the line moves a little faster. More than a little, for families traveling with more than one child. So it looks like a nice little harm reduction project.
If this is a new procedure the TSA is testing at Logan (or at part of Logan), that implies they're trying to measure the effects in order to decide if it goes well. That made me think, "Oh, I'm glad they're finally thinking like quality enginee--Hey! I call shenanigans!" What would it mean for it to "go well" at Logan; what can they be measuring? what do they expect/hope the results might be?
Maybe the line will go much faster with kids wearing shoes, or maybe it will only go a little faster. It's possible that the line speed won't change noticeably, because parents will still need to take their shoes off. Would that be a reason not to change? It's not like "Ok, you can keep your shoes on" would cost a lot of money.
Absurd security procedures stay in place because people in authority claim it might be *dangerous* to relax them. What can they measure to prove kids-with-shoes-on are no more of a terrorist risk than kids-with-shoes-off? If they use their spiffy new procedure and scan kids in Logan's Terminal C with their shoes on, and find no little shoe bombers in a week, or a month...what does that prove? The old procedure found no little shoe bombers in all the airports in the country, for years...so how do we know that isn't safer?
This entry was originally posted at http://adrian-turtle.dreamwidth.org/5882.html. Please comment there using OpenID, or here as usual.