I’ve been sitting on this for months, but now that we have a vaccine on the horizon it may finally be useful to some of you: YOUR GUIDE TO NOT GETTING MURDERED IN A QUAINT ENGLISH VILLAGE.

Enjoy.

There’s literally no other explanation for the constant stories of absurdly unwarranted detention of legal immigrants and even US citizens.

If you travel frequently over the US border, even as a citizen — and even as a white, native-borne citizen — you might want to consider doing so with a wiped phone and no laptop.

No, really.

Well, when I say “worst,” obviously I’m excluding ICE, which are the literal worst. BUT:

The TSA has an internal list of people it just doesn’t like, and you may be denied boarding based on it.

Obviously, there’s no way to review this list or get off it.

Recent testing showed they were still failing to find “threatening items” over 80% of the time in randomized tests.

We can expect Congress to yell about this, and the TSA to change procedures some trivial amount in an attempt to “improve,” but that’s the wrong lesson here.

Here’s what we know:

• The TSA just failed another test by an enormous margin.
• The TSA has failed these tests repeatedly for 16 years.
• This means the TSA is absolutely not stopping most “forbidden items” from getting on planes.
• And yet, air travel is absurdly safe.

The only intellectually honest conclusion here is that the TSA is utterly, completely pointless. We’re spending billions but failing to stop even trivially “forbidden” items. Those items make it onto planes. Nobody dies. The TSA has never foiled an actual plot; all they do is confiscate liquids and nail clippers, and generally increase the hassle factor of flight.

Their efficacy in thwarting airborne terrorism might be debatable if they were shown to do even a C+ level job of their mission, but here we see the truth: They’re crap at their job, have ALWAYS been crap at their job, and yet air travel is absurdly, mind-bogglingly safe — and that safety has nothing to do with the TSA, and never has.

Security is always about balancing access with safety. We put up with some hassles in exchange for value. The TSA provides no value, but is constantly ramping up their hassle. This is a bad deal, and we need to end it.

End the TSA. Now. We’ve wasted billions on security theater in the last 16 years, and we have nothing to show for it except angry travelers and long lines.

Reassessing Airport Security:

News that the Transportation Security Administration missed a whopping 95% of guns and bombs in recent airport security “red team” tests was justifiably shocking. It’s clear that we’re not getting value for the $7 billion we’re paying the TSA annually.

But there’s another conclusion, inescapable and disturbing to many, but good news all around: we don’t need $7 billion worth of airport security. These results demonstrate that there isn’t much risk of airplane terrorism, and we should ratchet security down to pre-9/11 levels.

We don’t need perfect airport security. We just need security that’s good enough to dissuade someone from building a plot around evading it. If you’re caught with a gun or a bomb, the TSA will detain you and call the FBI. Under those circumstances, even a medium chance of getting caught is enough to dissuade a sane terrorist. A 95% failure rate is too high, but a 20% one isn’t.

I added the emphasis. He’s absolutely right. Go read the whole thing, but here’s a zinger from a few paragraphs in:

The TSA is failing to defend us against the threat of terrorism. The only reason they’ve been able to get away with the scam for so long is that there isn’t much of a threat of terrorism to defend against.

Marriott has been insisting that it was free to disable guest Wifi hotspots “for quality reasons,” which is transparently false: their reason is to force guests and conference-goers to use their overpriced facility wifi services. Charges for these can run to hundreds of dollars a day for some conferences, so there’s no doubt that they’re feeling a bite here — at the rates I sometimes see, it would be cheaper to go to a mall, buy a hotspot device from whatever provider you want, and then never use it again than it would be to pay for conference wifi.

Marriott paid a $600,000 fine about this earlier in the year, but was still agitating for a rule change to allow their tomfoolery. Last month, they backed down, but still insisted it was their right.

The FCC has issued a very clear opinion on the matter:

The Enforcement Bureau has seen a disturbing trend in which hotels and other commercial establishments block wireless consumers from using their own personal Wi-Fi hot spots on the commercial establishment’s premises. As a result, the Bureau is protecting consumers by aggressively investigating and acting against such unlawful intentional interference.

[…]

No hotel, convention center, or other commercial establishment or the network operator providing services at such establishments may intentionally block or disrupt personal Wi-Fi hot spots on such premises, including as part of an effort to force consumers to purchase access to the property owner’s Wi-Fi network. Such action is illegal and violations could lead to the assessment of substantial monetary penalties.

Boom. Headshot, assholes.

Longtime Heathen watchers will recall that Mrs Heathen and I take an annual rejuvenating nerd cruise with Royal Caribbean every winter. Each time has been aboard one of RCI’s Freedom class ships, which are sort of amazing and shocking in their size and scope — 154,000 gross tons and 339 meters long. To put this in context, a Nimitz class supercarrier is “only” about 333 meters long, and has a lower displacement, and they land planes on it. Regularly, apparently. At one point, these boats were the biggest cruise ships afloat, but that’s no longer true.

Because, I guess, they thought bigger was always better, RCI eclipsed this class in 2009 with the Oasis class, at over 225,000 gross tons and 360 meters long. Given the sheer size and scope of the ships we’ve been on, I find that hard to wrap my head around, but there it is.

Perhaps because of issues of gravity or fear of hubris or something, though, RCI’s absolute newest ship is actually smaller. The Quantum of the Seas isn’t bigger than the Oasis boats, but it’s materially more advanced in every other way. Gizmodo writer Adam Estes took a ride on one and wrote about it. If you ignore his utter lack of fact checking re: the boat’s size, it’s a fun read. (He states it’s the third largest ship in the world, but a host of tankers and transport ships dwarf it; it is, however, the third biggest cruise ship in the world, behind the two Oasis boats that preceded it; the Freedom boats are in 5th place.)

Check this shit out. They’ve been smacked by the FCC to the tune of $600,000 for blocking personal wifi devices in a conference center in order to force people to use their overpriced service.

A spokesman for the hotel, Jeff Flaherty, had this bullshit to add:

“Marriott has a strong interest in ensuring that when our guests use our Wi-Fi service, they will be protected from rogue wireless hotspots that can cause degraded service, insidious cyber-attacks and identity theft,” he wrote in a statement without responding to Ars’ direct questions.

Yeah, right.

Christ, these goons are ridiculous.

The short version is that Minneapolis man has, for some reason (and there’s no reason to assume it’s a valid reason), been placed on the “extra scrutiny” list by the TSA — but they somehow managed to forget to give him the third degree before boarding. So, obviously, the logical thing to do is screen him after the flight.

Um, right.

Fortunately, the passenger simply refused to comply and walked away, since the TSA has no power to detain you. (They did threaten to call the Denver police and have him arrested, which is remarkable in and of itself, and entirely aside from the fact that it’s a completely empty threat.) And, of course, the DHS and TSA won’t actually discuss why this man is on the extra scrutiny list, even with the man himself, so there’s no way to resolve the situation.

Gulf carrier Etihad has a new class of service on some long haul flights: Residence. There’s one per A380. It’s a 125 square foot, three-room suite usable by one or two guests. Yes, it includes its own bathroom.

Residence on Abu Dhabi to London costs a cool $21,000 each way, but that’s a pretty short flight by comparison. For a real long haul — say, London to Sydney via Abu Dhabi — you’re looking at forty grand each way.

Click through. There’s video.

First, I neglected to point out something, well, Gibsonian:

In addition to their physical attacks, the researchers also experimented with more inventive digital ones. They found that they could infect the scanner with malware—most practically for an attacker by picking the lock on the scanner’s cabinet and physically installing the malware on the PC inside. Once installed, that malware could be programmed to selectively replace the scan of any passenger with a fake image if he or she wore a piece of clothing with a certain symbol or QR code…

A similar approach is used in Gibson’s Zero History, wherein special T-shirts are printed up that, when seen by London’s security cameras, cause the wearer to be erased from the footage.

Second, note this: the security researchers had a very hard time finding machines to test with, because “security.” Security through obscurity is a terrible idea, and never does very well, but the entire process makes it clear that effectively NO adversarial testing has been done with these machines at all. That’s impossibly stupid, and further proof their acquisition was little more than a boondoggle. If you’re going to put in a security system, it makes sense to have someone who knows something about security probe it for weaknesses. That clearly was not done here despite the enormous costs of the machines.

Those TSA X-Ray Porno-Cancer Scanners? Yeah, it’s apparently super easy to smuggle weapons past them.

Because they’re worthless and pointless, naturally. On the other hand, they’re also really expensive.

Frequent Flyer guru Joe Brancatelli has more.

American, Delta, and United all just reduced the maximum size allowed for carryon bags.

Man, FUCK those guys. Seriously.

Vox:

[A]s security expert Bruce Schneier likes to note, there’s no evidence that the TSA has ever prevented a terrorist attack, and there’s some research suggesting it could serve to increase non-airborne terrorist attacks. Airline security is, so far as we can tell, totally useless.

It’s very sad that this Malaysian airplane has apparently crashed, killing all aboard and forcing CNN to go 24×7 on nearly information-free coverage. And it’s absolutely tragic that these people lost their lives. But every aviation event is not a reason to impose new security measures, especially when we don’t yet know exactly what happened.

Note the final graf in the linked story:

IATA said more than 3 billion people flew safely on 36.4 million flights last year. There were 81 accidents, 16 which were fatal with 210 deaths.

Air travel is mind-bogglingly safe. Sometimes, freak events will happen. Sometimes, crashes happen that don’t point out a need for an improved screw, or additional passenger hassle while boarding. It may very well be that this is one of those times. The fact that a couple guys on board had fake passports isn’t even particularly alarming to me; I assume some number of people fly on fake passports every day.

Remember, too, our ID fetish for air travel isn’t a safety measure — every 9/11 hijacker had valid, legal ID. It’s actually a handout to the airlines; before 9/11, tickets were effectively transferrable, which made it harder for airlines to fuck you over change fees.

We call this one “The Case Of The Visible Bitcoins!”

Good CHRIST those people are awful.

They’re apparently not completely sure if District of Columbia drivers’ licenses count as ID.

Politico has more:

We knew the full-body scanners didn’t work before they were even installed. Not long after the Underwear Bomber incident, all TSA officers at O’Hare were informed that training for the Rapiscan Systems full-body scanners would soon begin. The machines cost about $150,000 a pop.

Our instructor was a balding middle-aged man who shrugged his shoulders after everything he said, as though in apology. At the conclusion of our crash course, one of the officers in our class asked him to tell us, off the record, what he really thought about the machines.

“They’re shit,” he said, shrugging. He said we wouldn’t be able to distinguish plastic explosives from body fat and that guns were practically invisible if they were turned sideways in a pocket.

We quickly found out the trainer was not kidding: Officers discovered that the machines were good at detecting just about everything besides cleverly hidden explosives and guns. The only thing more absurd than how poorly the full-body scanners performed was the incredible amount of time the machines wasted for everyone.

On the upside, the monitoring parties DO get to see you naked, so there’s that.

Seriously, don’t miss this. The author is the guy behind the Taking Sense Away “inside the TSA” blog from a few months back.

This man is brilliant.

A MAN bought a first-class ticket and used it to have free meals and drinks at the airport’s VIP lounge almost every day for nearly a year, Kwong Wah Yit Poh reported.

The itinerary for the ticket was found to have been changed more than 300 times within a year, and the owner of the ticket used it to enjoy the facilities at the airport’s VIP lounge in Xi’an in Shaanxi, China.

The rare case was discovered by a China Eastern Airlines staff member, who then decided to investigate.

When the ticket’s validity was almost up, the passenger cancelled it for a refund.

A judge has ruled the No-Fly list procedures unconstitutional.

Seriously, check out this bullshit.

Over at the Post’s Wonkblog, Dylan Matthews wonders why we don’t just get rid of the TSA entirely after taking a commuter flight not subject to the TSA’s loving embrace.

TechDirt breaks it down:

In short: there’s little to no evidence that the TSA has saved a single life in stopping terrorism. While it may have prevented specific plots, that energy just went towards other plots and attacks. Yet the costs of the TSA are immense, and we’re not just talking about hiring all those people to feel you up at the airport, or even the super expensive naked scanner machines. It’s the costs to all of us — the public who travel. The fact that you have to get to the airport hours before your flight, stand in a very long line to be scanned or felt up and generally humiliated — that’s a massive waste of time and productivity for everyone, for apparently no benefit at all, other than security theater.

He’s not wrong.

Die in a fire.

Go check and see what one photographer had to do to his lens blower to get it past security.

What morons.

Heroic TSA goon confiscates 2″ gun-shaped object from toddler’s cowboy sock monkey. Quoth our civic hero, “If I held it up to your neck, you wouldn’t know if it was real or not.”

I am not making this up.

So, as I mentioned last month, somebody is making a point of assembling weapons made entirely of objects found inside airport security checkpoints.

Nothing will come of this, of course. Bruce Schneier explains why:

So, what’s the moral here? It’s not like the terrorists don’t know about these tricks. They’re no surprise to the TSA, either. If airport security is so porous, why aren’t there more terrorist attacks? Why aren’t the terrorists using these, and other, techniques to attack planes every month?

I think the answer is simple: airplane terrorism isn’t a big risk. There are very few actual terrorists, and plots are much more difficult to execute than the tactics of the attack itself. It’s the same reason why I don’t care very much about the various TSA mistakes that are regularly reported.

He’s completely right. As usual. 90% of the money and effort spent on the TSA checkpoints today is wasted, and we’d be better off if we used those resources for other things.

Turns out, you can make all sorts of dangerous stuff out of items available inside security.

$1 billion, down the drain on an utterly useless profiling program.

Turns out, even though they admit there’s no threat to US aviation, they’re doing all sorts of privacy-violating background checks on every flier anyway.

The TSA is allowed to lie to you in response to FOI requests, including and especially when lying would help them avoid showing you evidence of their own wrongdoing.

I am not making this up.

In twelve years, they still haven’t managed to stop any terrorists, but they’ve cost billions in lost productivity, hundreds of millions on boondoggle sweetheart deals on the porno-cancer-scanners, and thousands of stories like this where innocent people are given the third degree for, basically, flying while brown.

If you work for the TSA, you are part of the problem.

How, when I was checking in at exactly 24 hours prior to my flight, my boarding pass for my Southwest flight home tomorrow is A52.

I get the first 15 are reserved for Business Select. That’s fine. But I refuse to believe that 36 other people checked in before I did.

IOW: WTF?

They’re expanding to Amtrak — and this time, their doofuses will be armed.

“Our mandate is to provide security and counterterrorism operations for all high-risk transportation targets, not just airports and aviation,” said John S. Pistole, the administrator of the agency. “The VIPR teams are a big part of that.”

Some in Congress, however, say the T.S.A. has not demonstrated that the teams are effective. Auditors at the Department of Homeland Security are asking questions about whether the teams are properly trained and deployed based on actual security threats.

Civil liberties groups say that the VIPR teams have little to do with the agency’s original mission to provide security screenings at airports and that in some cases their actions amount to warrantless searches in violation of constitutional protections.

“The problem with T.S.A. stopping and searching people in public places outside the airport is that there are no real legal standards, or probable cause,” said Khaliah Barnes, administrative law counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington. “It’s something that is easily abused because the reason that they are conducting the stops is shrouded in secrecy.”

T.S.A. officials respond that the random searches are “special needs” or “administrative searches” that are exempt from probable cause because they further the government’s need to prevent terrorist attacks.

Emphasis added. So, the TSA can search when and where they deem necessary, and the Boarder Patrol can search you without probable cause as long as you’re within 100 miles of the border. Oh, and in case you missed it, it turns out the NSA dragnet data is used by the DEA, too.

T.S.A. officials would not say if the VIPR teams had ever foiled a terrorist plot or thwarted any major threat to public safety, saying the information is classified. But they argue that the random searches and presence of armed officers serve as a deterrent that bolsters the public confidence.

Really? No, what I see is a bunch of tinpot jackasses jumping at every opportunity to parade around playing soldier.

So long, Fourth Amendment!

TSA employee misconduct up 26% in 3 years.

Burn it down and fire them all. Start over. Nothing they do helps.

This is solid:

It is time to stop pretending that annoying protocols like these are all that stand between us and devastation. The most effective security innovation post-9/11 was also the simplest: the reinforcement of cockpit doors, which has made it virtually impossible to hijack an aircraft.

30 months after their rollout, the TSA has finally complied with the law mandating public comment on their porno-cancer-scanners.

97% of respondents hate them. This is, of course, in stark contrast to the mealy-mouthed push-polls the TSA has been touting saying people don’t really mind them.

Fortunately, Chief Heathen Education Officer Ceaser has you covered with this short video.

The bullshit “Do Not Fly” list is getting its day in court, and it’s not going so well for it.

It really irritates me that, while I can set a time zone on an appointment, I cannot set flights in my calendar so that they appear properly regardless of where I am. I ought to be able to say flight 123 leaves Houston at 10:00 CDT and arrives in DC at 1 EDT, and have it work. But it doesn’t appear possible.

Grr.

They tried to fuck with Chewbacca.

Peter Mayhew, the man who played Chewie, is over seven feet tall and, like many very-tall men when they get older, needs a cane. Given his height, it probably shouldn’t surprise you that his cane is rather long.

The TSA in Denver apparently thought the cane as too long, and were threatening to confiscate it — and would have, if Mayhew hadn’t Tweeted about the incident, and had enough Twitter followers to make sure the situation came to the attention of American Airlines, who prevailed upon the TSA to stop being douchebags.

This, of course, is only possible because he’s a celebrity with tens of thousands of Twitter followers, and because he’s a million-mile flier with American. Remove either of those factors, and the TSA would’ve bullied a man out of his goddamn cane.

Eat SHIT, you know-nothing, cowardly whiners. Hysteria and idiocy reign, again.

Let’s play a game. It’s called “measure risk with math!” I know, I know: the TSA is no good at either measuring things OR at math, let along rational thought, but bear with me.

First, let’s figure out how many airline passengers there have been in this history of American commercial aviation. It’s going to be a big number, since the FAA reports that there were 732 million passengers in 2012 alone. Let’s assume we’re talking on the order of 10 billion, then, which is probably low, but is also probably in the right ballpark (though I will eagerly accept corrections, provided they come with a clear rationale or, better, data).

Now let’s estimate the number of knife injuries or attacks that have happened on planes, ever. That number is harder to get, so as an upper bound let’s just start with the entire death toll on 9/11. It’s obviously risible to consider all those deaths as the result of the box cutters, but using that enormous number should put to rest concerns that I’m underestimating actual knife attacks in the air.

So, out of an estimated 10 billion passengers, we had about 3,000 injuries/deaths.

Good thing the TSA is protecting us!

Let’s look at this another way, which is to compare average knife injuries per year to the number of passengers per year. By annualizing the data, we can compare it intelligently to the chances of death or injury from other unusual events, to better understand what other activities we should ban or limit using “knives on planes” as the clear, logical border for permissible vs. impermissible.

Again, I’ll put my thumb on the scale against my position here, and count all 3,000 losses in 2001 as knife losses, but I’m going to divide it by 13 to pull an average per year since then. That yields a laughable 230, but vs the 700 million person-flights a year (here, at last, I may be using a slightly-too-high figure for average person-flights, but I think it’ll come out in the wash).

Using these ludicrously-overstated figures, we see 0.00003 percent chance, per year, of a knife injury or death on a plane. You are significantly more likely to die in an accidental plane crash. Or be legally executed. Or be struck by lightning. Or die from a bee sting. Or an earthquake. Or be killed by a dog.

Obviously, the next logical steps should be to ban going outside in the rain; eradicate bees; forcibly relocate folks from fault zones; and euthanize any dog over 15 pounds, as all these ideas have as much logical backing as keeping small pocketknives off planes.

People are insanely, irrevocably stupid. And the TSA is worse than most.

The entire Ft Meyers airport, what with its minimal facilities inside security, and it’s free wifi that, while definitely free, also fails to connect to the goddamn Internet.

Apparently, there is now only one daily from the Naples area back to Houston, so despite being done early I’m still waiting until 5:12 PM to fly home.

This is my fifth — and final, it turns out — year attending this conference here in Naples. Each year, the flight options have gotten worse. United reducing service (because fuck you) is just one more reason I’m glad I won’t have to come back here, or to this hotel either.

You: The hotel? What’s wrong with the hotel?

I’m glad you asked! It’s called the “Waldorf Naples,” but this is a goddamn lie. At some point, Hilton bought the real Waldorf, and immediately set about ruining that venerable hotel name by applying it willy-nilly to garden variety “full service” properties in pseudo-lux destinations like Naples. It’s not a Waldorf. It’s a run-down Hilton with delusions of grandeur. The rooms are shabby, the carpet’s worn, and they’re too snooty to have vending so you have to use their shop or coffeebar if you want a Diet Coke. Before 8, it’s just the coffeebar — where a 12 ounce bottle of DC goes for $2.85. Because, again, fuck you.

Every time I’ve stayed in a hotel since 2009, I’ve mentally compared it to the Hyatt Place hotel I used in Overland Park. Absolutely no hotel emerges from such a comparison looking good. Hyatt’s created a line with everything you need and nothing you don’t, and with a brandwide culture of “yes” when guests ask for things. It’s not fancy, but it’s done very well. There’s no full service restaurant, but you can get sandwiches and whatnot made to order 24 x 7. The wifi works well, and is included. The free breakfast is full of fresh fruit and good cereal options. I love some high-end stuff in my life, but I’ve become increasingly convinced that the whole IDEA of “high end hotel” is being executed very, very poorly; I haven’t seen a single so-called fancy hotel in the last 4 years I’d choose over a Hyatt Place, if given the option.

Turns out, lots of folks don’t turn their shit off on planes.

I wondered why all those planes were crashing OH WAIT.

They’re tabling the knife thing because whining, apparently.

In a recent study of airline performance, United came in dead last. This represents a bit of a reversal, since pre-merger Continental was frequently at the top of these studies — or, at least, sharing top billing with Southwest (who are still on top in terms of customer complaints per 100,000 passengers — 0.25 vs. United’s 4.24).

It’s a nasty irony that the 1999 story of onetime basket-case Continental’s resurrection and triumph was called From Worst to First.

Congratulations, we guess, to the management team that’s managed to bring this full circle!

So the big news today is that they’re going to allow pocketknives on planes again, which is nice since, you know, disallowing them had absolutely nothing to do with reality in the first place. Bully for them.

However, the new rules are, like everything that has anything to do with the TSA, arbitrary and capricious. As detailed here, the maximum permitted blade length is 2.36 inches, or 6 cm. The diagram in place clearly includes a Swiss-Army type knife, which was at first encouraging, since they come in essentially two sizes — and the one used as an example is obviously of the larger variety, and therefore should be the same size as the one I (and millions others) carry.

Except it’s been scaled down for the diagram. The normal-sized Victorinox (which is to say, most of them) are 3.5 inches long closed, and include a main blade that measures not quite 2.75 inches long (about 7 cm). Wenger’s knives are slightly smaller — 3.25″ closed, with a 2.5″ blade.

Nobody, to my knowledge, sells a Swiss knife of the size used in the diagram, but you can bet your ass that a shit-ton of TSA goons will have fancy new-to-them second-hand Swiss knives the week after this goes into effect (April 25). Travelers will see the Swiss knife in the diagram, think they’re cool, and have them snagged by the jackass patrol.

Nice.

Down in Chile, there’s a hotel made of pure awesome in a region known for its staggeringly clear night skies. Heathen Agent R, who did some work down there, notes that the time lapse footage here is more or less exactly what it looks like in real life.

Direct link to the hotel is here.