TSA @ train stations

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:help: Wow, Tough Halloween crowd in Tennesse, sounds like Robin Hood might be out on the highways!! :eek: (where do they get these clowns to pose as LE honchos??? :rolleyes: ) Thank goodness for the thousands in Blue Shirts and it only costs us $5 Billion for this Security Theater! Must be lots of extra money floating around Washington, guess the T- Party pledge about stopping "pork" and "waste" is inoperative now! Coming soon to a Train Station near you: dogs, metal detectors,IDs, taking off you shoes, plastic baggies for your personal items and delays,delays,delays! Sure will be fun to arrive three or four hours early @ the old station! :angry2:

(dont forget to keep your pet away from you before going to the station, sure be ashamed to be attacked by a Shepard or Doberman!) :wacko:

And doing the math ,(which George W couldn't!!), we only need about 100,000 more TSA agents to make up the teams to check all the numerous unstaffed stations, check the tens of thousands of miles of tracks and all the uncounted commuter Trains that board/debboard daily in our nations cities! Surely we can afford that! :wacko:

Our founding fathers must be rolling over in their graves, this is total BS but what we deserve if we keep electing the clowns that are now in office!! :wacko:
 
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As long as it's not more than the dogs that one sees in places like Penn Station, I'm more or less okay with it. If it's more, however, then that's a problem.
 
I've reported this on this forum already, but they are already pretty annoying in PVD. They swipe bags for explosives before heading down to the platform before the 66 boards in the morning - which is full of commuters. They have been a fixture in the station for a few months now.

The most ridiculous part is that they only swipe folks boarding amtrak, not any of the folks taking the MBTA commuter rail - which has the same destination and runs on the same tracks as the amtrak trains.
 
OlympianHiawatha said:
NAVYBLUE said:
http://www.infowars....sa-checkpoints/

TSA "may" be coming to a station near you.

THANK YOU, George Bush !!!

NAVYBLUE
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Check me if I'm wrong but George Bush has been out of office for 3 years.
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To get you up to speed in case you don't know me, I AM the right wing nut on this forum. I am so right wing, I make a Bircher look like a liberal. That should warm the hearts of my many liberal "friends" here on AU.

That being said, I would have preferred we pull 3/4 of our military from Europe after 9/11 and let the a**wipes in Europe fend for themselves and keep a contingency group there. I'd much prefer military MP, IED, EOD, weapons specialist trained personnel at the airports instead of the double digit IQ AFGE union dopes we have now at TSA. And for the record I retired from a Pennsylvania job which was a PSEU/SEIU job and when I left I was asst shop steward. I know how unions work. I constantly fought the more pay/less work senior crowd.

After the military stabilized the security situation, THEN I would have brought in a cadre of professionally trained security personnel hopefully many former military/police/gov't security personnel who know security and how to deal with people.

Right now when they run security trials at the major airports, they continue to get stuff through security that could have been used to do bad things on airplanes. I have not flown since 9/11 because of that and will not fly until the TSA morons are replaced.

NAVYBLUE
 
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amamba said:
The most ridiculous part is that they only swipe folks boarding amtrak, not any of the folks taking the MBTA commuter rail - which has the same destination and runs on the same tracks as the amtrak trains.
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Oh come on! Everyone knows the terrorists have some class and preferences. They ain't gonna blow up the lowly MBTA commuter trains when the more comfortable Amtrak is available.. gotta make a good impression with the 72 virgins waiting.
 
NAVYBLUE said:
http://www.infowars.com/congress-to-fund-massive-expansion-of-tsa-checkpoints/

TSA "may" be coming to a station near you.

THANK YOU, George Bush !!!

NAVYBLUE
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George Bush, Obama, no difference far as I can see.

That being said, 12 more VIPR teams is a joke. For LD travel, they show up at your terminal, just board at the next little station down the way (For Example, I show up at NOL for my train, TSA is showing off dogs and ponies, go back to my car and I'm off to Slidell to board. VIPR thwarted. Though I'm SURE that no terrorist WOULD EVER think of doing something so... unpatriotic). ;)
 
Since 9/11, the U.S. has spent more than $1.1 trillion on homeland security. To a large number of security analysts, this expenditure makes no sense. The vast cost is not worth the infinitesimal benefit. Not only has the actual threat from terror been exaggerated, they say, but the great bulk of the post-9/11 measures to contain it are little more than what Schneier mocks as “security theater”: actions that accomplish nothing but are designed to make the government look like it is on the job. In fact, the continuing expenditure on security may actually have made the United States less safe.
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Smoke Screening
 
CHamilton said:
Since 9/11, the U.S. has spent more than $1.1 trillion on homeland security. To a large number of security analysts, this expenditure makes no sense. The vast cost is not worth the infinitesimal benefit. Not only has the actual threat from terror been exaggerated, they say, but the great bulk of the post-9/11 measures to contain it are little more than what Schneier mocks as "security theater": actions that accomplish nothing but are designed to make the government look like it is on the job. In fact, the continuing expenditure on security may actually have made the United States less safe.
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Smoke Screening
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I know, I read that yesterday also. Scary ain't the word. I read a lot on stratfor.com and it makes you think.

NAVYBLUE
 
Texan Eagle said:
amamba said:
The most ridiculous part is that they only swipe folks boarding amtrak, not any of the folks taking the MBTA commuter rail - which has the same destination and runs on the same tracks as the amtrak trains.
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Oh come on! Everyone knows the terrorists have some class and preferences. They ain't gonna blow up the lowly MBTA commuter trains when the more comfortable Amtrak is available.. gotta make a good impression with the 72 virgins waiting.
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Does that mean Acela is more likely to be bombed over the Northeast Regional?

I was surprised how much security there was when I was at New York Penn last year. Philadelphia doesn't seam to have that much.
 
I am in the group that thinks 99.9% of this TSA stuff is futile security theatre. Having said that, if I was in a situation where every passenger boarding, or even deboarding an Amtrak train was screened airport style, I would not be angry. Annoyed, perhaps, especially since repacking my suitcase at a folding table in the middle of Union Station X would be tricky as much crap as I cram into it. :giggle: The ONE thing that would make me mad, though, is if I were singled out for a screening that didn't involve everyone. I had that in the back of my mind on my trip that ended a week and a half ago, because I had read both here and elsewhere that the TSA and other LE tends to pick single travelers to give the ***** treatment to. (Which may have more to do with drug activity than terrorism, at least in their minds.) At any rate, I didn't have to deal with any of it in Chicago or New Orleans at all, and for that I was glad. A LE presence that is there but unnoticed is much more effective than this Barney Fife meets Farenheit 451 ridiculousness that TSA rolls out when they feel like wasting some of our tax money (that could be better spent on things precisely like improving rail service!)
 
I'm also in the group that finds the vast majority of this stuff to be security theater. I cannot think of a single incident where a would-be terrorist was rounded up/intercepted at a checkpoint and hauled off to jail. My uncle and I had this argument the other night, actually (he pulled out the canard of "Should we pretend 9/11 never happened?", to which I responded "If the TSA could be shown to have worked, I'd be more tolerant of putting up with this crap. As it stands, I see no sign of it having worked." And that's really what my problem with it comes down to: Nobody has shown me cases of it working (and I'm sorry, but I'm not going to take some bureaucratic bull[you-know-what] about "not talking about successes" and asking me to simply trust them...if you had a subordinate telling you that for five years on the job, at what point would they cease to be your subordinate when there have been a number of high-profile failures?) and I've seen a huge number of high-profile failures.

The point about a lot of this being drug-related is actually something I can believe...but again, if it becomes intrusive then it falls under the general heading of "Tell me what you're doing and I'll work with you; don't and you get exactly as much cooperation as I absolutely must give you and not one iota more, and you get a very sore mood from me to boot".

I'm also reminded of a missive I sent off to Amtrak following a passenger survey I got. I'd rated Amtrak as not having much of a visible security presence, and I shot them a comment saying point blank "I said this and it is not a bad thing. I do not want to see too much security walking around, thank you very much."
 
NAVYBLUE said:
I read a lot on stratfor.com and it makes you think.
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IMO, that's part of the problem. Some people see something or learn something and absolutely freak out. Other people see or learn the same thing and continue living life without needlessly shouting at people. Regardless of who is doing which, at the end of the day we end up with someone freaking out, which isn't typically helpful.
 
George Bush, Obama, no difference far as I can see.

That being said, 12 more VIPR teams is a joke. For LD travel, they show up at your terminal, just board at the next little station down the way (For Example, I show up at NOL for my train, TSA is showing off dogs and ponies, go back to my car and I'm off to Slidell to board. VIPR thwarted. Though I'm SURE that no terrorist WOULD EVER think of doing something so... unpatriotic). ;)
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sounds like a plan!

beat them at there own game .........
 
Peter KG6LSE said:
George Bush, Obama, no difference far as I can see.

That being said, 12 more VIPR teams is a joke. For LD travel, they show up at your terminal, just board at the next little station down the way (For Example, I show up at NOL for my train, TSA is showing off dogs and ponies, go back to my car and I'm off to Slidell to board. VIPR thwarted. Though I'm SURE that no terrorist WOULD EVER think of doing something so... unpatriotic). ;)
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sounds like a plan!

beat them at there own game .........
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Honestly, there are a lot of stations I'd consider that for (I can beat a train from NPN-RVR, I can get reasonably close to WBG if I'm "racing the train", etc.), particularly depending on flexibility and lead time. I can go ahead and grant wanting to have someone in the terminal in NYP, LAX, CHI, WAS, etc. (where there is lots of traffic) to respond to a well-armed shooter, but other than that, it's utterly pointless. Heck, if someone really wanted to cause trouble in the New York area, there will be unguarded subway stations that they could get to 125th Street from, change to Metro North there, and then change to an Amtrak train at New Rochelle, Yonkers, Croton-on-Harmon, or Stamford (the latter being, as I understand it, a semi-major MNRR station and a major "change" location).

Moreover, the realistic question is why anybody would bother boarding a train to crash it when you've got hundreds of miles of tracks you can easily target. Not that Johnny Jihadi is the smartest guy, necessarily (and I'd also point out that they could do a lot more damage causing a catastrophic derailment of a toxic chemical-bearing train in an urban area), but it's utterly useless (Sunset derailment, anyone?).

That said...the dog teams aren't a bad touch, and I don't mind them...they're more or less non-obtrusive and non-intrusive (and any resulting search will have at least some form of "probable cause" due to a dog "going nuts"...drug dogs tend to be rather...er...excitable, as I understand it, though bomb dogs tend to be a lot more sedate in terms of their responses, for obvious reasons).
 
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The other thing I don't understand about the explosive swabbing of bags in pvd - why don't they just get some trained dogs? The dogs could stand at the entrance to the escalator down to the platform, wander the platform, wander the station, etc. It sounds like it would be less intrusive - and dare I say perhaps more effective?
 
The TSA as well as AMTRAK police & other LEOs were all over Portland Union Station a few times this summer when I was there as a Trails & Rails guide. I had one even come up to me & demand to see my ID & ask why I was on the platform.
 
OY and I have to leave via PDX next week on the EB....

I have in the past seen more then "enough " LEO at PDX ... unlike EUG ..

Like PDX needs them ...... * rolls eyes *

more chance of a snow slide then a person doinf train dammage ..

Peter
 
This is truly amazing. One subject where wing nuts like Navyblue and flaming/knee jerk/bleeding heart liberals like myself agree. The TSA is a (self censored - this is a family forum, insert your choice of expletives and slurs here)!!! I'm flying out of PDX tomorrow morning and am dreading it.

As long as there are unmanned stations, and unguarded tunnels, trestles, and grade crossings; trains will be vulnerable. As long as there are people who don't care if they die in the process, there will be no real security. Considering the damage a yokel driving a double dump in Nevada did, imagine what a gasoline tanker could do - and sadly I can't think of any way to stop some determined, deranged, deluded fool from doing it.
 
SP&S said:
This is truly amazing. One subject where wing nuts like Navyblue and flaming/knee jerk/bleeding heart liberals like myself agree. The TSA is a (self censored - this is a family forum, insert your choice of expletives and slurs here)!!! I'm flying out of PDX tomorrow morning and am dreading it.

As long as there are unmanned stations, and unguarded tunnels, trestles, and grade crossings; trains will be vulnerable. As long as there are people who don't care if they die in the process, there will be no real security. Considering the damage a yokel driving a double dump in Nevada did, imagine what a gasoline tanker could do - and sadly I can't think of any way to stop some determined, deranged, deluded fool from doing it.
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I fail to grasp the dread some people have of TSA at airports. I find the screeners are professional and courteous. It's rare for me to take more then 10 minutes through airport security, most of which is in line being held up by idiot travellers who have no clue what they are doing. With minimal preparation, the screening is nothing.
 
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