 |
|
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
You have all probably read about the famous psychological experiments
where normal everyday people are put in charge of some "prisoners"
(who are also normal everyday people) in an isolated environment with
no control, no deterrents and no consequences for abuse. Sooner or later
the "guards" will start abusing the "prisoners", starting with little
things and slowly escalating to amazing proportions, even though these
are, as said, just normal everyday people who would never do these things
normally.
It seems to me that the TSA in the United States is a perfect example
of exactly this in real life. The more I read about the extreme cases,
the clearer this becomes. For example:
http://tsanewsblog.com/2572/news/yet-another-child-abused-by-tsa/
I'm pretty certain that a normal person would normally not shout
"put your hands over your head! Hands over your head NOW!" to a small
5-years-old child who she has never even seen before. However, when
put in a position of power for a long time, with no deterrents and no
punishment for crude behavior, and with peer pressure, ie. when put into
the proper environment, even the nicest people can become outright
abusive, not to talk about a person who probably was already asocial to
begin with...
--
- Warp
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
On 26/12/13 21:12, Warp wrote:
> You have all probably read about the famous psychological experiments
> where normal everyday people are put in charge of some "prisoners"
> (who are also normal everyday people) in an isolated environment with
> no control, no deterrents and no consequences for abuse. Sooner or later
> the "guards" will start abusing the "prisoners", starting with little
> things and slowly escalating to amazing proportions, even though these
> are, as said, just normal everyday people who would never do these things
> normally.
>
I'm guessing that you mean the Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE) rather
than the Milgram Experiment.
> It seems to me that the TSA in the United States is a perfect example
> of exactly this in real life. The more I read about the extreme cases,
> the clearer this becomes. For example:
>
> http://tsanewsblog.com/2572/news/yet-another-child-abused-by-tsa/
>
Whilst I agree completely with your your viewpoint can I point out that
the real problem IMHO is that there appears to be no deterrent to the
TSA agents actions. This was exactly the case in the SPE and it could be
argued that Professor Zimbardo was actually encouraging the 'guards' in
their behaviour.
The lack of coverage by the mainstream media of this may be contributing
to the US government's lack of action. If you google 'tsa abuse' (in the
UK) the first mainstream hit you get is an article in the Daily Mail
from 2010 and that is slanted towards the agents' point of view. A few
headlines in the influential papers and/or on CNN et al would go a long
way towards civilising the agents' behaviour.
John
--
Protect the Earth
It was not given to you by your parents
You hold it in trust for your children
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
On 28/12/13 08:19, Doctor John wrote:
> The lack of coverage by the mainstream media of this may be contributing
> to the US government's lack of action. If you google 'tsa abuse' (in the
> UK) the first mainstream hit you get is an article in the Daily Mail
> from 2010 and that is slanted towards the agents' point of view. A few
> headlines in the influential papers and/or on CNN et al would go a long
> way towards civilising the agents' behaviour.
>
> John
>
Pressed send before thinking: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes
John
--
Protect the Earth
It was not given to you by your parents
You hold it in trust for your children
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
On 28/12/2013 8:24 AM, Doctor John wrote:
> Pressed send before thinking: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes
Damn you Moriarty!
I hear that in Boris's voice.
(Banker!)
--
Regards
Stephen
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
On Sat, 28 Dec 2013 08:19:55 +0000, Doctor John wrote:
> Whilst I agree completely with your your viewpoint can I point out that
> the real problem IMHO is that there appears to be no deterrent to the
> TSA agents actions.
This is certainly a problem, but another problem (as a fairly seasoned
post-9/11 air traveler in the US myself) is that while these types of
events are horrible and should not happen, they are quite an exception,
too, and may not be indicative of a systematic problem of enforcement,
but rather show that - as with any hiring process - it's not perfect, and
the screening that new hires the TSA brings on board may be missing
things that would filter out people who are prone to this type of
misbehavior.
Millions of people travel by air in the US every day, and this doesn't
happen every time, or even close to every time. It might be interesting
to see what percentage of travelers actually have problems like this
going through security checkpoints at US airports. I'd wager it's
significantly less than 1%, and probably significantly fewer than 1 in
100,000.
Jim
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
On 28/12/13 21:31, Jim Henderson wrote:
>
> Millions of people travel by air in the US every day, and this doesn't
> happen every time, or even close to every time. It might be interesting
> to see what percentage of travelers actually have problems like this
> going through security checkpoints at US airports. I'd wager it's
> significantly less than 1%, and probably significantly fewer than 1 in
> 100,000.
>
> Jim
>
You are, of course, absolutely correct. However, let's put your estimate
down at the low end - say 1 in 1,000,000. There are approximately 1.5
million passenger flights per day in the US, therefore there may be 550
such incidents every year ... and (realises that there are 150
murders/day in the US) <stops>
Anecdotal evidence is a bitch to deal with. Gimme hard stats.
Still a little bit of training and better selection (not in that order)
wouldn't go amiss.
John
--
Protect the Earth
It was not given to you by your parents
You hold it in trust for your children
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
On Sat, 28 Dec 2013 22:14:30 +0000, Doctor John wrote:
> On 28/12/13 21:31, Jim Henderson wrote:
>>
>> Millions of people travel by air in the US every day, and this doesn't
>> happen every time, or even close to every time. It might be
>> interesting to see what percentage of travelers actually have problems
>> like this going through security checkpoints at US airports. I'd wager
>> it's significantly less than 1%, and probably significantly fewer than
>> 1 in 100,000.
>>
>> Jim
>>
>>
> You are, of course, absolutely correct. However, let's put your estimate
> down at the low end - say 1 in 1,000,000. There are approximately 1.5
> million passenger flights per day in the US, therefore there may be 550
> such incidents every year ... and (realises that there are 150
> murders/day in the US) <stops>
>
> Anecdotal evidence is a bitch to deal with. Gimme hard stats.
That it is - and I agree, hard numbers are much better to deal with. As
Darren likes to say, "The plural of 'anecdote' is not 'data'." - and this
demonstrates why that's the case.
> Still a little bit of training and better selection (not in that order)
> wouldn't go amiss.
Absolutely agreed. :)
Jim
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
Doctor John <j.g### [at] gmail com> wrote:
> Still a little bit of training and better selection (not in that order)
> wouldn't go amiss.
Or how about doing what every other western country is doing, and not
being such a police state?
I know that public transportation in the US (other than air traffic)
generally sucks, but the way that Americans could do something about
the TSA is to vote with their feet, so-to-speak. The bus or the train
might take a longer time, but at least you are not treated like a
potential criminal and possibly subjected to humiliation and agression.
It might even be cheaper.
Imagine almost empty airports and airplanes... I'm pretty sure things
would change quite rapidly when airlines start going bankrupt one after
another...
--
- Warp
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
On Sun, 29 Dec 2013 04:48:57 -0500, Warp wrote:
> Doctor John <j.g### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
>> Still a little bit of training and better selection (not in that order)
>> wouldn't go amiss.
>
> Or how about doing what every other western country is doing, and not
> being such a police state?
>
> I know that public transportation in the US (other than air traffic)
> generally sucks, but the way that Americans could do something about the
> TSA is to vote with their feet, so-to-speak. The bus or the train might
> take a longer time, but at least you are not treated like a potential
> criminal and possibly subjected to humiliation and agression.
> It might even be cheaper.
You forget that *most* Americans are generally happy with the state of
things, or at least aren't angry enough to do anything about it. Many
feel powerless to effect any change, so why bother?
But again, to call the US a "police state" is really like calling us a
"socialist state" because we now have affordable health care. It's
hyperbole at the best.
I've been in US airports (recently), and I've been in European airports.
Trust me, security here is not so different compared to some of the
European airports. I haven't seen cops inside our terminals carrying
fully automatic weapons, as I did in Germany and Russia in the late 80's,
or in the UK (OK, in the UK I don't know if they're *fully* automatic,
but they weren't just pistols) in the early 2000's.
We have security theater. It's an inconvenience to many, and there are a
few high-profile abuses that make the news, but the airports in Europe
have more actual security than we do at most of ours, and a lot of it is
much more visible armaments.
> Imagine almost empty airports and airplanes... I'm pretty sure things
> would change quite rapidly when airlines start going bankrupt one after
> another...
That's actually been going on for years - only Southwest (and some of the
smaller carriers) actually turn a profit.
Jim
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
> But again, to call the US a "police state" is really like calling us a
> "socialist state" because we now have affordable health care. It's
> hyperbole at the best.
The TSA all in itself doesn't make the US police-state-like, but it
adds up to everything else.
It seems to be that, at least at some places, there's a strong "us vs them"
mentality among the police force, and they act as if they were a military
force within a foreign and potentially hostile land.
They are extremely trigger-happy and will pull out guns and tasers at
the slightest of provocation, or even without, but just if they feel
like it. They can legally lie to people, and trick people into
implicating themselves. They regularly abuse people with impunity.
Time and again we get news about new cases of police brutality. While
that alone doesn't yet make it a police state, what does is that they
usually get scot-free. Their buddies will support them and lie for them,
even under oath, and their superiors are not eager to start internal
investigations. Such investigations are generally started only if the
event gets wide publicity, and even then the punishments are often
extremely lenient or even non-existent.
The cases that get publicity are probably just the tip of the iceberg.
There just *happened* to be a camera pointing that way, or someone with
a camera who didn't have it immediately confiscated afterward. How many
such cases are happening where there are no cameras and no credible
witnesses? In these cases it's usually the word of the victim vs. the
word of a half-dozen police officers (all of who, naturally, agree that
no abuse happened, of course.)
If the government just watches by while all this is happening, rather
than taking stern actions to eradicate these abuses, what else is that
other than being police-state-like?
--
- Warp
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
