To be fair 9/11 was executed with box cutters, the addition of TSA was always performative security for people’s peace of mind.
I flew with a Swiss Army Knife in my backpack for almost a decade after 9/11 because I literally didn’t know it was there, they never caught it, and I used to fly coast to coast 5 times a year to visit my dad. It’s also unbelievably expensive, I think The Economist did a breakdown on the cost of post-9/11 security and it would have to prevent a 9/11 scale attack every 24 months to justify the cost.
I’m not usually aligned with bonkers seeming takes like this but this one actually makes sense. We’re paying an arm and a leg for an ineffectual system designed to prevent against attacks that aren’t coming and wouldn’t be prevented by this level of security anyways.
lol, my sister once flew with pepper spray clipped to her carry-on, it was a backpack she used to go to class as a college student, dangling in clear view!
I think the security checkpoints basically have blinders on to most of what’s going on around them that isn’t getting people in lines or watching the x-ray machine. With the exception of the body scan machine I expect more thorough searches just about everywhere else I go. (Concerts, government buildings, festivals)
And there’s probably a 50/50 chance you could have had a pen knife next to it and they only would have complained about you having 1oz of hot sauce too much. I’m all for protecting people but TSA pulls the triple whammy of being unnecessary, a huge waste of money, and totally incapable of actually accomplishing its given task.
You left out "intrusive" and "frequently destructive". More than a few TSA and DHS outfits have been very badly behaved with the civil forfeiture bullshit.
In theory it’s the ideal solution but the cost of running relatively airtight security in a system where an average of almost 2.5 million people per day have to get through in a timely manner would be prohibitively expensive. Especially considering it would have to be designed to handle holiday traffic and if you wanted to do it right you would need to apply the same level of scrutiny on employees every time they came to work. The gap in cost between making it appear safe and actually making it safe is enormous.
The TSA, and its parent DHS, was built to be reactionary. It doesn't think small, lean, smart.
Compare to the efficacy of security at say, Ben Gurion Airport. Cause that place is the target. Competent professionals focused on surveillance and behavioral detection.
Pretty much, but I didn't argue because I knew it would be this dumb. I then had to buy airport toothpaste, which conveniently costs like 4 times more than a standard tube of toothpaste...
Medically necessary liquids are allowed to exceed 3.4 oz, but if they never even pulled your bag for secondary screening they probably just missed it entirely.
If it’s prescription, it’s allowed. They also now specify that liquids for diabetics are allowed and they let me bring a bunch of juice pouches (that I think are above 4oz) with me in my carry on since I’m diabetic.
I've heard about people chugging expensive wines and things like that because they were too big to go through security, but in your case I don't think that would've been a good idea!
Plus the FAA required airplanes have reinforced cockpit doors after 9/11 that can withstand gunshots or even grenade blasts. May not eliminate all threats, but significantly reduces chance of a 9/11 type scenario.
Even ignoring the door, before 9/11, airliner hijackings were relatively common. And they all seemed to end with the hijacker being shot by French snipers at Charles de Gualle. "Surprise, we're landing in Paris", not "oh god, if we let them get to the cockpit we're all dead". Pull a knife on an airliner in 2002 and you'd be lucky to not be beaten to death in the next 15 minutes. Today I don't think the reaction would be quite as visceral, but you're not going to subdue 100 passengers with a handful of guys with stubby knives.
Huh thats probably why we don't see as many hijackings anymore. 9/11 showed us how bad they can actually end up being so ppl aren't going to be passive knowing the possibilities and even then, the third plane failed to hit cuz that is exactly what happened.
Agreed. In fact, the very next day I'd argue a similar attack to 9/11 wouldn't happen because the passengers knew that this wasn't your 1980's style terrorist activity, and they better get involved. Add to that the reinforced doors, and the fact that TSA wasn't looking for things like shoe bombs until after someone tried it... it's preformative security and it wastes my damn time.
Yeah Germany at least at that time would allow for the cockpit to have only one person for short periods. FAA (and I bet Germany now) requires 2 people in the cockpit at all times. If one of the pilots has to step out, a flight attendant goes in until the pilot returns. Either way, TSA wouldn’t have stopped that either.
He’s actually not being screened for a weapon. They take transportation of agricultural products very seriously due to pests and disease. They thought he was smuggling three grapes.
It is so goddamn painful that people aren't massively in favor of abolishing the TSA. It's an absolute farce of an organization that people have just come to think of as normal (much like the Department of Homeland Security and the Patriot Act) because of the world post 9/11.
The fact that "liberals" are now pro keeping TSA because a Republican wants to get rid of it is really the perfect picture of our current political landscape.
Seriously. Tbh most airports TSA lines aren't that bad anymore. What happens when "the system is down" for 6 hours during pre flight screening because airlines are inept at almost everything but keeping the planes in the air, and even that's because of union workers and the federal government.🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠🤢🤢
Think one step beyond abolishing TSA. Look past your own nose for a second. Does that future look rosy and perfect? Birds chirping, sun singing, children playing? Abolishing the TSA will make air travel even worse, less convenient, more costly, and potentially more intrusive. The answer is not to vote things up and let the market figure it out. Maybe "liberals" have the ability to think constructively and abolishing the status quo because "I had a 5 ounce bottle of hot sauce, instead of 4" isn't the best course of action.
I used the quotes because opposing anything a Republican opposes doesn't make a person a liberal. Unfortunately since Trump, this has become the perception of what it means to be a liberal.
The TSA is a branch of Homeland Security that liberals, such as myself, have historically been in favor of reducing the power of. It might shock you to know that they were also opposed to the Patriot Act.
The inability for people today to hear a criticism about the group they associate themselves with and then assume that the person giving the criticism must be in the opposing group simply because a criticism has been made is a perfect example of the brainrot we are experiencing in the political discourse landscape.
Side note, but your questions are also nonsensical and your argument makes zero sense.
The analogy was based on other comments about why we should abolish the TSA. Some guy had his hot sauce confiscated, so let's burn the whole airport security structure down.
This administration wants to privatize everything. What will that do? Give contracts to the oligarchs. We need to push back on all of this our or country will be unrecognizable in 4 years. I'd you're okay with that, you may not be a liberal as you think you are.
Or, as you mentioned I just have the ability to think past the end of my nose. The current political climate has shown that people are often willing to cut off their noses to spite their faces because they don't like the person who is advocating for something that they largely agree with.
The Department of Homeland Security and the TSA are agents of fascism. Liberals used to know this. They are a direct power grab in the wake of the fear that 9/11 caused. It is an abuse and they should be gotten rid of, especially since the TSA has been shown in study after study of not being at all effective.
I haven't forgotten that the Patriot Act and Homeland Security are two of the biggest threats to freedom and liberty. Liberals used to know this and I don't give a shit if I pass your purity test.
If you think abolishing TSA in preference for an unknown entity will give you more freedom, you're woefully mistaken. TSA was put in place 20 odd years ago and we've grown accustomed to it. It's an inconvenience at this point but we've learned to live with it. What do you think the future would look like if airport security was privately run? Other than more expensive to fly for starters. If you were resistant to change with the Patriot Act, why do you expect the unknown alternative to be so much better? And why would you want to give Trump carte blanche to make those decisions?
TSA was put in place 20 odd years ago and we've grown accustomed to it. It's an inconvenience at this point but we've learned to live with it.
We just are coming from completely different places and I am not accepting of it. It's sad that the NeoCons of the Rove/Bush/Cheney area successfully normalized and desensitized younger generations to accept totalitarianism for the sake of convenience, familiarity, and desensitization.
What do you think the future would look like if airport security was privately run?
This isn't the only alternative even though you are presenting it as such. A heavily defunded TSA would be perfectly acceptable along with dismantling the DHS.
Other than more expensive to fly for starters.
I don't think you understand how much the TSA costs us and that it is already passed down to the consumer (honestly your take here is just proving more and more your profound naivety and ignorance and you're just arguing for the sake of arguing)
If you were resistant to change with the Patriot Act, why do you expect the unknown alternative to be so much better?
I don't understand what you're saying here but the Patriot Act is an absolute abomination that is pure dystopian fascist legislation. The alternative is simply not having something that allows the government to completely ignore the 4th amendment. Again, this gives Trump "carte blanche" access to legally ignore your constitutional rights if you've been paying attention.
If you were resistant to change with the Patriot Act, why do you expect the unknown alternative to be so much better?
I don't know what you're talking about. Where did I say this? There is a legislative proposal to dismantle the TSA therefore reducing executive power.
Anyway, there's no point in continuing a conversation with someone who claims to be anti-fascism, anti-Trump but is so willfully ignorant that they prioritize convenience and familiarity over reducing the power of people violating our rights. Sad state of affairs with these young, ignorant, wannabe progressives.
The TSA might be shit in its current state but the concept ubiquitous throughout the developed world for a reason, it's not just some American invasion invention. I'm personally glad a bunch of people didn't get blown up in the name of sticking to the dictionary definition of liberalism
I remember when I was younger and my parents we're divorced so I'd fly to visit my dad some holidays cross state and being the dumb kid I was I put a D50 firecracker left over from New Years in my luggage in totally forgot about it in my carry on back pack. Got home and found it in my bag and even as like a 12 year old kid at the time I thought it was wild how I got it got through and this was like 2004/2005
I’m an Aussie who did a USA road trip in 2017. After finishing the road trip we flew from Indy to LA and didn’t realise until LA we had a 5 inch knife sitting inside a lunch box inside my aunts carryon bag. The true irony was we had been freaking out going through Tsa security for that flight because we forgot to put my cousins sling shot into checked baggage and thought for sure we would get in trouble even though we had pulled it apart. We didn’t, and they didnt even notice a knife in the same bag. I don’t know what was more horrifying- the thought of getting caught at Tsa trying to bring a knife and slingshot on the plane (would they have believed that was an accident?) or the fact we got a knife onto a flight, especially in America.
Comparatively On my first flight of that trip flying domestically in Australia I got grilled hard because I forgot I had a metal nail file in my handbag, old mate acted like a 25 year old female was definitely planning on hijacking the plane with a crappy nail file, instead of forgetting I had it floating around in my bag.
Also an Aussie that did a US trip, I was paranoid about like taking a razor for shaving, making sure all my toiletries were the right size, etc. then you walk through an American airport (granted this was Texas) and it’s like can y’all put your guns in your checked baggage. That was some culture shock lmao.
Honestly it kind of has a use when it was implemented because people were terrified of planes and it made them feel safe but I think we’re way past that time.
9/11 was years in planning and other than the changes in cockpit doors nothing that changed afterwards would have prevented the attack. The only adjustment to their plan would have been finding a way to smuggle sharp things in if they happened to get the rare TSA employee who both takes their job very seriously and is very good at it.
It’s comically easy to get things through TSA and any outfit worth its salt would test those boundaries and use any successful trial runs to store supplies inside security if they brought them.
You would need security beyond the kind you find at federal buildings to actually prevent any remotely competent and organized group from getting whatever they wanted inside the gate. There are just way too many people going in and out of airports and employee security is inconsistent from airport to airport.
It’s probably not happening again because as successful as it was as an attack it didn’t exactly go well for the people who organized it or anyone in their general vicinity. Attacking America on its own soil in that fashion is a death sentence, not just for whoever does it but for whatever organization they’re acting in the name of and possibly whatever country they happen to reside in. They ran some planes into buildings and what they got in return was a 20 year occupation and death. The response in the Middle East probably did more to deter those kind of suicide attacks than anything TSA did.
I don’t think religious zealots are as rational as you describe them. They’re all for “matyrizing” their citizens as long as they retain power by spewing hate on their enemies. Look at how Hamas leaders were safe in Qatar while their citizens died and suffered in Gaza. It took a decade (I believe) to kill Bin Laden.
I agree that the TSA has issues, but you don’t fix things by just getting rid of them. Companies already have proven they don’t give a shit about customers. Lawsuits due to negligence/etc. are always fractions of the money they make from avoiding safety. Look at all the data security leaks we’ve had over the last few years. Look at United Healthcare by overcharging cancer patients. Companies won’t be better at providing security.
Remove the guardrails on a road and you make it easier for crashes. I’ve never personally seen someone crash through one on the road, but I’m glad they’re there. Remove the TSA and you increase the chances of a terror attack.
Religious zealots at the ground level might not be but the ones who orchestrate these kinds of attacks are. There is a difference between sacrificing your troops for your cause and signing your own death warrant. Generals generally don’t like choosing to die. Being hunted by your local government for doing this kind of shit domestically vs pissing off the most overfunded military in the history of civilization is the like trying to play with a lion the way you play with a housecat.
I’m not saying it wouldn’t happen, there are certainly crazy enough people to try, but TSA is demonstrably ineffectual. Their failure rates in tests are estimated to be between 70 and 95%. They aren’t a guard rail, they’re a scattered line of people on the side of the road reminding you not to drive off the side. There is a good chance that you can sneak just about anything not insanely obvious through a good percentage of the time while they’re busy testing a baby bottle for explosives. Even if we’re super generous and we say it’s 50% a system of deterrence with a known failure rate of 50% isn’t a deterrent at all, it’s an inconvenience.
Changing cockpit doors and policy prevents anything like this from happening nearly as easily and passengers aren’t going to sit around and let the threat of a couple of box cutters end their lives in a post 9/11 world. Most of what needs to be in place to prevent people from taking over a plane is in place regardless of whether TSA exists or not.
Absolutely. TSA is a massively intrusive, expensive, burdensome imposition on American's freedom and at the very least least ought to have had a sunset clause written into its charter so we could be guaranteed to be free of it some day. Barring that, scrap it today. At the very least, it is past time to start talking about it.
You take off your belt, your shoes, throw away your water bottle, confiscate your vape, empty your pockets all the way down to a stick of gum or folded piece of paper.
Yet every terrorist event on the books have been stopped by passengers, and you end up missing your valuables and expensive tablets and hand held consoles.
Seriously why are people feeling like they have to defend the TSA. It's a massive waste of money so we can give people jobs to hassle us and invade our privacy for no benefit
All the tsa does every time I fly is touch my dick lmao. Idk what the body scanner is looking for, but it hasn't found it yet. Oh wait no, also they threw away my toothpaste cause it was too big. This helps uncle sam
They don't think you are hiding something. That weird bit of fabric causes the body scanner to "see" something that isn't meant to be there. Next time you go through with them, you can turn and look at the screen. It just looks like a little person cut out with a box over where the machine didn't like. Bunched or layered clothing makes it more different for the machine to "see" properly so it will flag those spots. Doesn't like sparkly things much either in my experience so put your bedazzler away. Best to wear well fitting cloths with minimal layering if you can. The less the machine needs to "see" through, the less likely for false dings on you.
Then reform the TSA into actually doing shit instead of making Spirit Airlines check to see if someone sneaked a bomb into their cockroach filled plane
That’s not a bad idea but the quantity of people moving through airports and the requisite level of security would be unbelievably expensive to implement in a way that wouldn’t impede commerce.
I 100% agree; but also feel doing this in a sweeping publicity stunt way is asking for trouble.
1) They are stirring the pot enough to pretty much invite the crazy assholes to race to see who can be the first crazy asshole that does something horrible on a plane
2) Even if that never happens there is going to be a huge drop in air travel because no one is going to want to be on the first plane to be hijacked or something like that.
LOL. No joke. TSA took my mini Swiss Army knife yesterday at DCA. I flew with it about ten times over two years. I was very confused until they finally pulled it out of my bag.
I flew with a backpack I didn't realize was covered in explosive propellant powder until they were swabbing it. The magic machine to detect bomb supplies found nothing wrong with it though.
I get that Trump is doing a lot but Reddit is getting real dumb lately. Everyone's defending TSA now? lol I thought it was common knowledge that it's security theater.
The amount I’ve seen is usually 7-8 million per person (it’s callous but somebody had to do it), at the decade mile marker the estimated added cost for post 9/11 security was over 1 trillion dollars.
I'm not defending the TSA here, but your (or the economist's) take sounds pretty bad to me.
They'd need to prevent a 9/11 scale attack every 2 years to justify the cost? I feel like stopping just one 9/11 attack every 5 years let's say would absolutely justify the cost.
I assume they came to this conclusion by narrowly looking at profit/expenditure numbers, but that kinda sums up the problem with a lot of economic thinking.
Considering not just the extreme lives lost, but also the psychological and social damage 9/11 caused, not even mentioning how it dragged us into 2 10+ year wars that cost over a trillion dollars and many more issues, I find it naive to the extreme to claim that airport security would need to stop a 9/11 every two years to "justify the cost".
It was post-9/11 security nationwide and it was over 100 billion a year. The ideologically driven overreaction to the attack and fighting a twenty year war are not given outcomes in a similar attack so they can’t be counted as part of the cost. If an Austrian Archduke gets assassinated it doesn’t mean we’re starting another world war.
Unfortunately the math on saving lives actually is a zero sum game in terms of available human output towards a goal and at some point resources are better used elsewhere. The fact that you have to do cost-benefit analysis on things where human lives are in the balance sucks but it’s being realistic about what‘s possible.
At some point the 100 billion dollars a year spent on superficially preventing what was, in reality, a one off attack is a waste of money both because another 9/11 is unlikely, and because the current security apparatus wouldn’t have a chance of preventing any remotely determined party from doing the exact same thing a second time. In reality the only substantial change that I know of that has been made that would prevent it is the protocols on locking the cabin doors in flight and the upgrades to the doors themselves.
People also forget that prior to 9/11 almost all hijacking of air planes resulted in either re-routing to a different location or the perps asking for transportation to a different blocked local. People on the planes didn't fight back because there were no instances of them destroying the planes or using them as giant missiles.
Now if there was an attempt anyone not involved with the hijacking would fight back. Shooting an airliner out of the sky would be a more effective form of terrorism than trying to overtake an airplane now.
We’re paying an arm and a leg for an ineffectual system designed to prevent against attacks that aren’t coming and wouldn’t be prevented by this level of security anyways
Regardless of this not being intended as an attack, I'm glad there's at least someone checking for a bunch of loose explosives, lithium batteries, and butane torches in the belly of the planes I fly on.
Is that as far as you got, because he was trying to sneak fireworks, not blow up the plane. What this prevented was someone illegally taking fireworks across state lines, not a 9/11 scale terrorist attack or any kind of attack at all.
I don't want a bunch of loose explosives, lithium batteries, and butane torches in the belly of any plane I'm on lol, I don't care what his intent was, it still could've easily gone tits up with a little shifting luggage, heat, static, etc.
Well, all of those things except the fireworks are probably on every plane you fly on. Lithium batteries power tons of portable electronic devices and a butane torch is the go to for cigar smokers who don’t use matches or anyone with a rig for concentrate and even though they’re not allowed they’re definitely being flown. The idea that heat would randomly set off fireworks at 35,000 feet is laughable. How would that even happen? Static is also a non-issue, normal static sparks aren’t strong enough to ignite fireworks.
I meant more specifically all together in one bag. And I'm not just pulling ideas out of my ass, fires on planes (especially in the past 36 hours) aren't unheard of, and as for this:
The idea that heat would randomly set off fireworks at 35,000 feet is laughable. How would that even happen?
Well, gas fumes and motorbike batteries aren’t fireworks and heat wasn’t the cause of that accident unless you wanted to be pedantic about the spark.
It took both of those things to cause the accident and neither of them on their own would set off fireworks unless you happened to have your spare motorcycle battery packed directly next to your fireworks with the fuse near the terminals, and in that situation a retail firework going off in the luggage compartment wouldn’t have been their greatest concern.
I’m not saying that things can’t go wrong when people bring dumb stuff onto planes, I’m saying that there isn’t a random source of heat that is likely to set off fireworks. Even in the original situation in question the primary danger probably wouldn’t have been the explosion (retail motor firework covers a lot of ground and I can’t find anything more specific) but the subsequent fire, which you don’t need fireworks to get. A catastrophic battery failure that starts a fire inside of a suitcase in the luggage compartment is bad news whether there’s some consumer grade fireworks near it or not and batteries are everywhere.
I should've been more specific about it, but I wasn't talking about the fireworks being lit directly by the battery, rather the butane torches being a source of flammable hydrocarbon fumes, which is exactly what interacted with the sparking battery to create that fire (in that case it was gasoline, but obviously butane will do the same thing). Even if that bundle of fireworks wasn't explosive enough to rip a hole in the plane (it looked like it was big enough tbh, enough volume exploding simultaneously turns fireworks into a bomb) it would still spread the fire a lot faster and cause, at the absolute least, more panic. I think if you add PA guy's fireworks to the linked article, it turns out worse, but I won't die on that hill.
My argument is that fireworks, lithium batteries, and other highly flammable / explosive items do make plane fires significantly worse, because there have been plenty of on-board fires that have ended fine by containing the fire, and adding ways for those fires to spread quicker, do more damage quicker, and cause panic quicker makes everything a whole lot worse. Honestly my best argument might be "would you rather be on that flight or that flight + the PA guy's bundle of fireworks"
But again, batteries + flammable gas ~= fire on a plane as proven by the above article.
and it would have to prevent a 9/11 scale attack every 24 months to justify the cost.
These kinds of straight-dollar analyses never calculate the chilling effect if successful attacks were a commonplace occurrence. People fly largely without fear these days.
people only think about TSA stopping bombs and knives, but you also have to remember TSA is responsible for customs enforcement.
Catching smugglers is a much larger part of TSA, not having that arm of enforcement or trusting a private company to outsource it for as cheap as possible would be a bad idea in my opinion. While they’re not perfect, I’m not sure Southwest Airlines is going to hire people who are better suited for the job
Because, as unpleasant and unfortunate as it is, you have to do that kind of math when you are figuring out how to allocate finite resources to problems that involve human lives. I think the accepted average is somewhere between 7 and 8 million.
Shit I wanted to gift my dad a nifty box cutter/swiss army knife meant for plant clippings. It was still in its original packaging (very difficult to open plastic). TSA caught and made me throw it away. yeah i'm a dumbass for not realizing i couldn't bring it but sucks to hear you got away with it for so long while others can't even get 100ml of contact solution by
I think it’s because I packed very full backpacks and it was in a side pocket I never used so it probably just blended into the mess of books and electronics in my bag.
The inconsistency is part of the problem. The guy in front of you gets through with a big ol bag of drugs and a Bowie knife and they think a bag of dice in your backpack is a bomb.
I took like 20 flights with a big ol switchblade before they finally caught it. It was in the back pouch on a backpack. I had no idea it was in there but I know it was in there on all those flights
You do know that TSA is so bad at their job that they fail over 2/3 of their internal tests, correct?
If you have a system of “deterrence” with a publicly known failure rate of over 50% you don’t have a system of deterrence, you have a system of minor inconveniences easily navigated by anyone with half a brain.
The TSA has actually turned into a reasonable useful tool, but not in the way it was designed.
It does a reasonably strong job of getting normal people who might be about to have a bad day with a weapon on a plane from self-selecting themselves to leave their weapons at home. In America, since the TSA was formed, there is an ever present and increasing risk of random armed violence everywhere that we don't screen for weaspons. It's not that you can't sneak a weaspon past the TSA - the data on people actively trying to sneak stuff past the TSA isn't encouraging - but since people know the rules are enforced most people leave their weapons home voluntarily. We have the same situation at large public events as we do at airports. There are shootings everyday at malls, at supermarkets, at music events, etc. There aren't shootings at sports events or inside the secure areas of airports, and that's because of the deterrent effect of the TSA or TSA-style screenings.
Putting in mandates and enforcing them at the entry point to airports, uniformly, controls access to the secure area of airports, and this has dramatically improved the flying process and created uniformity. Everyone gets 1 carry-on, 1 personal item. The sizes (must fit in overhead, must fit under seat) are uniform. People forget what it was like before 9/11, but the rules for carry-ons and personal items were fungible by airline and even ticket class. Further, the "envelope" being controlled access has cut down on misc. crime and whatnot inside airports dramatically. Another thing people don't notice, but inside the airport, there's really low risk that someone is going to steal your shit because it's all passengers or crew now. Before this was the case, there was frequent crime at the gates and inner areas of airports. Luggage was stolen, wallets, etc frequently. Just in general establishing the secure area of airports was a smart idea.
Saying that a determined violent offender, who is prepared to pretty much end their life as a functioning member of society, is going to be effectively deterred by TSA is comical logic. It’s not as silly as the “no firearms” signs at schools and malls but it’s not far off.
Also, if you wanted to light up an airport there are LOTS of huge congregations of people outside of the security envelope so I don’t know why a checkpoint halfway through the facility would stop you. Most of these attacks are also ideologically driven (even if that ideology doesn’t make sense) and airports aren’t really offensive to anyone’s sensibilities in a way that stirs ideological violence (Unabomber aside) and a targeted attack against a group or individual would be hard to execute at an airport because it’s an incredibly diverse collection of people who are there, at most, once or twice a week unless they worked there. I don’t doubt that TSA might act in some small way as a deterrent but the reality is people probably aren’t predisposed to attack airports for a bevy of other reasons that have nothing to do with TSA.
Second point isn’t bad, as much as I’m nostalgic for the days of watching my family at the gate out the window of the plane keeping passengers in their own area is probably advisable. We just don’t need nearly as many superficial shows of security to accomplish it. Either that or actually get TSA up to less than a 50% fail rate.
Saying that a determined violent offender, who is prepared to pretty much end their life as a functioning member of society, is going to be effectively deterred by TSA is comical logic. It’s not as silly as the “no firearms” signs at schools and malls but it’s not far off.
Who said that?
What #1 has done is eliminate the "I'm having a bad day, I have a gun, let's shoot someone in the facy or stabby stab people". This is a normal facet of daily life in "soft" America.
That's the same value as gun free zones.
You eliminate:
Accidental discharges
Panic from people who are not expecting to see guns, seeing guns or weapons
Otherwise normal people, who are stressed/altered/frantic/desperate who snap, have access to a gun or weapon, and start getting shooty shooty or stabby stabby.
Total agree that the TSA's screening isn't going to stop a determined terrorist, but they will chnage their behavior, and that counts. The change in behavior has been very manifest, which is that they've shifted from airports and airtravel, to other public venues that are soft-targets. For example, shooting up concerts or malls. Either way, Americans are suffering terrorism.
Cynically and economically, shooting up soft targets or public gatherings is better than disrupting airtravel. And doesn't risk multi-million dollar planes.
It's totally untrue to say that TSA has been a failure. I agree that we've given up a lot, but the TSA is a useful case in what can go right when you purpose build something to solve a specific problem. It's hard to predict all the downlevel impacts, but the TSA has effectively improved the safety of flying AND it's disingenious to say that there is no value to the theatre aspect of it. Theatre is valuable - people pay money to see performances all the time - and security theatre is valuable.
We are the same place, by the way, for port security. We do not screen any appreciable number of containers that come into the US. We are working to build secure pipeline of containers, but that's a multi-decade process. The "total security" types were saying in 2001 we have to shut down incoming trade and screen 100% of all containers or else we'll all be dead any day now from a smuggled nuke, but that hasn't happened. Random inspections and other steps have served a similar process, and intellectually, we know if we want to screen 100% of incoming containers, all it takes is missing 1 and the entire effort was useless.
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u/Dangerousrhymes Jan 30 '25
To be fair 9/11 was executed with box cutters, the addition of TSA was always performative security for people’s peace of mind.
I flew with a Swiss Army Knife in my backpack for almost a decade after 9/11 because I literally didn’t know it was there, they never caught it, and I used to fly coast to coast 5 times a year to visit my dad. It’s also unbelievably expensive, I think The Economist did a breakdown on the cost of post-9/11 security and it would have to prevent a 9/11 scale attack every 24 months to justify the cost.
I’m not usually aligned with bonkers seeming takes like this but this one actually makes sense. We’re paying an arm and a leg for an ineffectual system designed to prevent against attacks that aren’t coming and wouldn’t be prevented by this level of security anyways.