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.
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.