I'm no expert on airport security. But I'm not surprised that the Transportation Security Administration didn't come out looking good in recent studies, as described in Orin's last post. I have had personal experience with their incompetence. Here are two examples.
In 2004, my brother was on an international flight originating in the US, and was trying to get something out of his carry-on luggage. To his surprise, he found a Swiss Army knife in there. He hadn't been trying to sneak the knife on the plane, but had simply forgotten to remove it from his backpack before packing for the trip. Yet the TSA missed it. Obviously, if you can sneak a knife through TSA security without even trying, imagine what a moderately competent terrorist who actually was trying might be able to get on board?
Then there was the time in 2002 when I was waiting in line to have my checked baggage X-rayed by TSA. For some reason, I struck up a conversation with one of the TSA agents there. To my surprise, he launched into a detailed description of exactly what kinds of things their equipment could detect and what kinds it couldn't. I interrupted him to ask whether he was really allowed to reveal this information. He assured me that he was, which leads to the conclusion that TSA either has very lax secrecy rules about its procedures, or hires a substantial number of very stupid agents, or perhaps both.
Now I readily grant that these two cases might be exceptional. I'm sure there are plenty of competent and dedicated TSA personnel. In fact, let's stipulate that 90% of TSA screeners are more competent than the individuals involved in these two cases were. Still, a failure rate this high has to be cause for concern. If hijackings succeed 10% of the time, the terrorists might well take those odds. And if only a minority of TSA agents are lax about revealing their capabilities, it is likely that the information will quickly get to the terrorists.
Moreover, as Orin suggests, the underlying problem may not be merely incompetence by individuals, but the generally poor performance incentives in government bureaucracies. TSA personnel, like most other government bureaucrats, are highly unlikely to be punished or fired for their mistakes. Numerous studies suggest that contracting out to private firms both reduces the price and increases the quality of goods and services relative to direct government provision. As this Reason Foundation study by airport security and privatization expert Robert Poole points out, private provision is the model used for airport security in Israel and Western Europe, where the system is generally better run than in this country. Certainly, I doubt that I could sneak a knife past Israeli screeners without even trying.
UPDATE: I am impressed by the number of commenters with similar stories of accidentally getting weapons through TSA screening, including weapons such as switchblades that are more formidable than a Swiss Army knife. It doesn't say much for the TSA's competence.
Related Posts (on one page):
- Great Moments in Airport Security:
- Classified Report on Airport Security Leaked to USA Today:
That is probably a very generous stipulation. Private security contractors have historically seldom attracted the nation's best and brightest. There are many stories like these, though I realize that anecdotes are a poor substitute for data. Unless they are my anecdotes.
I'm chuckling b/c in 2003 someone pulled a DYKWIA w/me in order to get to his gate while going through security. I was a bitch about it and made it clear how I felt to TSA b/c they let him cut in front of me.
Shows where TSA's priorities are.
It's not like you can have two security lines at an airport competing with each other to provide the best "service", especially when the concept of service is so at odds between the traveling public (who wants the least hassle and intrusive) and security concerns (which needs the most hassle and intrusiveness to be the most effective).
I spent the first 10+ years of my career in a high-volume manufacturing environment. We used manual inspection to screen our product prior to it leaving the facility.
It was known then (1980s) that manual inspection is at best 80% effective over an extended period of time. You can't inspect quality in, you can only design it out. The same goes for baggage inspection.
I travel as much as the next man. The current procedures will, on average, allow 20% of the threats through, assuming we're talking about threats the inspectors recognize. Novel or less frequent threats (i.e., real ones) will be even less.
Two words: Turkey Sandwich.
Simply providing incentives to screen faster would lead to slipshod inspections. The incentive of a real reward if he found something would concentrate efforts where they are likely to be most effective.
You do realize that some screeners would start planting stuff in passengers' luggage within days of starting that program, right? It would be like when software companies apocryphally tried to motivate programmers by paying them for each error they found while coding.
No, it's not obvious.
let's see, I'm trying to imagine what a "moderately competent terrorist" can sneak on board, based on your assertion. Let's see. Hmmm. What I keep coming up with? A Swiss Army knife.
Big Whup.
First swarthy, body-odor ridden mutt who charges up the aisle on an airplane waving a Swiss Army knife and chanting "Allah Akbar" is not going to make it 10 feet. I personally am going to enjoy ripping his trachea from his neck.
Let's bring this back to reality. It's not the missed Swiss Army knives that are the problem. It's the inability of an arthritic government agencies to deal with read dangers such as poor border control and uninspected shipping containers and all the other ways these Islamic mutts can threaten entire municipal American regions.
I'm sure it feels good to go off on a rant about the TSA, but frankly it's a cheap thrill on your part. If you really must massage your sense of outrage in order to get off, try rubbing yourself over something important.
Bzzt. Wrong. Further to John Neff's comment: "security by obscurity" is no security at all. FWIW - I'm in no way suggesting the TSA is wonderfully competent either.
Perhaps a dagger would be provided in each seat-back together with the in-flight magazines.
Because every ounce counts in an airplane, and there are 200 daggers, they would be made of exotic materials. The airline would therefore have the metal detectors on the way out, to prevent people from stealing their exotic daggers.
-dk
However, note that I was flying -back- when it happened, meaning TSA had missed it on the way.
They've also missed hammers a couple times.
Furthermore, since you can buy glass bottles inside the terminal at Midway, beyond security, any screening for weapons is pointless.
Racist remarks aside, if I recall correctly, the 9/11 Hijackers used box cutters to kill pilots and flight attendants.
I would imagine you'd probably struggle if you saw someone get their throat slit next to you and knew it was coming. But it still happened.
I don't know about you, but I often carry a high quality swiss army knife, and I keep it razor sharp, sharper than any utility knife I've ever seen.
It may only be a 3in blade, but I'm pretty confident it could be lethal if used by someone trained to do so.
Just as a counter example, the knife I was referring to in the previous post, I religiously make sure I remove from my backpack before I travel, because I forgot to once and had to go through the hassle of mailing to myself from the airport. (rather than simply giving up a $150 knife.
And as I also recall, the private security contractors were terrible, too. I think the real answer is that it's nearly impossible to screen for all threats when the US flying population is as big as it is. What Israel has going for it is not better security (though it may have that), but less people flying.
And "effective" or not, I've found TSA to be more courteous and efficient than the private security contractors that came before them.
Nothing racist about the remarks. The 9-11 perps were swarthy. Some had made attempts to upgrade other characteristics by liberal use of cologne.
Same is true of various misbehaviors called, by the interested, "dry runs."
And the issue of what to do when somebody starts cutting is different after 9-11 and, specifically Flight 93. Where the perps killed a couple of guys to start with.
As Mark Steyn said afterwards, lean young men, burly middle-aged business men and arthritic grannies were looking for trouble. I paraphrase. But box cutters won't get it any more.
What racist remarks? Swarthy accurately describes every one of the 9/11 terrorists, as would "swarthy" describe most every Middle Eastern terrorist. Ditto for the yelling of "Allah Akbar."
In the case of placing bombs aboard aircraft, I believe that the groups which may have the desire to do so, do not have the capability and the groups that have the capability, do not have the desire.
It's possible that thinks have changed after 9/11, but we're still sitting with the facts that box cutters worked in 3 cases and only didn't work in one.
There's limited merit to the argument that previous hijacking protocols advised doing what the terrorists wanted . But there's one big problem with that. Those protocols are known by the attendants and pilots, not passengers. Further, A standard hijacking involved coercing the pilot into flying somewhere for some purpose.
In these cases they'd already executed the pilots and attendants. Which should be a big tip off that something was different. Yet, people in three planes did nothing but ride to their deaths.
Even further, given what I know about flight 93, several of the people on board were quite exceptional. Unless we've drastically increased the Air Marshalls program (and rumor is we have) that's something you can't count on. Heroes by their very nature arent' common.
BS
Describing a middle eastern person as a "Swarthy Body Odor Ridden Mutt" and then claiming it's not racist in character is like saying "I use the 'N-Word' all the time, but I only use it to refer to people who are of Nigerian Descent"
But I digress, this is completely unrelated to the issue at hand.
As the TSA studies show, it's believable that the wires on a hijacker's chest are really an explosive. This should give would-be Rambos pause.
Thus, it is not racist.
Racism is behaving in accord with the doctrine of racialism, which presumes that some races are better than others.
In this case, ME types who are not rushing the cockpit are not included. Therefore, it is not racist, but an individual description which fits both actual perps and likely perps.
Ben P. You ought to get out more. EVERYBODY knows what the new protocol is. Kill the bastards.
My son, a huge, hard-faced young man, flew a good deal early in his career. On the first flight after 9-11, not so long after, either, he was upgraded to first class and did not think it was his boyish good looks. He flew pretty happily for a year or so. Cheap, too. More to the point, nobody he told about it wondered if it was his charm. He can be charming, but that wasn't anybody's first guess.
Nobody's fooling anybody about this, no matter the implication that only the aristos actually know stuff.
Exactly. Pre 9/11, Airline policies were to cooperate with hijackers and do whatever they said. FAA policy was that the cockpit doors had to be open during takeoff and landing. In retrospect, it was like wearing a "kick me" sign.
Changing those policies had far more effect than confiscating all those tweezers, nail clippers, and bottled water. And don't get me started on how ridiculous it is that everybody's still removing their shoes.
Describing an African American as "Darkie" is objectively accurate too, but it's still considered racist.
Regarding security.
You're essentially contending that someone who is unarmed is more capable than someone armed with a small knife (or worse).
That might be true in rare circumstances, but relying on that as a matter of probability and security is simply foolish.
Exactly!
1. Pre-9/11, everyone, including passengers, *knew* that the best way to get through was to co-operate. By the time of Flight 93, the passengers knew this had changed.
2. You cannot rely on obscurity to achieve security. (Obscurity *can* be a useful part of a larger security system, but you have to expect it to fail, and not expend resources on it if it's trivial to bypass. That's this situation, where you can Google up the strengths and weaknesses of the scanning technology in under a minute.)
3. Random screens are good, because a terrorist doesn't want to risk getting caught 1 time in 10. Especially if they do several practice runs, like the 9/11 hijackers did. We don't need to find everything every time.
4. The above points should not be taken as a defense of the TSA. They botch a lot of things -- but that doesn't mean that just any criticism heaped on them is accurate.
As to effectiveness. I am. If I had a small knife, I'd use it as a distraction.
Secondly, anybody who's ever been hurt more than slightly knows exactly what capacities are left. There actually are charts listing how long it takes to bleed out after one or another major bleeder is opened. Plenty of time to prepare the situation for the guy behind you. The only instantly disabling stroke with a small knife or boxcutter is to the eyes.
And "darkie" is not a description. "dark-skinned" would be accurate and not racist.
Add me to the list of people who carried a knife on a flight by accident. In my case it was a camper-style knift/fork/spoon set.
Does Somin have a basis for thinking that what these machines detect or do not detect is anything other than easily obtainable by anyone who wants to know? There might be a good reason that this information is not classified; anyone who wanted the information could easily get it.
This is especially true for a centralized organization like Al Qaeda, who would have engineers and others with technical knowledge on their side to inform them of such technical details. Furthermore, all you need is one TSA employee at any of our many airport where such machines are found for knowledge of the limitations of this equipment to get out there. It is impossible to screen out every low level TSA employee who might have connections to Al Qaeda.
So, I am just not convinced that what Somin is describing is in fact an example of incompetence. And my view is that you should probably not make accusations of incompetence before you know the facts. Somin has not given us any reason to think that this information is not readily available to someone who wanted to know; and especially so to a centralized organization like Al Qaeda.
That's simply beyond reasonable. Not only are there eyes, there's clearly the neck. A person with a sharp 3 inch blade (Standard size pocket knife) could easily inflict cuts to the neck that would be incapacitating within 30seconds.
Further, the Femoral artery only lies 2-4cm below the skin in some places. Also within the reach of a well placed knife wound.
You're insisting that someone who's suffered a slash to the carotid/jugular is going to be able to continue to fight in any meaningful manner.
As I said beyond reasonable, and more than likely, highly intimidating. Seeing someone go down spouting blood from their neck is probably more likely to discourage resistance than encourage it. We're not talking about trained soldier here, but civilians on a plane.
Between the new locked cockpit doors and the fact that everyone on the plane now believes they will die in any hijacking the chances of success for a terrorist hijacking a plane have been reduced to almost zero. Yet at the same time we waste money protecting the (now safer) planes we face serious risks from chemical plants and other infrastructure attacks. The reason 9/11 worked is that the terrorists were smart and struck us in a way we didn't expect (tho we should have, the Secret Service stopped a plot to kill Nixon by flying a commercial plane into the white house). They aren't going to nicely attack us where it is most difficult for them.
If you want proof that airport security is all about show consider the way they check cars coming into the airport for bombs when we are at high alert. There is absolutely no reason to think that the terrorists would drive their bomb laden vehicle to the heavily secured and low density target of the airport rather than trying to take down one of the many office buildings with little security or by driving recklessly into parades and blowing up their car. The US government had discovered that terrorists were considering the use of binary liquid explosives several months before the attempt in England but they didn't bother to implement restrictions on liquids because experts were skeptical that this was a serious danger but after people heard all about it suddenly we got new security measures.
Look, you can't approach security by saying, "how do I prevent any future attack on airplanes," that leads to waste and silliness you have to ask, "how can I minimize the total harms of terrorism at a reasonable price." Quite simply the risk of terrorism on airlines isn't great enough to justify anything beyond the simple security we used to have before 9/11.
People will do amazing things if they think they will die otherwise. Back someone into a corner and they will do whatever it takes to live and now that means taking out any hijackers on the plane.
And once and for all, can we please stop using pejoritive terms to describe the 9/11 highjackers or those who wish to imitate their attacks? In case you don't have a large vocabulary, "pejorative" means belittling... mean... NOT NICE! If you can't say something nice about terrorists, don't say anything at all.
TSA needs to redirect its energy into searching PEOPLE, not STUFF. Profiling, along the lines of El Al.
and they might, but does this excuse missing 70% of the dangerous items that might make it onto an airplane?
The initial assertion was basically that a terrorist attempting to sneak a knife onto a plane is irrelevant because, the poster could "rip his trachea from his neck."
My counter assertion is simply that this is a silly chance to take.
also, FYI, I weigh 285 lbs, threw shot put in college and have a Sankyu belt in Judo. I'm perfectly confident in my own physical abilities, but would still rather take on an unarmed person rather than a person armed with a knife, even a small one. If you honestly think otherwise for yourself, you're either inexperienced or letting bravado pass sense.
And what you or I would "rather" is hardly relevant, is it? Did you miss that, or are you deliberately trying to change the issue?
Question is, what could you do against a guy with a small knife in the context of an airliner highjacking.
I competed in judo--when the light heavy was injured--did ju jitsu and several other methods of scientific dirty fighting. And I don't intend, in that situation, to be unarmed. There are any number of expedients to reduce or eliminate the effectiveness of a small knife.
Example: A small knife, or a tightly rolled Newsweek? Swinging a jacket. Jacket and Newsweek vs. a small knife?
Remember, a guy with a knife is all about the knife. That's why he brought it. It's all you have to worry about.
And nobody is saying anything about this discussion being an excuse for any shortcoming of TSA's.
Except that's almost exactly what was said
[quote]"Let's bring this back to reality. It's not the missed Swiss Army knives that are the problem."[/quote]
that's either an excuse or something close to it. Most specifically it's a statement that these particular shortcomings are irrelevant. That sounds like an excuse to me.
It might be true that there are more effective methods of preventing hijackings, but to say that airplane security is "not the problem" ignores a crucial area of security and shuts off any avenues as to how it might be improved.
They are irrelevant. It doesn't matter if someone can sneak through a screwdriver now and then. Really, it doesn't.
And I'll also explicitly repeat that the TSA gets a whole lot of things wrong and wastes a lot of resources. But I'll quote you and say that "these particular shortcomings are irrelevant."
I couldn't have said it better. QED, etc.
Low bidder? Airport Security was not privately contracted by the government; it was contracted by the airports and the airlines. The rules are different.
Second, the balance between quality and cost is something the private market deals with all the time. A friend of mine supervises Chinese contract manufacturers on behalf of his company. The chinese are always cutting costs &quality. When you put the contract out for bid, you need to specify q.c. requirements. If you don't, you can lose your shirt.
Gee, that is a really good example to use to prove your point--does he work for Mattell?
You implying imbeciles can't be droll?
I still think they should have two lines at the airport - one for passengers who enjoy BLT sandwiches, and the other for those who don't.
Thomas:
"Low bidder" and "profit motive" may be inaccurate--you seem to equate these with privatization, which isn't necessarily true. Regardless, how do you square your anti-privatization views with the point of these posts: the fact that SF's private security performed drastically better than the TSA? This isn't about "wishful thinking" it's about real world results.
The best evidence of this is that almost all the changes in TSA procedure over the last several years have been entirely reactive, instead of prospective: The Brits catch someone trying to sneak some kind of liquid-based explosive onto a plane, so now liquids are banned. Someone tries to sneak some sort of shoe bomb onto a plane, so now you have to take off your shoes and run them through the scanner separately. Are we to believe that our intelligence had never had any notion of the possibility of liquid explosive or shoe bombs until these events occurred? If they truly did not, then our problems are certainly a lot bigger than a swiss army knife making it onto a plane.
If they did, then didn't US intelligence advise the TSA to implement such important procedures instituted beforehand? Might i suggest that it is because the government does not expect the TSA to play much, if any role, in preventing a terror attack? Their job is simply to make the average traveler feel safe, and they do this simply by reacting to whatever is going on in the headlines.
Political suggestions to scrap random searching in favor of profiling are really operating along these same lines. Profiling appeals to the average joe -- it makes them feel like the system will stop potential bad guys, without the nasty inconvenience of having themselves of their "90 year old grandmother" stopped and searched. But the fact of the matter is that, in a planned attack, it is much easier for terrorists to circumvent a profiling system simply by using operatives that do not fit the profile (which is always easily ascertainable). On the other hand, there is absolutely no way to plan around a "random" search.
But I wont be surprised to see random searches abandoned in favor of profiling since the average
idiottraveler will always feel safer believing that the airlines are somehow able to screen out terrorists by only stopping anybody with Arabic surnames.Good point ejo. Since 9/11, "they" have had roughly 2200 days during which they could have very easily blown up the iron horse in my beloved home town of NYC. These smaller (and heretofore nonexistent) attacks represent the distinction between real terrorist attacks and the good ol' false flag.
Losing an airliner now and then isn't more than a two-day story, with the traditional hunting down of bereaved family for soap opera value. No terror is produced, no advantage is gained beyond the audience eyes sold to advertisers.
Any repeat of the 9/11 style attacks would run into murderous passengers set on preventing it. Different protocols are in use today on cooperating with hijackers. Kill the bastards, in short.
So airport security is all about preventing this or that bombing ; which itself is attractive to terrorists only if the media makes a show of it, but doesn't matter beyond that.
The war on terror is a general war against modern weapons in the hands of unaccountable groups. Modern weapons are too deadly today to permit their deployment by nutball groups.
The strategy is not airport security, but based on the fact that to pull off serious damage, you need a group of bad guys of some minimum size at least X, to handle the finance, assembly, deployment, and so forth. So through hassling, tracking, spying, eavesdropping, forced cooperation by unfriendly goverments, we seek to prevent groups from growing to size X.
Fortunately, the bigger a group gets, the easier it gets to detect, through its larger footprint, and through increased numbers of informers and turncoats they encounter.
So that's what all this eavesdropping is about, that the NYT is trying its best to undermine. There's the moronic activity, if you want to bash somebody.
The TSA is just theater. It doesn't matter if they're incompetent or not.
I'd suggest bomb sniffing dogs trained enough to work at liberty, milling round in the airport. The huge advantage is that you could amuse yourself petting a dog in the waiting area ; and (supposing they remember how to train a dog to work at liberty - see Koehler, The Koehler Method of Dog Training, et seq.) the dogs pretty effective at their jobs.
Actually, they didn't. I think you could carry up to a three inch blade with you onto the plane. Certainly, your standard swiss army knife (and the box cutters the 9/11 hijackers had) were perfectly acceptable. I always carried my swiss army knife with no problem, throwing it into the tray with my keys and change and no one ever said a thing about it (so its not like I snuck it through and never got caught). I do remember the guy in front of me in Atlanta sprinting back to the counter (apparently in the hope he could somehow check it) after security discovered the twelve inch divers knife and informed him he couldn't carry that onto the plane--dumbass.
I also once got a phony gun slipped under my carry on by security in an spot check (again in Atlanta). When they pulled that out on the other side I almost pissed myself. You'll be happy to know the screeners caught that one.
In fact, airplane cabin Pit Bulls would be a nice addition, instead of Sky Marshalls.
Pit Bulls, contrary to what you read in the papers, are enormously reliable ; and difficult to stop (they don't go into shock when injured very easily. A hijacker would have a huge problem on his hands).
Teddy Roosevelt had a Pit Bull, I think. It wound up America's dog in WWI, like the British Bulldog. Time to bring it back.
Right, because it's totally absolutely inconceivable that any group of people armed with knives will ever be able to hijack a plane successfully again,
And absolutely, with no exceptions 100% of the time, people will go to lengths including sacrificing their own lives just to give someone else "30 seconds" to subdue the hijackers.
Heck, with this logic we might as well allow passengers to carry guns because a terrorist can only carry 13 bullets at a time right?
Because, if another attack were to happen, the first thing people would ask is "why did we settle for only catching 20% of the weapons?" and someone would have to come up with an answer.
Too bad the Dave Kopels of the world prevent any discussion of preventing this and actually think that introducing more weapons into the marketplace is the solution to terrorism and instability in the world.
It was not until the one time that I forgot to put it in my bag, and put it in a separate bowl for scanning, that it was flagged and taken from me. Even then, it was not the scanner people who caught it, but one of the 'traffic direction' guys.
My trips involved bay area and san diego airports exclusively. Those screeners are lazy and stupid. I can't imagine how bad the checked-baggage screeners are -- they don't have hundreds of passengers watching them do their jobs.
Actually, they were NOT found to be "even worse." And the European and Israeli experience (no hijackings in Israel sicne 1969 despite many attempts), suggests that they are better.
It's not like you can have two security lines at an airport competing with each other to provide the best "service",
I'm not at all sure you can't. But let's assume this is true. Still, competition could occur 1) between different airports in the same metro area, 2) between different firms bidding for contracts. In addition, the private contractors can more easily fire and/or discipline incompetent employees.
What makes you think this statement is true. Sure, private employers can hire and fire at will, but the government can fire for cause and if you want to fire someone for being incompetent then that is for cause. You also claim that European security personnel are more competent, yet in Europe (as you libertarians love to complain so loudly about) work rules favor employees and firing employees is much more difficult, even than firing government employees in this country. So it can't be simply an issue of showing incompetent boobs the door.
And as noted above, TSA employees are not allowed to unionize. Even if they could, government unions have much less power than their private counterparts. Hand security over to private companies and that dreadful possibility is always there.
Furthermore, you really didn't address my point about competition. That is that what the travelling public wants out of screeners (from the content of some of the comments, some of you take absolute delight in committing felonies just to put one over on TSA screeners) is at odds with what the government wants (and the airlines might want something entirely different from the other two groups, e.g., they have thwarted efforts to increase security on air cargo, even though everybody agrees that is a huge security hole).
No. Terrorist do not have access to modern weapons (jet fighters / cruise missles . . ) but rather exploit weaknesses in our infrastructure or carry out pathetic guerrilla attacks* with substandard weapons.
Of course, no matter how bad airport security is (and I'm always terrified of taking a little dope with me when i fly) there's absolutely no reason to fear flying. We'd need a 9-11 every 2 or 3 weeks to make flying even comparable to driving in casualties.
*Case in point was the latest "war" in Lebanon - Hezbollah fired thousands and thousands of Kaytusha rockets while causing a handful of casualties and minor property damage.
Well, I'm sure the U.S. military would disagree with you about the damage that can be done with modern weapons such as RPGs, AK-47s, relatively cheap and portable anti-aircraft missiles, IEDs made out of cheap, modern explosives or old artillery shell and using a cell-phone or garage door opener as a remote trigger. And for the much ballyhooed WMDs, the machine gun and conventional bombs killed many more people (by an order of magnitude or two) in the twentieth century than chemical or nuclear weapons ever did (even if you include Hitler's gas chambers in the toll).
Yes, because nothing stops a terrorist like a 60 lb dog peeing on his shoes in excitement and then rolling over for a belly scratch.
There'd be extra excitement when the pit bill got bored and decided to "wrestle" someone's hand luggage.
I think phillylaw's entirely right: TSA's about making elected officials Look Like They're Doing Something, not about actually providing effective security against a real threat. You look at passenger miles flown, plane miles flown, passenger hours flown, or plane hours flown, and the terrorist attack rate is so low it might as well be zero. Airport security: much ado about nothing.
But people aren't trying to sneak guns onto planes. If we do catch 20% of guns, and we've caught 0 that weren't test guns, that means that we're catching them all.
If someone wants to get a bunch of guns on a plane, the screeners will start catching them, just by random search.
The point of screening people before they get on a plane isn't just to secure that one plane; it's to secure all the others, too.
I think you've answered your own question. Being able to fire at will is easier than firing someone after proving it at some hearing.
You can certainly argue that employees get better treatment when the employer has to prove cause, but let's not pretend it doesn't make the job of firing people (justly or not) harder.
It seems they just want some perks like nice clothes and a private jet. Hillary and the media have this well in hand.
Employment at will is a nice theory, but in today's workplace, except for menial jobs and small employers, it is simply not reality. Most companies that are big enough to have an HR department is going to have a formal discipline policy and steps that must be followed before someone can be fired.
a: real bombs and weapons are remarkably easier to find than dummy ones and/or
b: the function of all the screening isn't to catch the stuff, but for another purpose.
While I think Bruce Schneier is demonstrably wrong on a lot of stuff, he's right on this: it's just security theater -- and bad security theater -- intended to show, at great expense, that the Government Is Doing Something.
And, at that, it's much less of a dreadful failure.
The best evidence of this is that almost all the changes in TSA procedure over the last several years have been entirely reactive, instead of prospective
Of course they are reactive. Remember all the flack for the Bushism about how terrorists are thinking up new ways to attack America and so are we?
You fail statistics 101. Look up "sampling bias" and "binomial distribution" because I'm too damned tired to do the math (and nobody appreciated it the last time I did it).
Compromise pervades daily life. This is but another example.
Remember- the purpose of a business is to make a profit. How this is done is not a major concern, as long as it is legal (or can be made to appear so). Airport security was in private hands prior to 9/11, and they were responsive to the customer- the airlines that paid them, not the flying public. The airlines wanted smooth, unobtrusive security- and they generally got it.
There was no real reason to dismiss the private companies- but we did need to change who called the tune.
FYI- I fly so much on business that I never fly on vacation.
Of course not. It's just a major improvement over government bureaucracy.
Airport security was in private hands prior to 9/11, and they were responsive to the customer- the airlines that paid them, not the flying public. The airlines wanted smooth, unobtrusive security- and they generally got it.
The airlines, of course, had an incentive to cater to the flying public (since otherwise they wouldn't get customers). Yes, private security screeners perhaps slipped up on 9/11. Of course so too did the government in a big way. Remember also that bringing box cutters and knives onto a plane was not against the rules prior to 9/11. I openly brought my own Swiss Army knife on planes many times pre-2001. Government could have made it illegal prior to 2001, but chose not to.
The point is not that privatization eliminates all mistakes, but that it greatly reduces their incidence.
Or simply fly frequently with Swiss Army knives and the like to figure out which screeners are incompetent, or fly frequently and chit-chat with TSA employees until they get the info they need. No need to take chances - just to be patient.
Of course, this is why JFK will start x-raying passengers.
Depending on keeping security procedures a secret is the worst mistake you can make. They aren't, they will never be, and pretending that they should be amounts to - you guessed it - a false sense of security.
Same with targeting 100% effectiveness. Again, no security plan should premise itself on being 100% effective, because it won't be. If being less that 100% effective means you're compromised, then you have no security plan. You only have to be as effective as necessary to make an attack too risky.
That said, I agree they are stupid in many ways. One way in particular: the validity of the boarding pass is never verified against the name on it. It would be absolutely trivial to get on a plane with a ticket purchased under any name you want. (Think: show a fake one with your real name on it to the security agent - the only time you have to show ID.)
Unless the intended victim puts his arms up in the way - then the only thing you can do quickly with a small knife is to inflict some painful but not incapacitating wounds on the arms themselves. And the knife ceases to be even that useful when one of the other passengers grabs your knife arm. Other passengers can be throwing things.
Yes, even a small knife gives a decided advantage in a one one one fight - but a hijacking nowadays won't be a one on one fight. It will be a knock-down, dragout fight where the terrorists are badly outnumbered, although they would probably be stronger and better trained than most of their opponents, and (partly thanks to security rules) somewhat better armed than passengers who had no reason to smuggle weapons aboard. But I think the terrorists would lose as long as security prevents them from even trying to bring in better weapons than small knives and even small pistols with limited ammunition. (Short swords or submachine guns with plenty of ammo would be a different matter - but to get those through security would probably be a matter of suborning the caterers and bringing them in with the meals, because even poorly competent screeners are apt to notice that much metal.)
And to get back to the original 9-11 hijacking: box cutters worked because people just sat and watched as the terrorists hacked away. People sat and watched because for 30 years every first world goverment had been telling them to do just that. If they hadn't been confident about bringing boxcutters through security, Bin Laden could have just sent twice as many men, with instructions to request airline pillows and then use them to smother the attendants and flight crew - and quite likely the passengers still would have sat and watched.
More room for concealed weapons? ;-)
I agree twice. Going through Madrid, I saw enough to convince me that sending half a dozen attractive--not in the Audrey Hepburn style--young women on the same plane, with very large suitcases would basically be free play for everybody else.
And, it's one thing to stand on the mat with your hands at your sides while the instructor points out the good hits. It's another to find one of those spots when the guy is wired and moving.
I've carried a coping saw handle for decades. It's handy in a number of ways, as lethal as a knife in a thrust, the butt end can do less than lethal things when that's necessary and airport screeners in several countries have looked at it and shrugged. Because....it's not a weapon.
But, if anybody's interested in an experiment, roll up one of the thinner news mags--like Newsweek--tightly, and thrust it at something you can afford to lose. Tremendous impact, no compression at all, and if you are going up across the face, the edges will cut.
What highjackers have going for them is the aisle. It's one at a time until somebody gets behind them.
Nope. Flight 93 is the icon and nobody has failed to think through their scenario.
Do you want to take the chance that you are the 1-in-10 or 1-in-5 that will get through TSA? If you don't, all air traffic will be stopped, your cohorts will likely be found, and you will spend the next 3 years in Gitmo.
Also, remember that each of the 9-11 terrorists were working with 4 others. They could not have been effective on their own, even before the average flyer decided they were likely to die in a hijacking and they might as well resist. So to be effective, all 5 (or say 3 out of 5) would have to make it through TSA. Obviously, with a small percentage chance of any one making it through, the odds go steeply down when you have to get your whole group through. More likely, you will pursue other avenues for terrorism.
TSA doesn't have to be 100% effective in catching would-be terrorists to be 100% effective in deterring terrorism in the air.
On the other hand, just bringing down an airplane and killing everyone aboard is much simpler. I suspect that a few pounds of plastic explosive molded into two shaped charges and planted in the right spots in the rear lavatories could cut off all controls to the tail and crash the plane - but the terrorists would have to know just how to shape the explosive and just where to plant it. Or a larger bomb exploding at high altitide in checked luggage would stand a fair chance of peeling an airliner apart (all depending on the size of the bomb, where it wound up in the luggage compartments, and the characteristics of the surrounding luggage). X-raying luggage may detect bombs of conventional design, but someone with a knowledge of chemistry and explosives and a little creativity should be able to rig a bomb that looks nothing like anything the screeners have been trained to look for.
But it hasn't happened, and only two attempts have been reported as detected and stopped. One of them, Reid the shoe bomber, got explosives through security undetected but seems to have been a poor bomb-maker and attracted attention by repeated unsuccessful attempts to light his shoes. The other conspirators never even reached the airport, and it's very doubtful that their liquid-mix bomb would have worked at all. The competent bombmakers have avoided airports but hit many other targets, and that suggests that airport security is good enough - at least, until some magical means is discovered of securing subways, busses, nightclubs, and everywhere else people may congregate.
Do you want to take the chance that you are the 1-in-10 or 1-in-5 that will get through TSA? If you don't, all air traffic will be stopped, your cohorts will likely be found, and you will spend the next 3 years in Gitmo.
Obviously, I wouldn't want to take that chance. But a terrorist willing to sacrifice his life for his cause might well take such a chance, and indeed many terrorists routinely do defy odds that great.
This assumes that you're in a one on one fight which is not going to be the case. The person with the knife is going to be swarmed.
How many planes have been hijacked since 9/11/01?
How many were hijacked in the 6 years before then?
One thing that 9/11 did was take the plane hijacking tool out of the terrorist's toolbag.
If the question is "is TSA effective at protecting airplanes?", then that's a pretty clear yes.
If you ask "are they efficient for the money we're spending?" or "are they avoiding infringing on our privacy rights?" or "does TSA spend a lot of time on useless security procedures that just hassle travelers?", then you might get a different answer.
Yes, I concur that the current screening is nothing more than security theatre.
(Anyone remember the gaps in the partitions between "secure" and "non-secure" areas at DFW? Have those been fixed?)
Just last night, while picking my son up at the airport, I watched as 2 pilots went through the security gate. they presented their badges, and then proceeded to remove belts and shoes and empty their pockets to get through security.
Now if you are a pilot, what implements do you really need to hi-jack the plane?