Yup. Gotta stop that shoe bomber! And it makes people feel safe, I guess.
(except some international flights are governed by the arriving country’s rules, so sometimes you don’t have to if you are flying overseas.)
That’s basically the question posted in the OP, though, isn’t it?
Is TSA passenger screening itself largely responsible? Or something else? Maybe the terrorist repelling stone I wear around my neck? Would those dollars be better spent elsewhere?
The absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence. As of now, there’s some fairly good but not conclusive evidence that TSA passenger screening is not efficient or particularly effective at stopping terrorist plots. So, is TSA passenger screening causative of the low level of passenger deaths or merely correlated?
And that appears to be where a lot of posters have been talking past each other. There appears to be the implication in several posts that doubting the efficacy TSA passenger screening is tantamount to doubting any and all aviation security measures. That’s patently untrue from the responses so far.
The argument is rather that if there’s a cause/effect link, you’d think there’d be better evidence from the testing and there’s not. But if it’s merely correlated, that means other security measures or other causes have been largely effective and the TSA screening itself is more for the psychological benefit that we’re doing ‘something’. That does have a certain value, but it’s fair to ask about a cost/benefit for just a psychological benefit if it turns out that’s the primary benefit of the screening.
For example, the Metrojet example from earlier in the thread in Egypt, which somehow was used as a example in favor of TSA passenger screening. TSA style passenger screening wouldn’t have been successful at stopping the plot, since the prime suspects were employees of the airline and/or airport. Better security measures for personnel and in sensitive areas could have stopped it. And I imagine the vast majority of posters, even the ones who question the efficacy of the TSA itself, would agree with the need for heightened security and checks for aircraft and airport personnel.
TL;DR - aviation security good; Questionable if TSA itself contributes to aviation security
They are not. TSA officers at airport checkpoints do not have police powers. If law enforcement is needed they call the police.
Was this ever a tactic to begin with? I can find only a single reference to a shoe-bomb attempt, Richard Reid. I can find no information about even a single other shoe-bomb attempt that was foiled by TSA. You could say TSA has been successful in preventing shoe bombs, and you could also say the shoe bomb was a one-off that was never contemplated before or since, and the removal of shoes for screening is just a waste of time and money.
And I don’t even question “TSA” per se, we need someone to man some sort of security at airports. What I question is the specific rules and rigamarole we have put up with since 9/11. Removing shoes. No small blades. (They keep weakening that, because security experts are in agreement that it’s useless – so now small scissors are allowed, even though scissors are really just two knives linked together.) No one without a ticket can go through security. Slow expensive scanning machines instead of cheap metal detectors. (At least we’ve moved from the nude-o-scan to the faster and less hazardous cartoon-people-readers.)
Some of the new security is probably good. Randomly screening a few passengers for recent contact with explosives, for instance. Maybe even the ban on liquids (although they PROMISED they would be able to distinguish potential explosives from other liquids years ago. 
) The hardened door to the pilot’s cabin is certainly good.
But there’s so much. And the cost is so high, in time, money, and inconvenience. Can it possibly be worth it?
Some very good posts in this thread. I’d especially like to acknowledge "Stranger’s posts, which I consider extremely well reasoned. After 9/11, strengthen cockpit doors, and include in preflight safety announcements an invitation for passengers to assist in subduing announced hijackers at request of flight staff, and your 9/11 problem is solved.
I recall an Atlantic article I read shortly after 9/11 which outlined multiple “terrorist” actions that could be readily done, much easier than accessing an airplane, which would have outsized economic impact. But we haven’t seen those occur either.
Supporters of TSA will say ANY amount of cost/inconvenience is worth it if it saves a single life. I disagree. As was mentioned upthread, the money spent on TSA COULD be spent in other ways, which I believe would benefit more people than as currently spent. Moreover, the time spent by hundreds of thousands of travelers is not inconsequential.
Not a popular opinion, but our responses to 9/11 imposed FAR greater costs than the events of 9/11 themselves. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe that even in the year of 9/11, traffic fatalities exceeded air deaths. Yet we keep driving. IMO, the loss of a certain number of planes/lives over a certain period could be outweighed by costs and the loss of liberty.
As I’ve advocated before (not ENTIRELY tongue in cheek!), perhaps we could address this in an economic manner. Charge more for high security flights - where everyone is strip searched. And have other flights where you sign a waiver and take your chances. Maybe issue everyone a gun to allow passengers to shoot back!
Your statement is correct on the face of it (highway deaths in the US are at around 35,000 per year, trending down; the U.S. enjoyed a nine-year streak of no commercial air fatalities, until the Southwest engine disaster last year which killed one person). However, you are comparing two modes of transportation in a way that shows relative safety for that mode of travel per se, not for the potential for deaths caused by terrorism and what we should do to prevent it.
What difference does it make to you whether you or a loved one die in a terrorist attack, as opposed to a car accident?
Most car accidents are relatively random, while terrorist attacks are intentional. Just after 9/11 many opposed to stricter screening gave figures on the low probability of being killed by a terrorist. True, but terrorist acts are not stochastic. (Though being killed by one might be.)
The kind of non-random cause of accidents is DUI - and we don’t have a big problem limiting the freedom of people to do that. We also spend a lot of money on airbags and the like which are totally useless to the vast majority of drivers. Until they aren’t.
You can’t compare the cost of prevention to the cost of what already happened. My field involved spending extra money on silicon to prevent those chips failing later. Screening is much like that. It is also the case that a disaster is useful in prodding people to take preventative measures.
You can compute whether the screening is worth it by comparing screening costs to the cost of a terrorist action multiplied by the probability of it occurring. There is a lot of room for argument there, but comparing the cost to the cost of things that already happened is invalid.
Standing in line does have a cost, but anyone feeling the cost is too high can buy faster access to the gate.
One of the questions I have for the effectiveness of TSA screening relates to the number of handguns seized.
One could argue that some of those are not absent minded people, but terrorists doing planning, testing defenses.
But if that is so, how many handguns are missed by TSA screening? Where are the terrorists acts from those? Maybe every case of a handgun found is just absent minded people (or people who deliberately carry guns for defense, rather than attack, ie, they want to be the hero if there is a hijacking). But can we tell? Is the screening having a net positive effect, or no effect at all? I don’t know.
You personally can do things to preventa auto accident. A safer car. Drive defensively. Modern safety electronics.
But you are helpless in the face of most terrorist attacks.
This is possible, but I think it’s pretty unlikely for a number of reasons.
The first is that it’s a crime to take a gun through an airport. Unless you think the TSA’s success rate is abysmally low, that’s a pretty big risk to take. You get fingerprinted and questioned. If you have any middle-east connections, you are likely to be highly scrutinized. That’s a huge risk to take. People willing to carry out terrorist attacks are not easy to come by. Are you really going to take a risk of burning one of your operatives just to probe security?
A much much better plan if you actually wanted to do this test would be to take something that looks like a gun on X-ray but is clearly not a gun. Like, maybe you can find a gun-shaped metal box with chocolates in it or something.
Any remotely competent attempted terrorist is not going to plan an attack that requires just walking through security with a weapon that TSA is trained to look for.
It is possible that current screening is catching really dumb potential terrorists. But I expect that that would be trumpeted far and wide. Really dumb potential terrorists are also likely to leave lots of evidence of their plots that can be easily found with the sort of cursory investigation that you’d put into some dumbass who showed up at an airport with a gun.
Or maybe you could … gasp … do your own Googling. If it takes you longer than the time you spend nattering at me, you need to work on your Google skills.
If I was investigating, I would find that to be far more suspicious than carrying a real gun.
It is believable enough if a person tells a story that he always carries a gun in this particular bag for personal protection, and that before he came to the airport he was rushing around, throwing clothes in the bag and dammit, just completely forget to remove the gun from the bag before going to the airport. So sorry.
It is believable because this is exactly the case in almost all incidences of people caught with guns at the checkpoints. And IIRC, they are usually released and made to pay a civil fine of a few thousand dollars. For example Passenger at Virginia airport caught trying to carry on patriotic-looking handgun | Fox News this passenger faces fines of “up to” $13,000. The only time I’ve seen arrests for this is in locations like New York or New Jersey where carrying or owning the gun like this is illegal in this first instance, whether in the airport or outside on the street.
But if someone is carrying a metal gun-shaped chocolate tin, I might think that the passenger is simply incredibly dense, but for the reasons you stated, I would definitely be suspicious that he was testing the security. Maybe you could not detain him for anything, but you could get his name and start and investigation, staking out his house and whatnot to see who he hangs around with.
A friend somewhat seriously suggested that each plane come equipped with baseball bats attached to the walls, that could be released by the pilot in the event of a terrorist attack.
Why am I picturing that this would end up like the church scene in Kingsmen?
Not my job to come up with cites to support *your *position.
Just an off-topic FYI – I was able (post-9/11) to accompany my aunt to the gate without a ticket; she was starting to show symptoms of dementia at the time. Asked the agents at check-in, and they printed me up a not-a-ticket…
… Upon googling, this is called an “escort pass” or “gate pass,” and it can apparently be used for accompanying passengers who are minor children or have a disability. (Also for meeting such people at their arrival gate.) I didn’t need to present any documentation in my case – my aunt was merely her adorably out-of-it self.
Policies vary by airline. Posters on Lifehacker suggest that asking nicely is a key tactic.
[URL=“https://www.smartertravel.com/can-someone-accompany-me-to-the-gate/”]
Thanks! I might use that in the future.
Do you happen to remember the name of that article? I’m pretty sure I read it and it was fascinating.
IIRC one of the examples was someone with a high powered rifle shooting at airplanes right as they took off in areas where the runway is right next to an urban ares. It most likely wouldn’t do serious damage but cause enough panic and security measures well worth the cost in terms of terror efficiency.
I don’t have a “position” — I merely mentioned TSA’s battle with milk as an overreach.
What is more interesting to me is your position in this little sub-discussion. Kindly explain that! I don’t want to put words in your mouth but it appears your position is something like:
“I don’t believe TSA failed to follow its policy on human milk. I don’t believe that TSA workers, out of spite, made a mother miss her flight. Yes, you provided a YouTube link but I don’t click on YouTubes; and I won’t waste my time Googling for your story. If you want me to believe the claim, kindly find a non-video link.”
Is that about it? If not, please help me understand.
In any event, I have no interest whatsoever in correcting your confusion about the TSA milk behavior. I am far more interested in understanding this little sub-discussion.