You gotta love the TSA. They serve no real purpose, but its a monster too big to kill, staffed by people who desperately cling to the notion they're doing something important.
They don't stop hijackings (locking the cockpit door does that), they don't stop bombings (there are much better targets for that, which don't involve killing the bomber), they don't stop weapons (lots of airports outside the US have simple metal detectors for that.)
They do however cost the govt a lot of money, keep a lot of expensive-machine-makers, and in business, improve shampoo sales at destinations, waste a lot of passenger time and so on.
The grunts working for TSA on the floor at airports aren't desperately clinging for the notion that they're doing something important, or working towards some lofty, noble, and/or altruistic goal.
It's just a job.
They're principally motivated to do this job by the promise of a steady paycheck and decent benefits -- the same motivation that most other people with steady paychecks and decent benefits also have.
In my experience many of them do feel like they're doing something important, and some seem principally motivated to do the job by the promise of being able to bully travellers.
First I agree TSA is mostly theater... however if you HAD to have it, you want the people to work like this. I might be old-school but I think everyone should have pride and responsibility in their work. Even if from the outside it is meaningless.
100% no reason to be a bully, that is not pride/responsibility. Every job has ass assholes.
>Yeah, but jobs that are police-adjacent have them at a very high rate. Almost like they select for it or something...
Proximity to violence is probably the measuring stick you're looking for.
Police spend the bulk of their day credibly threatening violence. Just about every word that comes out of their mouth, pen or keyboard while they're at work is implicitly back by an "or else". Everyone who isn't an asshole is gonna wash out of that job, start doing something behind a desk, start a PI firm, etc. etc. So you're left with rookie and assholes and the occasional exception.
The TSA, all your non-police state and municipal enforcement agencies, etc, etc, are gonna serve to concentrate "asshole lites" people because anybody who isn't will have issues spending their day dispensing what are basically "do as I say, or pay what I say, or else the police will do violence on you" threats on behalf of the state and so they'll jump ship as they become jaded same as cops do, but the pressures are less because they're not as proximate to the violence.
You can take this a third step out. There are all sorts of industries, jobs, etc, etc. that exist soley to keep the above two groups off your back. Nobody wants to hire these people, but are basically forced to under 3rd hand thread of violence. Same effect, but still watered down.
Even more removed are jobs where some fraction of the business is driven to you under similar circumstances. For example, ask any mechanic. People forced to be there by a state inspection program are consistently the worst customers. And there's the same wash out effect. People get tired of arguing about tread depth or whatever and they go turn wrenches on forklifts or whatever.
Proximity to petty power might be a better measuring stick. The same sorts of people gravitate to those jobs as the people who sit at the DMV window and tell you you need to get back in line, wait another two hours, and go to a different DMV window with the correct form.
Probably the reverse: obnoxious people who seek badge-given authority but fail police entry exams (e.g. the psych part), carry on to other forms of employment that offer badges and uniforms, but have lax standards.
At least one of us is being serious here; I'm not sure if you're included in that group or not. (Don't really care, either. It appears to me that you've demonstrated yourself to be uselessly snarky either way.)
> They don't stop hijackings (locking the cockpit door does that)
9/11 also stopped all future hijackings. Up to that point passengers were trained that if they stayed calm they would likely survive. Now? Short of the hijackers getting guns on the plane, passengers will absolutely fight back.
> they don't stop bombings (there are much better targets for that, which don't involve killing the bomber)
Suicide bombers are probably the main vector that TSA helps avoid even if they miss some items sometimes.
> Suicide bombers are probably the main vector that TSA helps avoid even if they miss some items sometimes.
Not really, but this is because there are pretty much no suicide bombers anywhere in airports. They are incredibly rare.
But if you're a suicide bomber, by the time you get to the TSA checkpoint you can do a ton of damage inside a terminal during a holiday season when all airports are packed. Until then no one is stopping you.
There used to be suicide bombings in the news all the time. Hijackings were the reason they instituted the metal detectors at airports.
Improved security seems unlikely as a reason, given how many tests they fail. Was it just a fad? Did they decide it wasn't getting them what they wanted at a high personal cost? Did they find something more effective?
Common things don't get into the news. How many people died in car related accidents in your country yesterday - it almost never even makes the morning news in your country, much less international news.
There's lots of suicide attacks in poorer African countries.
But the west by and large won the war on terror, it broke up all the state sponsored terrorist camps, and built a vast surveillance network capable of spotting people trying to build these devices. Israel was the flashpoint and they built walls and put cameras and AI everywhere and just flat out ignore human rights. It's just really hard to radicalise someone to that extent and not have them show up. Isis was also behind a lot of the attacks and they don't exist anymore. Afghanistan and Pakistan also don't shelter terrorists anymore because they might have kicked the US out but they don't want them back again.
Most of this is terrible from a civil liberties / human rights / sovereignty point of view, but if you wanted to stop suicide bombings it worked.
As far as the terror in terrorism goes, blowing up a plane or hijacking it and flying it into a building is a much bigger impact than blowing up a queue of people. It doesn't need to be rational.
I grew up in a time and place when terror bombings were "commonplace". And while actual bombs were rarish, bomb alerts were not.
The impact of a bomb at a post office or shopping mall or commuter train was way more impactful than planes. Only a small number of people flew, and that was easily avoided if you cared. It's a lot harder to process when a place you go regularly explodes.
Flying into buildings is not gonna happen again. That tactic didn't survive even a few hours as UA 93 demonstrated. Passengers won't allow it, and these days the cockpit door are locked.
I was hoping these events could be used to impose fines/jailtime for airlines/airports/security that have queues longer than 5 people, but you know, counter-terrorism can’t mean making life better for the public.
> I was hoping these events could be used to impose fines/jailtime for airlines/airports/security that have queues longer than 5 people, but you know, counter-terrorism can’t mean making life better for the public.
Not even at private airports or business terminal can you can manage not having a queue smaller than 5 people. So this is a really no-go from many points of view.
BRU did something incredibly retarded after the incident: moved the queue outside. I mean yes, in open air a bomb is less lethal than in an enclosed space, but will still kill people.
And like others said, we developed capabilities to track hostiles before they can actually blow up a bunch of people. That's why you don't see FRA or MUC or CDG or LHR being blown up daily.
The only reason you believe aircraft bombings aren't being stopped is because you live in a world where rigourous security has stopped all aircraft bombings.
Yeah. The "security theater" absolutely does play its part in stopping attacks. Without it, airplanes would be an extremely easy target for any nutjob to commit mass murder in. They wouldn't even necessarily need a bomb, anything that can cause a big enough fire mid-flight could be potentially catastrophic. Over past few decades many airliners have crashed because out of control fire in the cabin / cargo hold. I really don't want it to be easy for any random person to cause such fire.
> Without it, airplanes would be an extremely easy target for any nutjob to commit mass murder in.
They still are, but I'm not comfortable spelling out details. The 95% TSA failure rate should lead you to this conclusion naturally.
> They wouldn't even necessarily need a bomb, anything that can cause a big enough fire mid-flight could be potentially catastrophic.
People have plenty of such things with them as it currently stands. Plenty more can be trivially brought on board in a checked bag or even pocket. But again I'm not going to spell it out.
> I really don't want it to be easy for any random person to cause such fire.
Well that's unfortunate because it already is. I think the primary things protecting passengers are the cost of entry (the true nutjobs don't tend to be doing so well financially) and the passengers themselves. Regarding the latter, the shoe bomber was subdued by his fellow passengers.
> They wouldn't even necessarily need a bomb, anything that can cause a big enough fire mid-flight could be potentially catastrophic. Over past few decades many airliners have crashed because out of control fire in the cabin / cargo hold. I really don't want it to be easy for any random person to cause such fire.
It is that easy for a random person to cause such a fire.
It’s probably not that difficult to figure out how to overcharge lithium ion batteries so that they’re prone to catching fire or exploding when connected to a resistor that will overheat them.
Wireless relays are commodity items you can order online from hundreds of vendors.
Did you drop a sarcasm tag? Anyone can make a fire on a plane as they allow lighters on a plane, and batteries, and any number of flammable objects. None of that is facing any scrutiny nor stopping crazy people from being crazy.
Ironically, both India and China forbid lighters on planes. Famously you see a collection of them around the bins just outside the airport as all the smokers leave them for others.
Yes it's possible to make a fire on a plane, but it would be even easier to cause a big fire if there was zero monitoring of bags. As flawed as airport security is, it should generally catch things like somebody trying to get a carry-on bag full of gasoline or extremely large lithium-ion batteries on board.
I take security that catches 50 or even 20% of threats any day over 0 security.
I've heard that cell phones often catch fire on planes, and the crews know how to deal with that. I guess they have to because the odds of one going up are pretty good across so many flights.
It's easier to deal if it's in carry on bag. This is why batteries are forbidden in checked luggage. Once it all burns the airplane has got to land asap and it's an emergency.
My checked luggage did not pass xray multiple times because they detected powerbanks. I had to come back and take it out. However it also did pass xray a couple times with powerbanks so it's not a reliable system.
Trains are a much easier target in most countries. Generally only the high-speed / cross border ones have any security at all. Until maybe 10 years ago you didn't even really need a ticket to get access to one (now ticket barriers are common).
Those tend to have extremely limited usefulness. Good enough to assassinate a single person at point blank range before they catastrophically fail but (unless something has changed) not much else. Plastic just isn't cut out for the job.
You still need metal parts, notably a gun barrel capable of holding extreme pressures until the bullet gets up to speed. That isn’t plastic. The grip and frame might be plastic, but not the barrel.
This is either incorrect or only technically correct. In the context of smuggling a weapon through a metal detector at a checkpoint there are nonferrous and even entirely plastic variants. Possessing them is generally illegal because essentially the only purpose is for assassinations.
Those are exotic parts that would have to be manufactured specially. You don’t buy them off the shelf. They are costly to procure and difficult to work with. One doesn’t just load up the 3d printer and push Go. To be clear, I’m sure a homemade gun can be passed through a metal detector checkpoint, but that requires some real thought and skill. More than likely, the real weak link at the checkpoint is not the detector “seeing” the gun but the half-asleep agent missing it, given the red-teaming results which show even very traditional firearms have a good chance of slipping through.
the handle on roll type luggage. not the actual handle but that is where you would hide a long piece of thick wall tube. not that a long piece of would be nessacery. a short one would do, the point being the metal detectors do not stop you from bringing metal into the airport.
Of course. Lots of metal goes through the detectors. The point is that the detectors “see” it and that’s then your chance to catch it. Whether you actually do or not is another question. But 3d printing a gun doesn’t give you a “plastic gun.” Btw, this is the same reason why the “Glocks are plastic guns that go through metal detectors unseen” stuff in the 1980s was always a myth. Glocks have a polymer frame but they always have a metal barrel.
No idea. I only replied to the guy saying that "metal detectors stop weapons". Which is false.
The evidence is in US law. Because they would be undetectable, 3d printed guns are required to have some metal inserted into it to be legal (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D-printed_firearm#United_Stat...). I think a guy who can 3d print a gun and wants to bring it onto a plane could probably skip that step;)
"I only replied to the guy saying that "metal detectors stop weapons". Which is false."
Taken in a strict boolean sense, yes, but real-world policy is rarely boolean, and mostly about tradeoffs and how many nines of reliability you want to spend on.
Metal detectors will catch the vast, vast majority of guns ever produced, which is their whole point of existence.
Not in the context of someone smuggling a weapon through a security checkpoint. At least not unless they're certain that it's small enough not to trigger the detector.
That said I will note that it is generally illegal to possess such nonferrous weapons regardless of circumstance.
How does a plastic pistol open the cockpit door? It is proof to small calibers. You might shoot someone in the plane and then you will be subdued and ghaddafied with a SkyMall magazine. Not the most effective form of terrorism.
Countries that didn't create the TSA also had a reduction in terrorism.
I agree. Such a pistol won't even get you many shots before catastrophically failing.
But upthread it was suggested that metal detectors are sufficient to stop weapons and a discussion of 3D printed guns followed. Nonmetallic weapons (and other tools) of all sorts are possible, 3D printed or otherwise.
If you want a gun you can use more than a couple times need metals. However if the goal is one shot plastic is good enough. Even plastic bullets will work - not well, but one well placed/timed shot is all we are talking about.
When flying international in to the US, we literally all stand in long lines watching the TSA agents. TSA serves as the introduction to America...
I can't think of another country where the personnel aren't groomed and 'height / weight proportionate'.
They don't stop hijackings (locking the cockpit door does that), they don't stop bombings (there are much better targets for that, which don't involve killing the bomber), they don't stop weapons (lots of airports outside the US have simple metal detectors for that.)
They do however cost the govt a lot of money, keep a lot of expensive-machine-makers, and in business, improve shampoo sales at destinations, waste a lot of passenger time and so on.
So... what's not to love?