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Airport security in America discovered more than seven guns per day in 2015

74 points by jimsojim 11y ago

akerro 11y ago
My gf forgot to take out her pepper gas from her bag before flight. Her bag was scanned twice and no one noticed. We found it out at home. The can was opened, used once before. Well done security officers and billions dollar market for security scanners.
- OscarCunningham 11y ago
  I once carried a small penknife onto a plane just by forgetting I had it.
  - mollmerx 11y ago
    In some jurisdictions penknives are explicitly allowed, due to their blade typically being just under 60mm long.
  - rectang 11y ago
    Back in the 80's I once sat next to a guy with a set of a dozen or so Exacto knives. He passed the time on our flight making intricate wood carvings.
  - Arnt 11y ago
    I shave using an old-fashioned razor. From (not sure when, but most likely 2004) to 2010 I travelled with a pack of razor blades in my hand luggage most of the time. It sailed through dozens of inspections. I found it myself when I got a new laptop bag and emptied out the old one. I was so angry about all the hassle (hours of queuing, dozens of examinations, all for zero success) that I decided to go on, and have done it another 100-200 times since. Whenever I fly somewhere without checked luggage but will want to shave, I just take along my razor and a blade or two. My blades have been found twice and confiscated once. A tip for other security-minded travellers: There's a brand of toothpaste called "one drop only" whose tubes are small enough to pose no risk to aircraft security, yet last long enough that you don't need a tube for each trip.
    - akerro 11y ago
      My friend had toothpaste confiscated, because it's a liquid pack of more than 50ml... He was arguing for 20minutes that toothpaste is not a liquid and they let him go. I was allowed to take 75ml of honey.
      - SlashmanX 11y ago
        Isn't the 'rule' "Liquids, gels, pastes"? Also isn't the limit 100ml?
      - ant6n 11y ago
        I once gobbled down what was remaining in a jar of Nutella at security because they wouldn't let it on a flight. Apparently it's a paste.
        mindslight 11y ago
        I once drank 10oz of tequila at 9am. Fuck em. Frankly there should be shipping boxes at the molest-station, with the cost paid by the thugs that insist on stripping you of your personal property.
        HeyLaughingBoy 11y ago
        If anything deserves an upvote, it's this :-)
      - koliber 11y ago
        Story time: I was flying out of Paris and had bought some good ripe camembert cheese. I was flying without checked baggage, so I put it into my carry on. The lady at the security scan insisted the cheese was liquid. After a lot of back-and-forth where I was not getting anywhere, I commented exasperated: "If I had a cheese sandwich though, you'd let me pass?" to which she replied "Yes." I stepped out of line, bought a baguette, spread the cheese on it, and passed through security without any issues. I made sure to get into the line in which I would have to be checked by the same lady. She let me pass and avoided eye contact.
  - bcook 11y ago
    I once carried my actual knife (Schrade CH7) into the airport while traveling with my parents (pre 9/11), and I was allowed to take the knife on the plane, since the blade was "under 3 inches" (which it isn't). As an explanatory back-story, I am not from the city. Carrying a knife is normal where I come from. I was less than 10 years old.
    - hga 11y ago
      Heh, I once carried my late '70s manufacture Gerber Mark I boot knife (http://www.thegerberknives.com/mark.html http://www.thegerberknives.com/mark.html see bottom) in carry on luggage in the mid-1980s, PEOPLExpress Airlines was in a hurry and didn't want to check baggage on that flight (very streamlined, e.g. you paid by cash or credit card during the flight). I showed it (sheathed) to the guy saying "Uhhh..." and I guess he thought correctly I wasn't going to be a problem and waved me on.
- pyvpx 11y ago
  I flew from JFK to LAX to DEN with eight 9mm, hollow point rounds in my carry on bag. Denver TSA finally caught it and was very, very nice about it all (being white, having recently trimmed my beard, and having a non-foreign name definitely helped in that regard) TSA at major airports is security theatre, plain and simple.
  - savrajsingh 11y ago
    Thanks for acknowledging that being white inevitably changed the outcome ;)
    - HeyLaughingBoy 11y ago
      OTOH, on a trip to Alaska with multiple connections, my white, Irish-Norwegian descent wife was searched every time she went through security while I, her black husband, looked on with veiled amusement. YMMV.
      - luxpir 11y ago
        Not to deny the fact that profiling happens, but it occurred to me that the assumption your wife was carrying something for you might have also been at play. White women carrying narcotics is not an unheard of phenomenon. Sorry if that de-funs the situation!
rahimnathwani 11y ago
"Last year, undercover TSA agents managed to smuggle concealed guns and bombs past security 96% of the time." So does that mean that thousands more weren't detected?
- spike021 11y ago
  I'm curious if there's a bias here though. Do the undercover TSA agents not already know where the weaknesses are in the detection process?
  - elthran 11y ago
    Possibly - but if they know the weaknesses, then it means that they are being left unaddressed for whatever reason (malicious or otherwise)
    - derefr 11y ago
      Or just that highly-experienced senior agents who've worked in many different locations and have "seen it all" know what to look for, but most agents are junior and don't.
  - mseebach 11y ago
    That's very possible -- but it really doesn't change much, does it? A gun on its own isn't dangerous, a gun in the hand of a bad actor is. If bad actors (who, being motivated, must be assumed to have access to the same knowledge of weaknesses as the TSA) are getting ~96% of their guns through, it doesn't really matter that only 30%(no idea, just put a number<<96%) of neutral actors' guns do. Compare pen-testing: You want the best possible hackers, with as much information as possible, to take a swing at your system - not a bumbling amateur, even if the amateur accurately models 99% of your regular users.
- mirimir 11y ago
  Maybe undercover TSA agents are better smugglers.
titzer 11y ago
I have reached my article limit. Umm no, Economist, I won't subscribe.
- mollmerx 11y ago
  If you're interested in using a js bookmarklet to bypass, search for "froomens".
- ascorbic 11y ago
  You clearly are interested in reading their articles, so maybe you should think about paying. I've subscribed for at least 15 years and it's worth every penny.
  - fche 11y ago
    "worth every penny" They've drifted too far left for my taste. Used to subscribe, a decade or so ago.
    - ascorbic 11y ago
      Their position has been pretty consistent. Which issues do you think they've change their mind on?
- thinkindie 11y ago
  just use google chrome incognito or similar functionality in other browsers and it will work just fine
ghayes 11y ago
What are the penalties associated with these 2,555 incidents? I assume it's not legal to smuggle a loaded gun onto a flight, and these numbers are staggeringly high.
- ljosa 11y ago
  The TSA will refer you to the local police. What happens next depends on the local laws. In some states you will be arrested (e.g., Massachusetts, where a law prohibits most people from carrying guns into three of the state's airports). In other states, forgetting to take a gun out of your bag is no different from forgetting to take a water bottle out, and you will be allowed to return the gun to your car before going through security again and boarding your flight (e.g., Georgia, which passed the Safe Carry Protection Act in 2014).
  - uppity_stuppity 11y ago
    > allowed to return the gun to your car Ha ha! What an American comment! Not only having a gun, but driving your own car to the Airport. Americans love guns but hate public transport! Hilarious!
    - ptaipale 11y ago
      > Ha ha! What an American comment! Not only having a gun, but driving your own car to the Airport. It's not an American-only thing. I live about 20 km from the local international airport. It's 1 hour 20 minutes by train (at daytime), 20 minutes by car. Also, there's less walking if I drive. Which one shall I take? Not a difficult decision.
    - halviti 11y ago
      The majority of American airports are not serviced by trains. Public transport to an airport usually involves several bus transfers and at least an extra hour or more of travel time, on top of having to transport your luggage on and off each bus and hoping there is room for you and your items. Americans don't hate public transport, it's just simply not available like it is in Europe. A lot of this stems historically from automotive manufacturers buying up streetcar companies and then dismantling them to force people to drive and also the antiquated rail infrastructure that gives preference to freight cargo over passenger trains.
SixSigma 11y ago
4% of all shipping containers are inspected by customs at The Port Of Rotterdam. 1% contain things that shouldn't be there (that's all they would say when telling us). The port I was at (there are 25 I think) unload 14 million containers per year. Those are pretty good odds for smugglers. EDIT: they said random inspection but they would, wouldn't they
- willvarfar 11y ago
  Depends how the shipping containers they inspect are selected. It could be that they are targeted inspections.
  - runholm 11y ago
    Yea, they pick the 4% most likely to contain smuggled goods. 25% of them do. That does not mean 25% of all containers contain smuggled goods.
- dagw 11y ago
  You're assuming that the 4% where chosen completely at random.
- Cthulhu_ 11y ago
  Even if those 4% were mostly targeted searches, a lot of smuggling happens 'via' another country, to avoid containers (from, say, Colombia) from being targeted as suspect based on where they're from (or not directly). But yeah, good odds - 100% checks are impractical and even those will sometimes fail to find anything. The only real effect successfully finding smuggled wares has is that the wares will become more expensive, which will only make the suppliers want to smuggle more.
- bkor 11y ago
  Port of Rotterdam doesn't randomly check containers. They have pretty good systems to determine if something strange is going on. You cannot just extrapolate the 4% if the distribution wasn't random.
- yoz-y 11y ago
ck2 11y ago
Just wait for a hijacking with a gun, the NRA will start insisting people open carry on planes to protect themselves.
- Gravityloss 11y ago
  Math puzzle: What are the odds that more than half of the passengers want to die in a terrorist strike? So if we equipped all passengers with tasers, all terrorists would be caught. Of course, sometimes there might be some minor accidents, but they're not (very) lethal or harmful to the aircraft structure. One change would result. You would have to pay the cabin attendants a lot more :) Also the safety instructions would take a while longer. They would show how to operate the taser in case your neighbor starts doing something suspicious.
  - ck2 11y ago
    Minor incidents? People would be letting their kids play with them and shoot other kids/people with them, police would have to meet every plane landing to arrest people for tasering the people behind them kicking their seat. BTW if you let all passengers have them, you'd be arming terrorists, sooner or later - all they have to do is use it on a pilot going to the bathroom, if they are ready to die they don't need anyone to land the plane.
    - Gravityloss 11y ago
      You would have to have a taser license perhaps, and you'd get a discount when flying. Especially if there's a shortage of security people on a particular flight. Airports could have 20 minute courses while you're waiting for your delayed flight anyway. This is normal par for the course, one would just sell it as normal crowd sourcing / uberizing of cabin security. ;)
    - hueving 11y ago
      Have you seen a pilot go to the bathroom? On us flights the flight attendants set up a barricade using a drink cart before the pilot comes out so you can't even get close to the bathroom without a major commotion.
venomsnake 11y ago
With the amount of guns in the US and the way people forget what they carry it is not out of ordinary or newsworthy.
DanielBMarkham 11y ago
This might be a good time to point out that finding the weapon is an idiotic way to conduct security. What you want to find is the dangerous person There are probably dozens if not hundreds of guns every day flying around the skies. Yet there is no danger. In fact, you could fill a plane with a fully armed Marine platoon, and there would be no increased danger. The TSA collecting oddball trinkets and weapons and then reporting about them has always struck me as one of the weirder aspects of the war on terror. Since it's obvious that armed terrorists aren't being arrested at checkpoints, and since it's also obvious that the population has been traveling with these weapons for as long as there has been air travel, what, exactly are we proving? That people forget and leave scissors and knives in their carry-ons? We are in the same spot here as we were with electronics just ten years ago. Everybody brought electronics on planes. Tons of people forgot to turn them off. We were given dire warnings about why turning them off was necessary. Yet planes kept taking off, flying, and landing safely. It wasn't that we were unsure whether or not these things were dangerous. Hell, we were conducting live experiments many times an hour that proved they were not. Same goes for some business guy who left his pistol in his computer case. We already know these guys are not security risks. We've been testing it with real, live, people and weapons for many decades now. TSA needs to be abolished. Immediately. Yes, we need flight security, but there are many drastically better ways of providing it. ADD: Of the many things that concern me about the TSA is what we're seeing in this article. In order to continue justifying its existence, it will need more and more to make us afraid of our fellow travelers. This is the terrible consequence of 9-11: we're turning the Defense Industrial base against the very population it is supposed to be protecting. Very, very bad stuff.
- tajen 11y ago
  "There are many drastically better ways of providing it" - The beginning was interesting, please develop and throw some ideas. Thank you.
- ZanyProgrammer 11y ago
  So you're in favor then of psychological profiling and no fly lists? Because those certainly block people who the government "thinks" are dangerous, regardless of the actual danger posed by the items on their person.
m1sta_ 11y ago
I remember accidentally taking a massive pair of scissors onto three flights while travelling from NYC to SYD. Arrived in Sydney for an Australian domestic leg and they were immediately found. I was very confused as to how the TSA had missed them so many times.
- robk 11y ago
  You should be more outraged at the fact scissors are banned, not happy they were found by the Aussies.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
d_theorist 11y ago
"The number of Americans trying to smuggle guns on to planes keeps rising" Is the actual headline. And it's one I find fault with. The mere presence of a gun in somebody's bag does not imply "smuggling". As alien as it seems to us in the UK (and elsewhere), there are certain parts of the US where people think absolutely nothing of carrying a gun around with them all the time. I have little doubt that some percentage of these finds are just due to forgetfulness, and not to any malign intent.
- 01Michael10 11y ago
  Did you even read the article? They are talking about cases where people are actually trying to hide the guns in their luggage which are on the rise. Sorry, the increase in found guns can't be explained merely by people "forgetting" them. Everyone should be MORE aware of what they are bring to the airport these days. Right?
  - MCRed 11y ago
    Do you realize it is perfectly legal to transport a firearm in your luggage? You just check it at the counter, and they usually put a flag on the case to indicate it has been cleared (to make sure it's unloaded.) I wonder how many of these are simply pieces where the flag was ripped off via the luggage transport system.
    - 01Michael10 11y ago
      Do you realize your reply has nothing to do with my comment? I don't believe most of these people were ever going to check their guns at the counter as in they are NOT "forgetting".
- Kiro 11y ago
  Maybe you're right but I think that you would have to be very absent-minded to accidentally bring a gun with you into airport security.
  - 11y ago
daniel-levin 11y ago
>> Last year, undercover TSA agents managed to smuggle concealed guns and bombs past security 96% of the time The system for gun/bomb detection is only as good as the agents responsible for it. For example, I saw my friend accidentally sneak a knife onto an plane two years ago. The metal detector flagged him, and he confidently told the official present: "Oh, it's my belt!" and after taking it off he walked through, with no further probing. He literally forgot about his EDC knife and wound up with it on the flight. It must be noted that this was in South Africa, but having travelled to both the USA and Europe, I know it could have happened there too. The current system is not robust to human error, and this is its fundamental flaw. Con artists and psychologists know how to systematically induce human error [1, 2]. It is conceivable that malicious actors (or TSA people pretending to be) can do exactly that and reliably subvert a human detection system. As an aside, it would be interesting to see TSA people try sneak weapons onto an El-Al flight [see 3, 4, 5 for why]. A humorous anecdote: once when returning from Israel, I had my bag full of dirty clothes thoroughly man-handled by an irate woman from El-Al security. I had two books inside, each with a metal inset in the spine. As soon as this was found out, I went from being treated like a terrorist to a non-threat in a few seconds. It was remarkably efficient. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confidence_trick https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confidence_trick [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_bias [3] http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB1001458258397595640 http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB1001458258397595640 [4] http://edition.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/01/11/yeffet.air.security.israel/ http://edition.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/01/11/yeffet.air.securit... [5] http://www.tabletmag.com/the-roll/102229/the-gatekeepers http://www.tabletmag.com/the-roll/102229/the-gatekeepers
zomg 11y ago
give me a break, what a joke. typical gun-grabbing economist article. turns out in all the states they are harping on, a gun is considered a tool and not some black, metal object of death, like they want you to think. and if i want to take a gun with me on a trip (where i'm legally licensed to carry, which is most states), i can already do that by checking it, like the majority of LAW ABIDING citizens do. if there was actual INTENT to "smuggle" a gun on a plane, with which to do harm, then there's a news story here, but there isn't. it's liberal, gun grabbing, troll bait and an attack on legal firearms owners. move on. </rant>
fche 11y ago
And the number of shootings on board airplanes has been ... zero.
- dawnbreez 11y ago
  The implicit danger is that someone will fly to another part of the world and start shooting there.
  - hga 11y ago
    And why would this be any more danger than of him using it while there? Note that if declared, it's legal to transport unloaded in checked baggage in the US, and unless things have drastically changed the airline etc. isn't going to wonder if possession is legal for you at your destination.
tuyguntn 11y ago
Suppose what would be headline if 7 guns will be from Middle Eastern guys, "Terrorists are attacking America" Hoping not to get downvoted for honest opinion

74 points by jimsojim 11y ago

My gf forgot to take out her pepper gas from her bag before flight. Her bag was scanned twice and no one noticed. We found it out at home. The can was opened, used once before. Well done security officers and billions dollar market for security scanners.

OscarCunningham 11y ago
I once carried a small penknife onto a plane just by forgetting I had it.
- mollmerx 11y ago
  In some jurisdictions penknives are explicitly allowed, due to their blade typically being just under 60mm long.
- rectang 11y ago
  Back in the 80's I once sat next to a guy with a set of a dozen or so Exacto knives. He passed the time on our flight making intricate wood carvings.
- Arnt 11y ago
  I shave using an old-fashioned razor. From (not sure when, but most likely 2004) to 2010 I travelled with a pack of razor blades in my hand luggage most of the time. It sailed through dozens of inspections. I found it myself when I got a new laptop bag and emptied out the old one. I was so angry about all the hassle (hours of queuing, dozens of examinations, all for zero success) that I decided to go on, and have done it another 100-200 times since. Whenever I fly somewhere without checked luggage but will want to shave, I just take along my razor and a blade or two. My blades have been found twice and confiscated once. A tip for other security-minded travellers: There's a brand of toothpaste called "one drop only" whose tubes are small enough to pose no risk to aircraft security, yet last long enough that you don't need a tube for each trip.
  - akerro 11y ago
    My friend had toothpaste confiscated, because it's a liquid pack of more than 50ml... He was arguing for 20minutes that toothpaste is not a liquid and they let him go. I was allowed to take 75ml of honey.
    - SlashmanX 11y ago
      Isn't the 'rule' "Liquids, gels, pastes"? Also isn't the limit 100ml?
    - ant6n 11y ago
      I once gobbled down what was remaining in a jar of Nutella at security because they wouldn't let it on a flight. Apparently it's a paste.
      - mindslight 11y ago
        I once drank 10oz of tequila at 9am. Fuck em. Frankly there should be shipping boxes at the molest-station, with the cost paid by the thugs that insist on stripping you of your personal property.
        HeyLaughingBoy 11y ago
        If anything deserves an upvote, it's this :-)
    - koliber 11y ago
      Story time: I was flying out of Paris and had bought some good ripe camembert cheese. I was flying without checked baggage, so I put it into my carry on. The lady at the security scan insisted the cheese was liquid. After a lot of back-and-forth where I was not getting anywhere, I commented exasperated: "If I had a cheese sandwich though, you'd let me pass?" to which she replied "Yes." I stepped out of line, bought a baguette, spread the cheese on it, and passed through security without any issues. I made sure to get into the line in which I would have to be checked by the same lady. She let me pass and avoided eye contact.
- bcook 11y ago
  I once carried my actual knife (Schrade CH7) into the airport while traveling with my parents (pre 9/11), and I was allowed to take the knife on the plane, since the blade was "under 3 inches" (which it isn't). As an explanatory back-story, I am not from the city. Carrying a knife is normal where I come from. I was less than 10 years old.
  - hga 11y ago
    Heh, I once carried my late '70s manufacture Gerber Mark I boot knife (http://www.thegerberknives.com/mark.html http://www.thegerberknives.com/mark.html see bottom) in carry on luggage in the mid-1980s, PEOPLExpress Airlines was in a hurry and didn't want to check baggage on that flight (very streamlined, e.g. you paid by cash or credit card during the flight). I showed it (sheathed) to the guy saying "Uhhh..." and I guess he thought correctly I wasn't going to be a problem and waved me on.
pyvpx 11y ago
I flew from JFK to LAX to DEN with eight 9mm, hollow point rounds in my carry on bag. Denver TSA finally caught it and was very, very nice about it all (being white, having recently trimmed my beard, and having a non-foreign name definitely helped in that regard) TSA at major airports is security theatre, plain and simple.
- savrajsingh 11y ago
  Thanks for acknowledging that being white inevitably changed the outcome ;)
  - HeyLaughingBoy 11y ago
    OTOH, on a trip to Alaska with multiple connections, my white, Irish-Norwegian descent wife was searched every time she went through security while I, her black husband, looked on with veiled amusement. YMMV.
    - luxpir 11y ago
      Not to deny the fact that profiling happens, but it occurred to me that the assumption your wife was carrying something for you might have also been at play. White women carrying narcotics is not an unheard of phenomenon. Sorry if that de-funs the situation!

rahimnathwani 11y ago

"Last year, undercover TSA agents managed to smuggle concealed guns and bombs past security 96% of the time." So does that mean that thousands more weren't detected?

spike021 11y ago
I'm curious if there's a bias here though. Do the undercover TSA agents not already know where the weaknesses are in the detection process?
- elthran 11y ago
  Possibly - but if they know the weaknesses, then it means that they are being left unaddressed for whatever reason (malicious or otherwise)
  - derefr 11y ago
    Or just that highly-experienced senior agents who've worked in many different locations and have "seen it all" know what to look for, but most agents are junior and don't.
- mseebach 11y ago
  That's very possible -- but it really doesn't change much, does it? A gun on its own isn't dangerous, a gun in the hand of a bad actor is. If bad actors (who, being motivated, must be assumed to have access to the same knowledge of weaknesses as the TSA) are getting ~96% of their guns through, it doesn't really matter that only 30%(no idea, just put a number<<96%) of neutral actors' guns do. Compare pen-testing: You want the best possible hackers, with as much information as possible, to take a swing at your system - not a bumbling amateur, even if the amateur accurately models 99% of your regular users.
mirimir 11y ago
Maybe undercover TSA agents are better smugglers.

titzer 11y ago

I have reached my article limit. Umm no, Economist, I won't subscribe.

mollmerx 11y ago
If you're interested in using a js bookmarklet to bypass, search for "froomens".
ascorbic 11y ago
You clearly are interested in reading their articles, so maybe you should think about paying. I've subscribed for at least 15 years and it's worth every penny.
- fche 11y ago
  "worth every penny" They've drifted too far left for my taste. Used to subscribe, a decade or so ago.
  - ascorbic 11y ago
    Their position has been pretty consistent. Which issues do you think they've change their mind on?
thinkindie 11y ago
just use google chrome incognito or similar functionality in other browsers and it will work just fine

ghayes 11y ago

What are the penalties associated with these 2,555 incidents? I assume it's not legal to smuggle a loaded gun onto a flight, and these numbers are staggeringly high.

ljosa 11y ago
The TSA will refer you to the local police. What happens next depends on the local laws. In some states you will be arrested (e.g., Massachusetts, where a law prohibits most people from carrying guns into three of the state's airports). In other states, forgetting to take a gun out of your bag is no different from forgetting to take a water bottle out, and you will be allowed to return the gun to your car before going through security again and boarding your flight (e.g., Georgia, which passed the Safe Carry Protection Act in 2014).
- uppity_stuppity 11y ago
  > allowed to return the gun to your car Ha ha! What an American comment! Not only having a gun, but driving your own car to the Airport. Americans love guns but hate public transport! Hilarious!
  - ptaipale 11y ago
    > Ha ha! What an American comment! Not only having a gun, but driving your own car to the Airport. It's not an American-only thing. I live about 20 km from the local international airport. It's 1 hour 20 minutes by train (at daytime), 20 minutes by car. Also, there's less walking if I drive. Which one shall I take? Not a difficult decision.
  - halviti 11y ago
    The majority of American airports are not serviced by trains. Public transport to an airport usually involves several bus transfers and at least an extra hour or more of travel time, on top of having to transport your luggage on and off each bus and hoping there is room for you and your items. Americans don't hate public transport, it's just simply not available like it is in Europe. A lot of this stems historically from automotive manufacturers buying up streetcar companies and then dismantling them to force people to drive and also the antiquated rail infrastructure that gives preference to freight cargo over passenger trains.

SixSigma 11y ago

4% of all shipping containers are inspected by customs at The Port Of Rotterdam. 1% contain things that shouldn't be there (that's all they would say when telling us). The port I was at (there are 25 I think) unload 14 million containers per year. Those are pretty good odds for smugglers. EDIT: they said random inspection but they would, wouldn't they

willvarfar 11y ago
Depends how the shipping containers they inspect are selected. It could be that they are targeted inspections.
- runholm 11y ago
  Yea, they pick the 4% most likely to contain smuggled goods. 25% of them do. That does not mean 25% of all containers contain smuggled goods.
dagw 11y ago
You're assuming that the 4% where chosen completely at random.
Cthulhu_ 11y ago
Even if those 4% were mostly targeted searches, a lot of smuggling happens 'via' another country, to avoid containers (from, say, Colombia) from being targeted as suspect based on where they're from (or not directly). But yeah, good odds - 100% checks are impractical and even those will sometimes fail to find anything. The only real effect successfully finding smuggled wares has is that the wares will become more expensive, which will only make the suppliers want to smuggle more.
bkor 11y ago
Port of Rotterdam doesn't randomly check containers. They have pretty good systems to determine if something strange is going on. You cannot just extrapolate the 4% if the distribution wasn't random.
yoz-y 11y ago

ck2 11y ago

Just wait for a hijacking with a gun, the NRA will start insisting people open carry on planes to protect themselves.

Gravityloss 11y ago
Math puzzle: What are the odds that more than half of the passengers want to die in a terrorist strike? So if we equipped all passengers with tasers, all terrorists would be caught. Of course, sometimes there might be some minor accidents, but they're not (very) lethal or harmful to the aircraft structure. One change would result. You would have to pay the cabin attendants a lot more :) Also the safety instructions would take a while longer. They would show how to operate the taser in case your neighbor starts doing something suspicious.
- ck2 11y ago
  Minor incidents? People would be letting their kids play with them and shoot other kids/people with them, police would have to meet every plane landing to arrest people for tasering the people behind them kicking their seat. BTW if you let all passengers have them, you'd be arming terrorists, sooner or later - all they have to do is use it on a pilot going to the bathroom, if they are ready to die they don't need anyone to land the plane.
  - Gravityloss 11y ago
    You would have to have a taser license perhaps, and you'd get a discount when flying. Especially if there's a shortage of security people on a particular flight. Airports could have 20 minute courses while you're waiting for your delayed flight anyway. This is normal par for the course, one would just sell it as normal crowd sourcing / uberizing of cabin security. ;)
  - hueving 11y ago
    Have you seen a pilot go to the bathroom? On us flights the flight attendants set up a barricade using a drink cart before the pilot comes out so you can't even get close to the bathroom without a major commotion.

venomsnake 11y ago

With the amount of guns in the US and the way people forget what they carry it is not out of ordinary or newsworthy.

DanielBMarkham 11y ago

This might be a good time to point out that finding the weapon is an idiotic way to conduct security. What you want to find is the dangerous person There are probably dozens if not hundreds of guns every day flying around the skies. Yet there is no danger. In fact, you could fill a plane with a fully armed Marine platoon, and there would be no increased danger. The TSA collecting oddball trinkets and weapons and then reporting about them has always struck me as one of the weirder aspects of the war on terror. Since it's obvious that armed terrorists aren't being arrested at checkpoints, and since it's also obvious that the population has been traveling with these weapons for as long as there has been air travel, what, exactly are we proving? That people forget and leave scissors and knives in their carry-ons? We are in the same spot here as we were with electronics just ten years ago. Everybody brought electronics on planes. Tons of people forgot to turn them off. We were given dire warnings about why turning them off was necessary. Yet planes kept taking off, flying, and landing safely. It wasn't that we were unsure whether or not these things were dangerous. Hell, we were conducting live experiments many times an hour that proved they were not. Same goes for some business guy who left his pistol in his computer case. We already know these guys are not security risks. We've been testing it with real, live, people and weapons for many decades now. TSA needs to be abolished. Immediately. Yes, we need flight security, but there are many drastically better ways of providing it. ADD: Of the many things that concern me about the TSA is what we're seeing in this article. In order to continue justifying its existence, it will need more and more to make us afraid of our fellow travelers. This is the terrible consequence of 9-11: we're turning the Defense Industrial base against the very population it is supposed to be protecting. Very, very bad stuff.

tajen 11y ago
"There are many drastically better ways of providing it" - The beginning was interesting, please develop and throw some ideas. Thank you.
ZanyProgrammer 11y ago
So you're in favor then of psychological profiling and no fly lists? Because those certainly block people who the government "thinks" are dangerous, regardless of the actual danger posed by the items on their person.

m1sta_ 11y ago

I remember accidentally taking a massive pair of scissors onto three flights while travelling from NYC to SYD. Arrived in Sydney for an Australian domestic leg and they were immediately found. I was very confused as to how the TSA had missed them so many times.

robk 11y ago
You should be more outraged at the fact scissors are banned, not happy they were found by the Aussies.

deleted 11y ago

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d_theorist 11y ago

"The number of Americans trying to smuggle guns on to planes keeps rising" Is the actual headline. And it's one I find fault with. The mere presence of a gun in somebody's bag does not imply "smuggling". As alien as it seems to us in the UK (and elsewhere), there are certain parts of the US where people think absolutely nothing of carrying a gun around with them all the time. I have little doubt that some percentage of these finds are just due to forgetfulness, and not to any malign intent.

01Michael10 11y ago
Did you even read the article? They are talking about cases where people are actually trying to hide the guns in their luggage which are on the rise. Sorry, the increase in found guns can't be explained merely by people "forgetting" them. Everyone should be MORE aware of what they are bring to the airport these days. Right?
- MCRed 11y ago
  Do you realize it is perfectly legal to transport a firearm in your luggage? You just check it at the counter, and they usually put a flag on the case to indicate it has been cleared (to make sure it's unloaded.) I wonder how many of these are simply pieces where the flag was ripped off via the luggage transport system.
  - 01Michael10 11y ago
    Do you realize your reply has nothing to do with my comment? I don't believe most of these people were ever going to check their guns at the counter as in they are NOT "forgetting".
Kiro 11y ago
Maybe you're right but I think that you would have to be very absent-minded to accidentally bring a gun with you into airport security.
- 11y ago

daniel-levin 11y ago

>> Last year, undercover TSA agents managed to smuggle concealed guns and bombs past security 96% of the time The system for gun/bomb detection is only as good as the agents responsible for it. For example, I saw my friend accidentally sneak a knife onto an plane two years ago. The metal detector flagged him, and he confidently told the official present: "Oh, it's my belt!" and after taking it off he walked through, with no further probing. He literally forgot about his EDC knife and wound up with it on the flight. It must be noted that this was in South Africa, but having travelled to both the USA and Europe, I know it could have happened there too. The current system is not robust to human error, and this is its fundamental flaw. Con artists and psychologists know how to systematically induce human error [1, 2]. It is conceivable that malicious actors (or TSA people pretending to be) can do exactly that and reliably subvert a human detection system. As an aside, it would be interesting to see TSA people try sneak weapons onto an El-Al flight [see 3, 4, 5 for why]. A humorous anecdote: once when returning from Israel, I had my bag full of dirty clothes thoroughly man-handled by an irate woman from El-Al security. I had two books inside, each with a metal inset in the spine. As soon as this was found out, I went from being treated like a terrorist to a non-threat in a few seconds. It was remarkably efficient. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confidence_trick https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confidence_trick [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_bias [3] http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB1001458258397595640 http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB1001458258397595640 [4] http://edition.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/01/11/yeffet.air.security.israel/ http://edition.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/01/11/yeffet.air.securit... [5] http://www.tabletmag.com/the-roll/102229/the-gatekeepers http://www.tabletmag.com/the-roll/102229/the-gatekeepers

zomg 11y ago

give me a break, what a joke. typical gun-grabbing economist article. turns out in all the states they are harping on, a gun is considered a tool and not some black, metal object of death, like they want you to think. and if i want to take a gun with me on a trip (where i'm legally licensed to carry, which is most states), i can already do that by checking it, like the majority of LAW ABIDING citizens do. if there was actual INTENT to "smuggle" a gun on a plane, with which to do harm, then there's a news story here, but there isn't. it's liberal, gun grabbing, troll bait and an attack on legal firearms owners. move on. </rant>

fche 11y ago

And the number of shootings on board airplanes has been ... zero.

dawnbreez 11y ago
The implicit danger is that someone will fly to another part of the world and start shooting there.
- hga 11y ago
  And why would this be any more danger than of him using it while there? Note that if declared, it's legal to transport unloaded in checked baggage in the US, and unless things have drastically changed the airline etc. isn't going to wonder if possession is legal for you at your destination.

tuyguntn 11y ago

Suppose what would be headline if 7 guns will be from Middle Eastern guys, "Terrorists are attacking America" Hoping not to get downvoted for honest opinion