4 ms·

Similar thing happened to me when visiting a museum in the Vatican. Long queues, metal detectors, etc. After passing through the whole thing with no problem, I

by lkozma 15y ago

Similar thing happened to me when visiting a museum in the Vatican. Long queues, metal detectors, etc. After passing through the whole thing with no problem, I realized I had my pocket knife in my pocket throughout the day. I noticed then that the metal detector was beeping all the time, but they were not paying attention, as they probably didn't want to get people to take off belts, etc.

brc 15y ago
I accidentally took a pocket knife through airport security in LAX. After that, I realised that the TSA was not only annoying and a waste of time and money, it was completely pointless as well.
- rdtsc 15y ago
  It is possible to deduce that from their track record as well. In 10 years TSA has caught exactly 0 terrorists. Not saying there weren't attempts, but those were caught by FBI, other agencies, and most importantly, regular citizens.
  - TomAnthony 15y ago
    I'd never thought about it like that. That is both scary and amusing.
  - ryanbrunner 15y ago
    While I agree that the "security theatre" that the TSA provides is largely useless, I don't think this is really an accurate statement. It's entirely possible that TSA screening prevented someone getting on a plane with a weapon of some sort, but that the person in question was never identified as a terrorist, since they had to abandon whatever plans they had.
    - rdtsc 15y ago
      > It's entirely possible that TSA screening prevented someone getting on a plane with a weapon of some sort I disagree with that statement. "It could" is hard to measure. We spend 100s of billions of $ on something based on this unproven hypothesis. Keep in mind, TSA was created to catch terrorists red-handed as they are just about to board a plane. As in "Hey look a bomb in the x-ray machine, arrest this guy!". That is their purpose. They have not yet done that, once, in 10 years! Govt. intelligence work and regular citizens have prevented and stopped attempts. There is some track record there. TSA doesn't have one. By your metric one could have just as well re-defined TSA's mission as "Protect the citizens of the United States of America against Evil Pink Elephants from Neptune". Chances are very high that TSA's track record with that task would have been exactly what it is with their current mission. AND you could have still made your argument "See no Pink Elephants from Neptune have attacked us, so they must be doing their job." Or think about it another way: How many airliners were blown up in US airspace before 9/11? Was it a monthly occurrence? Yearly? Now if was a yearly thing, and then TSA came along and it suddenly stopped, you could have made a correlation based argument saying, that it is probably because of fear of TSA that we didn't have any more attacks. Yet another way to look at it. As a terrorist you are trying to instill terror and kill as many people as possible. A large gathering of people would maximize your impact. I wonder what places and events consistently create large queues of people waiting in line? What about also a place that would cripple and disrupt the economy and travel? I'll leave that as a rhetorical question.
      - ryanbrunner 15y ago
        I agree with you completely that it's entirely unproven whether or not the TSA has been effective for catching terrorists. I also agree that it's a wasteful system that should be seriously reformed into something that is actually effective. It's precisely because it's unproven that we cannot say that the TSA has never caught a terrorist. That's all I was saying. The TSA may or may not have caught a potential terrorist at some point, it's pretty much impossible to say. You can't have it both ways. Either the TSA's effectiveness is unknown (meaning they may or may not have caught terrorists), or it's known to be 100% useless (meaning 0 terrorists were caught). In regards to occurrences of terrorists prior to 9/11, you're correct that there weren't many (any?) incidences of using a plane for a terrorist attack, but hijackings were certainly not uncommon prior to 9/11. In fact, come to think of it, incidences of hijackings are almost certainly down since 9/11. I don't think this can be entirely attributed to increased security, but I wouldn't be surprised to see it as a contributing factor.
    - brc 15y ago
      The main reasons for the TSA are: 1) politicians seen to be doing something 2) making the public feel safe flying again 3) because someone, somewhere is making a pile of cash from it 4) it's a good way to employ unskilled people Catching terrorists is likely to be one of the lower priorities. Personally I think that random thorough screening and randomly distributed flight marshals is a better deterrent than poorly screening everyone. It's always harder to evade a security threat when you don't know what it is or looks like. Another thing that annoys me is that people push for more railways on the basis that it is safe than flying. Railway in the last 10 years has had more crashes and more terrorist incidents than flying, and a determined terrorist can create massive havoc, fear and deaths from targeting trains, as was tragically displayed several times. But for some reason, you can still hop on a train with no screening. Go figure.
- byoung2 15y ago
  I accidentally left a pocket knife in my carry on as well, and made it through the first leg. On the second leg, I had to go through security again and they spotted it. I explained that it made it through the first security check, so it must be safe. They allowed me to keep it. I wonder if that would have worked with a gun...
- X-Istence 15y ago
  I had a 6 inch hunting knife in my bag and it went through security in Denver, Chicago, New York (JFK), Zurich, and Amsterdam. Found it when I get back from my travels... was hidden in one of the folds of my bag.

by lkozma 15y ago

brc 15y ago

I accidentally took a pocket knife through airport security in LAX. After that, I realised that the TSA was not only annoying and a waste of time and money, it was completely pointless as well.

rdtsc 15y ago
It is possible to deduce that from their track record as well. In 10 years TSA has caught exactly 0 terrorists. Not saying there weren't attempts, but those were caught by FBI, other agencies, and most importantly, regular citizens.
- TomAnthony 15y ago
  I'd never thought about it like that. That is both scary and amusing.
- ryanbrunner 15y ago
  While I agree that the "security theatre" that the TSA provides is largely useless, I don't think this is really an accurate statement. It's entirely possible that TSA screening prevented someone getting on a plane with a weapon of some sort, but that the person in question was never identified as a terrorist, since they had to abandon whatever plans they had.
  - rdtsc 15y ago
    > It's entirely possible that TSA screening prevented someone getting on a plane with a weapon of some sort I disagree with that statement. "It could" is hard to measure. We spend 100s of billions of $ on something based on this unproven hypothesis. Keep in mind, TSA was created to catch terrorists red-handed as they are just about to board a plane. As in "Hey look a bomb in the x-ray machine, arrest this guy!". That is their purpose. They have not yet done that, once, in 10 years! Govt. intelligence work and regular citizens have prevented and stopped attempts. There is some track record there. TSA doesn't have one. By your metric one could have just as well re-defined TSA's mission as "Protect the citizens of the United States of America against Evil Pink Elephants from Neptune". Chances are very high that TSA's track record with that task would have been exactly what it is with their current mission. AND you could have still made your argument "See no Pink Elephants from Neptune have attacked us, so they must be doing their job." Or think about it another way: How many airliners were blown up in US airspace before 9/11? Was it a monthly occurrence? Yearly? Now if was a yearly thing, and then TSA came along and it suddenly stopped, you could have made a correlation based argument saying, that it is probably because of fear of TSA that we didn't have any more attacks. Yet another way to look at it. As a terrorist you are trying to instill terror and kill as many people as possible. A large gathering of people would maximize your impact. I wonder what places and events consistently create large queues of people waiting in line? What about also a place that would cripple and disrupt the economy and travel? I'll leave that as a rhetorical question.
    - ryanbrunner 15y ago
      I agree with you completely that it's entirely unproven whether or not the TSA has been effective for catching terrorists. I also agree that it's a wasteful system that should be seriously reformed into something that is actually effective. It's precisely because it's unproven that we cannot say that the TSA has never caught a terrorist. That's all I was saying. The TSA may or may not have caught a potential terrorist at some point, it's pretty much impossible to say. You can't have it both ways. Either the TSA's effectiveness is unknown (meaning they may or may not have caught terrorists), or it's known to be 100% useless (meaning 0 terrorists were caught). In regards to occurrences of terrorists prior to 9/11, you're correct that there weren't many (any?) incidences of using a plane for a terrorist attack, but hijackings were certainly not uncommon prior to 9/11. In fact, come to think of it, incidences of hijackings are almost certainly down since 9/11. I don't think this can be entirely attributed to increased security, but I wouldn't be surprised to see it as a contributing factor.
  - brc 15y ago
    The main reasons for the TSA are: 1) politicians seen to be doing something 2) making the public feel safe flying again 3) because someone, somewhere is making a pile of cash from it 4) it's a good way to employ unskilled people Catching terrorists is likely to be one of the lower priorities. Personally I think that random thorough screening and randomly distributed flight marshals is a better deterrent than poorly screening everyone. It's always harder to evade a security threat when you don't know what it is or looks like. Another thing that annoys me is that people push for more railways on the basis that it is safe than flying. Railway in the last 10 years has had more crashes and more terrorist incidents than flying, and a determined terrorist can create massive havoc, fear and deaths from targeting trains, as was tragically displayed several times. But for some reason, you can still hop on a train with no screening. Go figure.
byoung2 15y ago
I accidentally left a pocket knife in my carry on as well, and made it through the first leg. On the second leg, I had to go through security again and they spotted it. I explained that it made it through the first security check, so it must be safe. They allowed me to keep it. I wonder if that would have worked with a gun...
X-Istence 15y ago
I had a 6 inch hunting knife in my bag and it went through security in Denver, Chicago, New York (JFK), Zurich, and Amsterdam. Found it when I get back from my travels... was hidden in one of the folds of my bag.