4 ms·

Get rid of the TSA. Security theatre belongs off broadway, not at airports.

by tomohawk 3y ago

dumbo-octopus 3y ago
Do you think anybody should be able to bring whatever they want onto a plane?
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  https://reason.com/2021/11/19/after-20-years-of-failure-kill-the-tsa/ https://reason.com/2021/11/19/after-20-years-of-failure-kill... ("After 20 Years of Failure, Kill the TSA") | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29286418 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29286418 (November 2021 thread) https://web.archive.org/web/20181009074941/http:/oversight.house.gov:80/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/5-9-2012-Joint-TSA-Staff-Report-FINAL.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20181009074941/http:/oversight.h... ("Airport Insecurity: TSA’s Failure to CostEffectively Procure, Deploy and Warehouse its Screening Technologies") https://www.oig.dhs.gov/taxonomy/term/5 https://www.oig.dhs.gov/taxonomy/term/5 ("Office of Inspector General DHS TSA Reports") https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/06/reassessing_air.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/06/reassessing_a... ("Bruce Schneier: Reassessing Airport Security") | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9699339 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9699339 (June 2015 thread) > The TSA blog carries constant reports of weapons confiscated from people who forgot to remove them from carry-on bags. But the Homeland Security Red Teams in the 2015 test actively concealed forbidden items just as real criminals and terrorist would. The result was that "TSA agents failed 67 out of 70 tests, with Red Team members repeatedly able to get potential weapons through checkpoints." > Two years later, a Red Team test at Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport achieved the same 95 percent failure rate to detect explosives, weapons, and illegal drugs. Repeat national tests in 2017 also went badly, "in the ballpark" of an 80 percent failure rate. > In fact, the DHS Inspector General has long been a thorn in the TSA's side, compiling a still-growing collection of critical reports. In 2015, the TSA grew so upset with the criticism that it went so far as to classify some findings as "sensitive security information" in order to suppress distribution.
  - dumbo-octopus 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - toomuchtodo 3y ago
      There are rarely simple answers to complex issues. If your question was instead, "Are there more cost efficient mechanisms to reach the same outcome?" the answer is unequivocally yes. How many aircraft fall out of the sky from attacks in every other country in the world? They achieve the same outcome without the TSA. It is plain as day we are lighting enormous amounts of human and fiat capital on fire for something that is simply ineffective for its cost. Start at the desired outcome and work backwards.
      - dumbo-octopus 3y ago
        Every other country has airport security of some sort (at least the several dozen I've been to). Is it the case that you aren't against airport security, except when it is specifically named "TSA"?
        toomuchtodo 3y ago
        [flagged]
        saurik 3y ago
        We had airport security before the TSA. It was very different and not at all as bad. Reading this discussion, it frankly sounds like you can't conceptualize the notion that not only can you have a very different model of airport security than this over-arching agency, but that many other countries--as well as our country only a couple short decades ago--manage to do so in practice. You thereby keep asking extremely strange questions like whether we believe people should be able to bring absolutely anything onto a plane, as, to you, either you have exactly the model we have now or we have literally nothing... but, obviously, that doesn't make sense, and you thereby just entirely ignore the stark differences between airport security pre- and post- TSA :/. The reality is that the TSA's way of approaching this problem 1) wasn't what was needed to prevent 9-11 and 2) doesn't even manage to prevent people from bringing dangerous things onto planes (another fact you keep refusing to engage with).
- kevingadd 3y ago
  We were fine before the TSA.
  - dumbo-octopus 3y ago
    It was created in response to 9/11, which is not what I would consider being "fine". Regardless, that doesn't answer the question. Please answer the question.
    - toomuchtodo 3y ago
      While the loss of life of ~3k people, once, is regrettable, it is by no means an event worth the response that has occurred. Sometimes, you are just unlucky, and we aren't going to reconfigure entire systems at enormous cost when it is unlikely the event will happen again. It is very hard for people to internalize this. "Do something!" and what not. Armoring flight deck doors would've been sufficient to prevent a recurrence. Instead, the TSA spends ~$8B/year and employs ~60k federal workers. For 3k people who died once. Conversely, there are ~40k-50k gun deaths annually in the US, and we do nothing, despite that being a much greater risk than an air transport terror attack. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/26/what-the-data-says-about-gun-deaths-in-the-u-s/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/26/what-the-... https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/ https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/
      - throwaway345353 3y ago
        Armoring flight deck doors has also killed at least ~400 people so far. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_370 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_370 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanwings_Flight_9525 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanwings_Flight_9525
        toomuchtodo 3y ago
        Again, sometimes you are unlucky, wrong place at the wrong time. If we replaced pilots with full autonomy, and people died from edge cases/tail risk events, would we bring back pilots? There is no way to get to zero risk. Derisk when you can, accept the remaining risk.
- perlclutcher 3y ago
  [dead]
- MostlyStable 3y ago
  I think the pre 9/11 safety protocols, with the sole addition of the new locking cockpit doors, is plenty safe.
  - fragsworth 3y ago
    This was all really we needed to do. It's so frustrating what travel has become
- chrismcb 3y ago
  Sorry of. There are limits, it has to be yay big. Can't be too heavy. But those limits are (usually) administrated by the airline. Otherwise if it is legal then bring it. The reality is, if you want to bring something nefarious into a plane, you can do so. TSA mainly stops law abiding people and stupid people. And an enormous cost in time and money and safety.
- freeopinion 3y ago
  I was recently amused at an airport security check in a major US airport when a TSA uniform explained to a person in the line next to me that US citizens can qualify to skip the security lines. I chuckled at what somebody might make of that without further explanation. I finally worked my way up to the screening gate where the person ahead of me presented their gold-star drivers license as an ID; the person behind me only had to present their boarding pass. I have gone through the checkpoint with somebody who presented a photo id that was printed on an inkjet printer. Meanwhile, my holographic state-issued ID was subjected to four different tests. The rules differ between major US airports. They differ between lines at the same airport. They differ between people in the same line at the same airport. So it seems to me that some people already can bring whatever they want onto a plane. Which means that everything else is, in fact, theater.
- hansvm 3y ago
  The TSA misses 60-95% of guns in security tests. That's approximately $10-$11 per flight that you pay for at most a 40% reduction in guns on the plane (assuming they're even able to find intentionally concealed firearms at the same rate as the base chance). Most guns that make it through are never used or intended to be used for violence on the plane, totalling to well over (unclear if it's closer to 1x or 100x too small) $250m for every gun which was caught which might have on average prevented 1 gun-related crime in the air. Their other stats aren't much better. For the equivalent of $250m worth of effort, there are thousands of better uses of your time and money. And today, right this second, you can bring high-powered un-extinguishable bombs onto a plane [0]. That comic is written in jest, but it really is trivial to kill a lot of people with common household devices and chemicals, including those allowed on planes. The world carrys on because most people are at least halfway decent, not because the TSA saves us. [0] https://xkcd.com/651/ https://xkcd.com/651/
MichaelMug 3y ago
The only (small) benefit of the TSA is standardization. Prior it was all contractors with varying rules and enforcement.
- AwaAwa 3y ago
  Keep the standards, and throw the rest? Seems like a slam dunk, outside of the theatre lobby.

Get rid of the TSA. Security theatre belongs off broadway, not at airports.

dumbo-octopus 3y ago

Do you think anybody should be able to bring whatever they want onto a plane?

toomuchtodo 3y ago
https://reason.com/2021/11/19/after-20-years-of-failure-kill-the-tsa/ https://reason.com/2021/11/19/after-20-years-of-failure-kill... ("After 20 Years of Failure, Kill the TSA") | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29286418 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29286418 (November 2021 thread) https://web.archive.org/web/20181009074941/http:/oversight.house.gov:80/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/5-9-2012-Joint-TSA-Staff-Report-FINAL.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20181009074941/http:/oversight.h... ("Airport Insecurity: TSA’s Failure to CostEffectively Procure, Deploy and Warehouse its Screening Technologies") https://www.oig.dhs.gov/taxonomy/term/5 https://www.oig.dhs.gov/taxonomy/term/5 ("Office of Inspector General DHS TSA Reports") https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/06/reassessing_air.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/06/reassessing_a... ("Bruce Schneier: Reassessing Airport Security") | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9699339 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9699339 (June 2015 thread) > The TSA blog carries constant reports of weapons confiscated from people who forgot to remove them from carry-on bags. But the Homeland Security Red Teams in the 2015 test actively concealed forbidden items just as real criminals and terrorist would. The result was that "TSA agents failed 67 out of 70 tests, with Red Team members repeatedly able to get potential weapons through checkpoints." > Two years later, a Red Team test at Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport achieved the same 95 percent failure rate to detect explosives, weapons, and illegal drugs. Repeat national tests in 2017 also went badly, "in the ballpark" of an 80 percent failure rate. > In fact, the DHS Inspector General has long been a thorn in the TSA's side, compiling a still-growing collection of critical reports. In 2015, the TSA grew so upset with the criticism that it went so far as to classify some findings as "sensitive security information" in order to suppress distribution.
- dumbo-octopus 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - toomuchtodo 3y ago
    There are rarely simple answers to complex issues. If your question was instead, "Are there more cost efficient mechanisms to reach the same outcome?" the answer is unequivocally yes. How many aircraft fall out of the sky from attacks in every other country in the world? They achieve the same outcome without the TSA. It is plain as day we are lighting enormous amounts of human and fiat capital on fire for something that is simply ineffective for its cost. Start at the desired outcome and work backwards.
    - dumbo-octopus 3y ago
      Every other country has airport security of some sort (at least the several dozen I've been to). Is it the case that you aren't against airport security, except when it is specifically named "TSA"?
      - toomuchtodo 3y ago
        [flagged]
      - saurik 3y ago
        We had airport security before the TSA. It was very different and not at all as bad. Reading this discussion, it frankly sounds like you can't conceptualize the notion that not only can you have a very different model of airport security than this over-arching agency, but that many other countries--as well as our country only a couple short decades ago--manage to do so in practice. You thereby keep asking extremely strange questions like whether we believe people should be able to bring absolutely anything onto a plane, as, to you, either you have exactly the model we have now or we have literally nothing... but, obviously, that doesn't make sense, and you thereby just entirely ignore the stark differences between airport security pre- and post- TSA :/. The reality is that the TSA's way of approaching this problem 1) wasn't what was needed to prevent 9-11 and 2) doesn't even manage to prevent people from bringing dangerous things onto planes (another fact you keep refusing to engage with).
kevingadd 3y ago
We were fine before the TSA.
- dumbo-octopus 3y ago
  It was created in response to 9/11, which is not what I would consider being "fine". Regardless, that doesn't answer the question. Please answer the question.
  - toomuchtodo 3y ago
    While the loss of life of ~3k people, once, is regrettable, it is by no means an event worth the response that has occurred. Sometimes, you are just unlucky, and we aren't going to reconfigure entire systems at enormous cost when it is unlikely the event will happen again. It is very hard for people to internalize this. "Do something!" and what not. Armoring flight deck doors would've been sufficient to prevent a recurrence. Instead, the TSA spends ~$8B/year and employs ~60k federal workers. For 3k people who died once. Conversely, there are ~40k-50k gun deaths annually in the US, and we do nothing, despite that being a much greater risk than an air transport terror attack. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/26/what-the-data-says-about-gun-deaths-in-the-u-s/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/26/what-the-... https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/ https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/
    - throwaway345353 3y ago
      Armoring flight deck doors has also killed at least ~400 people so far. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_370 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_370 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanwings_Flight_9525 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanwings_Flight_9525
      - toomuchtodo 3y ago
        Again, sometimes you are unlucky, wrong place at the wrong time. If we replaced pilots with full autonomy, and people died from edge cases/tail risk events, would we bring back pilots? There is no way to get to zero risk. Derisk when you can, accept the remaining risk.
perlclutcher 3y ago
[dead]
MostlyStable 3y ago
I think the pre 9/11 safety protocols, with the sole addition of the new locking cockpit doors, is plenty safe.
- fragsworth 3y ago
  This was all really we needed to do. It's so frustrating what travel has become
chrismcb 3y ago
Sorry of. There are limits, it has to be yay big. Can't be too heavy. But those limits are (usually) administrated by the airline. Otherwise if it is legal then bring it. The reality is, if you want to bring something nefarious into a plane, you can do so. TSA mainly stops law abiding people and stupid people. And an enormous cost in time and money and safety.
freeopinion 3y ago
I was recently amused at an airport security check in a major US airport when a TSA uniform explained to a person in the line next to me that US citizens can qualify to skip the security lines. I chuckled at what somebody might make of that without further explanation. I finally worked my way up to the screening gate where the person ahead of me presented their gold-star drivers license as an ID; the person behind me only had to present their boarding pass. I have gone through the checkpoint with somebody who presented a photo id that was printed on an inkjet printer. Meanwhile, my holographic state-issued ID was subjected to four different tests. The rules differ between major US airports. They differ between lines at the same airport. They differ between people in the same line at the same airport. So it seems to me that some people already can bring whatever they want onto a plane. Which means that everything else is, in fact, theater.
hansvm 3y ago
The TSA misses 60-95% of guns in security tests. That's approximately $10-$11 per flight that you pay for at most a 40% reduction in guns on the plane (assuming they're even able to find intentionally concealed firearms at the same rate as the base chance). Most guns that make it through are never used or intended to be used for violence on the plane, totalling to well over (unclear if it's closer to 1x or 100x too small) $250m for every gun which was caught which might have on average prevented 1 gun-related crime in the air. Their other stats aren't much better. For the equivalent of $250m worth of effort, there are thousands of better uses of your time and money. And today, right this second, you can bring high-powered un-extinguishable bombs onto a plane [0]. That comic is written in jest, but it really is trivial to kill a lot of people with common household devices and chemicals, including those allowed on planes. The world carrys on because most people are at least halfway decent, not because the TSA saves us. [0] https://xkcd.com/651/ https://xkcd.com/651/

MichaelMug 3y ago

The only (small) benefit of the TSA is standardization. Prior it was all contractors with varying rules and enforcement.

AwaAwa 3y ago
Keep the standards, and throw the rest? Seems like a slam dunk, outside of the theatre lobby.