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No, the TSA exists because 19 people hijacked 4 flights and succeeded in crashing 3 of them into various important buildings in the US on 9/11/2001. Private pl
by AlotOfReading 7mo ago
No, the TSA exists because 19 people hijacked 4 flights and succeeded in crashing 3 of them into various important buildings in the US on 9/11/2001.
Private planes are just as capable of crashing into buildings as commercial jets. The TSA has picked up some ancillary public safety functions over the years, but their raison d'etre is to prevent hijackings.
- schmookeeg 7mo agoIn terms of menace potential, any private plane will lose to a van full of fertilizer and a baddie intent on causing destruction. It's a matter of scale. Little planes, like this one [1] just don't do damage on the same scale as airliners. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Austin_suicide_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Austin_suicide_attack
- woodruffw 7mo agoMost private planes taking off from commercial airports (the ones where TSA generally operates) are much larger than a Piper Dakota. (But regardless, it’s not clear that the TSA is even performing that kind of calculus.)
- schmookeeg 7mo agoA G650 still loses to a motivated U-haul. :) No argument though, just saying it's a hard problem, and the scaling issue makes it somewhat awkward to deploy security resources in proportion to the threat. I don't have a solution. I'm not exactly thrilled with the current setup, but I try to stay quiet since I can't think of anything better.
- AlotOfReading 7mo agoGovernment building codes already anticipate the "van full of fertilizer" attack, as a result of the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. Federal building security is a separate matter though, with its own agency called FPS that predates DHS and TSA by decades.
- paradox460 7mo agoWhat about a private plane full of anfo
- ratrace 7mo ago[dead]
- garciasn 7mo agoNo; the TSA exists because we needed a government jobs program that was easy to promote under the guise of terrorism.
- verall 7mo agoIt's not nearly enough jobs to be a jobs program
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- caminante 7mo agoBy what standard? Federal civilian workforce (ex Postal Service and Military) is only 3 million. TSA has 60k employees. That's a lot of permanent jobs.
- AustinDev 7mo agoAnd they get Federal pensions and healthcare funded by tax dollars.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- verall 7mo agoBy your own numbers - 60k employees just doesn't touch a jobs program in a country of 350M people. The point of a jobs program is to provide jobs. TSA was created to accomplish a goal - security theater (mostly), preventing another 9/11 (maybe more in theory than in practice), etc. The New Deal WPA, according to wikipedia, supplied about 3M jobs at its peak in 1938, when the population was ~130M. 2.3% of the population vs 0.017%. Also empirically - if it was a jobs program, it would be way better staffed..
- caminante 6mo ago
- thfuran 7mo agoNo, the TSA exists because politicians felt they needed to be seen doing something after 9/11. If there were actually much political will for it to fulfill actual security purposes, it surely would’ve been reformed after it’s continually abysmal performance on security audits.