7 ms·

TSA Admits In Leaked Doc: No Evidence of Terrorist Plots Against Aviation in US

236 points by ddelphin 13y ago

pavlov 13y ago
...But as you can see, Senator, there is also no evidence of the guaranteed absence of terrorist plots either. They are obviously even better hidden than we feared. Increased resources will be required to bring them to light. Our department has drafted a new budget proposal that takes this changed situation into account.
- chris_mahan 13y ago
  Especially since, Senator, the new facility to be built and staffed for the purpose of identifying these better-hidden terrorists, will be built in your district!
  - javajosh 13y ago
    And, Senator, if you don't support this program and, heaven forbid, another terror attack occurs that could have been prevented by the program, then your career will be over.
  - MrZongle2 13y ago
    "...though somewhere between 30 and 45% of the contract cost will go to cover the administration and management of this contract, by employees in the greater Washington DC area..."
- jlgreco 13y ago
  Ah you see, no terrorist plots actually means that our tiger^Wterrorist repellent rock is working!
- tokenizer 13y ago
  Exactly. Why can't we just pull their meta-data profiles from online, and just assess potential threat levels and weight it against the national threat level. Threat level orange? Internet Anarchists and Armchair Libertarians don't fly. Threat level blue? Just people who look like they have some desert heritage. Threat level red? "I'm sorry sir. It says here you we're really, really mad at how a cop stopped you last weekend for going through a red light."
  - yeukhon 13y ago
    You know they are already doing this right? American intels are collecting individuals profile here and outside of US. This is the whole PRISM project. And this is what people oppose too. Now we are suggesting abandon TSA and instead favor massive profiling? You will return to karma 0 if that's the route you take. Hahaha
    - tokenizer 13y ago
      sorry, let me add: /sarcasm. I hear ya. I'm just being a realist. If I was dictator of the world, I'd ban all taxes and let the market figure it out.
      - yeukhon 13y ago
        If I were a dictator, I'd just migrate to Mars! and yeah I know it was a sarcasm (hence the hahaha at the end)
- sharkweek 13y ago
  Let's be honest -- if they really wanted more funding, it'd be much easier just to fake some threats to warrant more public support, Operation Northwoods style -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods
  - oleganza 13y ago
    Thanks for the link. People somehow don't realize that no one was punished by losing job/savings/reputation/credibility for even proposing such a sabotage. Kennedy merely "rejected" proposal which gives his office zero credibility on how he handled possible similar proposals. In the governments incentives are all inverted: bad stuff is not risky to attempt and it gives great rewards.
    - nopassrecover 13y ago
      "Following presentation of the Northwoods plan, Kennedy removed Lemnitzer as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, although he became Supreme Allied Commander of NATO in January 1963"
      - oleganza 13y ago
        Such a brutal punishment, indeed. A guy makes a plan to kill citizens and he's just moved to another office to continue earn money extracted from these citizens.
        nopassrecover 13y ago
        You argued no-one was punished by losing their job. That's exactly what happened. Whether that is an appropriate punishment is a different discussion.
        oleganza 13y ago
        It was not a punishment. The guy was getting free goodies from his powerful position somewhere in the government. He proposed to kill people. He got another position with free goodies somewhere in the government.
tsaoutourpants 13y ago
Link owner here. I love it when my posts get submitted to HN so fast that I don't even have a chance to share it. ;) Happy to answer any questions.
canistr 13y ago
But couldn't it be argued that the use of body-scanners functions as a form of strong deterrent for potential plots? If a potential terrorist understands that they will eventually be caught or that the stakes to beat the system are too high, they will look at alternative forms of terrorism simply because the investment to beat airport security is too high.
- MaysonL 13y ago
  Then again, take a look at the rest of the world: are they using body scanners? We're not the only country where terrorists have attacked.
- snorkel 13y ago
  True. In the 1970's back when boarding a plane was as casual as boarding a metro bus, commercial flights were routinely hijacked by amateurs so often it became a joke. Passenger screening was started in response to that, and it was real. Whether every screening practice today is effective is debatable but no screening at all would be open mike night for any crank with a grievance.
- jessaustin 13y ago
  You're assuming a number of seemingly questionable propositions about "potential terrorists". Do they really care more about personal outcomes than mission outcomes? (I might not mind that I'm caught, if my colleagues succeed before they are caught.) Do they really care so much about "high stakes"? (If I'm comfortable with martyrdom I may be comfortable with a number of other outcomes.) Are they actually so willing to substitute "alternative forms of terrorism" for the sorts of acts that have been successful before? Do they care about returns on "investments"? (Those who fund operations may be civilians in some sense, and not the same people who take decisions regarding the use of those funds or of other resources.) Besides, the point about alternatives is problematic in other ways. If vast public resources are expended moving problems from one location to another location, were those resources well spent?
- roc 13y ago
  > "couldn't it be argued..." About as effectively as arguing a tiger-repellant rock is strong deterrent.
Havoc 13y ago
Free cavity searches for all. Taxpayer dollars at work right there.
- MrZongle2 13y ago
  I prefer the term "Freedom Fondle".
  - pavel_lishin 13y ago
    "Government Grope"
    - MrZongle2 13y ago
      "Totalitarian Touch"
- rbcgerard 13y ago
  in fact your probably paying ~$2.50 per flight to get fondled and berated at the airport - ever noticed that "September 11th Security Fee" when you buy a ticket...
DannyBee 13y ago
Not a bear in sight. The Bear Patrol must be working like a charm.
- chris_mahan 13y ago
  They're in the Himalayas looking for the bear hybrid.
- tedunangst 13y ago
  Why not say "Not a bear in sight. Bears must not exist."?
  - wiml 13y ago
    "Not a bear in sight. Clearly they're hiding more effectively than we thought; we must put on additional bear patrols immediately!" ?
  - DannyBee 13y ago
    It's a reference to the simpsons, the episode "Much Apu about nothing". http://www.snpp.com/episodes/3F20.html http://www.snpp.com/episodes/3F20.html Search for "not a bear in sight"
zzzeek 13y ago
I know I'm throwing my karma down the toilet here but domestic-sourced airline terrorism has happened before. The TSA (edit: OK, whoever it was that scanned our bags and ran us through the metal detector, if it was not "the TSA") was unaware of 9/11 as well. Argue all you want that we should just tolerate the occasional 9/11-style (edit: or the random pipe bomb blowing out the side of the plane, cockpit doors can't protect against that) event as the price of freedom, but if there were no airline security, you can be sure events will occur.
- fein 13y ago
  > but if there were no airline security, you can be sure events will occur. Eh, concert ticket queues, malls, the line for the actual TSA. Plenty of opportunities outside of airline related things, and I don't see anything about your local mall foodcourt getting hit. My person wasn't fondled the last time I got some Panda Express.
- computer 13y ago
  You know what the answer is to 9/11-style events? Locking cockpit doors. And that's what they did after 9/11. Passengers now know what's at stake too. So, while bad things can happen, another 9/11 can't happen again (and as such, the TSA does nothing to prevent it anyway).
  - angersock 13y ago
    To further this point...we can either continue to incur the cost and overhead of reacting to every terrible event that happens and changing things to prevent that particular edge case, or we can accept that bad things sometimes happen to good people and simply keep calm and carry on. I think we're ultimately better served by the latter approach.
  - sixothree 13y ago
    Also there is one actually proven method to deterring terrorist events like 9/11. Four planes were hi-jacked. Three of those did not know that the outcome was to crash the plane into a building. But one did, and (as far as we know) the people aboard prevented that. If the American people would simply have been informed that terrorists didn't want to steal planes, but instead fly them into target then 9/11 would have turned out very differently. And we know this because we have proof.
np422 13y ago
From my horizon the entire security debacle have never been about actually keeping the populations safe - it's there to keep them worried about "the enemy" and keep them compliant with both funding requests and authorities in general. As of today neither USA or countries in western Europe can be considered police states. But if we keep on travelling in the same direction we are going now, that's where we'll end up.
- bediger4000 13y ago
  Exactly! After "Communists!" went away in the early 90s, the US Government and the associated "defence contractors" found the money a lot tighter. Although I'm pretty sure they didn't create 9/11, or just let it happen, the US Government and the defence contractors have sure jumped on the "Terrorists!" wagon. The War on Terror is just the boogie man that Containing Communism used to be.
k2enemy 13y ago
I'm a huge critic of the TSA and would be thrilled to see it dismantled, but I always find these kinds of arguments a little intellectually dishonest. It could be that “terrorist threat groups present in the Homeland are not known to be actively plotting against civil aviation targets or airports” because we have scanners in place that deter that kind of threat. Now, I don't believe this is the case, as plenty of research has shown that the scanners don't increase security, but the "no active threat" argument by itself doesn't get us very far. By that logic, we should remove security at Fort Knox because it never gets robbed.
- rhizome 13y ago
  as plenty of research has shown that the scanners don't increase security We can infer from this statement of yours that "the scanners" (such as they are) are not a component of security, so the analogy to Fort Knox security is inapt.
- tsaoutourpants 13y ago
  The issue (beyond the fact that the scanners don't work, which you've addressed and I publicly schooled back in March 2012) is that in public (especially on the floor of Congress) the TSA talks up all of these threats against us in order to garner support. Essentially, we've been lied to, which, at this point, is not a surprise coming from any federal agency.
- tokenizer 13y ago
  > By that logic, we should remove security at Fort Knox because it never gets robbed. Airports should have security. Every country has security in their airports. Where it crosses the line are when you have the security preemptively treat you like a criminal, and violate your personhood without justification other than a blanket statement of "terrorists". Security ! always have to = Neo-Fascism. But many people feel it does in American airports.
  - zzzeek 13y ago
    > Airports should have security. Every country has security in their airports but wait, in your response to me you said that the line people wait on for security checks is just as big a terrorist hazard as the plane itself. How are you not contradicting yourself here? Which is it, we wait on lines for metal detectors or not ?
growupkids 13y ago
Perhaps what the actually conclusion one should take from this memo is not that terrorists don't exist, clearly they do, but rather that those terrorists are now focusing on softer targets, because aviation is seen as too difficult. I realize this may be an unpopular opinion, because let's face it the TSA searches are demeaning and some might argue an invasion of privacy. But it seems like a non sequitur to say that because terrorists aren't focusing on aviation that they don't exist. Maybe aviation is hard to hit, and they want to focus on easier targets like shooting up malls. Perhaps what's happenng here is that terrorists would like to target aviation, but TSA is doing just a good enough job to dissuade them. I know, blasphemy. The government can't do anything right.
- tsaoutourpants 13y ago
  Take about 60 seconds to think about how, if you were a terrorist tasked with blowing up an airplane, you would do it. Do you really think the TSA would stop you? And if they did, would you really get fewer virgins if you had to use your Plan B of blowing up the security checkpoint with maybe 100 people and a couple dozen federal employees, instead of your intended target?
  - growupkids 13y ago
    Or, attack some softer target. And I just love how my post was modded down, no rebuttal because everyone hates the TSA. My assertion still stands, it's far more reasonable to conclude that terrorists have moved on to other targets, as we saw in Kenya, because they have no security and rarely have any armed capability even near by to respond. No doubt attacking the security line at the airport is a soft target, but no mo where near as soft as a mall. An airport may detect the attacker on the way to the line, you still have to buy a ticket. A mall, no chance. Are the lines a security risk? You bet, it's why I'm glad my GOES account keeps me out of them and thru the quick TSA-Pre line. But hey, this is all blasphemy anyway, the TSA sucks, Al Qaeda was defeated, and the government desperately wants to keep lying to you so they can look at the outline of someone's body.
    - 13y ago
herbig 13y ago
If I were trying to champion a legitimate cause, I would steer way clear of acknowledging Infowars by name or calling them "journalists." You could just say that a third party discovered it or something, but you definitely don't want to imply that they're fighting the good fight alongside you.
- tsaoutourpants 13y ago
  I respect that they found and published the documents. I don't buy most of what they are selling, but in this instance, their journalism brought an important issue to light.
  - herbig 13y ago
    The problem is in the perception it gives to those reading your post. Infowars is not a legitimate journalistic effort. It is SEO optimized linkbait garbage created with the intent of selling videos, speaking engagements, and other assorted junk to gullible people. There is a whole network of crazy headed by the likes of Alex Jones that cross-link each other sharing ridiculous claims masquerading as real causes and small injustices blown totally out of proportion to support insanely tangential ideas. Some of these people also believe the government is run by lizard Jews from outer space.
    - gonzo 13y ago
      > Some of these people also believe the government is run by lizard Jews from outer space. Oh man, see? that's something I could get behind.
jstalin 13y ago
The GAO regularly audits the TSA by trying to get firearms and other contraband through security. They consistently get a lot through without the TSA noticing: http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/loaded-gun-slips-past-tsa-screeners/story?id=12412458 http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/loaded-gun-slips-past-tsa-scre...
- ethomson 13y ago
  I read years ago (and can't now find the article) that the TSA screeners didn't really care about catching these guns. The TSA tested them by slipping one (or a few) fake guns into luggage. If I recall, a screener said something along the lines of "we don't have to catch all guns. We only have to catch those guns." Sigh.
  - Amadou 13y ago
    He's right. When there is no real threat, it doesn't matter how incompetent they are. As long as nothing bad happens you can't tell the difference between effective security and incompetence. You can tell on the micro-scale like those test weapons, but not on the macro scale where budgeting and oversight decisions are made.
    - growupkids 13y ago
      I'm sorry, there's no real threat? Lack of intelligence supporting a specific threat is very different from a general threat. Is the supposition here that because we don't know if anyone is currently targeting aviation that we shouldn't defend against those threats? Even if those threats existed in the near past? I guess I'm not tracking the conclusion that there is no real threat. So there's no current intelligence showing any specific plots exist. That's good. Have there been plots in the past? Yes. Why did they stop? Does this mean there won't be any in the future? Perhaps because airliners are a pITa to target? Is the threat actor really gone? Are they targeting something else? I guess I find it hard to believe that the kind of wackjob so we've seen out there are suddenly kicking back and have retired from the terrorist scene. If the threat actor is still there, and previously target aviation, why did they stop?
tsaoutourpants 13y ago
This post has been moderated down for some reason. Generally, posts on HN appear on the front page based on a calculation of upvotes per unit time. This post has a better ratio than all of the posts above it, yet about 20 minutes ago got bumped down from #1 to #14. Lame.

236 points by ddelphin 13y ago

...But as you can see, Senator, there is also no evidence of the guaranteed absence of terrorist plots either. They are obviously even better hidden than we feared. Increased resources will be required to bring them to light. Our department has drafted a new budget proposal that takes this changed situation into account.

chris_mahan 13y ago
Especially since, Senator, the new facility to be built and staffed for the purpose of identifying these better-hidden terrorists, will be built in your district!
- javajosh 13y ago
  And, Senator, if you don't support this program and, heaven forbid, another terror attack occurs that could have been prevented by the program, then your career will be over.
- MrZongle2 13y ago
  "...though somewhere between 30 and 45% of the contract cost will go to cover the administration and management of this contract, by employees in the greater Washington DC area..."
jlgreco 13y ago
Ah you see, no terrorist plots actually means that our tiger^Wterrorist repellent rock is working!
tokenizer 13y ago
Exactly. Why can't we just pull their meta-data profiles from online, and just assess potential threat levels and weight it against the national threat level. Threat level orange? Internet Anarchists and Armchair Libertarians don't fly. Threat level blue? Just people who look like they have some desert heritage. Threat level red? "I'm sorry sir. It says here you we're really, really mad at how a cop stopped you last weekend for going through a red light."
- yeukhon 13y ago
  You know they are already doing this right? American intels are collecting individuals profile here and outside of US. This is the whole PRISM project. And this is what people oppose too. Now we are suggesting abandon TSA and instead favor massive profiling? You will return to karma 0 if that's the route you take. Hahaha
  - tokenizer 13y ago
    sorry, let me add: /sarcasm. I hear ya. I'm just being a realist. If I was dictator of the world, I'd ban all taxes and let the market figure it out.
    - yeukhon 13y ago
      If I were a dictator, I'd just migrate to Mars! and yeah I know it was a sarcasm (hence the hahaha at the end)
sharkweek 13y ago
Let's be honest -- if they really wanted more funding, it'd be much easier just to fake some threats to warrant more public support, Operation Northwoods style -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods
- oleganza 13y ago
  Thanks for the link. People somehow don't realize that no one was punished by losing job/savings/reputation/credibility for even proposing such a sabotage. Kennedy merely "rejected" proposal which gives his office zero credibility on how he handled possible similar proposals. In the governments incentives are all inverted: bad stuff is not risky to attempt and it gives great rewards.
  - nopassrecover 13y ago
    "Following presentation of the Northwoods plan, Kennedy removed Lemnitzer as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, although he became Supreme Allied Commander of NATO in January 1963"
    - oleganza 13y ago
      Such a brutal punishment, indeed. A guy makes a plan to kill citizens and he's just moved to another office to continue earn money extracted from these citizens.
      - nopassrecover 13y ago
        You argued no-one was punished by losing their job. That's exactly what happened. Whether that is an appropriate punishment is a different discussion.
        oleganza 13y ago
        It was not a punishment. The guy was getting free goodies from his powerful position somewhere in the government. He proposed to kill people. He got another position with free goodies somewhere in the government.

tsaoutourpants 13y ago

Link owner here. I love it when my posts get submitted to HN so fast that I don't even have a chance to share it. ;) Happy to answer any questions.

canistr 13y ago

But couldn't it be argued that the use of body-scanners functions as a form of strong deterrent for potential plots? If a potential terrorist understands that they will eventually be caught or that the stakes to beat the system are too high, they will look at alternative forms of terrorism simply because the investment to beat airport security is too high.

MaysonL 13y ago
Then again, take a look at the rest of the world: are they using body scanners? We're not the only country where terrorists have attacked.
snorkel 13y ago
True. In the 1970's back when boarding a plane was as casual as boarding a metro bus, commercial flights were routinely hijacked by amateurs so often it became a joke. Passenger screening was started in response to that, and it was real. Whether every screening practice today is effective is debatable but no screening at all would be open mike night for any crank with a grievance.
jessaustin 13y ago
You're assuming a number of seemingly questionable propositions about "potential terrorists". Do they really care more about personal outcomes than mission outcomes? (I might not mind that I'm caught, if my colleagues succeed before they are caught.) Do they really care so much about "high stakes"? (If I'm comfortable with martyrdom I may be comfortable with a number of other outcomes.) Are they actually so willing to substitute "alternative forms of terrorism" for the sorts of acts that have been successful before? Do they care about returns on "investments"? (Those who fund operations may be civilians in some sense, and not the same people who take decisions regarding the use of those funds or of other resources.) Besides, the point about alternatives is problematic in other ways. If vast public resources are expended moving problems from one location to another location, were those resources well spent?
roc 13y ago
> "couldn't it be argued..." About as effectively as arguing a tiger-repellant rock is strong deterrent.

Havoc 13y ago

Free cavity searches for all. Taxpayer dollars at work right there.

MrZongle2 13y ago
I prefer the term "Freedom Fondle".
- pavel_lishin 13y ago
  "Government Grope"
  - MrZongle2 13y ago
    "Totalitarian Touch"
rbcgerard 13y ago
in fact your probably paying ~$2.50 per flight to get fondled and berated at the airport - ever noticed that "September 11th Security Fee" when you buy a ticket...

DannyBee 13y ago

Not a bear in sight. The Bear Patrol must be working like a charm.

chris_mahan 13y ago
They're in the Himalayas looking for the bear hybrid.
tedunangst 13y ago
Why not say "Not a bear in sight. Bears must not exist."?
- wiml 13y ago
  "Not a bear in sight. Clearly they're hiding more effectively than we thought; we must put on additional bear patrols immediately!" ?
- DannyBee 13y ago
  It's a reference to the simpsons, the episode "Much Apu about nothing". http://www.snpp.com/episodes/3F20.html http://www.snpp.com/episodes/3F20.html Search for "not a bear in sight"

zzzeek 13y ago

I know I'm throwing my karma down the toilet here but domestic-sourced airline terrorism has happened before. The TSA (edit: OK, whoever it was that scanned our bags and ran us through the metal detector, if it was not "the TSA") was unaware of 9/11 as well. Argue all you want that we should just tolerate the occasional 9/11-style (edit: or the random pipe bomb blowing out the side of the plane, cockpit doors can't protect against that) event as the price of freedom, but if there were no airline security, you can be sure events will occur.

fein 13y ago
> but if there were no airline security, you can be sure events will occur. Eh, concert ticket queues, malls, the line for the actual TSA. Plenty of opportunities outside of airline related things, and I don't see anything about your local mall foodcourt getting hit. My person wasn't fondled the last time I got some Panda Express.
computer 13y ago
You know what the answer is to 9/11-style events? Locking cockpit doors. And that's what they did after 9/11. Passengers now know what's at stake too. So, while bad things can happen, another 9/11 can't happen again (and as such, the TSA does nothing to prevent it anyway).
- angersock 13y ago
  To further this point...we can either continue to incur the cost and overhead of reacting to every terrible event that happens and changing things to prevent that particular edge case, or we can accept that bad things sometimes happen to good people and simply keep calm and carry on. I think we're ultimately better served by the latter approach.
- sixothree 13y ago
  Also there is one actually proven method to deterring terrorist events like 9/11. Four planes were hi-jacked. Three of those did not know that the outcome was to crash the plane into a building. But one did, and (as far as we know) the people aboard prevented that. If the American people would simply have been informed that terrorists didn't want to steal planes, but instead fly them into target then 9/11 would have turned out very differently. And we know this because we have proof.

np422 13y ago

From my horizon the entire security debacle have never been about actually keeping the populations safe - it's there to keep them worried about "the enemy" and keep them compliant with both funding requests and authorities in general. As of today neither USA or countries in western Europe can be considered police states. But if we keep on travelling in the same direction we are going now, that's where we'll end up.

bediger4000 13y ago
Exactly! After "Communists!" went away in the early 90s, the US Government and the associated "defence contractors" found the money a lot tighter. Although I'm pretty sure they didn't create 9/11, or just let it happen, the US Government and the defence contractors have sure jumped on the "Terrorists!" wagon. The War on Terror is just the boogie man that Containing Communism used to be.

k2enemy 13y ago

I'm a huge critic of the TSA and would be thrilled to see it dismantled, but I always find these kinds of arguments a little intellectually dishonest. It could be that “terrorist threat groups present in the Homeland are not known to be actively plotting against civil aviation targets or airports” because we have scanners in place that deter that kind of threat. Now, I don't believe this is the case, as plenty of research has shown that the scanners don't increase security, but the "no active threat" argument by itself doesn't get us very far. By that logic, we should remove security at Fort Knox because it never gets robbed.

rhizome 13y ago
as plenty of research has shown that the scanners don't increase security We can infer from this statement of yours that "the scanners" (such as they are) are not a component of security, so the analogy to Fort Knox security is inapt.
tsaoutourpants 13y ago
The issue (beyond the fact that the scanners don't work, which you've addressed and I publicly schooled back in March 2012) is that in public (especially on the floor of Congress) the TSA talks up all of these threats against us in order to garner support. Essentially, we've been lied to, which, at this point, is not a surprise coming from any federal agency.
tokenizer 13y ago
> By that logic, we should remove security at Fort Knox because it never gets robbed. Airports should have security. Every country has security in their airports. Where it crosses the line are when you have the security preemptively treat you like a criminal, and violate your personhood without justification other than a blanket statement of "terrorists". Security ! always have to = Neo-Fascism. But many people feel it does in American airports.
- zzzeek 13y ago
  > Airports should have security. Every country has security in their airports but wait, in your response to me you said that the line people wait on for security checks is just as big a terrorist hazard as the plane itself. How are you not contradicting yourself here? Which is it, we wait on lines for metal detectors or not ?

growupkids 13y ago

Perhaps what the actually conclusion one should take from this memo is not that terrorists don't exist, clearly they do, but rather that those terrorists are now focusing on softer targets, because aviation is seen as too difficult. I realize this may be an unpopular opinion, because let's face it the TSA searches are demeaning and some might argue an invasion of privacy. But it seems like a non sequitur to say that because terrorists aren't focusing on aviation that they don't exist. Maybe aviation is hard to hit, and they want to focus on easier targets like shooting up malls. Perhaps what's happenng here is that terrorists would like to target aviation, but TSA is doing just a good enough job to dissuade them. I know, blasphemy. The government can't do anything right.

tsaoutourpants 13y ago
Take about 60 seconds to think about how, if you were a terrorist tasked with blowing up an airplane, you would do it. Do you really think the TSA would stop you? And if they did, would you really get fewer virgins if you had to use your Plan B of blowing up the security checkpoint with maybe 100 people and a couple dozen federal employees, instead of your intended target?
- growupkids 13y ago
  Or, attack some softer target. And I just love how my post was modded down, no rebuttal because everyone hates the TSA. My assertion still stands, it's far more reasonable to conclude that terrorists have moved on to other targets, as we saw in Kenya, because they have no security and rarely have any armed capability even near by to respond. No doubt attacking the security line at the airport is a soft target, but no mo where near as soft as a mall. An airport may detect the attacker on the way to the line, you still have to buy a ticket. A mall, no chance. Are the lines a security risk? You bet, it's why I'm glad my GOES account keeps me out of them and thru the quick TSA-Pre line. But hey, this is all blasphemy anyway, the TSA sucks, Al Qaeda was defeated, and the government desperately wants to keep lying to you so they can look at the outline of someone's body.
  - 13y ago

herbig 13y ago

If I were trying to champion a legitimate cause, I would steer way clear of acknowledging Infowars by name or calling them "journalists." You could just say that a third party discovered it or something, but you definitely don't want to imply that they're fighting the good fight alongside you.

tsaoutourpants 13y ago
I respect that they found and published the documents. I don't buy most of what they are selling, but in this instance, their journalism brought an important issue to light.
- herbig 13y ago
  The problem is in the perception it gives to those reading your post. Infowars is not a legitimate journalistic effort. It is SEO optimized linkbait garbage created with the intent of selling videos, speaking engagements, and other assorted junk to gullible people. There is a whole network of crazy headed by the likes of Alex Jones that cross-link each other sharing ridiculous claims masquerading as real causes and small injustices blown totally out of proportion to support insanely tangential ideas. Some of these people also believe the government is run by lizard Jews from outer space.
  - gonzo 13y ago
    > Some of these people also believe the government is run by lizard Jews from outer space. Oh man, see? that's something I could get behind.

jstalin 13y ago

The GAO regularly audits the TSA by trying to get firearms and other contraband through security. They consistently get a lot through without the TSA noticing: http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/loaded-gun-slips-past-tsa-screeners/story?id=12412458 http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/loaded-gun-slips-past-tsa-scre...

ethomson 13y ago
I read years ago (and can't now find the article) that the TSA screeners didn't really care about catching these guns. The TSA tested them by slipping one (or a few) fake guns into luggage. If I recall, a screener said something along the lines of "we don't have to catch all guns. We only have to catch those guns." Sigh.
- Amadou 13y ago
  He's right. When there is no real threat, it doesn't matter how incompetent they are. As long as nothing bad happens you can't tell the difference between effective security and incompetence. You can tell on the micro-scale like those test weapons, but not on the macro scale where budgeting and oversight decisions are made.
  - growupkids 13y ago
    I'm sorry, there's no real threat? Lack of intelligence supporting a specific threat is very different from a general threat. Is the supposition here that because we don't know if anyone is currently targeting aviation that we shouldn't defend against those threats? Even if those threats existed in the near past? I guess I'm not tracking the conclusion that there is no real threat. So there's no current intelligence showing any specific plots exist. That's good. Have there been plots in the past? Yes. Why did they stop? Does this mean there won't be any in the future? Perhaps because airliners are a pITa to target? Is the threat actor really gone? Are they targeting something else? I guess I find it hard to believe that the kind of wackjob so we've seen out there are suddenly kicking back and have retired from the terrorist scene. If the threat actor is still there, and previously target aviation, why did they stop?

tsaoutourpants 13y ago

This post has been moderated down for some reason. Generally, posts on HN appear on the front page based on a calculation of upvotes per unit time. This post has a better ratio than all of the posts above it, yet about 20 minutes ago got bumped down from #1 to #14. Lame.