>it seems to me that chatting up passengers in order to spot potential trouble-makers is probably the single most effective part of the whole TSA process I don

>it seems to me that chatting up passengers in order to spot potential trouble-makers is probably the single most effective part of the whole TSA process I don't understand this. I assume that its meant from an intuitive 'I feel like this would be effective' standpoint. Because as far as actual effectiveness is concerned, we know that it has stopped 0 attacks. The only way we could know it to be effective is if there were people actually trying to carry out attacks and being caught. Neither of those things are happening, though, so we really can't tell. Thus far, it's just a massive waste of resources. Really, 9/11 guaranteed that there will never be another airline hijacking for a very, very long time. No passenger will fight with anything less than every fiber of their being to stop any hijacker now. It doesn't matter what kind of weapon you've got, the instant you stand up and say 'I'm taking over this place', you immediately have the entire crew and passengers willing to die to stop you. Before the idea of planes as weapons was tried, everyone presumed a hijacked plane would just fly to Cuba and everyone would be OK. But now that they know the possibility everyone is going to die in an intentional crash, hijackers have no chance.