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The TSA was created for one purpose and one purpose only: To remove liability from the airlines if someone tries to blow up a plane or bring a weapon onto one f
by erbo 11y ago
The TSA was created for one purpose and one purpose only: To remove liability from the airlines if someone tries to blow up a plane or bring a weapon onto one for evil purposes. (At the same time as it was created, the airlines had liability retroactively removed after 9/11; without that, they'd have been sued into smoking craters by the families of the 3,000 people who died.)
The fact is, nobody in this country has been willing to die to blow up an airplane since 9/11. If there had been just ten people willing to do so, then, from the statistics, nine planes would have been blown up, and, when the tenth guy was caught, he would have blown up the airport instead.
The TSA is a failure, and an infringement of civil rights besides. Everyone responsible for it, up to and including members of Congress, should, by all rights, be fired and forfeit all salary and pension benefits.
- fredgrott 11y agono, not a failure..No planes blown up and No huge Airlines liability..like it or not the politicians who made the law do not have the same expectations we do
- grecy 11y agoHomer: Not a bear in sight. The Bear Patrol must be working like a charm. Lisa: That's specious reasoning, Dad. Homer: Thank you, dear. Lisa: By your logic I could claim that this rock keeps tigers away. Homer: Oh, how does it work? Lisa: It doesn't work. Homer: Uh-huh. Lisa: It’s just a stupid rock. Homer: Uh-huh. Lisa: But I don't see any tigers around, do you? [Homer thinks of this, then pulls out some money] Homer: Lisa, I want to buy your rock.
- digi_owl 11y agoHomer, catching the essence of Idiocracy before Idiocracy...
- Vexs 11y agoThat statement is like saying "This antivirus works really well on my computer that's not connected to the internet, I haven't gotten a virus yet!" If there was a threat, the TSA would probably do a pretty crap job at stopping it, every test that's been run against them shows it, not to even mention the myriad of people that accidentally bring a pistol, knife, or whatever through the checkpoint and discover it when they land!
- __z 11y agoBoth the underwear and shoe bombers were stopped, not by TSA, but by their own mistakes as well as vigilant passengers.
- peteretep 11y ago> The fact is, nobody in this country has been willing to > die to blow up an airplane since 9/11 Or they've been caught pre-airport by the Intelligence Services.
- freditup 11y agoI think this is a critical point. Intelligence seems like a much more effective means of security than physical security. Of course we have to debate the relative merits of intelligence if there are tradeoffs with liberties/freedoms.
- joshvm 11y agoThe underwear bomber in 2009 was certainly willing, although ultimately inept. There was also the transatlantic plot in 2006. That one rejuvenated the travel-size cosmetics industry.
- erbo 11y agoNeither of which were stopped by the TSA.
- simoncion 11y agoHonestly, I'm not sure that the it could have been demonstrated that the airlines were liable for the losses. Consider that every single other hijacking up to that point had ended peaceably. One of the many, many, many reasons that this attack was so successful was that it was novel and unexpected.
- erbo 11y agoI don't know that it would matter whether it could have actually been demonstrated, in court, that the airlines were liable for the losses. With 3,000 grieving families looking for someone to blame, and any number of lawyers looking to cash in if they could get the airlines found liable, suits would have been filed, and the airlines would then have been obligated to defend those suits, which would have hit them hard with legal expenses, discovery expenses, and so forth, right when people were unlikely to be buying tickets, being afraid of another attack. How bad would the damage have been? There's no way to know; if it didn't destroy the airlines, it could easily have wounded them greatly.
- simoncion 11y agoThis argument isn't convincing. Airlines have been bailed out -financially- several times before. If a suit happened to crush them, yet another infusion of taxpayer money to a critical piece of national infrastructure would have been made. Moreover, if the govt. was actually concerned about airline liability, they could have done for the airlines what they did for the phone companies; granted retroactive immunity for any actions taken by the airlines up to 9/11.
- specialist 11y agoThe TSA was created for one purpose and one purpose only... To enrich cronies.