No successful terrorist attacks on planes going to/from western countries after 9/11/2001, that's a pretty good record. Maybe we can't prove that the security theater was responsible for that, but still, the only planes that were bombed after 9/11/2001 were inside Russia or going from Egypt to Russia.
TSA direct costs, passenger time wasted, flights missed, items confiscated.
All so no bombs on planes. But somehow also no bombs at sports events or music concerts, or on trains or subways, or courthouses or....
So the TSA is either stunningly successful or a complete waste. I'd argue a complete waste, but hey, everyone in a TSA uniform drawing a paycheck us entitled to a different opinion.
It's just not bombs that are a danger. You really don't want anyone to set the airplane on fire either, or start shooting people or holes into the fuselage.
AFAIK America has had plenty of shootings, and probably arson attacks too over that time period.
A year ago Air Busan Flight 391 burned completely after a single passenger power bank caught fire on the overhead compartment, and crew couldn't extinguish it. If that had happened on a plane that was in middle of an ocean for example, it would have been almost certainly a total loss with everyone dead, or at least ditching into the sea.
You're right that fortunately there aren't many cases of people causing fires inside airliners on purpose. But that doesn't mean it couldn't happen. When a single power bank can cause catastrophic results like this, I'm glad there's at least some monitoring of what people carry into the airplane in their bags.
You claim comfort from monitoring, and yet the easiest source of fire on a plane is z lithium battery. Which are expressly allowed.
In other words the TSA specifically does not seek yo prevent fires. The reason we don't have people setting fires on planes is because people don't want to do that. And if they did the TSA would be specifically useless in preventing it.
I've traveled all over Europe and North America and have taken a lot of trains. Not once did I have to remove my shoe, scan my baggage, or had any kind of liquid restrictions.
Having a lot of experience with trains too, I can confirm this.
In Europe the major exceptions are Eurostar (Channel Tunnel) and the Spanish high-speed network, where the major stations are like airports, with airport-style security, airport-style departure lounges, and waiting. As I understand it, the extra security is at least partly an outcome of the Madrid terrorist bombings of 2004. Terribly self-defeating.
In France by contrast you can still arrive 2 minutes before the TGV departs.
Concerts and things like sporting events in the US typically require any bags to be clear and only be of a certain size. They may also be checked. No outside liquids are typically allowed (mainly to avoid alcohol). Usually people are at least wanded to prevent weapons, but sometimes metal detectors are setup.
i've been to a bunch of concerts here in the netherlands and they do the most basic checks.
last time, they checked my wife's purse without a torch (so she could've hidden anything inside) and didn't check anything on me so i got in with two 1g edibles.
There are even restaurants in London you can't get to without going through a scanner. E.g. half the restaurants at The Shard.
But to give an idea of how idiotic it is: Those are on the 32nd and 33rd floor. Next door is the Shangri La hotel of The Shard, where you can walk straight in and take the lift to the 31st (no scanners), and change to a lift for the 52nd floor (no scanners).
Quite possibly, but that doesn't seem to be their concern for whatever reason. It's very unclear to me what the supposed threat profile is for those cases (perhaps they're concerned it might be easier to do sufficient damage higher up given that the Shard narrows floor by floor; who knows), but The Shard one strikes me as particularly "funny" given you gain access to more of the building by wandering in the entrance next door to the one where the scanners are.
You can tell because some of the failed bombings (like the shoe bomber) failed because their plans were stupid to get around security, and if security wasn't there they would probably have used a normal bomb and succeeded
I have no idea if it has worked or not but you got to count deterrence too. If you have a lock and alarm in your house it might deter someone from even trying to break in. Of course you could never know if the deterrence worked (only attempts would be noticeable)
This is somewhat false? There were four other bombings, two in western countries (specifically EU->US flights). None of these two were successful in terms of "the plane was downed", but bombs were carried on a plane and exploded, and security didn't stop that.
22 December 2001, American Airlines Flight 63
7 May 2002, China Northern Flight 6136
25 December 2009, Northwest Airlines Flight 253
2 February 2016, Daallo Airlines Flight 159
There's 200 other people on the flight that think this plane is going to crash instead of thinking this plane is going to land safely and a ransom is going to occur.
Prior to 9/11 hijackings were rare but still occurred with everybody living [1]. There is a notable truncation in the list after 9/11 of incidents per decade (across the world; so nothing special about TSA).
How many man hours and how much money have we wasted over SREs at <tech company>? Has it been a worthwhile trade off?
- Half kidding but this is what a lot of CEOs/CTOs think, SRE is one of the least invested skills because it is so difficult to prove that they are worthwhile. Similarly they are invested into AFTER a major incident.
Plane hijacking has been on its way out anyway after the turmoil of the 1970s. And that has probably more to do with a) the relative political stability of the post cold war period, and b) a general sense that airplane hijacking isn’t actually that likely to advance your political goals. If you read the list above, you see people hijacking planes all kinds of dumb methods, hardly any of them involves carrying an actual bomb onto the plane.
Of the two in the US this decade, one did not have a cockpit door as the plane was too small, and the other was by an off-duty pilot sitting in the cockpit…
Yes, if you read the list prior to 9/11 majority of all plane hijackings were equally dumb. And hardly any involved bringing an actual bomb on board (usually lying about having one was enough).
There has been way less terrorism in general too. I'm always curious whether the war on terrorism is that effective, or there's major socioeconomic factor that matters most (or there's just less lead in the air).
Back in the day you needed to get onto TV and into newspaper headlines to get any attentions besides your neighbours. Today you can do that with a Facebook page and send your ideas worldwide.
And that works the back way too: instead of the news of bombing in some remote country you can't even find on the map you can get a funny cat videos to fill in.
In the 1970s everyone and their grandma was a member of some left wing revolutionary group, and half of them were working on some terrorist plot, bombing an embassy here, taking hostages there, hijacking an airplane, etc. etc. And in the 1980s every right wing reactionary had joined a right wing counter-revolutionary group, and 99% of them were plotting terrorist attacks (most of them targeting minorities). </exaggeration>
Today the cops are doing the job of the right wing counter-revolutionary groups, and relatively rarely do we get the right wing counter revolutionary terror attacks (but we definitely still do; just not as much). Meanwhile the left has pretty much abandoned terrorism as a viable tactic. It is mostly employed as part of an anti-colonial struggle of an oppressed minority sometimes under literal occupation of their colonizer’s military. But alas we only have a fraction of colonies today relative to the 1970s and the 1980s.
I don‘t like it (in fact I hate it), but capitalism won the cold war. And communist revolutionaries went dormant as a result. The cold war brought a different kind of stability, particularly to Europe, and the end of it created a massive turmoil (mainly along nationalistic lines rather then political ideological ones).
In hindsight perhaps I should have been more specific and said “relative political stability along ideological lines.”
