The question isn’t whether people will try to hijack the planes but whether TSA is really an effective way to stop it. How much are we spending and how much freedom are we giving up? For every concealed weapon they find, how many are they missing? I think there are better ways to make the flights secure, and more effective ways, than what we are doing.
Arriving an half and a half before a flight turns what was once a convenient way of travel into a very slow way to get places. We should be looking to how Israel and other countries are performing their security and adjusting that to our own airports, not frisking every passenger in the hope of finding a weapon. The last time I traveled they had to scan this ancient woman in a wheelchair who clearly was not a threat. They treated her with respect, but, wow, we were all waiting for her to dodder across the line and get wandeed. I feel safer. Do you? Not really?
How come, since they had this mass theater shooting a year ago, we don’t have to get xrayed every time we want to take in a show?
LOTS of people carry guns on planes, by the way. You would be shocked to know how many people are legally carrying on a flight. Sure, they are permitted to carry, but all it takes is one of those people to decide that they have HAD it to make that flight go bad.
I’m not arguing about the system as a whole. I’m neither informed enough, not passionate enough to be cogent or loud about it (respectively).
I will say that if you think the potential existence of threats that bypass security completely invalidates security efforts, you’ve probably got a lot of computer security software to uninstall.
And if you want to avoid screening old ladies, you’re gonna have to rely on gender/age/ethic profiling and the efforts of the CIA and NSA, and to convince everyone that doing so would not lead to social injustice. Good luck. (That is to say, whether there’s a common sense solution to screening the wrong people or not, there are social factors that make its implementation far from simple.)
There was airport security before the TSA. A handgun wouldn’t make it through a metal detector in 2000. They didn’t change the technology of metal detectors or bag checks, they just changed the idiots running them. It’s not like it was a free-for-all before the TSA arrived…
This seems to miss the point. If there is a reasonable expectation that an obvious and easily obtained weapon like a gun or a large knife is going to be detected, then intentional attackers are forced to chose other targets or resort to more exotic and harder to obtain weapons.
In fact, as Boing Boing has already reported, the introducing metal detectors and X-ray machines resulted in a massive reduction in the number hijackings:
That means most of the guns and knifes seized are going to be from forgetful idiots. I am sure said idiots were subjected to some uncomfortable questioning and had their backgrounds checked before they were released, sans weapons. This would appear to be the system working as intended.
