Hacker News Reader

Comment by KennyBlanken | Hacker News Reader

It's really important we have that 3 in 70 chance the TSA catches someone trying to get a bomb onboard a plane! Airport security isn't about preventing loss of life. It's about keeping the passenger airline industry alive.

Biden is famously pro-rail and I think this is just a way of killing off rail before he has a chance to fund a bunch of construction and equipment. Which is sad, because our federal highway system is crumbling in decay because we way, way overbuilt it.

It's all moot. No matter how much security there is, no matter how badly intelligence services or political leaders fuck up (in the case of 9/11, it was political leadership. In the case of the Boston Marathon bombing, it was intelligence), they'll just shout that they need more surveillance, more security measures, more rules. Nobody will ever say "no, you intelligence people need to do your job properly."

View on HN

I understand the most effective change was reinforcing and locking the cockpit doors. Despite the seemingly ineffective TSA checkpoints, I do wonder how well it works as a deterrent. AFAIK simple for-profit hijacking of planes used to be more common before 9/11. I haven't heard about any such incident since. How much of that isn't because the potential perpetrators were deterred from even trying?

The only event I know of where that new policy played a central role was in the 2015 disaster in which a suicidal pilot locked the cabin while his co-worker took a bathroom break, and crashed the plane:

> "On March 24, 2015, the co-pilot of a German airliner deliberately flew the plane into the French Alps, killing himself and the other 149 people onboard. When it crashed, Germanwings flight 9525 had been traveling from Barcelona, Spain, to Dusseldorf, Germany. (history.com)"

I believe there's now a strict rule of two pilots in the cockpit at all times as a result. Also, hijacked planes are now much more likely to be shot down by military jets if they approach urban areas, which is not a topic airlines like to discuss.

The recent China eastern disaster and Malaysian air crash are both (potential) examples of this too.

Not sure of the veracity, but I know pilot Suicide was one of the major theories held by investigators in both cases.

Sounds like some of that TSA money should he spent on lowering workload and increasing quality of life for pilots.

Also maybe let's stop firing them for getting mental healthcare.

That and matching bags loaded on aircraft to travelers boarded - the rest is just thousands standing around

What actually changed with the luggage matching? Googling this only gives me one-liners that don't explain what changed. Was there some way to check luggage anonymously before?

Not anonymously but if you checked-in, checked a bag, and then didn’t board, typically your bag may not still fly, now on most international flights if you don’t board, they go pull the bag from the aircraft.

https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/pdf/10.1287/opre.49.2.181...

I normally don't ask for sources, but 3 in 70 is so precise that I'm curious of the study.

3 in 70 is between 1/23 and 1/24, but really how many significant digits does this study get to. Surely 1/25 is accurate enough.

It's linked in the article I linked. Here's the direct link[1] and Schneier's analysis[2].

[1]: https://www.cnn.com/2015/06/01/politics/tsa-failed-undercove...

[2]: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/06/reassessing_a...

The TSA works for Biden, this is an action of an executive branch office, and an action that requires a significant amount of budget. If Biden didn't want this to happen it would stop at a stroke of his pen. If this is a move to kill passenger rail, then it's Biden that is killing it.

When I lived near Dulles airport I frequently used the train to travel up the north east as far as NY or Boston-- even though the train was often more expensive. The fact that I didn't have to deal with the TSA and their intrusive searches was a significant part of that. From the article it sounds like they're only currently planning to quietly invade your privacy in the background, which might not the rail killing effect you are concerned with. But if they did go full airport-tsa style handling of the trains then I wouldn't be shocked if it killed passenger rail: Not dealing with the TSA may not be a reason for most passengers, but it only has to be a reason for enough to bring it under a threshold of viability.

It seems unlikely that Biden wants to kill passenger rail. He's made a pretty big deal of using Amtrak between DC and Delaware to commute when he was in Congress. TSA has tried this before with Amtrak and it's possible that this decision is being made at a level lower than that of the president.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com