"Counterterrorism in the airport is a show designed to make people feel better" | Hacker News Reader

"Counterterrorism in the airport is a show designed to make people feel better"

theatlantic.com

16 pointstheoneill19 comments

Remember to consider the incentives of the 535 individuals who vote on funding the TSA year after year.

It doesn't matter if it provides any security. It keeps us sheeple under the illusion of safety, we keep buying plane tickets and a whole economy springs up surrounding the airport (not to mention the firms supplying the TSA with equipment). That's good for a ton of voter approval. Even better, if you don't vote for the TSA your opponent can call you out: 'Senator so-and-so wants our innocent children to die in a fire at the hands of scary men with beards!'

Yes. I'm jaded. I know.

No matter how many times I try, the security guards never let me take toothpaste or bottled water through the gate. They also had a tendency to confiscate my hair gel when i used to gel it up.

However, I was able to take my laptop + two batteries + 360 (and cables) + two external hard drives (and all the cables) + router + other misc electronic stuff through as carry on (Since I didn't trust the TSA not to steal it out of my suitcase when flying home and all) without any issues. Not even a question or odd look.

So many more people die in car accidents than in terrorist attacks - I would say that the feeling of safety in flight is not false in any account. The article has it completely backwards - the airport security theater is what creates the false feeling of unsafety.

I agree, I feel safer on Amtrak than when I fly and have to go through security; I never have the opportunity to wonder if the guy behind me has a bomb in his shoes. Though I do agree with the article that airport security is designed to make you feel safe.

planes are the safest way to travel PERIOD. What other method of travel gets as much safety testing? And has a second pilot just in case the first one is knocked out.

From 1999 to 2007 there's been a total of 11,000 deaths from plane crashes world wide. With an average of 1,200 deaths per year.

Car accidents? According to world health organization, there are a total of 1.2 million deaths world wide per YEAR. In addition to 48 million injuries per year.

So in 2007 when there were 965 deaths from plane crashes, you were 1,243 times more likely to die in a car accident than you were in a plane crash.

I've been saying this for years. I routinely just stick my toiletries in my pockets to avoid having to do that stupid little baggie. I used to fly a pretty decent amount (50k miles per year) and never once had a problem that way.

Also, I messed around with cheap homemade plastic explosives in high school enough to know that the amount you could legitimately stick in plastic tubes and then cram into a ziploc bag is more than enough to cause some serious damage.

Luckily we're all safe because very few people actually want to kill a plane full of strangers, and even fewer want to kill themselves too.

I flew recently, at Gatwick they say "no containers of liquids bigger than 100ml". At the other end they said "no more than 1L of liquids in total". But, if you were working in a team, you could get any amount of any liquid you wanted aboard.

True, but working in teams is hard. The larger the team must be, the harder it is to recruit, train, organize, supply, maintain confidentiality, keep out spies, and avoid detection (hence the cell structure). Forcing terrorists to work in teams significantly increases the cost of conducting an attack, so it's an excellent security strategy.

That's an interesting thought. You're probably right. I imagine doubling the number of terrorists required probably more than doubles the chance of them getting caught. Might be exponential.

Unfortunately, one ziploc bag full of plastic explosive is probably more than enough to blast a hole in the side of a plane. And one of those beer belly things I would think could take a whole plane out.

You say it like it's a bad thing. It works very well - people feel safe.

Does it? Everyone I know, and a few strangers I've met while taking off my shoes for the X-ray machine, hates airline security and doesn't really believe that it helps keep anyone safe.

It does. Proof - if it didn't make majority happy it would be scrapped.

You are not a typical user of the system. You also hang out with like-minded people which gives you illusion of being normal which ain't true - normal people aren't reading HN, aren't starting startups and aren't working deeply immeresed into unforgivingly precize digital machines.

Or, at the very least it's CYA. It's working very well for someone.

> Proof - if it didn't make majority happy it would be scrapped.

That's not a proof at all. Representative democracy doesn't mean the majority gets its way on every issue - otherwise, it's a fairly good bet that CEO pay would be capped, the Wall Street bailout would never have happened, and we wouldn't still be in Iraq. Rather, it means that when the government screws up on enough issues and pisses enough people off, we get to throw them out of office.

Granted, my experience isn't a proof either, for the reasons you point out. (Although - talking to random strangers in line for the checkpoint is about as close to a relevant random sample as you can get.) But then, I didn't claim it was.

If it is true, it means that counterterrorism in the airport actually decreases security, as it decreases motivitation to find real solutions to the problem.

Surely it's also at least partly a show in order to make terrorists feel like they won't get away with it?

It's easy to complain about airport security, but you gotta admit: terrorists seem to have more-or-less given up on targeting aeroplanes.

Is that because of the show or some actual, intelligent counterterrorist work?

Or is it because it would be stupid of them to target airoplains again. As the article mentioned, they are watching against what happened last weeks.

Well, considering we have a data set that consists of zero events/yr for decades except for 1 in 2001 and 1 in 2003? (shoe bomber, don't remember the year), I'd say we are firmly in the region of small number statistics and I'm very doubtful any meaningful inference can be made about what the rate itself if, let alone whether it's changed after 2001...

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