The aircraft attack vector has already been played out. Lets keep sane regulations in place (metal detectors, armored/locked cockpit doors), and move on to better problems to solve.
At some point the damage by TSA surpassed the expected damage from the alleged threat.
Airline terrorism plays against people's innate fears, and is therefore more effective.
yet we caught at least two people trying to blow up airplanes in the last ten years (shoe bomber and underwear bomber), why is that? why don't they just shoot up a grade school or a supermarket? (I'm asking honestly here. why airplanes?)
Let's not give them any ideas...
I think we're ultimately better served by the latter approach.
Four planes were hi-jacked. Three of those did not know that the outcome was to crash the plane into a building. But one did, and (as far as we know) the people aboard prevented that.
If the American people would simply have been informed that terrorists didn't want to steal planes, but instead fly them into target then 9/11 would have turned out very differently. And we know this because we have proof.
Elements of various intelligence community agencies were aware of a 9/11-style plot and were aware of the hijackers' existence within the United States. If these existing agencies had worked together and done their job, 9/11 might never have happened.
All without anyone removing their belts, frisking grandma, or having to stand like a perp in a county lock-up.
I've no issue with restructuring TSA or whatnot, I just think that if people could get on airplanes the way they do buses, there'd be events. Not so much 9/11 style hijackings, more like the occasional pipe bomb or shooting.
Eh, concert ticket queues, malls, the line for the actual TSA.
Plenty of opportunities outside of airline related things, and I don't see anything about your local mall foodcourt getting hit. My person wasn't fondled the last time I got some Panda Express.
Of course not- it wasn't formed until after the attacks.
Now, I don't believe this is the case, as plenty of research has shown that the scanners don't increase security, but the "no active threat" argument by itself doesn't get us very far. By that logic, we should remove security at Fort Knox because it never gets robbed.
Airports should have security. Every country has security in their airports. Where it crosses the line are when you have the security preemptively treat you like a criminal, and violate your personhood without justification other than a blanket statement of "terrorists".
Security ! always have to = Neo-Fascism. But many people feel it does in American airports.
but wait, in your response to me you said that the line people wait on for security checks is just as big a terrorist hazard as the plane itself. How are you not contradicting yourself here? Which is it, we wait on lines for metal detectors or not ?
Security needs to be proportional to the risk. We know there are plenty of people who would make off with the gold in Fort Knox if they could because hold-ups and bank-robberies happen all the time.
We do know the level of risk that the TSA is defending against is minuscule because of these basic facts:
(1) The TSA is not catching terrorists: No TSA action has ever resulted in a conviction on terrorism related charges. To the best of my knowledge, the only actual arrest on terrorism charges turned out to be completely bogus.[1] Meanwhile they crow about stupid little things like the guy with a funny looking water bottle.[2]
(2) The TSA is not deterring terrorists: Someone bent on spreading terror doesn't just give up because good security scared them off - they find another target. There are all kinds of high-profile soft targets: Shopping malls, the line at the airport, bridges, tunnels, movie theaters, derailing passenger trains, etc. It does not require much imagination to come up with a very long list of easy targets.
But so far we've seen just one effective attack like that - the Boston marathon and it was super easy for those guys to pull off. It is so easy, yet it is a once-in-a-decade event. That is unequivocal evidence that for all intents and purposes nobody with the ability to carry out attacks is actually attacking us.
Given those two facts, we can have very high confidence that the TSA is not providing useful security.
[1] http://www.clickorlando.com/news/TSA-exaggerates-claims-abou...
[2] http://boingboing.net/2008/07/30/tsa-proud-of-confisc.html
But the fact that they don't protect other things, like malls, doesn't change that possibility. You are right terrorists can target softer targets, and have recently done just that. And it may be because because of heightened security at other places that they are starting to choose softer targets. If you want to kill a lot of people and get a lot of attention, go where lots of people are that will have a big media reaction and where the security sucks.
Nude scanners convey messages such as 'We're doing something.' and 'The state is looking out for you.' while they're much more prone to errors and missing actual threats than 'good old-fashioned' airport security.
Defunding and dismantling out-of-control agencies such as the TSA and - while we're at it - the NSA would not only make the world a better but also a safer place.
Moreover, while the US - like most other industrialized countries - struggle with their budget at the same time they have no qualms about spending enormous amounts of money on government agencies that clearly provide no value other than furthering an utterly sinister political agenda.
There are, however, active threats against Fort Knox -- we know people want to rob it and that they would given the chance. On the other hand, it is not clear that there are people who would attack airplanes were we to scale back the TSA's operations (particularly airport checkpoints).
Fort Knox seems like a bad example of necessary security. How far would you get with a convoy of trucks, each carrying some tons of gold? Does that gold need more security than a nuclear weapon?
Fort Knox seems more like an example of security theater, designed to impress people with the idea that a pile of gold matters a whit compared to large modern nation's budget.
There is no demonstrable, rational connection in your example. It is entirely rational and possible that extra airport security is a deterrent to airbourne terrorism.
(In other words, if I don't look in a box, then I don't have evidence that anything is in the box, but that's not evidence that the box is empty. If however I do look in the box and fail to find evidence of anything in it, that is evidence that the box is in fact empty.)
They have presumably been looking for terrorists rather intensely.
We can infer from this statement of yours that "the scanners" (such as they are) are not a component of security, so the analogy to Fort Knox security is inapt.
No, because there have been attempts that the scanners have not caught, and were thwarted not by the TSA, nor any government agency, but by other passengers. Know thy history, I'm not even accounting for the white-hat tests that the TSA has soundly failed.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/mar/8/tsa-fails-und...
http://blog.tsa.gov/2010/12/70-detection-failure-rate-being....
http://www.prisonplanet.com/tsa-scanners-repeatedly-fail-to-...
In this case, by criticizing the spending of scanners as a deterrent to potential plots, are we not playing the part of CEO who complains about a small security expense as opposed to waiting until after a disaster to respond?
When the cost of security exceeds the cost of what's being protected, the solution need be reconsidered.
Similarly, the nude scanners would have done very little to stop the 9/11 hijackers, whose weapons were simple and equivalent weapons could be improvised from items that anyone can find on the other side of a checkpoint. Whatever we were doing in August 2001 to stop less-determined attacks was working back then and would work equally well today. The simplest conclusion is that whatever else is being done to stop a 9/11-style attack is working, and that the checkpoints are just a distraction.
Not that we should be surprised by that. The TSA was going to allow people to carry small knives through the checkpoints, and noted that you are already allowed to carry far more dangerous items through -- except for box cutters, because of their appearance. Then there was an outcry from people who are terrified of knives being on airplanes, and so the policy change never happened. With that kind of logic, it is a stretch to say that the checkpoints are keeping us safe.
Besides, the point about alternatives is problematic in other ways. If vast public resources are expended moving problems from one location to another location, were those resources well spent?
Not when all the materials one needs to construct a dangerous weapon are available on the other side of the checkpoint. Go to the duty-free shop and buy a glass bottle, and now you are ready to make a shiv.
For that matter, you have lots of sharp metal things and dangerous chemicals in your laptop, and you can walk through security with that.
I doubt the 9/11 hijackers would be deterred by the nude scanners. Sure, you would stop them from bringing a box cutter through (maybe), but there are a dozen other weapons they could have carried through or procured past the checkpoint. The nude scanners might catch someone who is trying to sneak a gun through security, but so do metal detectors -- and metal detectors might even do a better job.
About as effectively as arguing a tiger-repellant rock is strong deterrent.
Threat level orange? Internet Anarchists and Armchair Libertarians don't fly.
Threat level blue? Just people who look like they have some desert heritage.
Threat level red? "I'm sorry sir. It says here you we're really, really mad at how a cop stopped you last weekend for going through a red light."
And this is what people oppose too. Now we are suggesting abandon TSA and instead favor massive profiling? You will return to karma 0 if that's the route you take. Hahaha
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/loaded-gun-slips-past-tsa-scre...
Sigh.
When there is no real threat, it doesn't matter how incompetent they are. As long as nothing bad happens you can't tell the difference between effective security and incompetence. You can tell on the micro-scale like those test weapons, but not on the macro scale where budgeting and oversight decisions are made.
Search for "not a bear in sight"
You could just say that a third party discovered it or something, but you definitely don't want to imply that they're fighting the good fight alongside you.
Infowars is not a legitimate journalistic effort. It is SEO optimized linkbait garbage created with the intent of selling videos, speaking engagements, and other assorted junk to gullible people.
There is a whole network of crazy headed by the likes of Alex Jones that cross-link each other sharing ridiculous claims masquerading as real causes and small injustices blown totally out of proportion to support insanely tangential ideas.
Some of these people also believe the government is run by lizard Jews from outer space.
Perhaps what's happenng here is that terrorists would like to target aviation, but TSA is doing just a good enough job to dissuade them. I know, blasphemy. The government can't do anything right.
No doubt attacking the security line at the airport is a soft target, but no mo where near as soft as a mall. An airport may detect the attacker on the way to the line, you still have to buy a ticket. A mall, no chance. Are the lines a security risk? You bet, it's why I'm glad my GOES account keeps me out of them and thru the quick TSA-Pre line.
But hey, this is all blasphemy anyway, the TSA sucks, Al Qaeda was defeated, and the government desperately wants to keep lying to you so they can look at the outline of someone's body.
As of today neither USA or countries in western Europe can be considered police states.
But if we keep on travelling in the same direction we are going now, that's where we'll end up.
The War on Terror is just the boogie man that Containing Communism used to be.
Lame.
