[antics]

I've got one of those stories.

My parents live on the opposite side of the country. I flew to see them one Christmas and then flew back home. As I unpacked after the trip, I discovered that my huge hunting knife had accidentally been in my carry-on bag the whole time. I had carried it through both Salt Lake and Philadelphia International Airports. Literally no one bothered me about it.

Someone once told me that America is "fully prepared for the past" with regards to terrorism. This experience makes me wonder whether even that is really true. And indeed, when I read up on the actual security practices, I discovered that on an alarmingly frequent basis, it is not our security measures that foil terrorists, but their sheer ineptitude. The underwear bomber, the attempted Times Square guy, and a whole host of other idiots had the opportunity to seriously hurt people, and had they even a modicum of expertise, they would have succeeded. Our security forces may be able to take credit for stopping some of these events, but how many? These were incredibly simple strategies, and given that they still couldn't identify and neutralize the threat before it would have been too late, I can't imagine it's an astonishingly high number.

In spite of this I'm not worried about terrorism at all. If someone started a security-free airline, I would fly on it every single time I had the option. What does frighten me is that we spend so much money on this stuff. Why isn't the TSA held accountable by the government? (And if it is, why are they so bad at it?) Do we honestly know that increased spending in technology catches more terrorists? We are trying to identify very sparse features, and it is not at all obvious that this is the best way to catch them. On the other hand, the American government has eliminated (I'm told) 200 of Al-Quaeda's top leaders. This seems like a much more effective method for demolishing this behavior.

[jonah]

Yep, similar story - they flagged my messenger bag for the 1" of water in the bottom of my stainless steel water bottle and made me go back, empty it out, and run my bag through the x-ray machine again.

OK, fine. But while I was opening my bag to remove the water bottle, I noticed my 3" folding knife clipped to the front pocket with my pens, etc! I very quietly emptied the water, closed up my bag and ran it back through the x-ray. They were satisfied and I was on my way.

Needless to say, I breathed a huge sigh of relief. (And feeling bold, left the knife in my bag for the return trip. Again no problem.)

Edit: typos.

[phreanix]

Same here . I'm a competitive shooter and I've travelled internationally with live ammo lost in my bag that I found after unpacking. Total facepalm moment. It wasn't much, 5-6 rounds but I'm sure enough to get me in heaps of trouble had it been found in my carry-on. Then, they finally did detect something I had forgotten in my backpack again, but it was just airgun pellets, basically little pieces of lead.

[DanBC]

5 year prison sentence in England, so go careful.

[vacri]

It's hard to say how many terrorist events security actually stops. Raising the bar reduces attempts, and who knows how many there otherwise would have been? It's similar to when police departments get more bodies pounding the pavements, as the mere presence of authority helps keep things in check.

Certainly there's a sweet spot and the TSA is on the far side of it, but it's not as simple as looking at a number.

[tikhonj]

I think that would be more of an issue if terrorism was a spur-of-the-moment crime. Violence on the streets can be completely random (violent people getting angry for no appreciable reason) or without much premeditation (a mugger mugging whomever he sees). In these cases, a police presence would deter a lot of the crime.

A terrorist attack would have to be planned. Anything at all meaningful is going to require explosives: you won't be able to hijack or even severely damage a plane with a knife or even a gun these days. Anybody who goes out of their way, gets explosives and probably has special training isn't going to be stopped by a bunch of ineffectual bureaucrats in silly uniforms. Anybody else isn't going to be much more dangerous on a plane than on the ground, so added security would make little sense.