[jballanc]

In the vein of "Don't attribute to malice..." this would be my vote for most likely explanation for the TSA and countless other changes in the US since 9/11. The longer I live, the more I'm convinced that much of human behavior, or even human history as a whole, can be largely summarized by two maxims: "nothing risked, nothing gained" and "those who have the most are willing to lose the least".

Edit: Also, regarding the pen... The full conversation was longer. My father was complaining that the "weapons" they were catching were likely all from upstanding citizens, and that the terrorists would have figured out how to get weapons on board regardless. Instead of making the plane safer, they were in fact making it easier for potential terrorists to take control. He remarked, though, that he wasn't worried because he had his pen (and mind you, this was an old-school solid metal fountain pen...possibly not lethal, but I wouldn't want to find out).

So many people forget that one very, very important factor in the 9/11 attacks was that almost everyone on the planet had been conditioned by decades of politically motivated plane hijackings that the proper course of action was to aquiesce to the hijackers every demand. In fact a friend whose mother was a flight attendent at the time told us that they received explicit training informing them to do just that! I doubt you could repeat 9/11 today, security theater or no...

[saalweachter]

It was the very definition of a zero-day attack: even the fourth attempt, less than an hour after the first plane was crashed, failed (to reach its intended target) because passengers knew it wasn't a "normal" hijacking.