[F_J_H]

The sad fact is, I think TSA type security is hear to stay, and won't lighten up very much, regardless of the facts that question its efficacy.

Why? Picture this. Someone (likely a politician) crusades hard to have the TSA dismantled, and is successful. No matter how much better the system that replaces it is, there is always a chance that someone slips through and takes down a plane, and 300+ people are killed.

In the throng of people screaming that "something needs to be done to stop this from happening again", who wants to be "that guy" who lobbied to have the TSA dismantled/replaced? Former TSA proponents will jump up and down and scream "See! This is why we can't have nice things!"

I don't think anyone will touch it...

[specialist]

Yea. It's one of those ideological dead ends that are hard to back out of. Just like the War on Drugs, Tough on Crime, Privatize and let the Free Market Decide, War on Terror, etc.

[WettowelReactor]

Bruce Schneier address this very topic in his post on CYA security.

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/02/cya_security_1...

[krichman]

The USA would need to somehow simultaneously remove sociopaths from office and remove voting privileges from idiots before they can have rational legislation in favor of the people.

[flyinRyan]

Then you just stand up and point out that TSA never caught a single terrorist in its entire history so there's no reason to believe it would have handled this incident.

[lutusp]

> Then you just stand up and point out that TSA never caught a single terrorist ...

Your conclusion doesn't follow from your premise -- you're using flawed logic. What would you think of an oncologist whose patients never contract serious, life-threatening cancer? Is he ordering unnecessary tests and procedures on people who aren't really sick, or is he catching all the cancers so early that they're never life-threatening?

See the point? I'm certainly not arguing one way or another about the TSA, just that your argument contains a very serious logical flaw. Maybe terrorists, knowing about the TSA, won't take the risk of going near an airport.

> ... so there's no reason to believe it would have handled this incident.

Flawed argument, flawed conclusion.

[flyinRyan]

>What would you think of an oncologist whose patients never contract serious, life-threatening cancer?

Since the science tells us that his methods reduce the rate of cancer (all metrics we can test to a degree), I'd think he's doing good work.

TSA, on the other hand, has been been called out by many actual security professionals for having shit practices that don't actually work. They're basically pulling a rain man scam and people like you are buying into it because you think there's no way to prove it hasn't magically stopped something we didn't even hear about. Actual professionals who don't have money invested in one conclusion or the other are saying it isn't helping anything.

[lutusp]

> TSA, on the other hand, has been been called out by many actual security professionals for having shit practices that don't actually work.

Yes, that's true, but (a) those "professionals" have no better logical basis than you do, and (b) this doesn't change the fact that you were using flawed logic, my only reason for posting. The fact that there haven't been any terrorist arrests at airports doesn't mean what you seem to think.

> They're basically pulling a rain man scam ...

This is counterproductive. It might be true, it might be false, but it doesn't follow from the evidence. Again, I'm not taking a position on the TSA, only the logic.

> Actual professionals who don't have money invested in one conclusion or the other are saying it isn't helping anything.

Name one who is using an argument more scientific than "they haven't caught any terrorists!" And again, this is not about whether the claim is true, this is about the basis for deciding whether it's true.

[flyinRyan]

Actually you're wrong. At least one security expert has written up pretty good critiques of why the screening can't actually be doing anything.

Also, there are other ways terrorists could hurt us that would be much easier to exploit than getting on a plane. Why has this never been tried? There is just no reason to believe TSA is doing anything useful. The burden of proof lies with them and their extraordinary claims that they're somehow keeping us safe with their bullshit ineffective procedures.