TSA calls a halt to child patdowns

Of course, in America, this is a huge overestimate. 2001 is the only year in which deaths from terrorism have ever reached or exceeded that number in America. After 9/11, Timothy Mc Veigh's terrorist attack is the largest the country has ever seen. Not counting 9/11, fewer than 40 people were killed in acts of terrorism in the United States in the interval of 2000-2010 (most of that being domestic terrorism.) That's less than .008% of the deaths from automobile accidents in the same interval. Even including the 9/11 attack, it's still less than .7% of the deaths from automobile accidents.

edited 15th Jul '11 7:25:55 PM by Desertopa

...eventually, we will reach a maximum entropy state where nobody has their own socks or underwear, or knows who to ask to get them back.

Well, you've just made my point better then.

Unfortunately, "Have a goddamn sense of perspective" does not have a successful history as a political platform.

...eventually, we will reach a maximum entropy state where nobody has their own socks or underwear, or knows who to ask to get them back.

Now if only I could get people to apply that in the Right To Bear Arms thread.. That the amount of money the firearms industry brings into circulation compared to how many deaths it causes compared to automobile accidents is so trivial.

Let's not bring up that issue in this thread too.

Yeah.

The thing is thought, these measures were to stop 'previous' attacks.

If we were to roll them back, we would have more attacks on our hands. The only way, we can sadly go, is forward, or stay in park about this.

Edit: off topic. I should have stopped myself in the first place.

edited 15th Jul '11 9:19:02 PM by Desertopa

...eventually, we will reach a maximum entropy state where nobody has their own socks or underwear, or knows who to ask to get them back.

And if we were to cut healthcare benefits, we would have more people dying of preventable illnesses. And if we cut roads and bridges, we'll have more people dying from car accidents. And if we cut other infrastructure, we'll have more people dying from flooding or power outages. And if we cut police, we'll have more people being murdered. And etc. etc. etc.

You're looking at this all wrong. It's not a matter of making airports as safe as possible from terrorist attacks, because at some point the cost isn't worth it. It's a matter of putting the money where it'll do the most good, and looking at how poor a job the TSA does, coupled with the extremely high cost they represent, it's pretty clear that money shouldn't be going to the TSA.

edited 15th Jul '11 9:29:52 PM by deathjavu

Look, you can't make me speak in a logical, coherent, intelligent bananna.

There have been several public reports this year of outrage at the TSA patdown procedure, which many find invasive. Last December Khloe Kardashian likened the procedure to rape. Susie Castillo, a former beauty queen, released a distraught video after a patdown at the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport. Last month an elderly cancer patient was made to remove her adult diaper for TSA authorities. And earlier this month a Seattle woman accused the TSA of racism for inspecting her curly hair.

edited 15th Jul '11 11:11:48 PM by thernaB

So what in-airport queue security measures do you believe should be made now in the US? No changes? Go back to pre-2010 levels? Pre 2001 levels? Scrap the lot and treat it like getting on a subway? What detection systems should be used and how thoroughly should people be patted down? Where do you believe the sweet spot lies between cost and humiliation, and making acts of terrorism more viable?

If anyone would prefer this to be a new thread I'll make one.

I still stand by my point that airline terrorism still gets you much more fatality and fame bang for your buck than any other target and makes detective work much harder. Taking the two best known UK acts of terrorism as an example: the Pan Am 103 flight bombing over Lockerbie killed 270 people. The 2005 London tube bombings killed 56 (though there were over 700 injured).

People say that, under the current security measures, it's still very easy for a moderately clever person to get a bomb onto an airplane. So how come no one's ever successfully done that yet?

Uuuhhh, isn't it obvious why?

Pour y voir clair, il suffit souvent de changer la direction de son regard www.xkcd.com/386/

No, it's not. There are people who would be interested in blowing up an airplane or taking it hostage. And according to some posters here getting a bomb onto a plane is relatively easy. So why hasn't it happened?

Obvious answer, no one has tried it yet, as the people who unsuccesfully smuggled a bomb on a plane are as many who did it succesfully: 0.

And that puts a doubt on your assumption that there are actually a significant amount of people who want to do it. Just as there are a very low amount of people who want to blow up trains. Or are you telling me the strict security in train stations in the USA is the reason for the low amount of terrorist attacks there?

Pour y voir clair, il suffit souvent de changer la direction de son regard www.xkcd.com/386/

A bomb could go off on a train without actually hurting many people, though. The people near the bomb might be hurt, the particular car they're in might be damaged, and the train might have to stop, but you'd need a really, really big bomb if you actually wanted to destroy an entire train. A plane, however, once it's above a certain height and speed, will go down if you can just blow a decent sized hole in its hull, so far more people can be threatened with a far smaller explosive device.

That's pretty much a hypothetical, as we know from terrorist attacks that actually happened at such places, that yes, people die there as well, quite reliably even. Madrid killed almost 200, plus a lot of injured. Tokyo sarin incident, 13 dead thousands affected. How many terrorist attacks on trains/train station do you know of, that failed to achieve anything? Oklahoma city bombing, not a plane as well, 168 dead. Afghanistan, lot of terrorist attacks on ground level that rarely fail to kill someone. You might not get as many as with an airplane, though it's still possible if you really try. Use multiple bombs for example.

We know that terrorists can target trains, we know they are not above targeting trains, we know targeting trains is in general moderatly succesfull, and we also know it doesn't even require suiciding! So why doesn't happen anything with trains regularly? Because those assumed hordes of terrorists don't actually exist.

edited 16th Jul '11 4:57:45 AM by Uchuujinsan

Pour y voir clair, il suffit souvent de changer la direction de son regard www.xkcd.com/386/

How much funding/expertise did it take to make those big bombs, though? There's a difference between the destruction someone with access to black market explosives or genuine skill in bomb manufacturing can do and the destruction someone who just looked up bomb-making instructions on the Internet can do.

Now, maybe I've been misinformed on this, but I've been led to believe that even just a hand grenade could bring an airplane down. Timothy Mc Veigh's attack and the Madrid train bombings had a lot more explosive oomph than a hand grenade.

And I'm not saying there are legions and legions of fanatical terrorist bombers out there. But if there were just a dozen or so in the whole world, if it was as easy to get bombs onto a plane as some posters here say it is, I'd expect to have seen a little more destruction in the skies than we have in the last decade.

edited 16th Jul '11 5:10:56 AM by RavenWilder

If you can't make a bomb that can kill someone on a train, you can't make a bomb that crashes an airplane (you can still fly an airplane with half its roof blown off). So the people who can't make bombs don't matter anyway.

[edit]
How much destruction did we have in the decade before 9/11? How many plane hijackings? Terrorist attacks are - especially in a rich country - rare by their very nature. It wasn't that hard (or that easy) before 9/11, it hasn't become harder (or easier, of course).

edited 16th Jul '11 5:21:50 AM by Uchuujinsan

Pour y voir clair, il suffit souvent de changer la direction de son regard www.xkcd.com/386/

Huh, didn't know airplanes were that durable. Okay, that changes matters a bit if you don't just need a single stick of dynamite or a hand grenade to crash a plane.

Yeah, but some people were making it sound like anyone with a little bit of smarts could get deadly explosives past airport security. That's the part I was taking issue with. Whether the TSA's new measures add to security in any meaningful way is a different matter.

I question the first one, and point to the massive list of possible targets that are both easier and potentially more lethal- subway stations, stadiums, water facilities, power facilities, crowded apartments, etc.

No commercial plane will ever be allowed to fly into another building for two reasons- one, the cockpits are now reinforced and don't open to hostage takers, and two, there are standing orders to shoot down hijacked planes. That only leaves taking down the plane itself, which, while easy to accomplish, is not easy to do in such a way that actually kills the passengers. The things are designed to make at least some sort of halfway decent crash landing in a lot of different situations. Blowing a hole in a plane isn't nearly enough to kill everyone on board.

As for the second, that's a problem with people's irrational perceptions. The solution to that is obvious- don't be so goddamn terrorized, that's just playing into their hands.

Look, you can't make me speak in a logical, coherent, intelligent bananna.

Not to mention that after 9.11 there are trained and armed air marshals on most major flights. The TSA routine at the gate is just there for show, really. I've accidentally gotten dangerous stuff*

through security even after the special screening, so I know that it doesn't do shit.

edited 16th Jul '11 1:53:03 PM by DrunkGirlfriend

"I don't know how I do it. I'm like the Mr. Bean of sex." -Drunkscriblerian

Better pat-downs than carcinogenic scanners. No-one, least of all children, should be forced to go through cancer machines just to travel between countries.

edited 16th Jul '11 1:58:47 PM by Shichibukai

Requiem ~ September 2010 - October 2011 [Banned 4 Life]

So...we should tell the airlines to fly lower??

Oh, you edited it to cover that.

edited 16th Jul '11 1:58:55 PM by blueharp

Yep, I know there is greater exposure to atmospheric radiation during flights. That is a passive factor which is hard to control. Full body scanners unnecessarily add to that cumulative radiation exposure.

edited 16th Jul '11 2:03:35 PM by Shichibukai

Requiem ~ September 2010 - October 2011 [Banned 4 Life]

Unless you're really good with a knife, you're not likely to be that big a threat even if you snuck a folding knife onboard the plane.

And trust me when I say most people have little to no experience with handling a knife properly in a real fight. And it's entirely possible for even a normal civilian with minimal training to pacify an average knife nut who thinks he can hijack an entire plane and break into a cockpit so easily.

"Every opinion that isn't mine is subjected to Your Mileage May Vary."