Air travel security is retarded - why?

[PokrLikeItsProse]

You should look up Ramzi Yousef and the Bojinka plot. Yousef, who was behind the first WTC bombing, successfully detonated a bomb using batteries hidden in his shoes and an explosive hidden in contact lens fluid bottles on a 1994 Philippine Airlines flight.

What's shocking is that it doesn't seem like any measures were taken to watch out for this kind of activity in the years following.

[raju]

Thanks Teabag, very informative.
Never really considered this:

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Another advantage to these "annoying inconveniences" is that it tangibly raises ALL passenger's awareness to odd things. As you leave the security checkpoint bitching about the delays you are far more likely to notice "abnormal" things about your fellow passengers than if you had sailed through security.

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But i have to agree this is definitely the case
Nice post

[WordWhiz]

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one of the important roles in air security is to almost entirely eliminate the cost/benefit calculation.

eg, i've heard a story of a car tyre manufacturer that allegedly knew of a problem with their tyre*; they didn't fix it, 'cause they figured the cost of a recall would be greater than the cost of damages in a court. the judge discovered this, and made such huge penalties to apply to totally blow any cost:benefit analysis out of the water.

the same thing applies here - the "inconvenience" of no liquids is totally inconsequential compared to the cost of an airline crashing into a building. thus, the probability is not overly relevant.

*the detail of the story isn't important, but the point is; it might even be a fiction - i don't know

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While this is probably the thinking that goes on, it's incorrect. And it's part of the problem. Loss of life sucks, but so does inconvenience. And they can be compared on the same scale. Every time you reach to change the radio station when you're driving, you're increasing by a very small amount the odds of killing yourself (or someone else) in exchange for the convenience of listening to music you like rather than an ad or a song you hate. You make that tradeoff every day, as does everyone else.

And private companies do too: Disneyland has private security guards. If they're too aggressive, they may prevent crime, but at the risk of angering or alienating the customer base. If they're not aggressive enough, the opposite problem. Disney doesn't just say "Let's go balls to the wall with security--saving a single life is way more important than a few patrons being temporarily inconvenienced." And they're right not to, because it's not true. As a private company, Disney has a nice feedback mechanism for determining how much security to employ and how to best use it. If there's too much, people stop attending Disneyland due to the inconvenience; too little, people stop attending Disneyland out of fear of being mugged or raped. Disney can thus continually tweak the security it provides to make it as good as possible.

The government has no such feedback mechanism. If security is too much of a hassle, fewer people travel (as is certainly happening now). But this doesn't result in decreased profits for the TSA, or angry shareholders demanding change. Nor is there any risk of competition stealing away customers--the govt has a monopoly on airport security.

Incentives are thus skewed. Most notably, people get fired if big bad things happen, like the occasional terrorist attack. People tend not to get fired for lots of little bad things happening, like everyone who travels wasting a few more minutes, or losing their shampoo, or whatever.

The same problem occurs in the FDA--no bureaucrat ever got fired for refusing to approve a potentially life saving drug. But they do get fired for approving drugs that turn out not to be safe. In both cases, an error in judgment leads to death, but only one is noticeable: "A statistical corpse is just as real as a thalidomide baby."

As for the tire analogy, one can make a very convincing case that the tire company got it right, and the judge got it wrong. If the cost of fixing the problem is greater than the damages it causes, it doesn't make much sense to spend money fixing it. The only caveat is that the legal system must produce quick and accurate results; if the tire company is using the slowness of the system of force advantageous settlements, that's another matter.

[inside??]

The whole security issue is 'free insurance' for the airline industry. They charge you $20-30 a flight as a security fee and make sure no major catastrophe occurs that would cause severe economic hardship on their industry such as occurred after 911.

[MrDetroit]

Flying now for me is very traumatic and uncomfortable. I remember as a kid traveling by plane and loving every second of it, when I would with one of my parents to pick up or drop off the other at the airport, we had free rein, we would go all the way to the gate, sometimes on the plane for a little while before take-off, things were so laid back then. Now when I get to the airport, I feel like a criminal.

[jono]

Maybe we would not have to put up with these measures if the USA government would just cut back on their false flag terrorism.

[NewTeaBag]

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Maybe we would not have to put up with these measures if the USA government would just cut back on their false flag terrorism.

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Politics forum is only 3 clicks up the sidebar. Why not rant in there, instead of in travel?

[TheWorstPlayer]

yes, please keep this thread to rants by me only. thank you.

[StevieG]

Laughable TSA Procedure- Boarding Pass Check at Metal Detectors

It is laughable to put any credence into a document I can print for myself, especially since there is no later verification that I am using the same document to get on the plane.

The one worthwhile thing the boarding pass check does is discourage people who aren't flying from going through security and adding to the burden and increasing lines. But then there is no need to show it once the preliminary ID check is complete.

When you consider the number of casual flyers who are not at all familiar with this procedure and hold up lines, it is really quite silly.

The Most Important Changes Since Sept 11 for Airline Security

The three most important changes for airline security since the Sept 11 attacks are not related to TSA screening procedures.

1) Locking cockpit doors

2) Changed attitude of passengers - the prevailing attitude with hijackers previously was to cooperate. That is no longer the case, and as the brave passengers of United 93 showed, it was no longer the case as soon as that morning.

3) Increased presence of air marshals and trained security presence at airports

Silly to Counter Specific Known Attack Methods

The reason people think the liquid procedures are silly is that it focuses on a previously tried method and risks focusing on that to the exclusion of just looking for the real out of place stuff. And it doesn't do it effectively anyway.

Why empty out kids bottles? If you wanted that amount smuggled on, you still can, you just need to put it in two shampoo bottles in a quart sized freezer bag.

Screening bags for trace amounts of bomb making material and X-raying for obvious weapons is good. But we will never be able to enumerate and check against all attacks. We cannot keep improvised weapons out of prisons, we have no chance of doing it on commercial airlines.

Getting into a guessing game is a no-win situation. We are better off with more trained security staff to look for suspicious activities, and a greater fraction of flights with air marshals.

The Probability Game

To those saying that any cost is worth preventing another attack, you are ignoring a basic fact - resources are scarce. We must take into account costs of procedures because we can only spend so much.

In fact, just dedicating the resources we do to TSA instead of general intelligence is a mistake.

It is much more likely that the next attack is in an unforeseen segment of the country and economy, and certainly in one with less attention from security.

Which gets us back to the guessing game. We'll never predict every spot, so focus on intelligence gathering and finding the bad guys rather then trying to protect the vast number of targets and attack methods individually.

[NewTeaBag]

There is a lot of false reasoning in here.

You seem convinced of yourself though, so I won't try to reason with you.

But I'll give you just one example:

People have hijacked planes with guns before. It's a tried method. Should we no longer screen for guns?

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2) Changed attitude of passengers - the prevailing attitude with hijackers previously was to cooperate. That is no longer the case, and as the brave passengers of United 93 showed, it was no longer the case as soon as that morning.

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As I stated in my above post, increasing passenger awareness is key component of increased security. BUT, relying on brave passengers is not a great defence overall.

Additionly, despite the good film and excellent PR from the United 93 passenger revolt, that plane crashed due to alltgether different reasons.