I mean, I read news articles that say the TSA fail to actually catch prohibited items like weapons or drugs most of the time… so what’s the point? Many people are calling this “Security Theater”… Does this “Security Theater” actually scare away a would-be terrorist?
AFAICT, they go around it via terminal staff.
security theater and justification for taking away rights.
Well as usual it’s all about money. You can look it up because I can’t remember the guy’s name but a former politician owns a substantial stake in the body scanners used in airports.
I think they’ve gotten better but I remember reports in the past that said they missed over 90% of the guns/weapons that were put through as a test. So I’m pretty sure it isn’t about security, especially when mail was loaded into the cargo hold essential unchecked( this could have changed too, my data is pretty old).
I mean none of it makes sense. You can only bring what 3oz. of fluids, like two or three people can’t just combine fluids. But you ARE spending $5.00 for a bottle of water in the other side.
Does this “Security Theater” actually scare away a would-be terrorist?
Basically, we can’t answer this because it’d require measuring how many events didn’t happen. I suspect it only really helps reduce improvised, spur-of-the-moment crimes, but then again, the sort of person who would highjack an airliner is usually pretty stupid.
Passengers will not allow disruptions anymore either. The assumption now is that everyone will die if you don’t do something.
Yea I hope people intervene if dudes with shivs are walking around the plane.
Just suddenly thought about 9/11 for some reason, now I’m just randomly scare of flights. (Just weird OCD things… 😖)
Edit: Didn’t mean to label everything as “OCD”, I meant more like “paranoia”.
But you could test the system by trying to violate the rules and documenting the catch rate. Surely, they are already doing so to measure its effectiveness.
They are, and the TSA failure rate is astronomical.
Failing more than half the time back in 2017
I’m having trouble finding anything more recent, which doesn’t seem to suggest that they have i proved significantly or they would be bragging about it. But even a 90% success rate would be preatty terrible due to the volume of travelers they screen. They should be failing either one or zero out of dozens of tests at the most to be considered reliable.
Well, at at least they were able to catch something, rather than nothing. Now terrorists know that you can’t just walk through with an RPG on your shoulder. However, with rates like that, you could probably sneak through just about anything through as long as you try to hide it even a little bit.
You can test the catch rate of illegal or dangerous materials, but this is a measure more of the chance of catching someone once an attack is already prepared and being put into action. Basically, it just measures if its security theatre or not. To know if its effective at preventing attacks, we’d also need to know the number who wanted to attack and decided against it because TSA existed.
They certainly do miss some dangerous items, including weapons; but they also do catch thousands of people per year trying to take firearms on planes.
How many of these people intended political violence against civilians (i.e. terrorism) is not determined. Some may intend ordinary nonpolitical violent crime. Some may be really stupid hunters who don’t read the signs that are all over airports telling hunters not to try to carry on firearms. Some may be really incompetent gun smugglers. Some may have just forgotten which backpack they put their handgun in.
The terrorist is not scared away.
The one who can be scared away is no terrorist.
The whole thing works against small offenders, who forgot to store away their pocket knife etc. and hopefully it works also against clumsy criminals who make big mistakes.
My father flew for the first time in years to come visit me some time back. He packed his stuff in an old duffel bag. Once he made it to my place, he gave me a pocket knife that he hadn’t remembered was in the duffel bag.
Great job, TSA.
They also occasionally catch the guy with 50 parrots stuffed in his pants or something.
Others have mentioned how bad the TSA is, but with they aren’t mentioning is why it is so bad. It’s basically the third rail of . As soon as a politician starts to suggest that we redo the TSA they are accused of being weak on security and weak on terrorism. So because of it, there’s no real way to change what exist all they can do is add another layer. And yet the bad part or messed up part is still in place. Even TSA agents know that half of what they’re doing doesn’t make any sense.
And by the way, when I say half that’s a figure of speech, not a literal.
If the TS agent doesn’t do exactly what the rules require they’re just fired. Once you get fired from a government job good luck on ever getting another job in the government.
Instead of the politician, sitting down and asking what is working and what is not working and rebuilding the TSA. It’s just used as a for political, cheap shots and a way to attack the other side. Both Democrats and Republicans are doing the exact same thing. Anybody who says otherwise just lying to themselves
Insane amount of money are spent for just a small benefit. Meanwhile, it screws up travel time. There’s a reason why some people stand in for hours just to get on an airplane.
Those tsa lines are the ideal attack boint for a terrorist just plant your bomb is a garbage can and you can kill many without suticide tactics. If the tsa was interested in security you would not allow people to be in lines.
I’m not going to defend everything the TSA does. And they do have a lot of problems. But, the lines at the checkpoint are the result of trade-offs in security. For all things security related, it’s about managing risk. You will never eliminate risk, so you need to pick and choose where to apply controls to reduce the worst risks and accept some risk in other areas.
Think about the possible outcomes from terrorist attacks on airports. There are several possible scenarios:
- The attacker kills a few people in the airport using a direct weapon (gun, knife, etc.)
- The attacker kills a lot of people in a small area with a area weapon (bomb, gas, chemical, etc.)
- The attacker destroys an airplane in flight, killing everyone onboard.
- The attacker hijacks the airplane and takes everyone onboard for ransom.
- The attacker hijacks the airplane and uses it as a weapon, killing everyone on board and more people on the ground.
We could probably come up with other cases, but I think this covers the bulk of it. So, let’s dive into managing these risks. What are the effects of such attacks, if successful?
Looking at case 1, how many people are likely to be killed? Well, that depends on the police response time and the effectiveness of the attacker’s weapon. But, based on other mass casualty events, this probably falls into the range of 10-30 people. It could move outside this range, but this is pretty typical of such situations. To pick a number in the middle, will say they the expected loss for such an attack is around 20.
With Case 2, again there is variability. But, it’s also something we have analogs for and may be able to put a range of casualties on. The Boston Marathon bombing in 2013 killed 6. The attack on Kabul Airport in 2021 during the US evacuation killed 182, though that also included multiple gunmen attacking after the explosion. Let’s put the loss rate around 50 for as single bomb, assuming a very packed area and a very effective bomb.
For Case 3, the numbers are a bit easier to get a handle on. Typical airliners carry anywhere from 100-200 passengers. The 737 MAX 8-200 is designed for 200, while the Airbus A200-100 carries around 100 passengers. We’ll pin the loss rate here at 150, as attackers are likely to target larger aircraft for this sort of attack.
Case 4 is basically Case 3, but with an optional loss of only money. For that reason, I’m going to remove this case, but wanted to mention it to avoid the “well akshuly” crowd, since this is a historic problem.
That leaves Case 5. And it’s Case 4’s situation, plus some number of people on the ground. Certainly, not every such use of an airplane as a weapon will be as successful as the attack on 9/11. And that also involved multiple successful attacks. But, let’s assume that such attacks will hit populated buildings and cause significant damage. We’ll pin the expected loss at 200, This is 150 for the airplane and 50 on the ground, somewhat equivalent to Case 2 with a bomb in a crowded area.Ok, so we have expected losses, now lets talk about how often we expect such attacks to happen? And yes, this is a rough guess. But, since terrorists are unlikely to publish their plans, it’s the best we can do. We also face a difficulty in that these are still (thankfully) pretty rare events. And trying to extrapolate from a small set of data points is always a fraught exercise. So, fell free to quibble over these numbers, but I don’t think any numbers which fall into a reasonable range will change things much.
Case 1 - This attack as a pretty low barrier to entry. If a person can be found to perform the attack, arming them isn’t terribly hard. So, we let’s assume we get 2 of these attacks a year. I don’t think we’re actually getting that, but out goal is just to get into the right ballpark.
Case 2 - This attack takes a touch more work, bomb making isn’t that hard, but making a really effective one isn’t easy either. This type of attack does have the advantage that it doesn’t always require the attacker to die in the process. So, it might be easier to find someone willing to engage in such an attack. Let’s call this 1 per year.
Case 3 - This also requires a bomb, but it may not need to be quite as big to be effective. Granted, modern aircraft can be amazingly resilient (see Aloha Flight 243). This attack also results in the attacker dying, so that can be a bit harder to source. So, lets say this happens once every other year, or 1/2 per year.
Case 5 - So, no bomb this time, but you have to have an attacker not only willing to die in the process, but also go through enough flight training to fly the aircraft to it’s target. And you need the training itself. Plus, the attacker needs to get a weapon onto the aircraft. And since they need to overpower 100-200 people who might just take exception to the hijacking, you probably need multiple attackers willing to die in the attack. This is a pretty high bar to clear; so, let’s say that these attacks happen at a rate of 1 every 5 years.Ok, so let’s consider our Annualized Loss Expectancy (ALE) with what we have:
Case Loss Expectancy Frequency ALE 1 20 2 40 2 50 1 50 3 150 0.5 75 5 200 0.2 40 Total - - 205 Alright, so lets start talking about controls we can use to mitigate these attacks. By raw numbers, the thing we should care about most is Case 3, as that has the highest ALE. So, what can we do about bombs on airplanes? Making them more resilient seems like a good start, but if we could do that, the military would have done it long ago. So, really the goal is to keep bombs out of airplanes. And that’s going to mean some sort of screening. We could just say “no carry on, period” and move the problem to the cargo hold. This would reduce the frequency of Case 3 and Case 5, as it would be much harder to get a bomb or weapon onto an airplane, without a bag to hide them in. But, travelers are not likely to give up all carried on bags. So, that really leaves us with searching bags and controlled checkpoints to do it. Of course, as has been noted, this would likely mean that Cases 1 and 2 become deadlier. Let’s put some numbers to it. Let’s say that checkpoints reduce the frequency of Cases 3 and 5 by a factor of 4 and increase the Loss Expectancy of Cases 1 and 2 by 1.5.
Case Loss Expectancy Frequency ALE 1 30 2 60 2 75 1 75 3 150 0.125 18.75 5 200 0.05 10 Total - - 163.75 And we could push the numbers around for the effect of the checkpoints. And we could look at other controls or controls in combination. But, this is the sort of risk analysis which would need to be done to make such decisions. And, ideally, the numbers chosen would be done with a bit more care than my rectal extraction method. Can I say that anyone at the TSA/DHS/etc did this sort of analysis? No, but I suspect there has been some work on it. And it probably does lead to the conclusion that the expected loss is lower for airports with checkpoints than airports without. Though, that doesn’t excuse the TSA’s abysmal track record for tests done by the FBI.
I don’t understand why this hasn’t happened already.
We got a good roll of dice and didn’t split into the even worse timeline.
(But our luck wasn’t good enough to go into the better timelines, so this is the timeline we have)
I don’t remember which country, but there was one that had an attack on long security lines. Just one that I remember though, which makes sense as those kinds of terrorism were already becoming rarer before 9/11.
This just seems particularly cruel to me. You’re already miserable standing in line, then you get blown up.
Average Papers, Please day at the border
Don’t give them ideas.
Not OP, but it’s not a new idea. I’ve seen that suggested, even in major news coverage, for the past 20 years. For a long time, any article criticizing the TSA and its effectiveness would point out that weak point.
Three are IATA security minimums and the USA isn’t that far out of line compared to other countries; the biggest difference being the restriction on liquids and taking out electronics for non TSA Pre passengers. Terrorists could still attack the airport, but the flights are considered to be safer.
You also have other things that TSA or their local equivalent are looking for, including various forms of smuggling.
It’s a Swiss cheese model of risk management.
Alone, each layer (slice) of the security system has holes. But, when you put more layers on top (each with their own holes) some of the holes are now covered. Add more layers, and cover more holes.
In an airport, it is not just TSA but also cameras doing pattern recognition in the airport for suspicious activity, add into the mix complex national security measures and you would hope there is sufficient layers/coverage to stop most serious cases.
It is pure show. It might deter or maybe even catch the most stupid wannabe-terrorist, but tests have shown repeatedly that skilled people have no issues getting guns through without issues. All this while you can still build a bomb with stuff bought from the duty-free behind the TSA curtain.
Damn, if this is actually true, its kinda unsettling. They spend so much budget on military but not actually have a competent TSA… 🤦♂️
Well lets hope the Cockpit Doors are strong enough… in case, you know… 👀
If you want to cause trouble, don’t bother with the cockpit doors. Windows and doors are much easier targets.
I mean… someone could destroy a window and cause depressurization, but pilots just put on their oxygen mask and land the plane, and buildings are probably not at risk.
Millimeter wave machines are just plain worse than metal detectors - our airport security has gone down because of the TSA.
It does absolutely nothing.
Does this “Security Theater” actually scare away a would-be terrorist?
I very much doubt it. Also it would be a lot easier to just bribe/threaten/blackmail an airport employee to “forget” to lock a gate or similar and get anything you want in that way.
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So many have noted how the TSA is security theater, and even explained why it’s so bad, but I want to offer some reasoning as to why it’s still worth it. In a nutshell, it makes passengers feel safer. We all know that TSA is mostly useless at actually stopping a motivated threat. It’s really only good for stopping poorly planned or spontaneous threats which are generally uncommon in air transit. But for the general masses, that intrusive security screening feels thorough and so people assume their flights are safe and continue to fly all over the country. This keeps airlines in business, taxes going to localities and states from their airports, and creates a ton of jobs from gate agents to coffee shop clerks to rental car agents and beyond. The minute people stop thinking air travel is generally safe and secure is when all of that collapses. So we pour money into theater to make things look and feel secure (though most of the effort to actually secure things is behind the scenes, DHS/FBI/CBP/etc. using threat intel to stop planned attacks long before TSA would ever need to interact with anyone).
To your second question, we don’t really know if it scares away threat actors, but it likely does to some extent. It preps passengers to be somewhat more alert that they are in a secured area past the checkpoints, and complicates planning attacks at a minimum. No security system is 100% effective, especially one that needs to work at scales like TSA does, but the theater isn’t really an accident and for sure TSA heads know that’s all it really is, and they are fine with that.
Lastly, it’s not just the US with screenings like this, flying through Heathrow in the UK was just as bad in every way.
In a nutshell, it makes passengers feel safer.
That is a shit fucking reason for the level of annoyance that they cause now.
The pre 9/11 security accomplished the same feeling of security with a couple of guards and a metal detector.
Perhaps for you, but for millions of Americans it no longer did. I mean I don’t disagree with you, but the reality is the increased presence and technology of airport screening is mainly an economic force to keep folks flying. The average American doesn’t really understand it frankly care that TSA doesn’t increase security in relation to the costs and hassle (and I’m not talking about the folks that ask questions like OP, or give TSA agents a hard time in line, or even uncle crazy that we all ignore at Thanksgiving as he rants about how mmWave machines give us all cancer, I’m talking about the folks that just grumble a little about how long it takes the once or twice a year they fly, then forget about it again, the 80% fliers).
