Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

TSA Admits In Leaked Doc: No Evidence of Terrorist Plots Against Aviation in US

tsaoutofourpants.wordpress.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–129 of 129 posts

Re: TSA Admits In Leaked Doc: No Evidence of Terrorist Plots Against Aviation in US

#121

Post by yeukhon »

svachalek wrote: post #118
yeukhon wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure anyone could be hit by a car tomorrow. But why do we even bother to have education and laws? Why police officers and firefighters? Why EMT and doctors? Why don't we just let everyone die if there is nothing more that we could do? If there is only a 40% of a chance that a driver given a ticket will drive safer, then there is a 40% more likely for any individual to survive while crossing the street so we continue…

If we moved every man, woman, and child on Earth to the Moon, there's at least a 40% chance they would survive a catastrophic meteor strike to the Earth. That doesn't make it a good idea. There's always a cost and in this case (TSA or moving to the Moon) it's a ridiculously high one to pay for marginal protection against an unlikely event.

So, in the case of TSA, convenience outweigh than 1% of safety because of 40% of increase in both convenience and pleasant experience.

The conclusion that an attack is unlikely to happen is based on what? Can we do a fair experiment to show what would the probability be like if we never implemented this TSA inspection vs after implementing this TSA inspection?

Should we conduct such experiment and watch an alert (or wait until another plan gets hijacked)?

Okay. I need a new solution. What is the solution? I don't need a "we will die let's move on solution" because this is not a solution. If this is were a solution, we don't need law enforcement.

Re: TSA Admits In Leaked Doc: No Evidence of Terrorist Plots Against Aviation in US

#122

Post by HN_Account »

MrZongle2 wrote: post #49
zzzeek wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that is very interesting. were the people scanning the luggage and such beforehand just hired by individual airports? I've no issue with restructuring TSA or whatnot, I just think that if people could get on airplanes the way they do buses, there'd be events. Not so much 9/11 style hijackings, more like the occasional pipe bomb or shooting.

Yes, prior to 9/11 airports would hire private companies to do their security checks. This was often why different airports would have different degrees of thoroughness; I recall a trip through Kansas City in the mid-90s where I was amazed (and annoyed) that I had to turn on my laptop, despite never having to do that for dozens of trips elsewhere.

Today they call that, "By design".

Good way to cover up the fact that there's no consistency in the organization.

Re: TSA Admits In Leaked Doc: No Evidence of Terrorist Plots Against Aviation in US

#123

Post by DanBC »

gknoy wrote: post #115
DanBC wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 9/11 was a mild success 9/11 caused billions of dollars of economic damage, and we are still suffering the (stupid, self-imposed) effects - shuffling through airport security without our shoes, mass fingerprint surveillance, longer travel times, etc. 9/11 caused two wars, killing many thousands of soldiers, and maiming very many more, and those people now need expensive medical treatment and rehabilitation and bene…

The only reason 9/11 caused these is because we (nationally) overreacted.

> we are still suffering the (stupid, self-imposed) effects

Re: TSA Admits In Leaked Doc: No Evidence of Terrorist Plots Against Aviation in US

#124

Post by Amadou »

DanBC wrote: post #123
gknoy wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only reason 9/11 caused these is because we (nationally) overreacted.

> we are still suffering the (stupid, self-imposed) effects

> we are still suffering the (stupid, self-imposed) effects

The real damage wasn't self-imposed. It was imposed on us by poor leaders.

The solution lies within. The events of 9/11 were vivid, but in terms of GDP just a blip. It was the poor leadership that caused so much economic and human damage - spending hundreds of billions of dollars and tens of thousands of lives for basically no return at all.

We'll never have 100% control over foreign actors, but our government is an entirely different case. It exists by our whim alone. If instead we had spent just 1/100th of that money on better government accountability we'd be miles ahead of where we are today.

Re: TSA Admits In Leaked Doc: No Evidence of Terrorist Plots Against Aviation in US

#125

Post by webmaven »

growupkids wrote: post #99
tsaoutourpants wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take about 60 seconds to think about how, if you were a terrorist tasked with blowing up an airplane, you would do it. Do you really think the TSA would stop you? And if they did, would you really get fewer virgins if you had to use your Plan B of blowing up the security checkpoint with maybe 100 people and a couple dozen federal employees, instead of your intended target?

Or, attack some softer target. And I just love how my post was modded down, no rebuttal because everyone hates the TSA. My assertion still stands, it's far more reasonable to conclude that terrorists have moved on to other targets, as we saw in Kenya, because they have no security and rarely have any armed capability even near by to respond. No doubt attacking the security line at the airport is a soft target, but no…

But that's the point, the only significant 'hardening' of airliners as potential targets has been by armoring the cockpit doors and the awareness of the passengers, the porno-scanners are meaningless in that regard.

And the justifications previously offered for said porno-scanners have turned out to be bogus. The plots mentioned that were disrupted were disrupted by other means such as sigint and humint. So why not continue to invest in the means and methods that work, and cut from the budget the ones that never did?

Re: TSA Admits In Leaked Doc: No Evidence of Terrorist Plots Against Aviation in US

#126

Post by oleganza »

nopassrecover wrote: post #117
oleganza wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the link. People somehow don't realize that no one was punished by losing job/savings/reputation/credibility for even proposing such a sabotage. Kennedy merely "rejected" proposal which gives his office zero credibility on how he handled possible similar proposals. In the governments incentives are all inverted: bad stuff is not risky to attempt and it gives great rewards.

"Following presentation of the Northwoods plan, Kennedy removed Lemnitzer as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, although he became Supreme Allied Commander of NATO in January 1963"

Such a brutal punishment, indeed. A guy makes a plan to kill citizens and he's just moved to another office to continue earn money extracted from these citizens.

Re: TSA Admits In Leaked Doc: No Evidence of Terrorist Plots Against Aviation in US

#127

Post by tokenizer »

zzzeek wrote: post #119
tokenizer wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Lots of the comments here point out that airplanes tend to be the target because we're not talking about "killing lots of people" as we are about terror. The difference being? I'm sorry. Wasn't the Boston terrorist attack not on a plane? Didn't that kill people. In my opinion terror is an emotion, and people can feel that in a variety of situations depending on who they are. Killing a bunch of people, as an event,…

> Are you telling me I'm a threat until proven otherwise, or that we should have policies that treat everyone or a select few that way? not really, no, this seems like you're responding to something else here. > I only mentioned the free market because if they were to take this over, solutions would be available for both of us. how exactly, I'd pick one airport and you'd pick another ? I'm not sure that's very practi…

You're right. It would be best if they just eased back on the implementation. I don't care if it's the TSA or the airports doing it really. If things get better that be good, if things get worse that would be bad in terms of my perspective on travelling to the US.

As things stand now, the only way I'm going into the US is from Montreal down into Vermont. Any other way seems to sketchy to me.

In my country of Canada, flying from place to place within the country only requires walking past guards that don't do anything to you at the gate, and metal detectors. I haven't flown to different countries, so I'm sure I'm being too idealistic and naive on this subject, especially in terms of actual policy.

Re: TSA Admits In Leaked Doc: No Evidence of Terrorist Plots Against Aviation in US

#128

Post by nopassrecover »

oleganza wrote: post #126
nopassrecover wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Following presentation of the Northwoods plan, Kennedy removed Lemnitzer as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, although he became Supreme Allied Commander of NATO in January 1963"

Such a brutal punishment, indeed. A guy makes a plan to kill citizens and he's just moved to another office to continue earn money extracted from these citizens.

You argued no-one was punished by losing their job. That's exactly what happened. Whether that is an appropriate punishment is a different discussion.

Re: TSA Admits In Leaked Doc: No Evidence of Terrorist Plots Against Aviation in US

#129

Post by oleganza »

nopassrecover wrote: post #128
oleganza wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such a brutal punishment, indeed. A guy makes a plan to kill citizens and he's just moved to another office to continue earn money extracted from these citizens.

You argued no-one was punished by losing their job. That's exactly what happened. Whether that is an appropriate punishment is a different discussion.

It was not a punishment. The guy was getting free goodies from his powerful position somewhere in the government. He proposed to kill people. He got another position with free goodies somewhere in the government.
Post reply on HN