Uncharged phones, laptops to be banned on US-bound flights

They might do so someday, but it has been explained time and again why this is not a very effective strategy: it will hit a relatively small number of people, it will be in an enclosed area so media access and thus graphic coverage will be limited, and airports are uniquely well-provisioned with emergency services because of the non-negligible risk of plane crashes, which will limit the impact. So the 'return on risk' for the terrorist is relatively low - it would scare people and put them off flying for a bit, but it wouldn't be an epic disaster.

Realistically it would be hard to kill more than 25-50 people, and the media coverage would consist of footage of ambulances, sober-faced people in uniform, and crying friends and relatives. Look at the history of conflicts where bombings were common, like Northern Ireland, and you notice that crowds don't necessarily mean mass casualties. The most deadly bomb set off during the Irish troubles was at an outdoor market in a town called Omagh, and killed 29 people - but that was a car bomb. Also, in a terrestrial bombing there are also tales of heroism as people help each other, emergency services turn up to help, and so on, which dilutes the sense of horror and helplessness. You could see that with the Boston bombing last year, which was ultimately more effective in drawing people together than it was in terrorizing them.

A plane blowing or otherwise falling out of the sky is a much bigger deal, because it will almost certainly mean the death of everyone on board, plus it has the potential to cause considerable destruction on the ground. Even excluding terrorism, there was high awareness of the Air France plane that crashed in the Atlantic and of course the Malaysian Airlines plane that mysteriously vanished earlier this year. In a terrestrial bombing, you might be unlucky and die, but you might also be lucky and suffer only superficial injuries, or be able to make it to safety, or whatever. In an aerial disaster you and everyone else are basically helpless because if the initial disaster doesn't kill you the fall will. Situations involving helplessness and inevitability are a great deal more frightening to people in general, more so when multiplied by a large number of people.

The secrecy is ridiculous. The bombers and bombmakers already know what's going on. The TSA is just keeping innocent travelers in the dark.

> does anyone know how many people were caught trying to smuggle explosives on a plain until now?

I believe exactly 0 caught by TSA. Given their job performance they should have all been fired by now and the department closed.

FBI and even regular passengers have in 10 years or so caught and stopped some terrorists. TSA hasn't claimed a single person they stopped red-handed with a bomb.

All they did was waste years and years of productive time, abused, molested people, stole goods expensive and cheap alike and so on.

It is a self-perpetuating cancer (not unlike any other large organization) that now that it has been created will come up with further excuses to stay in business.

At least FBI is smart enough once a while to find some feeble minded brain-washable idiot and entrap him (groom him) to make him buy chemicals for explosives and then claim "oh look we have prevented deh terrorism!" and throw the idiot in prison for life.

TSA isn't even competent to do those false flag like activities. It is a pure cancer spreading and consuming resources.

It annoys me to no end when people bring up the extreme overreaction to terrorism as justification for paying extra attention to terrorism.

You're mixing up cause and effect here. Invading Iraq/Afghanistan is not a reason to put a lot of effort into counterterrorism. It's a reason not to.

The US is like a country that's allergic to bee stings. The immune system is constantly finding new ways to fight bee stings harder and faster than before. And when we point out that the vast majority of the damage done by bee stings is actually done by the immune system's reaction, the counterargument is that we suffered a lot of damage in the last bee sting, so we need to react.

Imagine a "keep calm and carry on" reaction to 9/11 instead of the panic attack we actually had.

Yes, the differences are huge. And we should work to make them not be huge, instead of using the huge differences to justify making huge differences.

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"

Nobody is going to put themselves out of a job by saying, "Ubiquitous security screening doesn't work, as every countermeasure we come up with has obvious counter-countermeasures. Thus, we should shrink this agency by a factor of five and refocus our efforts in other areas."

But they can't just ignore threats either, because that gets you hauled in front of Congress the next time something happens. Thus, they ride a line of carrying out countermeasures that don't really help, but which are enough so that they can go to Congress and say that they did everything they could.