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Comment by roadnottaken | Hacker News Reader

How is it that the efficacy of these machines in preventing terrorism has not even entered into this discussion??

I don't have strong feelings one way or another, but to read these comments (and much internet commentary) you'd think these machines were totally useless and the TSA was a department of perverts, rather than a government agency tasked with an extremely difficult job with zero margin of error.

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I up-voted you because it's a legitimate reaction. And it gives me the opportunity to point out why your question is flawed.

The whole issue is the burden of proof. Here in the USA, the whole government is supposed to be about the people: "government of the people, by the people, and for the people". We built this country, and vested the Federal Government with power, in order to guarantee our freedoms.

Thus, there is absolutely no burden on us, the people, to prove or even explain why the government's bumbling encroachments are wrong. It's the other way around.

It's entirely the job of the government to prove that any encroachment on our freedom is both necessary and effective. To date, they have only asserted that this is necessary without any supporting logic or evidence. And to the best of my knowledge, they haven't even tried to make the argument that it's effective.

And absent any material demonstration of those things from the government, freedom should win by default.

Adding to that, we know that different models for security may very well work better than what we've got. See this article about Israel's Ben Gurion International Airport: http://forward.com/articles/122781/

Mind you, one definitely shouldn't argue from this that adopting Israel's airport security system would be a good idea for the USA (with, among other things, its much larger threatened area), as the article mentions. But it's important to note it, because it shows that there are effective options for securing air travel that don't cause such a devastating invasion of privacy and/or provoke molestation accusations.

A difficult job, yes, but zero margin of error -- or rephrased, 100% security -- is not possible, and attempting to achieve can justify anything that is incrementally effective.

Lets assume they are 100% effective. And instead a terrorist detonates a bomb while waiting in the security line, killing hundreds. So was the money spent on these machines a good investment?

Seriously? This gets down-voted? This was a legitimate, reasonable, and respectful comment. WTF.

I think because a lot of people question their effectiveness.

Fine. But you have to admit that there are two sides to this issue: there is a balance of security and privacy. I'm not crazy about the privacy violations, but I don't think demonizing the TSA is particularly useful or mature. I think they're trying to do a difficult and important job that we all benefit from. Perhaps they are over-stepping their bounds right now. However, if there had been another three plane-hijackings since 9/11 I don't think anyone would be complaining. This is the political problem with effectively preventing disaster: if you're good at it you don't get any credit (because there are no catastrophes to remind people of the danger).

if there had been another three plane-hijackings since 9/11 I don't think anyone would be complaining

FWIW, I would still be complaining about them. If we had a 9/11-scale tragedy every year, the real, practical effect of this is a trivial drop in the bucket compared to other issues. Even if we were just to focus on air travel, it wouldn't be that big a deal.

There is absolutely no way that it's worth the degree of attention that it's getting, not by several orders of magnitude.

Because the shoebomber and the pantsbomber waltzed aboard without a care in the world despite the enhanced security, and were stopped by passenger action. Post 9/11, passengers know what the deal is. If frisking people stopped even one bomber they'd be shouting it from the rooftops. But they ain't.

So the TSA needs to stop dicking us about on the ground since our safety is in our own hands anyway.

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