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Comment by leecarraher | Hacker News Reader

Correct, but I think the general escalation of security in airports which caught Richard Reid, was a direct response to 9/11 . Either Way, it is still mainly security theater to make passengers less apprehensive about taking what is still the safest mode of travel per passenger mile( there might be other metrics, but this is the only one I've read recently).

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> Correct, but I think the general escalation of security in airports which caught the Richard Reid

Eh? But he wasn't caught due to airport security. He got onto the plane and tried to set off the bomb during the flight.

He would have been caught if someone had looked at his shoes.

But if he knew they were checking shoes at airport security, then he probably would have put it somewhere else.

Well isn't that the reason for it? Deny an avenue of attack so they to use another less effective option?

But anyway - the point was 'general escalation of security in airports which caught the Richard Reid' is a provably false statement.

Let's all be grateful this dude didn't try to pull his underwear bomb stunt on an airplane.

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/09/30/saudi.arabia.a...

Do you mean like this other guy did? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umar_Farouk_Abdulmutallab

What like his underwear? And now we get to go through full body scanners without our shoes. You're much more likely to be able sneak a firearm through than an explosive device now.

Where?

> Where?

Are you familiar with any recent bomber story at all? All he needed was some matches and a small amount of plastique.

Someone put an incendiary in his underwear. There are tons of possibilities. If you can't name 3 ways other than shoes and underwear, you might be in the group that thinks the TSA is fine.

They scan your body for bulky objects under clothing and X-ray luggage. Shoes are the only other location to hide an explosive device.

How do they get cellphones into prison?

Mostly guards smuggling them in

Yes, but I think you get where I am coming from.

> mainly security theater

I have often noticed policies are different at each airport. Combined with the shoe/belt/imaging policies, I believe it's meant to be a form of confusion. As in, any given security policy/process can be studied for weaknesses. When the policies are differing/changing there is a component of surprise the attacker has to account for that can be difficult to game. However, this is all in my head as I try to understand my observations. Hoping it's all being done intentionally, when chances are it's just local level enforcement picking and choosing what ever they want to enforce any given day depending on who is in charge on that shift.

Ever since the pandemic I seem to have been shadow banned from PreCheck, and reading their FAQ the TSA is quite clear they deliberately randomize security, even to the point that getting a PreCheck on the boarding pass isn’t guaranteed.

It’s so hard to prove either way if TSA/etc are effective. We can count how many people they stop but there’s no way of knowing how many were just scared away.

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