Hacker News Reader

Comment by TulliusCicero | Hacker News Reader

While I sort of agree, the potential impact of someone smuggling in a bomb in their shoe onto a plane is obviously overwhelmingly larger than the impact of hiring a fake cheater guy for your corporation.

Part of why the answer for hiring fakes is 'do nothing' is because the downside there just isn't that bad, it's several orders of magnitude less destructive than "plane with dozens of people on board explodes".

View on HN

So why stop at airplanes? Why not subway trains, elevators, Starbucks?

Is it because someone tried in an airplane once? Tried and failed? Would you change your mind about Starbucks if someone tried and succeeded?

The whole point of that article is that you can’t design around extreme edge cases. If we used shoe bomb security theater logic around all aspects of flying, there would be no airline industry.

Sadly, for some people out there, any part of the process not swaddled in shoe bomb security theater is an opportunity to kill dozens of innocent people just waiting to be taken.

I'm not saying I agree with the security theater in this case, just that the comparisons between that and hiring the wrong person aren't very good.

Shoes aren't that big; the damage which could be done by a shoe bomb is pretty small, even one built by a highly trained demolitions expert.

Likewise the "no liquids" thing because of a risk of "binary explosives".

Now weight the potential impact of the downside by the cost to society/taxpayers.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com