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The TSA has an absolutely abysmal record for catching weapons and explosives during security audits.

The most embarrassing bit of security theater is that, even if these new devices were safe, even if they were necessary, even if they were effective at presenting the relevant data to their operators, that those operators simply do not catch actual weapons ~80% of the time. [1]

And that number has been that bad year after year after year.

Truly, a given flight's chance of getting blown up depends on little more than the chance that someone capable is trying to blow it up.

The only comfort to be found is in the relative difficulty in assembling a suitable explosive and the low co-incidence of that skill alongside murderous intent.

[1] http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/loaded-gun-slips-past-tsa-scre...

I went through security screening in LAX with a large pocket knife in my onboard luggage. IT was a mistake on my part - I'm glad they didn't find it because the knife has sentimental value to me.

I also went through a full-body scanner at MCO for the first time recently. It's not faster - in fact it is a giant bottleneck. Instead of just walking through, as per a metal detector, you have to stand there like an idiot with your arms above your head, for what seems like an eternity. If you move, the TSA resident rottweiler barks at you and the whole process is repeated.

In the meantime, you have 400 or so people jammed up in an unsecured area wiating to be processeed, which is a far-worse security risk than being on the plane.

But the worrying thing is - is this a ratchet? Will it be politically untenable to ever relax the security screening? I shudder to think at the GDP lost by people standing in airport screening queues. It's like a giant 24 hour stop-work protest that never ends. Even if only 1% of the time wasted would otherwise be productive work, well....

> The TSA has an absolutely abysmal record for catching weapons and explosives during security audits.

I know I'm expressing a view that's probably been expressed.

Nevertheless, I hope you can explain how/why this statement is wrong: "The scanners are deterring people from carrying weapons right now. If the scanners were removed, there would be more people carrying weapons."

I suppose you could argue that the people who really want to carry weapons wouldn't be stopped by a scanner. Then again, there are definitely "impulse crimes", where people are driven to commit crimes based on nothing but impulse/pent up anger. Those people would have been stopped by scanners, but are let through, if there were no/less effective scanners.

Regarding "impulse" crimes--I don't see why such crimes are that much more of an issue on a plane than anywhere else. My understanding of psychology is naturally imperfect, but I don't think that a hijacking would be an impulse crime.

I could see why explosives would be more dangerous on a plane than elsewhere. However, people don't generally carry large amounts of explosives with them for no good reason, so explosives also don't lend themselves to impulse crime.

Other dangers, like getting shot or stabbed--something that is actually likely to be an impulse crime--are not much more dangerous on a plane than on the ground. Since we're perfectly content running the risk of being shot walking around outside, I don't see why airports would need special security just to prevent impulse crimes.

Of course, this is not an argument against all airport security. While I am personally against it, I would have to spend more time and do some research before being confident of making a compelling case against it. I'm just explaining why I think preventing impulse crimes would not be a good reason for tight security at airports.

> "The scanners are deterring people from carrying weapons right now."

The scanners aren't deterring anyone who wasn't already deterred by simple metal detectors.

Has there ever been a single case of an "impulse crime" committed with a weapon on a plane, prior to the installation of body scanners?

Ok, I'll bite.

Because you need to weigh benefits against costs?

A certain number of people die from vaccines (side effects, negligence etc) every year. That's a fact. Do we stop vaccinating? No, we don't, because the number of lives saved is probably >10000X the cost.

>As the line for the x-ray scanner started to grow, they started letting people just go through the metal detectors. Once the line shrunk back down, they started forcing people to go through the scanner again.

That's not even limited to airports. I've seen it on festivals and concerts as well, and I'm sure it extends to other public events. Most notably I remember the security checks at the entrances of the infield on the Wacken Open Air 2010. When Iron Maiden or other very popular bands played, they just waved everyone through. It was ridiculous, really.

Also, there's a really amazing video[1] from a German talkshow on Youtube where Werner Gruber[2] completely embarrasses one of the most fervent supporters of the body scanners, Wolfgang Bosbach[3] of the CDU party. He easily smuggles enough thermite to blow a decent hole into the wall of a plane through a body scanner, and later demonstrates its destructive capabilities on a frying pan.

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrKvweNugnQ - German, I sadly cannot find a subtitled version, though it's quite possible to understand the basic gist by merely watching what Gruber does (he's the slightly chubby guy with the red tie).

[2] http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werner_Gruber - Also German, he has no English wikipedia entry.

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang_Bosbach - Quite uninformative, the German version is much better. He's a supporter of all sorts of completely ridiculous laws and measures, including a ban of "Killer Games" (violent video games) and all sorts of surveillance and anti-privacy laws.

I've seen this same scenario in play many times in different airports. In some larger airports (IAH) they only have 1 body scanner but way more volume than it can handle, so they will have two other lines going through standard metal detectors. I just stand in one of those lines and bypass the scanner. The last time I asked a TSA guy how to request a pat down and not go through the scanner he got visibly annoyed and started loudly proclaiming how safe the scanners were, its just an X-ray, yadda yadda.

The irony there is that moving people through the line faster when it's busy is actually the right security decision... It's just also the right decision other times.

I thought one of the selling points of these machines was that they result in shorter lines and quicker security screenings??

They're faster than a pat down, not than just respecting innocent travelers' privacy in the first place.

> The TSA agent told me, "you know these are completely safe and no human sees the pictures anymore, right?"

Wouldn't the obvious response be, "If nobody sees the results of the detector, why are we walking through it?"

Surely the software can detect anything strange just as well as (or better than) a human could.

I'm thinking that you are a bit overconfident in the state of computer vision software.

yep, TSA scanners (i mean machines) swapping funny pictures on Facebook. Turing would be proud.

The TSA employees appear to buy into the "need." I wrote about some of my recent airport experiences here: http://jseliger.com/2011/08/02/lessons-in-language-from-the-... .

I've gotten lucky on more recent flights: Tucson and La Guardia still appear to be using basic metal detectors.

The Continental Terminal in LaGuardia is still using metal detectors and the TSA personnel there tend to keep the line moving pretty quickly, considering its a serious bottleneck.