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Comment by LarryMullins | Hacker News Reader

50,000 is WAY too many. If we go off the rate of terror attacks in America, the number of terrorists in this country is incredibly low.

Consider this: you can buy gun powder at walmart with cash, no ID needed, but how many pipe bombs are going off every day? It's incredibly rare. Obviously there are very few people out there with terroristic inclinations.

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The number is probably closer to 50k based on other estimates so let’s go with that.

Expanding that we’re talking worldwide (and I bet most of the list is non-American) I feel like we could get to 50k pretty easily. The list isn’t just terrorists, but anyone who has been a real safety risk to flights (we’ve seen them in YouTube videos).

And the list accumulates year after year. I wonder how many are dead?

I don't believe this list is the same list as the passenger blacklist airlines use for unruly drunks.

Why are we going off the rate of terror attacks in America

Because we're talking about America's No Fly list......

Ok but American planes fly in and out of the US. Also domestic flights have no limitations on foreigners. Unless you are saying that it's ok to have terrorists onboard, as long as they're not trying to terrorize America.

The rate of terrorist attacks in America, regardless of perpetrators' country of origin, is the relevant metric when evaluating the value of American anti-terror watchlists. Extend this to international flights to or from America if you like, it makes no difference. Any sort of terrorism is exceptionally rare. If somebody were to say that terrorism doesn't exist at all, they'd be closer to the truth than fiction.

Leaving aside the question of effectiveness and abuse of the list, the rarity of terrorist attacks doesn't say anything about the number of people who might be inclined or convinced to commit them.

At the very least it indicates the rate at which people actually go through with it, which is the rate that actually counts. It's stupid small. Worrying about terrorism is extremely foolish.

It's not the rate that counts if your list is intended to stop people who have an elevated risk of carrying out an attack.

> Worrying about terrorism is extremely foolish.

I'm not debating the merit of the list or terrorism policy. But if you have a list in the first place then it's illogical to say its size should be relative to the number of successful terrorist attacks on planes. Not without more information about the distribution of terrorism inclination in the population.

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