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Comment by LarryMullins | Hacker News Reader

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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