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Comment by ot | Hacker News Reader

I don't really buy the argument "TSA has never [...] foiled a terrorist plot or stopped an attack on an airliner.": it could be argued that the TSA measures act as an effective deterrent.

A stronger argument could be to show that in none of the countries that do not adopt TSA-like measures there have been any terrorist attempts, let alone successful.

How easy would it be to board in, say, Mexico or Canada, and hijack the flight to the US?

EDIT: looking at the comments (and the downvotes) I have the feeling that I wasn't clear. I agree with the article pretty much on everything, I'm just trying to say that where there are no body scanners deployed, for example in Europe, there have been no terrorist attacks, and I think that this is a stronger argument than "the TSA hasn't prevented any attack".

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Yes, it could be argued. But I've never seen it argued with convincing data, and for something so expensive and invasive, convincing data is the least I expect.

As he said in the article, if they HAD stopped someone, that someone would have been charged with a crime. Where are the charges?

Actually there have been would-be bombers and terrorists stopped since 9/11. And they have been charged.

The problem is that the TSA is not responsible for any of them. Either they were discovered and apprehended before carrying out the act by intelligence agencies (that predate the TSA and DHS, and have been doing this for a long, long time), or they were stopped by passengers and bystanders, in which case the TSA has demonstrably already failed.

Either way the DHS is just an embarrassment.

That's a fairly naive argument. My local bank discourages potential robbers with armed guards, alarms, and a locked vault. Just because they've never charged anyone with bank robbery doesn't mean those measures didn't prevent potential robbers from deciding to become actual robbers.

It's really not any better than the argument that of course the TSA keeps away terrorists and tigers because there haven't been any hijackings or tiger maulings on airplanes since they took over.

Let me tell you about this new product of mine. It's called Rhinoceros powder, and it does - you guessed it! It scares away Rhinos. As long as you spread Rhino powder everywhere, you will not be attacked by a Rhino. It works particularly well in urban areas.

It clearly works, too! I've been using it for decades, as have many of my customers, and wouldn't you know it! None of them have ever been attacked by a Rhino.

$60b a pack.

I'm not sure if it's intentional, but there was a Simpsons parallel in "Much Apu About Nothing":

  [Later, a full-force Bear Patrol is on watch.  Homer watches proudly.]

  Homer: Not a bear in sight.  The Bear Patrol must be working like a 
         charm.
   Lisa: That's spacious reasoning, Dad.
  Homer: Thank you, dear.
   Lisa: By your logic I could claim that this rock keeps tigers away.
  Homer: Oh, how does it work?
   Lisa: It doesn't work.
  Homer: Uh-huh.
   Lisa: It's just a stupid rock.
  Homer: Uh-huh.
   Lisa: But I don't see any tigers around, do you?
          [Homer thinks of this, then pulls out some money]
  Homer: Lisa, I want to buy your rock.
          [Lisa refuses at first, then takes the exchange]

http://www.snpp.com/episodes/3F20.html

This story archetype is centuries old.

specious not spacious. FTFY.

I don't really buy the argument "TSA has never [...] foiled a terrorist plot or stopped an attack on an airliner.": it could be argued that the TSA measures act as an effective deterrent.

The thing is that's the wrong metric.

The TSA isn't in a vacuum. The metric is whether the security measures have made it hard enough to mount an attack that law enforcement could disrupt it before it began.

Right now, I don't see enough evidence to evaluate that either way. However I can say without a doubt that there are plenty of huge issues with the way the TSA is going about things and a lot of things, like body scanners, do not support an effort to score high on the above metric.

On the other hand, there have been numerous attempted terrorist attacks on planes in the United States. All of them have been foiled without assistance from TSA, even the ones that weren't stopped until the would-be terrorist was on the airplane.

This isn't proof that TSA hasn't stopped any attacks. You could be correct that fear of the TSA has stopped terrorists from trying, or trying as often. However, given that there have been actual attempts and TSA has failed to foil any of them, it seems doubtful.

> How easy would it be to board in, say, Mexico or Canada, and hijack the flight to the US?

Arguably harder than it would have been before 9/11, as the U.S. has insisted on security standards for flights destined for American airports. That's why you frequently have to go through an additional gate security check at a European airport when flying to the U.S.

Well just hijack a regional Canadian/Mexican/Whatever flight then.

Take off, eh!

There are body scanners in Europe. I went through one at Schiphol on the way to Washington last week. And I didn't see any sign there to tell me that I could opt for a pat-down, whereas there are screens to tell you that in Washington on the way back.

The scanners we have in the US are using radiation. Some of the scanners used in Europe are using sound waves instead. (I noticed this because I always opt out of the radiation ones.)

I'd recommend not travelling through Manchester Airport then, which have backscatter machines in place and do not allow for opt-out (although this is as-per DfT guidelines). They do only test a random sample, however.

    The Department for Transport has full confidence in the independent assessment 
    undertaken by the Health Protection Agency. We are confident with their assessment
    that the dose from being scanned is far below the allowed levels in the UK and
    does not constitute any unacceptable risks to health

My chief concern is that the security agencies have often been known to lie and/or be technically incompetent when it comes to such things. Case in point: I still remember when we were being told that going through the xray machine doesn't damage film. It does, but it took them YEARS to admit it. So now we're being told that this machine (when being operated correctly and when working properly and when it has been properly calibrated) merely poses "acceptable" risks to health. We know the people running the machines are largely idiots and we have reason to suspect the machines aren't entirely idiot-proof - because almost nothing is. Frankly, I wouldn't trust the TSA to operate a blender safely; they're the last people I want giving me an x-ray scan.

Interesting. So it constitutes only acceptable risks to health. Of course "acceptable" being judged by whatever officials are there at the Health Protection Agency. I'd be curious to know how many exposures did they take into account.... what if you're flying every day? Or say 3 times a week?

Keep in mind that there have been attempted attacks that the TSA failed to stop. In every case the TSA proved useless and other forms of security (vigilant passengers especially) saved the day.

I have some highly effective Elephant Stampede Deterrent spray to sell you. You will be very pleased with it. Any American to use it in the continental US has never been stampeded.

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