The shoes and belts thing is ridiculous, I agree. But there's a legitimate reason for the liquid ban to which I'm not sure there's much of a solution, is there?
* Airport security got much more invasive post-9/11. For decades before that, people flew safely without these tight security measures. So, how much of the intensification is actually preventing another 9/11 versus just making us all feel like the government "did something"? I don't have an answer (genuinely I don't know :), but there are opinions all over the spectrum here.
* Even if we do accept that all the security steps are necessary and there isn't much we can change, we can still find it miserable and dehumanizing.
So, being able to travel by train, where security checks are either noninvasive or not even required, is a breath of fresh air. That's the point the commentor was making. They weren't proposing they could fix airports.
We can get back to not taking shoes off, but getting rid of xrays is not going to do well.
Conservatives could argue for reducing it because it might save money, and liberals could argue for reducing it because it might reduce incidence if racial profiling.
Perhaps it's that few pols are willing to roll back restrictions and then be "responsible" next time there's a terrorist attack. Kinda like how Dukakis was big into rehabilition and forgiveness for prisoners, which was great until a released prisoner committed violent crimes and of course then the blame is laid on Dukakis.
The chances of another 9/11 happening are basically zero because of two factors: 1) better cockpit security, and 2) 9/11 happening.
Before 9/11, a hijacking meant you were going to be late for dinner. If everyone cooperated, it would basically just be an inconvenience. Since 9/11, a hijacking means you are going to die. Turns out near-certain death is quite a good motivator for getting people to fight hijackers.
Similarly, before 9/11 cockpit access was pretty lax. You weren't supposed to have other people in the cockpit, but it happened all the time. The door was there more to stop people from wandering in than keeping anyone out. Since 9/11 that door stays shut with very few exceptions - and it is now strong enough that breaking through the door is practically impossible. A pilot is never willingly going to open that door to a hijacker - see the "near-certain death" above.
This would still apply even without any passenger screening at the airport. You can't really do anything once you get on board the airplane, so why even bother bringing anything on board?
If those checks were actually deterring terrorism I'd expect those other public places with less checks but just as much potential victims be attacked instead.
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2020/03/tsa_admits_li...
I'm not a chemist, but I'm under the impression that the liquid explosives in the 2006 plot are a much more feasible approach to explosives than what the shoe bomber attempted.
I'm also not going to pretend like I have any idea how effective any of these security measures are, I'm only explaining that I'm under the impression that there's at least a real precedent for them.
I don't know what the solution is to terrorism in air travel, but it's a very hard problem and the liquid limit isn't something that personally bothers me that much -- who wants to carry around full bottles of shampoo and shower soap and whatever else anyway?