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Comment by chihuahua | Hacker News Reader

No successful terrorist attacks on planes going to/from western countries after 9/11/2001, that's a pretty good record. Maybe we can't prove that the security theater was responsible for that, but still, the only planes that were bombed after 9/11/2001 were inside Russia or going from Egypt to Russia.

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I have a rock that keeps tigers away. For 30 years I have not encountered any tigers. That’s a pretty good record.

To answer the parent question, no not even close.

TSA direct costs, passenger time wasted, flights missed, items confiscated.

All so no bombs on planes. But somehow also no bombs at sports events or music concerts, or on trains or subways, or courthouses or....

So the TSA is either stunningly successful or a complete waste. I'd argue a complete waste, but hey, everyone in a TSA uniform drawing a paycheck us entitled to a different opinion.

> But somehow also no bombs at sports events or music concerts, or on trains or subways, or courthouses or....

Boston marathon? The Madrid train bombings? 7/7? Ariana Grande?

Airport security has been stunningly successful.

But we don't have intense security checks at concerts, trains, or at marathon events as a result, do we?

I don't know where you live, but where I live, we do.

I've traveled all over Europe and North America and have taken a lot of trains. Not once did I have to remove my shoe, scan my baggage, or had any kind of liquid restrictions.

You're very fortunate, you'll have to teach us your ways some day

Concerts and things like sporting events in the US typically require any bags to be clear and only be of a certain size. They may also be checked. No outside liquids are typically allowed (mainly to avoid alcohol). Usually people are at least wanded to prevent weapons, but sometimes metal detectors are setup.

i've been to a bunch of concerts here in the netherlands and they do the most basic checks.

last time, they checked my wife's purse without a torch (so she could've hidden anything inside) and didn't check anything on me so i got in with two 1g edibles.

I think marijuana is legal in the Netherlands

There are even restaurants in London you can't get to without going through a scanner. E.g. half the restaurants at The Shard.

But to give an idea of how idiotic it is: Those are on the 32nd and 33rd floor. Next door is the Shangri La hotel of The Shard, where you can walk straight in and take the lift to the 31st (no scanners), and change to a lift for the 52nd floor (no scanners).

Wouldn't a terrorist want to bomb a building on the ground floor, anyway, so that all of it would fall down?

Quite possibly, but that doesn't seem to be their concern for whatever reason. It's very unclear to me what the supposed threat profile is for those cases (perhaps they're concerned it might be easier to do sufficient damage higher up given that the Shard narrows floor by floor; who knows), but The Shard one strikes me as particularly "funny" given you gain access to more of the building by wandering in the entrance next door to the one where the scanners are.

Having a lot of experience with trains too, I can confirm this.

In Europe the major exceptions are Eurostar (Channel Tunnel) and the Spanish high-speed network, where the major stations are like airports, with airport-style security, airport-style departure lounges, and waiting. As I understand it, the extra security is at least partly an outcome of the Madrid terrorist bombings of 2004. Terribly self-defeating.

In France by contrast you can still arrive 2 minutes before the TGV departs.

This proves that intense security checks prevent bombs.

It's just not bombs that are a danger. You really don't want anyone to set the airplane on fire either, or start shooting people or holes into the fuselage.

AFAIK America has had plenty of shootings, and probably arson attacks too over that time period.

Other then https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Northern_Airlines_Flight... how often has anyone ever set fire to a plane (not counting bombs that caused fires). Is there even a single other example.

I agree on guns, but you can probably deal with that with much lower intensity security.

A year ago Air Busan Flight 391 burned completely after a single passenger power bank caught fire on the overhead compartment, and crew couldn't extinguish it. If that had happened on a plane that was in middle of an ocean for example, it would have been almost certainly a total loss with everyone dead, or at least ditching into the sea.

You're right that fortunately there aren't many cases of people causing fires inside airliners on purpose. But that doesn't mean it couldn't happen. When a single power bank can cause catastrophic results like this, I'm glad there's at least some monitoring of what people carry into the airplane in their bags.

You claim comfort from monitoring, and yet the easiest source of fire on a plane is z lithium battery. Which are expressly allowed.

In other words the TSA specifically does not seek yo prevent fires. The reason we don't have people setting fires on planes is because people don't want to do that. And if they did the TSA would be specifically useless in preventing it.

You should market the rock with a track record like that

Last I checked, in the US there has not been a single instance of the TSA detecting and preventing a terror attack in its 25 year history.

And presumably they wouldn’t be shy about telling us if they had.

I mean, they do find a ton of guns and ammunition. I wouldn't be so sure.

I assume they have some deterent value.

You can tell because some of the failed bombings (like the shoe bomber) failed because their plans were stupid to get around security, and if security wasn't there they would probably have used a normal bomb and succeeded

I have no idea if it has worked or not but you got to count deterrence too. If you have a lock and alarm in your house it might deter someone from even trying to break in. Of course you could never know if the deterrence worked (only attempts would be noticeable)

I don't think that the question is really "removing all checks". It's rather "are all those expensive machines necessary?".

The main benefit from post 9/11 security is locks on the cockpit doors. And no longer telling passengers to do whatever a hijacker says.

Bombings are pretty rare. The last succesful plane bombing of a plane departing from the united states that killed people was in 1962.

Ok so cockpit door was locked and thus nobody can hijack plane.

Of course even that has killed people.

I thonk it has more to do with process and pilot crew closing their door.

This is somewhat false? There were four other bombings, two in western countries (specifically EU->US flights). None of these two were successful in terms of "the plane was downed", but bombs were carried on a plane and exploded, and security didn't stop that.

22 December 2001, American Airlines Flight 63 7 May 2002, China Northern Flight 6136 25 December 2009, Northwest Airlines Flight 253 2 February 2016, Daallo Airlines Flight 159

This is an asinine take - it literally has nothing to do with the theater we deal with at the airports in America

What's the actual reason then?

Better cooperation between intelligence and law enforcement agencies

Locking the door of the cockpit, actual on the ground policing in terms of monitoring terror cells.

There's 200 other people on the flight that think this plane is going to crash instead of thinking this plane is going to land safely and a ransom is going to occur.

Prior to 9/11 hijackings were rare but still occurred with everybody living [1]. There is a notable truncation in the list after 9/11 of incidents per decade (across the world; so nothing special about TSA).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_hijackings#19...

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