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Comment by QuercusMax | Hacker News Reader

Like other post-9/11 things like DHS and ICE, we need to abolish TSA since it doesn't actually keep anyone safe, and actively harms people.

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I do think there's an advantage to third-party security, but they need to be properly trained -- airline-managed security has perverse incentives because of their profit motive.

Perverse profit motive like them not losing a big expensive aircraft, or having a massive loss of confidence in the airline to keep customers safe that causes them to go bankrupt?

If the only risk they care about is a hull loss or reputation, then yes, that's an example of a perverse profit motive, because there are other threats to life and limb that exist.

SFO has its own security, they seem better then TSA

It's sad that this is getting down voted. What have we become.

There's all kinds of people in the world. It's good to be accepting.

It is fine by me that a person might have a powerful lust for the taste of boot leather. I don't kink shame.

I just wish I didn't have to be a part of it.

There's been a slow shift here over the past decade, from

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety"

"If you don't agree with what I think a nanny state should be doing you're a terrible person"

What I wonder is if this is brought on by a demographic shift or a viewpoint shift among the same demographic.

It feels like there's different restrictions pushed by different groups. Gen Z is pretty prudish and seems to be the most in support of some of the adult content or internet censorship, while anti-LGBT/bathroom policing/etc seems to be more of the older generations.

There was a pretty much instantaneous shift on a certain Tuesday morning in September of 2001. I haven't noticed much of a change since then. The whole national mood has been "better safe than sorry" for anything vaguely terrorism-adjacent ever since.

You say abolish TSA. That's a "how"; let me ask you about outcomes to better understand.

Are you suggesting that the level of security at airports be reduced?

Are you suggesting that people and object that get onto planes be given less scrutiny?

Reinforced flight deck doors are sufficient. See: the rest of the world. TSA is a jobs program and to soothe the irrational and those poor at risk management.

At $10 Billion A Year, TSA Still Fails 90% Of The Time—And Covers It Up - https://viewfromthewing.com/at-10-billion-a-year-tsa-still-f... - January 27th, 2025

TSA Admits New Machines Are Slowing Security To A Crawl—And Says Screening Won’t Improve Until 2040 - https://viewfromthewing.com/tsa-admits-new-machines-are-slow... - August 10th, 2024

> But TSA itself has filed in court documents that they’ve been unaware of actual threats to aviation that they’re guarding against, and they haven’t stopped any actual terrorists (nor with past failure rates at detecting threats were they deterring any, either).

Accidentally Revealed Document Shows TSA Doesn't Think Terrorists Are Plotting To Attack Airplanes - https://www.techdirt.com/2013/10/21/accidentally-revealed-do... - October 21st, 2013

TSA was never necessary, it was all theater to begin with. The median number of terrorism deaths per year in the U.S. for all years between 1970-2017 was 4 [1]. You have always been about 10x more likely to die from being struck by lightning than by being killed by a terrorist.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_the_United_States....

And for 9/11, the only change that actually matters is strengthening the cockpit door and keeping it locked.

That, and the knowledge that hijackers are going to kill you, so you need to fight back. 9/11 only worked because the passengers on three of the planes "knew" that being compliant was their best chance of survival in a hijacking. When passengers on the fourth plane discovered this was no longer the case, they foiled the attack.

Someone in the thread mentioned that in a red team test 95% of the guns were passed undetected under the very noses of your TSA.

That is what you call security?

I would say yes to both of those.

But even if you want to keep security/scrutiny as it is now, that doesn't mean you need TSA. We had airport security before there was a TSA. We currently have airport security without TSA in some airports, such as SFO.

I say this as somebody who regularly travels around EMEA and the US: there is airport security at the same or higher level all around the World, and yet fewer people travelling in those countries seems to have the same level of problems.

My hot take is that its almost certainly a recruitment and training issue: there seem to be just enough bad apples getting through and not having poor behaviours trained out of them to mean the self-reported "these guys are idiots" numbers are higher than in other parts of the World.

Yeah, it is security theater, but other countries are way more relaxed than the US, especially small airports with few international flights.

When i was ~17, i had a friend with a false leg, with metal in it. We were late to our plane at a Moroccan airport (Agadir i think), we burst through the scanner gate that started beeping. He looked at the agent, tapped his leg, the agent made a "you can go" sign and we managed to get to the plane without any issue. I have seen very similar scene at Porto, it might be the mediterranean temper but i really think it has more to do with airport size (Lisbon airport agents seems more thorough)

What is the smallest level of additional security such that, if you assumed that the TSA only provides that much additional security over the alternative of not having them, you would regard it as worth it?

And, is the actual amount of security provided greater than that amount?

Judging by how every single TSA agent is horrifically trained and doesn't have a drop of care in the world, abolishing the TSA would be a step up from having it.

So every year the TSA wastes about 60,000 man years.

I think the OP's meaning was entirely clear and engaging with your questions could only obscure their message.

So just get rid of TSA and have no security? They find hundreds of guns in carry on baggage every year, but that should be no big deal right?

They didn't force this person through the scanner, they could have asked for a supervisor and discussed the situation. Don't trust the people at the bottom of any organization if you have a concern.

> They find hundreds of guns in carry on baggage every year…

They don't exactly have a great track record in that regard.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/investigation-breaches-...

"In all, so-called "Red Teams" of Homeland Security agents posing as passengers were able get weapons past TSA agents in 67 out of 70 tests — a 95 percent failure rate, according to agency officials."

(Don't worry, though. They fixed it... by classifing the reports. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/noem-dhs-watchdog-feuding-over-...)

They're not mutually exclusive things. Red-teamers often have quite a bit of expertise and are smarter than your average threat. And the point of these exercises is precisely to continually improve in response to the findings. But alas, most of the people who bring guns on to planes aren't threats anyway (at least not in the typical sense), they're idiots who forgot their CCW in their bag.

> Red-teamers often have quite a bit of expertise and are smarter than your average threat.

That is not super comforting.

> And the point of these exercises is precisely to continually improve in response to the findings.

Then they should proudly release some more recent results showing that improvement!

> Most of the people who bring guns on to planes aren't trying to hide anything at all, they're idiots who forgot their CCW in their bag.

Which means they aren't even bothering trying to hide it.

> smarter than your average threat

Well, there's a good candidate for the dumbest assumption I'm going to see this month.

What assumption?

Well funded and planned security threats are overwhelmingly outliers. Most security threats in airports are drunk and pissed off idiots, and most terrorists are lone wolf crazies with zero experience or expertise in security.

Those aren't the ones who are actually going to do serious damage. Drunk pissed off idiots haven't planned to be carrying anything anyway. Lone wolf crazies might get organized enough to be in the line in the first place... and if they do, well, crazy is not actually mutually exclusive with smart or even knowledgeable. And you still have the assumption that it matters how smart you are. There are only so many places to hide a weapon, and being smarter doesn't give you more choices.

A red teamer is going to be better suited at picking the right thing to hide and right way to conceal it, not because they have more options, but because they understand which combination of options are more likely to exploit the weaknesses of their target.

Have you noticed that in 25 years they have never managed to catch a single terrorist? Do you think they would’ve been quiet if they did? No way.

Random citizens on planes have. At least once.

We’ve had lots of stories about them missing weapons. Lots of stories about them making up ridiculous rules. Lots of stories about them sexually harassing people. Lots of stories about random agents going mad with power.

They have never accomplished anything that wasn’t accomplished by the much simpler and less invasive security we had before 9/11.

>They didn't force this person through the scanner

"Despite the woman's request for a pat-down search, a TSA agent told her that her only option was to pass through the AIT device."

>they could have asked for a supervisor and discussed the situation

"Before passing through the device, the plaintiff spoke to another officer, trying to explain the situation, but was told that the AIT machine had been “adjusted” so that it would not damage her spinal cord implant."

> So just get rid of TSA and have no security?

Nobody said that. Go back to pre-2001 airport security, together with locked cockpit doors and the widespread understanding that it isn't safe to cooperate with hijackers.

So just get rid of TSA and have no security?

No one suggested that. What do you think we did 30 years ago (look it up if you have to)? That, and locked cockpit doors: what value-add is TSA over procedures from 30 years ago?

It would be nice if there were evidence based requirements for new security features and rollback if subsequent data showed them to be ineffictive.

There is a lot of security theater happening at airports.

Airlines could have locked cockpit doors and prohibited passengers from bringing box cutters on their airplanes 30 years ago, but they didn't, even though hijackings regularly happened.

When there is no coordination between airlines, none of them wants to be the one who implements tough security and pisses off their customer base.

> Airlines could have locked cockpit doors and prohibited passengers from bringing box cutters on their airplanes 30 years ago, but they didn't, even though hijackings regularly happened.

Yes, because in most cases the hijackers would demand you land, negotiate, and either get some sort of asylum deal or get shot. Big inconvenience, but usually not much bloodshed.

9/11 changed the math for the people on the plane a lot, from "sit down, be quiet, and you'll probably be fine" to "you are about to be flown into a building". Reinforced cockpit doors are one of the little bits of legitimate security improvement made since then.

Look how many on the list at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_hijackings end with "no casualties".

Yeah, exactly, the security posture was simply to accept the risk because it was presumed to be small. A hijacking is an archetypal security failure, but airlines chose not to add friction to their operations to prevent them.

It's the Ford Pinto cost-benefit analysis scandal of the sky.

The fairly reasonable concern was that it’d turn relatively peaceful events into massacres.

Too much security can be a problem just like too little can.

…even though hijackings regularly happened

Maybe in the 70s, but that pretty much stopped with advent of metal detectors. And the hijackers had guns, not knives. Before 9/11 I carried a pocket knife on every flight I took.

Regardless, they’re doing it now, so I fail to see your point.

Before 9/11, my dad and I used to carry our fishing tackle boxes onto the plane because we didn't trust them to go through baggage handling. One time my dad brought a 10-inch fish gutting knife on a flight and didn't realize it until we got to our destination. Sailed right through the metal detectors and x-ray machines.

So we're supposed to trust people at the bottom of this organization to detect and safely confiscate a terrorist's firearm, but not to follow their own policies about alternative search procedures?

Studies seem to indicate that for every gun they find, they miss at least two more.

They miss more guns than they find.

They miss more knives than they find.*

They did, in fact, summon a supervisor, who lied to her.

*I am of the opinion that, since 9/11, passengers should be encouraged to have knives rather than discouraged. Knives won't get through the cockpit door; no one will open the cockpit doors for a hostage anymore.

Given how unruly and belligerent some passengers have become I think flight crews would correctly object to allowing knives.

In the 50's, you could board a plane with a gun and no ID.

You do know there was airport security before the TSA took over, right?

While I agree that TSA should be done away with, I'm afraid that it wouldn't actually change what airport security looks like in most places. At this point, since people have gotten used to it, my guess is that if Airports took over their own security again (or went back to however it worked pre-TSA), they would maintain about the same standards and procedures in an effort to avoid blame in the case that something happened. Regardless of government involvement, it is extremely hard to work back these ratchets on security theater.

On the contrary, I think airports would desperately like to do better. Airports are hated; improving the experience of airport security is extremely important to them.

I could legit see an airport in a major metro advertise "Fly through PDQ instead of SRX - you'll save an hour of your time and nobody will ask to touch your genitals"

If you pay enough, you can in fact get a much better experience (in some airports).

This is true, though how much better still has airport security as a major limiting factor.

You can get a private screening

The actual screening would probably be the same. But the customer service side of it might improve when airports can compete on how nice the experience is. I don't imagine these scanners are ever going away, but loudly clueless workers don't have to be part of the experience.

Yeah private security at some stuff pretty much already looks like TSA just with a cheaper scanner.

Blame/lawsuit avoidance is a powerful motivation to keep things the same. But there's also a very strong drive to reduce costs, and this would be a very enticing cost center, for better or worse.

Hard to say how things would play out.

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