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Comment by Buttons840 | Hacker News Reader

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.

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