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Comment by hammock | Hacker News Reader

Why should private plane passengers be subject to TSA? TSA (paid for by you and me by the way, not for free) exists to protect the public from harm, on public flights by common carriers. It used to be contracted by airlines themselves. Unless you are the most extreme of pro-seatbelt law people, it would make little sense for TSA to screen anyone on a private plane manifest unless the client asked them to.

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No, the TSA exists because 19 people hijacked 4 flights and succeeded in crashing 3 of them into various important buildings in the US on 9/11/2001.

Private planes are just as capable of crashing into buildings as commercial jets. The TSA has picked up some ancillary public safety functions over the years, but their raison d'etre is to prevent hijackings.

No, the TSA exists because politicians felt they needed to be seen doing something after 9/11. If there were actually much political will for it to fulfill actual security purposes, it surely would’ve been reformed after it’s continually abysmal performance on security audits.

No; the TSA exists because we needed a government jobs program that was easy to promote under the guise of terrorism.

It's not nearly enough jobs to be a jobs program

By what standard?

Federal civilian workforce (ex Postal Service and Military) is only 3 million.

TSA has 60k employees.

That's a lot of permanent jobs.

By your own numbers - 60k employees just doesn't touch a jobs program in a country of 350M people. The point of a jobs program is to provide jobs.

TSA was created to accomplish a goal - security theater (mostly), preventing another 9/11 (maybe more in theory than in practice), etc.

The New Deal WPA, according to wikipedia, supplied about 3M jobs at its peak in 1938, when the population was ~130M.

2.3% of the population vs 0.017%.

Also empirically - if it was a jobs program, it would be way better staffed..

>if it was a jobs program, it would be way better staffed..

You're saying it's not comparable to the size of the New Deal, the biggest jobs program ever in the US.

That doesn't disqualify it from consideration as a jobs program as there are many jobs programs much smaller.

Adding 60k to ~3 million is significant because it's permanent. These are low skilled workers (and security theater as you astutely say) mostly concentrated in large cities.

Whereas the New Deal was temp jobs that disappeared once grants and funding disappeared.

And they get Federal pensions and healthcare funded by tax dollars.

In terms of menace potential, any private plane will lose to a van full of fertilizer and a baddie intent on causing destruction. It's a matter of scale.

Little planes, like this one [1] just don't do damage on the same scale as airliners.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Austin_suicide_attack

Most private planes taking off from commercial airports (the ones where TSA generally operates) are much larger than a Piper Dakota.

(But regardless, it’s not clear that the TSA is even performing that kind of calculus.)

A G650 still loses to a motivated U-haul. :)

No argument though, just saying it's a hard problem, and the scaling issue makes it somewhat awkward to deploy security resources in proportion to the threat.

I don't have a solution. I'm not exactly thrilled with the current setup, but I try to stay quiet since I can't think of anything better.

Government building codes already anticipate the "van full of fertilizer" attack, as a result of the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. Federal building security is a separate matter though, with its own agency called FPS that predates DHS and TSA by decades.

What about a private plane full of anfo

The TSA was created because a plane crashed into a building. Private planes can crash into buildings. Why should they be exempt from TSA checks?

Lots of things can crash into buildings. Should they all be screened by TSA? Drones and their operators prior to every launch? 30 minute helicopter tours and high-rise HVAC drop offs? Private satellites?

Or is licensing and registration (of pilots and aircraft and manifest and flight plan) enough?

Governments are reactive. So if any of these other things ever successfully destroy a building then you can absolutely count on new rules and laws that, at a minimum, will include screening.

Commercial drones can't bring down buildings. And they're still subject to an awful lot of regulations.

So it’s complete building destruction that is the protective mission here? Not loss of life or general terrorism or something else? I’m glad we are clarifying

I wasn’t aware that DJI drone with 60lb payload was subject to more regulations than a Citation leaving TEB but I guess I’m open to learning what those are.

Why are you spending so much effort helping the most privileged people on the planet? Makes no sense to be their white knight

Why are you wasting time here? Even a letter to the editor would be more effective than an HN comment.

Were you born after 2001? Did you remember those planes that flew into the buildings?

Private planes can do the same thing.

And the TSA wouldn’t do anything to stop that

Hell the TSA doesn’t do much to prevent that on commercial flights, but requiring private flights to start going through commercial security would be completely pointless

Inconveniencing wealthy people might create motivation to fix the problem.

Doesn't work.

If TSA were added, there still wouldn't be any lines at private terminals.

Even if you're flying commercial, wealthy people can just pay Perq Soleil $250 a pop to waltz them through the employee line with no wait.

This reminds me of when Steve Job's had his ninja throwing stars confiscated by (airport security) getting on his private jet.

Edited to clarify NOT TSA

The danger of Steve Jobs hijacking his own private plane was obviously quite high! We can only thank the dutiful TSA officers for their brave service. I’m sure they risked their lives averting this danger. Have they been awarded any medals yet?

https://techland.time.com/2010/09/14/steve-jobs-vows-to-neve...

For reference

"Update: Apple called Techland saying that the story is “pure fiction.” According to the New York Post, Steve Jobs himself has told them the same."

Apparently I forgot the “/s” on my parent comment.

It seems to me that the people flying private jets are the biggest threats to humanity.

HN can always be counted on to have a good contingent of temporarily embarrassed billionaires ready to stick up for them at the slightest provocation.

Yeah let’s screen every kid and his 172 because rich people bad!

You don’t have to be a billionaire to fly out of an FBO and you don’t have to fly out of an FBO to be interested in freedom of movement. No Kings.

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