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Comment by HDBaseT | Hacker News Reader

In Australia, you place your carry on luggage onto a tray and it passes through an xray machine, at the same time, you walk through a metal detector. Takes about 30 seconds depending on the line.

It still feels incongruent with the reality of the situation in my opinion. I can hop on a bus with 200 other people, or on a train with literally 0 security carrying whatever I want in a bag with no staff nearby either.

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That's basically how it is in the US, except that sometimes there aren't enough machines so the lines are long, and it's the spinning scan thing rather than a metal detector. Usually no line in major California airports when I've gone. NYC is hit-or-miss. Just did a transfer through LHR and the security line was insanely long.

It used to be much worse though. I think the new machinery has made the difference.

The bus/train is different because they're harder to weaponize. Everything we got was a response to the 9/11 attacks.

I agree with you on train and somewhat bus but cars are extremely easy to weaponise and dirt cheap. Any terrorist trying to hijack a plane and not simply using a car (with or without extra explosives) is an idiot.

Essentially terrorism isn’t about spreading terror, because they are so laughably ineffective at it.

See this excellent gwern article: https://gwern.net/terrorism-is-not-about-terror

These kinds of measures are always reactionnary to prior events. For example in Spain you do get your bag scanned (but I doubt scan operators are sufficiently trained to spot anything of importance anyway) at train stations before embarkments and also any governmental/official/administrative office because Spain has a history of bombing (mostly by ETA).

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