Comment by Fervicus
13 hours ago
How many man hours and how much money have we wasted over security theater at airports? Has it been a worthwhile trade off?
13 hours ago
How many man hours and how much money have we wasted over security theater at airports? Has it been a worthwhile trade off?
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.
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.
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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.
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 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)
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I mean, they do find a ton of guns and ammunition. I wouldn't be so sure.
Bombings are pretty rare. The last succesful plane bombing of a plane departing from the united states that killed people was in 1962.
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
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 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?
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How many man hours and how much money have we wasted over SREs at <tech company>? Has it been a worthwhile trade off?
- Half kidding but this is what a lot of CEOs/CTOs think, SRE is one of the least invested skills because it is so difficult to prove that they are worthwhile. Similarly they are invested into AFTER a major incident.
Depends who the 'we' is. It worked out great for the airports; increased drink sales means increased rent for airport shops.
no
No hijacked planes, no terror attacks?
There's also been none since I washed my hair this morning - certainly must be related!!
Clever
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I don‘t think that is true at all. There have been numerous hijacked planes since 9/11 including two in the USA just this decade.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_hijackings
Plane hijacking has been on its way out anyway after the turmoil of the 1970s. And that has probably more to do with a) the relative political stability of the post cold war period, and b) a general sense that airplane hijacking isn’t actually that likely to advance your political goals. If you read the list above, you see people hijacking planes all kinds of dumb methods, hardly any of them involves carrying an actual bomb onto the plane.
There has been way less terrorism in general too. I'm always curious whether the war on terrorism is that effective, or there's major socioeconomic factor that matters most (or there's just less lead in the air).
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Of the two in the US this decade, one did not have a cockpit door as the plane was too small, and the other was by an off-duty pilot sitting in the cockpit…
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> a) the relative political stability of the post cold war period
Most plane hijackings/bombings were middle east related (e.g. linked to one of Palestinian liberation, al-qaeda, or isis)
Not sure i'd call that a stable region of the world, especially now. Perhaps though the people involved just realized it was an ineffective strategy.
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