I’m old enough to remember a time when it didn’t really matter, the wrong person getting on the wrong flight was more of an issue for that person and maybe the airline.
Governments, like many other institutions, tend to find ways to generate demand for their services. By the time it happens the response is; ‘of course we need these things’, and in time that will be replaced by ‘that’s the way it has always been’ by people who don’t know any better. Just because it’s normal now doesn’t mean it always had to be this way.
I’m not going to summarize everything the whole salami encompasses - that’s a rather big topic that’s probably best left as an exercise for the reader.
It’s a curious trend that the ignorant demand that I do free work for them.
I see it as part of this inversion of responsibility at schools and in culture where students have not failed to learn, the teachers have failed to teach. The students have become very entitled and demanding that not only must they be spoon fed but that the information must be pre-chewed to their exact liking.
I’m not paid to teach you and if you spend your life expecting others to do the work of learning for you then you assuredly will spend the rest of your life in ignorance.
I’m far better off finding ways to shield myself from the negative consequences of a culture fostering ignorant masses than I am to try to fight that onslaught one person at a time.
> When was that? Mass (as in common, not the initial one off ones) airplane hijackings started in the 1940s.
IIRC, in the US up to the 1980s or so. Perhaps even into the 1990s.
Hell, there didn't even used to be metal detectors in airports until a "large" number of plane bombings happened in the 1980s. IIRC, the excuse for installing them was to detect metal-based explosives smuggled in one's person.
> Are you implying that governments are behind terrorist acts or suicidal ones...
I'll note that the cumulative delays from TSA "security" have had a much, much larger human cost than the destruction of the WTC towers. Relatedly, the financial cost has been staggering. Tragically, the process creating both of these costs are ongoing.
Two things (and only two things) ensured that there will never be another attack like that, ever:
1) Hardening and locking the cockpit doors. Pilots screamed about this for an assload of years before 9/11, but penny-pinching airlines refused to do anything about it.
2) The fact that air passengers now know that a hijacking is not an inconvenience (or maybe a stop at an exotic destination), but is a death sentence. With any plausible armament that a team of hijackers could get into the cabin with even 1970's-era security screening, they absolutely cannot win against a planeload of people who are supremely disinterested in dying in a plane crash today.
> 2) The fact that air passengers now know that a hijacking is not an inconvenience (or maybe a stop at an exotic destination), but is a death sentence. With any plausible armament that a team of hijackers could get into the cabin with even 1970's-era security screening, they absolutely cannot win against a planeload of people who are supremely disinterested in dying in a plane crash today.
The kind of languorous and spiritless attitude with which people argue for all this extra population control makes me think they would prefer those passengers sit calmly and sing Nearer My God To Thee.
Do you understand that the section you quoted indicates that (since 2001) people in the plane will absolutely use violence to stop any hijackers that attempt to hijack the plane?
> I'll note that the cumulative delays from TSA "security" have had a much, much larger human cost than the destruction of the WTC towers. Relatedly, the financial cost has been staggering. Tragically, the process creating both of these costs are ongoing.
People die because of the TSA? Like die immediately, in the aftermath, and a decade later from cancer? Any sources on this?
Your two things fall apart with a (not even that big to trigger an explosive decompression in a bad part of the aircraft and cause a near certain crash) bomb. Or a grenade to blow up the cabin door. Or hell, a deranged pilot who decides to end it all and crash the plane.
> [T]he cumulative delays from TSA "security" have had a much, much larger human cost than the destruction of the WTC towers.
Do try to keep up.
> Your two things fall apart with a ... bomb. Or a grenade[.]
How do you get them past a metal detector? Remember that most explosives are metallic. If your answer is to shove them up your ass into your intestines or down your throat into your stomach, then note that that method also defeats both the pornoscanners and the patdowns and ask yourself why noone has detonated a grenade or blown out a portion of the fuselage with an explosive in the ~15 years that TSA has been using scanners, or the ~9 between 2001 and 2010 [0] where they were "just" using metal detectors.
> A deranged pilot who decides to end it all and crash the plane.
Yep, that's a very real hazard and has happened internationally a time or two in the years since 2001. Locking and reinforcing the door has changed that from a "Alert crew might be able to save the plane" situation to a "Crew have no hope of saving the plane." situation.
[0] Or if we're being fair, the thirty-six years since the last US aircraft bombing in 1988.
Governments, like many other institutions, tend to find ways to generate demand for their services. By the time it happens the response is; ‘of course we need these things’, and in time that will be replaced by ‘that’s the way it has always been’ by people who don’t know any better. Just because it’s normal now doesn’t mean it always had to be this way.
I’m not going to summarize everything the whole salami encompasses - that’s a rather big topic that’s probably best left as an exercise for the reader.