Originally Posted by
williamsg4713
"Well, duh," will be your reaction; please bear with a newbie. If this is a topic that has already been beaten to death, please direct me to the relevant threads.
It occurs to me that a bomb in checked luggage or shipped as cargo is a bigger danger than one carried to the cabin, if for no other reason than that the suicide bomber can succeed no more than once.
I know that we try to avoid that by matching a list of those who check to a list of those who board. But how hard would it be to circumvent this?
I know that checked baggage is subject to some scrutiny....but, in the opinion of FT observers, is this scrutiny truly effective. Especially because x-rays are a major element in that scrutiny, and as many are pointing out, x-rays cannot detect explosives.
Baggage gets x-rayed and if you have high density items (i.e. tools) it gets opened and checked by hand. The big gaping hole in security is that cargo doesn't get the same scrutiny level that checked baggage gets so if a terrorist knew which flight the cargo bomb was going to be on, just ship the bomb by air. TSA was ordered by Congress to be doing 100% cargo screening by now, but for whatever reason they haven't been able to close that gaping hole in their security operation and continue to beg for just another six months every six months it comes up for review.