Originally Posted by
dand99
Do you know how many false alarms there are ?
Nope.
Originally Posted by
dand99
And how many captures ?
Nope.
Originally Posted by
dand99
Your "personal experience" hardly constitutes statistical proof.
Of course it's not proof, but it's a reasonable conclusion to draw based on what we do know. May I ask what proof do you have of your assertion below...
One in a thousand (or fewer) false alarms may lead to bad things happening to good people. What about the times when wary (or nosy...) civilians saved the day ? I'm sure there are just as many of those.
I base my educated and intellectual guess on the fact that every minor and insignificant security alert is presented as a win in this broad war of terror you are fighting. To date, after ten years of this, I can think of hundreds of formal complaints of unnecessary security alerts resulting from dumbasses seeing someone they think is suspicious that I have been privy to, and possibly thousands discussed in various live and online forums or listed on the websites of various civil rights groups. Add to this my own experiences and those of others I know of who are who have been removed from aircraft but not filed complaints with a civil rights group and I think it becomes fairly obvious that the vast majority of these alerts that arise from the logic challenged segment of the population are false alarms.
On the rare occasion that someone has seen something suspicious and it has actually turned out to be a good catch, the media has been all over it. However, I recall no more than a handful of these and most of those turned out to be nonsense too, once analysed by LE or the courts.
Originally Posted by
dand99
I cannot understand your being happy with the odds - part of the reason there are so few attempts is, yes, airport security - which you are quite happy for pax to circumvent. You're seriously suggesting we can rely on other passengers to save the day when a terrorist is on board with a weapon ? How many times has this happened as compared to the number of successful attacks ?
Airport security may suck - but if you want to fly, you agree to be undergo a check as they see fit. If you choose to circumvent the check (by placing something in your pocket) and someone alerts security - you bear responsibility for your actions.
That is your opinion - one I disagree with vehemently.
Originally Posted by
dand99
While I fully agree that 99.9+% of cases may be false alarms, I believe that's a fair price to pay for the small precentage of cases possibly preventing a disaster.
Aha. Statistics!
Presumably, you are perfectly happy with the number of people killed in road accidents every year. How does that compare with the type of air disaster you appear to be concerned about?