^^^^^^ times a bazillion.
Indeed, what really threatens us more? A terrorist attack, of which there have been none successful in over 10 years, or the increasing activities tending toward a police state: the government now able to read all your email and listen to phone conversations, monitor all your internet postings, look at your medical records, all without warrant. Now from the recently passed NDAA act, the government is able to detain you forever upon mere suspicion, without any legal recourse whatsoever-- habeus corpus, without which NONE of the Bill of Rights will get enforced, has been smashed with a hammer.

Moreover, is an underwear bomber nearly the same threat to us as two trillions of dollars printed every year to cover shortfalls in government revenue, thus posing a grave and immediate threat to continued value of our currency--what happens when nobody accepts that currency? (everything grinds to a halt immediately, 350 millions lives imperiled immediately and all at once).

The DHS, with its hundreds of billions of dollars wasted on the police state every year, is directly involved in creating the very real threats above, while protecting us, badly and with offensive means, from a very small threat.

Love_Travel, the tiny amount of apparent safety on an aircraft has been purchased at too dear a cost. Other nations perform adequate security without performing the TSA's degrading gropes on their passengers or strip searching the elderly.