Unfortunately, Bart, with your last few posts I've come to see you as one of those who see terrorists on every corner.
As someone said in another post said:
All of life is one big calculated risk.
I'd take out the word calculated - life is one big risk.
Driving to the airport is more dangerous than flying will ever be, terrorists or no terrorists.
Making travelers remove their shoes is not making us safer - it's as simple as that, but I don't think you or anyone else at TSA understands "simple" just because you see threats at every turn. You have to or else you wouldn't have a job.
If a terrorist gets on a plane, he can't get to the cockpit to take over the controls and fly the plane into the Capitol.
And guess what, Bart - they know that.
The next attack against an airliner will come from the ground or perhaps from another plane - and that's something you can't defend against.
But, in fact, they probably don't want to blow a single plane out of the sky. They'd have to take out several planes to make an impact and the chances of their being successful at that are just about nil.
Making us take off our shoes is not going to remove that particular threat; it just makes the terrorists realize that DHS doesn't act, it reacts.
"There's this feeling that you have to secure everything possible in every way possible for every possible kind of terrorist attack," Garry L. Briese, executive director of the International Association of Fire Chiefs, said."
(The above from today's NY Times in reference to DHS wanting to remove signage from train cars carrying haz mat so the terrorists can't tell what's in a car and attack it.)
It can't be done. DHS needs to accept that and stop harrassing the traveling public.