Hence, my original point: there needs to be a debate about how to balance the societal good of safety on public transportation against the societal goods of personal privacy and personal liberty. For the most part, that debate isn't happening --- at least, in the places that matter.

I'm not a chemist, or a structural engineer, so ... I'm going to pass on this one. But if TSA is concerned about bottles exceeding 100ml in size as a "threat" to aircraft, it certainly seems like a relatively small quantity of a substance could do serious damage.

Of course, whether such a threat is worth conducting the War on Liquids, the Shoe Carnival, and so on, is an open question (at least to this observer).

This is the problem with the TSA. They apparently have no ability to do risk analysis. Every day there is an infinitesimally small chance that you might be hit by a small meteor anywhere on the planet, but we don't walk around cowering in fear, with shield over our heads at all times. There's several orders of magnitude less of a of chance that a 6 year old girl has some newly invented form of non-detectable explosive attached to her body as there is of a meteor randomly striking someone on any given day, yet the TSA continues to operate as if this is a likely event that might occur at any airport in the country. What makes their approach even more baffling is that they use the 'random' method of enhanced screening. So your looking for evidence of event to occur that had an 0.00000000000001% chance of actually occurring, but then you turn around an multiple those odds by only
screening people at random(every 100, every 1000) that you've now decreased your changes of success by so much that it is far less likely that you would prevent a terrorist from succeeding than you are of actually catching one(ie. see the obscene failure rate of their own internal investigators slipping through weapons). But hey, you have to do something, don't you?

Google is your friend. Don't take my word for it, do some research on what actual security professionals think of the 3-1-1 rule - and other nonsensical rules the TSA uses.

The title of this thread is wrong.

It should be "TSA as Tools of Terror"

Not what I was arguing. You said

I said that kids could hide enough material to pose a threat, I did not say they were a threat.

So you believe that a square foot of sheet explosive could take down an aircraft?

You don`t?

No, I don't. It's possible, but I don't believe it's likely at all.

Not when an aircraft like Aloha Airlines 243 can still land with only one fatality.

I know that a well-placed marshmallow can bring down a plane, but the possibility doesn't keep me up at night.

The probability is beyond minute.

These silly fears don't justify 4th amendment violations. Routine 4th amendment violations mandated by a federal agency do keep me up at night.

Terrorism willfully perpetrated by our federal government is far more serious than any other threat, foreign or domestic.

I am not saying that it is an imminent threat at all, just a possibility. Much like winning the loto.

You're not one of those people who buys at least ten lotto tickets for every draw because you *might* win, are you?

Many things are possible. Most of them are possible and yet so improbable as to not even worry about, like the possibility that a six-year-old wearing a thin shirt is going to be carrying a square foot of sheet explosive on a flight originating in the United States.

If the odds worry you, you should also be carrying an armored umbrella to make sure you're not killed by a stray meteorite.

Are you mocking my retirement plan?
Furthermore, it appears I need to re-foil my hat since you can obviously read my mind. :P

But seriously, I don't think it would happen. I am just saying that it could happen. Nothing more.

Of course, it could happen.

The real question is whether or not the amount of money, time, human resources and infringement on the rights of people is worth trying to prevent something that could happen, especially when the something that could happen is so incredibly minute.

We are doing needle-in-a-haystack security and the terrorists are laughing their butts off looking at what we have become.

^^^^^

There is no question that the TSA is using children as tools of terror. There are saying, "Look at what we will do to an innocent 6 year old child without any hesitation. Imagine what we can do to you."
It's time to treat every punk pervert TSO like the terrorists they are.