snipped above comment........

The most likely means to introduce an explosive to a commercial airliner is through actions by ground personnel. This is exactly where TSA focuses the least amount of effort evidenced by the number of smuggling cases over the years and TSA does not screen ground workers 100% of the time. Screening airport ground workers does not support TSA's Kabuki theater.

This is exactly where TSA focuses the least amount of effort evidenced by the number of smuggling cases over the years and TSA does not screen ground workers 100% of the time. Screening airport ground workers does not support TSA's Kabuki theater.


Shhhh! Don't let the puppetmasters know you are aware of the absurdity of current Security Theater antics. They'll put you on their list.

Oh yea...
How ground personnel are monitored is another matter.
Worst one is also freight. I have a friend that worked many years at Fed-EX, and he got canned for making such a fuss on how freight was not inspected.

I'm not afraid of TSA putting me on a list. I haven't done anything to have them question my integrity or patriotism. Unlike TSA I'm honest.

You miss the point entirely.

Of course disarming a pilot will not stop them from harming the plane. The issue is if you allow anyone trusted access through security they can smuggle stuff that will be used by other people.

My point is about risk management. Given the lack of planes falling out of the skies and the amazingly lax security for airport workers and aircrew we can reasonably predict that the risk is low to nil. TSA don't understand risk management. At all. In fact, if they want to assert that an actual risk exists then I'd say they were criminally negligent in the the way they do things. If they want to focus on real, statistically based and rationally applied risk management then I'd be all for that.

the risk isn't "low to nil"; in fact, the risk is high; it is the probability that's low.

We're not in class right now. You can drop being deliberately obtuse. The *reality* is that if it was going to happen OMG LIKE RIGHT NOW FEAR FEAR FEAR then it would have been happening more than the once in the last 17 years that it has happened. But it hasn't. EOS.

I agree with your larger point but I am not being obtuse, I am correcting a material misstatement of how the security types actually view the situation.

And the people that know will tell you (as they have told me) that while the probability is currently low, the bad guys are getting closer to making a reality.

"Bad guys"? I'm sorry, but that sort of simplistic two value judgment clouds understanding of actual threat and risk. There is literally almost nothing stopping people from blowing up/shooting down US aircraft if they wanted because TSA is wholly ineffective and incapable of performing their job: the fact it hasn't happened has *nothing* to do with TSA or DHS protecting people from Bad Guys (tm) and everything to do with the fact that the threat is over hyped and close to nil. The US will never admit that because they've spent the last ~50 years creating the Enemy Dictator of the Week for Americans to fear and now fear is the only thing they know.

"Frightened enough, people will accept, if not demand, extreme and dangerous solutions to problems whose true direness exists mostly within their anxieties. "
Losing Control of the American Fear Machine | The American Conservative

Which "people in the know"?

In what "know"?

Which "bad guys"?

Making what a reality, and how? And how "close" are they?

Specific answers to specific questions is how you are supposed to formulate plans and strategies for security (or anything else in life, for that matter). Vague innuendo that "real smart people know stuff about bad that we don't know" is nothing but fear mongering and paranoia. And it's how we got to this point.

9/11 was caused by a "failure of imagination." But the current invasive (and largely ineffective due to lack of focus and mission creep) aviation security apparatus came about as a result of overactive imagination.

It used to be that we couldn't imagine that there were bad guys out there who wanted to do us harm. Now we can't stop imagining that there are bad guys everywhere, around every corner, behind every shrub, loitering in every suburban shopping mall, waiting for the slightest opportunity to kill our fathers, rape and murder our sisters, burn our homes, shoot our dogs, and steal our bibles. And even when we stop one bad guy, if there's one rule of paranoia - bad guys have brothers!

Laptop bombs are what I would call a non-threat. If a bomb is put into a laptop, the best tools for detection of these bombs are 1) x-ray scanners, and 2) combination of ETD and sniffer dogs. The crazy ideas of making people boot their devices or taking the back covers off or limiting sizes or banning them altogether are completely un-necessary. But paranoid people will always call for extreme, insane measures to combat their imagined threats, and the more that those threats fail to materialize, the more the paranoid will double-down on the crazy.

Serious question:

What do the 'people that know' think about the increasing dangers posed by drones - drones operated by idiots or drones operated by 'bad guys' who will not be deterred in any way by increased stupidity at the checkpoints?

There is no shortage of media stories about aviation security officials expressing concern about the increasing numbers of drones tracked / sighted / reported in and around airports. The aviation security people I work with believe the biggest risk is drone-strike due primarily to idiots (for example, reports are regularly received of people flying drones and kites! at Gravelly Point at the end of the runway at DCA). And even in the Washington area where ALL drone activity is proscribed within 15 miles of DCA and in almost all national parks (the Mall, etc.) recent DoD studies and testimony to Congress makes it clear that drone activity is occurring multiple times a day (at all hours) and seems to be increasing. Even CIA has reported an average of one a month flying over or near Langley.

Domestic "bad guys" regularly use drones to drop-ship weapons and contraband into correctional facilities. And the "bad guys" have successfully and dramatically used small armed drones to attack military targets around the world. So while the probability of an armed drone strike on civilian aviation is probably quite low, it is far from small. It doesn't take much imagination to envision bad guys flying a swarm of drones on a runway approach. Just five months ago a bad-guy left an IED at an airport terminal (AVL). It does not take much imagination to envision a drone being used to deliver a similar device (or a better designed device that could actually work) over a civilian aircraft parked at a gate and detonate it. Even if it didnt detonate, it would seriously disrupt service; do that at a major hub and one could have a major impact on travel for days....