As the argument often goes, there hasn't been any terrorist bombings of planes since I got my magic rock. Prove to me that my magic rock isn't protecting us from terrorists.

Correllation doesn't have to equal causation.

By that same argument we can also say:

Number of shoe bomb attempts made since Richard Reid 0 (<5). TSA and the FBI admitted this in an LA Times article earlier this year.

Number of planes brought down by liquid explosives: 0

Number of planes crashed in the US by terrorists since 2000: 4.

Number of flights flown in the US since 9/11: millions.

So of all flights that have gotten blown up or attempted to be blown up since 9/11, that percentage is what, diddly squat?

Interestingly enough, those numbers aren't really different than pre-9/11 either.

The argument can be made, using your logic, that we're throwing billions of dollars worth of resources at to combat a threat that many people have a better chance of winning the lottery than experiencing.

I don't think airport security is useless, but I think that the terrorists are going to be nailed by intelligence and law enforcement operations like we saw in Britain, not by some screener making a Big Catch�.

We really need to step back and make a serious evaluation of airport security. Are we getting the most bang for our buck? How long does it take to deploy solid, usable technology to the checkpoint? Are we better of using private screeners with government oversight? Are our resources allocated to lesser threats and ignoring bigger threats? These are the things that need to be asked and changes made. Unfortunately, I don't see that happening.

However frequent they maybe the crew did not beleive that the TSA had done their job right when they kicked the Jewish man off the plane. Or do you think once in a while it's OK to force some people off the aircarft?

It does seem far fetched. More likely people wouldn't take the trip at all. Or they'd find a different routing if they were in-transit passengers.

The point I was making is that it's a rare occurance and thus (1) will not upset as many people and (2) can be avoided without much cost.

I try to avoid companies that, as a matter of policy, require ID to use credit cards. This is an annoying hassle and is a violation of their merchant agreement.

Agreed, they can do this. Unfortunately, people avoiding the US is bad for the US. Foreigners bring skills, money, experience with them, which is good for the US, and they take things from the US (e.g. education, cultural understanding) that help the US in the long-run.

As I said, the exchange rates are likely enough to overcome any negative effect from the criminal treatment. If the exchange rates were to come out of the toilet, things might change.

It's not popular with the electoral public to be against anything that supposedly comes under the heading of "security."

Some may care, some may not. There are plenty of FlyerTalkers who refuse to come to the US or have cut back on trips.

Yep. Every once in a while the police pull over a car because they mis-read the license or because data entry got it wrong. Your solution would be to what, disband the police?

I would suggest that this is a minscule portion of the flying public, and an even small portion of that which visits the US.

And if they're the weirdos (:-) from the Mileage Run section then they're just costing us money - fire your customers sort of thing, dontcha know?

Yes, well, most arguments can be reduced to the "tiger prevention" analogy, but that may work in PHL210/Logic class, but in the real world, we understand the difference.

I would strongly agree with all your statements above. Most of what we endure could be obviated by mandatory non-citizen deep screening and selective profiling.

I have a pretty low expectation of efficiency for most government operations,and the TSA seems to be about where I thought they'd be.

here is a few reasons why this is not working...

1) not the finger prints are compared but the computer compares the knots of the finger prints. It relies on a program, and programs are not perfect.
2) computers can only track a very limited number of markes on prints, making ID very unreliable
3) inteligence in the US is a oxymoron, cooperation with overseas services even worse, so the "database" is at best patchy
4) 10% of the population have changing / not useful finger prints due to manual labor
5) changing fingerprints can be done on a PC and laserprinter
6) concealing fingerprints is even easier...

I think you missed my point. While the tiger prevention was a bit of sarcasm/bit of truth type thing, the rest of it was based on your statement that the chances of a Jew getting thrown off the plane were diddly squat. That's when I said that the incidents I cited also had the same diddly squat chances of happening yet we spend billions of dollars trying to combat them. Does that make it a waste of money then or the Jew getting booted of the plane any less significant?

It's good that we agree on something, even though we may differ on the methods.

That was what scared me with the beginning of the TSA to begin with. Anything our government does is slow. Contractors can generally get stuff done a lot more quickly, but they typically cost more. Even contracts take forever to get signed though (and this is big cause of pain at my company as we do government contracting). In this case, I think if the government set the standards, contracted it out and then audited them to make sure they were meeting the standards with things like technology deployment, screener training, etc, I think we'd see things that need to happen quickly happen more quickly.

Super

Only 99.9% accurate. This is well proven technology.
Somebody better tell the FBI, because they've been doing fingerprint matches by computer for more than a decade.

But the accuracy goes to 99.9% when you check 10 digits, which is presumably why they're going to a 10 digit system instead of the 2 they presently capture.
I'll settle for just the database of fingerprints lifted from the Afghan training camps and safehouses lifted by the FBI and US Army.
So we only get 90% of them? Sounds good to me.
Not while you're standing in front of a customs officer watching you have the print captured.