But that can't be right. We have to search 72 old granny's diaper to make sure she isn't carrying pen knife.

Evidently you are 8 times more likely to be killed by the police then by a terrorist.

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/06/fear-of-terror-makes-people-stupid.html

You know Matt, I'd be willing to bet in most cities in America, you are more likely to be killed by police than be a victim of a violent crime

This is why I say TSA should declare a War on Falling Coconuts (which are also more likely to kill you than terrorism -- other than their own).

Sure, the chances are small that someone could use their Swiss Army Knife to disassemble their airplane seat, fashion the parts into a bazooka, and take over the plane, but there's still a chance.

When somebody talks about "bombs", what do you think of?

Here is the Emergency Response Guidebook.

It's a .pdf, which will show you what your fire department and other emergency agencies may have to face - because we have millions of tons of this material in transit every day.

Since 9-11, some 5,000 people have been killed by our own police.

Consistency Alert:

Comparing police action to terrorist action is logically null and void.

Example: More kids have been killed riding bicycles than by terrorists.

They are NOT RELATED, and THERE IS NO CAUSAL LINK BETWEEN THEM.

Comparing police action to terrorist action is logically null and void.

I dont see why, both are
groups banned together by a common ideology
groups which despise the 'outsider'
groups which look to enforce edicts thru fear and terror tactics
groups which kill those who vocally oppose them

I'd say the comparison is apt.

They are NOT RELATED, and THERE IS NO CAUSAL LINK BETWEEN THEM. -- Radwaste at December 1, 2013 4:23 PM

True. But in comparing your general risk of dying from a cause is a valid comparison.

The odds for me to die from some nuclear incident are in the millions to one. For you those numbers are much different.

But the odds of hitting the lottery and getting hit by lightning have no common causal issue, but represent the reality that the majority of us live with.

"The odds for me to die from some nuclear incident are in the millions to one. For you those numbers are much different."

This is true.

"But the odds of hitting the lottery and getting hit by lightning have no common causal issue, but represent the reality that the majority of us live with."

This is false.

This is a good example of how the general public cannot estimate risk correctly. In the second case, you have made NO differentiation between those members of the general public who actually play the lottery and those who do not, nor do you isolate the behaviors of those who are at greater risk of a lightning strike.

That is WHY your statement is FALSE.

In the first case, you have correctly approximated the relationship of a specific risk (even though it's not too specific) to individuals. Not the second time.

Generalities are common because they are convenient. They are also USELESS in safety analysis.

That they are accepted by unthinking people is undeniable - and you should know that this tendency is exploited by those who would sell Americans their own fear.

Here's one I like: "You're more likely to be struck by lightning than win the lottery!"
This ignores volition. The reality is that the odds differ depending on the participant, and they differ by MORE, FOR that participant, than the "odds" cited by some wag about the general population!

-----

Why am I what many would say, "an ass", about this? Because this kind of generality is used to justify sending Americans to die in useless causes around the world - and it is used to camouflage the real intent of such action through minimization.

There is a table of logical fallacies here. I wish they were taught in schools.

> Comparing police action to terrorist action
> is logically null and void

You're being autistic... Nobody's affirming causality. It's a comparison.

A ninny who supports expensive and intrusive government responses to terrorism (and we have millions of these ninnies) deserves to know that there are greater threats to worry about. And that chief amongst those threats are the agencies who encourage aggressive response to terror... Because doing so fattens their budgets.

Changing the name of the activity doesn't change its validity at all.

The colloquial assertions are made with the understanding that somehow these claims apply to each observer.

Back them, and you accept the idea that you, Crid, are more likely to contract AIDS and die than win Powerball, unless lightning gets you first. Unless the car crash on the way home gets you first.

You poor guy!

"Validity" of what activity? What does validity have to do with activities? What's "colloquial" about any of this? I haven't a clue what point you're trying to make.

Specifically-

>> "But the odds of hitting the lottery and
>> getting hit by lightning have no common
>> causal issue, but represent the reality
>> that the majority of us live with."

> This is false.

No it isn't. The "the odds of hitting the lottery and getting hit by lightning" —whatever they may be, and whether for the same person or any number of other people— are, y'know, real thangs, real numerical values. Lightning strikes and lottery winnings are phenomena for which you could calculate probabilities and offer predictions.

…If you wanted to. Nobody I know ever does that math, because, like, whatever.

OK, the "represent" thing is a little sketchy, as is the "majority" part.

But it's indisputable that "we have to live with" the probabilities of hitting the lottery and/or getting hit by lightning.

Whatever they are.

And we do! We live with those probabilities. I had a great holiday weekend. How 'boutchoo guys?

"…If you wanted to. Nobody I know ever does that math, because, like, whatever."

As you haven't. So you are set up to be fooled by every bozo who can think up a plausible-enough comparison.

When you have a job that requires safety analysis, maybe you'll absorb enough of the actual work in this area to understand.

You're the prince of colloquial English. About probability/statistics... not so much.

Right. So you can't put it in to words... It's just this special power that you have.

Little Jimpers has deep and punishing faults, but both his impulse and his expression are (essentially) correct in this matter.

Apples and oranges are comparable as fruits, they're just not comparable as citrus fruits. There's no statistical clumsiness on his offering. Everybody sees what's what. I think you're just confusing the shit out of yourself.

As of mid-2011, terrorist threat groups present in the Homeland are not known to be actively plotting against civil aviation targets or airports; instead, their focus is on fundraising, recruiting, and propagandizing.

Why is that?

And what does the phrase "present in the Homeland" mean?

Why is that? -- Jeff Guinn at December 2, 2013 6:53 PM

Because the TSA was never needed.

=================================================
The TSA was not needed one hour and one minute after Tower II was hit!

The paradigm, the norm, the expected, what everyone was taught to do was to sit down, shut up and wait for the plane to land and the negotiations happen. That was the model from before Entebbe and afterward.

The passengers on board did not really know what was about to happen on September 11, 2001 at 8:46:30 when Flight 11 struck Tower I.

Even the passengers on Flight 175 probably didn't realize what was about to happen when they struck Tower II at 9:03:02.

The Pentagon crash of Flight 77 at 9:37:46 may have been still a matter of ignorance.

At 10:03:11 on September 11, 2001, United Airlines Flight 93 crashed after the brave souls counter-attacked and caused the hijackers to crash the plane.

The time difference is 60 minutes and 9 seconds from Tower II being struck to the crash of Flight 93. The shoe bomber and panty bomber were taken down by fellow passengers as well. Recently, JetBlue's Flight 191 pilot was taken down by the passengers once he was out of the cockpit. Additionally how many times have you heard of passengers' concerns and diverted flights?

The TSA is and has always been a joke, no make that a total stupidity, that has wasted our country's fortune going down a rabbit hole.

If you don't believe me look at the 9/11 timeline.

There will never be another 9/11 style attack unless the attackers can arrange planes full of geriatrics, and even then it would be doubtful.

Oh, and someone brought bombs being an issue. If bombs were effective and simple then the Lockerbie bombing would have been repeated multiple times between 21 December 1988 and 11 September 2001. That's 4647 days or 13 years. Where was the TSA in that time? There was one successful bombing that was done in Colombia and two unsuccessful attempts in that time. The bombing in Colombia was a drug dealer assassination and not a terrorist attack.

Basically the normal was used in an abnormal way. Once it was realized it was countered.
=================================================

This is the same thing that is going to happen when the terrorists try to pull off a mall attack in a may issue carry state. Illinois, New York, California, and other may issue CCW states are going to be the primary targets of attacks on malls. But states that have shall issue CCW are going to hold them back. The states that have realized armed private citizens are the best guarantee of public safety are going to be way down on the list.

Jim, FFS stop wasting the world's precious supply of pixels by endlessly posting that ridiculous blather.

All you succeed in doing is repeatedly demonstrating you have absolutely no idea what the threat is.

All you succeed in doing is repeatedly demonstrating you have absolutely no idea what the threat is. -- Jeff Guinn at December 2, 2013 8:15 PM

Please tell me where I am wrong?

I cordially invite you to break the logic and point every single fallacy in any of it.

I will gladly stop posting it. As it stands now you are calling it blather. I sincerely want to know what the threat is and where I'm misguided in that post.

I am begging you to tell me.

Please tell me where I am wrong?

Because you don't know what the threat is.

9/11 was a one-off. If you think the TSA is defending against another 9/11, then you are truly clueless.

As evidenced by this sentence: The shoe bomber and panty bomber were taken down by fellow passengers as well.

They were only taken down because the bombs failed to go off.

That is part of your fallacy: relying on passengers to react after getting blown to pieces.

And here is the rest of it:

Oh, and someone brought bombs being an issue. If bombs were effective and simple then the Lockerbie bombing would have been repeated multiple times between 21 December 1988 and 11 September 2001.

It isn't just bombs that are an issue, it is suicide bombers that are.

Why don't you look at the trend in suicide bombings, all types, world wide, since the early 1980s.

9/11 should have clued you in. How many suicide hijackings were there before?

That is why what you keep putting up is complete blather -- you are either ignorant of, or refuse to acknowledge, the single greatest change in terrorism.

And, as a consequence, you have absolutely nothing to offer as to what to do about it.

> It isn't just bombs that are an issue, it is
> suicide bombers that are.

You want a world where terrorists cannot strike.

That wouldn't be a world worth living in.

"Right. So you can't put it in to words... It's just this special power that you have."

Wrong again. So you have THAT unlimited capacity.

Just dismiss this as beneath you, and move on. Say something to distract the casual reader from noting that you have no idea that risk assessment is unique to the activity presenting the risk.

In short, death by lightning has nothing whatsoever to do with death by Afghan IED. It should be obvious, but you have something else driving you to object.

Living felons have killed more Americans than combat in Vietnam. Oooh, perspective!

No.

> In short, death by lightning has nothing
> whatsoever to do with death by Afghan IED.

Death by police action and death by terrorism are phenomena with this in common: Each is a way to die.

Someone listed their frequencies side-by-side. This offends you?

Need we consult a professor of statistics to soothe the annoyance? There are about twenty universities in Los Angeles County... Caltech would would be my first choice, because Feynman. Also, Pauling. Also, JPL.

Word the inquiry however you see fit, and I'll get it to the right guy. (Academics love this kind of stuff.) If that falls through, RAND is just down the boulevard aways....

[Crid:] You want a world where terrorists cannot strike.

That wouldn't be a world worth living in.

First and foremost, I want a world where Jim P stops cutting and pasting the monumentally irrelevant.

Almost as importantly, I don't want a world where terrorists strike, because that would be just as helpful as hoping for pastel unicorns or free healthcare for everyone.

Rather, I want a world where we don't have six airliners blown up on the same day.

The question Jim P missed, along with everything else, should be obvious: Why are "terrorist threat groups present in the Homeland [not] known to be actively plotting against civil aviation targets or airports?"

Assuming for the moment that statement is objectively true, as opposed to merely ignorant, and ignoring whatever the heck "in the Homeland" means, certainly there has to be some reason. Have the terrorists suddenly decided the US is, far from being the Great Satan, actually a great place to work and play?

An alternative explanation is that the terrorists aren't planning to bomb planes for the same reason no one is planning to rob Ft. Knox: it has gotten too hard to do.

[Radwaste:] In short, death by lightning has nothing whatsoever to do with death by Afghan IED.

Sure they do. They are related by time, for one. If you want to get life insurance, I'll bet the insurer would want to know that you are a race car driver, rock climber, motorcyclist, or Fast & Furious co-star.

Because even while the cause of death driving a race car has nothing to do with the cause of death free-climbing Half Dome, it is death nonetheless, and the risks are cumulative.

> I don't want a world where terrorists strike

That will not be a choice.

They were only taken down because the bombs failed to go off.

Had the bombs gone off, given their components and blast yields the only death would have been the underwear bomber, and that would have been thru blood loss.

Mild possibility of 3rd degree burns on passengers in the same row, possible smoke damage to the chairs, likely flash burn damage to seat covers and clothing.

Now maybe I missed it, but I didnt see you actually refute Jims post. Care to try again?

Rather, I want a world where we don't have six airliners blown up on the same day. -- Jeff Guinn at December 3, 2013 1:22 AM

I could have sworn it was only four. So either my math is bad or you are being hysterical.

An alternative explanation is that the terrorists aren't planning to bomb planes for the same reason no one is planning to rob Ft. Knox: it has gotten too hard to do. -- Jeff Guinn at December 3, 2013 1:22 AM

Try reading about how to blow up an airplane with Axe body spray and then tell me how the TSA will stop the next 9/11.

Jeff, how many of our civil liberties, for EVERY AMERICAN, will you demand be sacrificed to assuage your terror, the core of which you have yet to meaningfully confess to us?

You're in the transportation business; that alone does not explain the hyperbole.

Back in reality, things are going great.

So what is this shoe polish?

I am not afraid of terrorists. I am afraid of my government's "efforts and conditions" that are required to "protect" me from "Terrorism" that I am in no danger of experiencing. I'll take my freedom over your protection any day of the week. Please give me freedom airlines, where freedom means freedom from Government Sanctioned "Protection" that violates my constitutional rights. I'll happily sign a waiver that excuses you from any obligation to protect me against my will.

[lujlp:] Had the bombs gone off, given their components and blast yields the only death would have been the underwear bomber, and that would have been thru blood loss.

And you know this how? (If memory serves -- and it will have to, because I am behind the Great Firewall of China, where wikipedia is very much forbidden fruit -- there was a Philippines 747 that had a big hole blown in the side of the airplane by a bomb smaller than what the shoe or underwear bombers had.)

So the evidence is that your assertion is utter bollocks. The reason the bombs didn't go off is because of complications required to get the things through security undetected. But had they gone off, there would have been a hell of a bang.

Now maybe I missed it, but I didnt see you actually refute Jims post. Care to try again?

No maybe about it, although it easily obvious enough: Jim P completely ignored the thing that matters most, the phenomena of suicide terrorists.

[crid:] Jeff, how many of our civil liberties, for EVERY AMERICAN, will you demand be sacrificed to assuage your terror, the core of which you have yet to meaningfully confess to us?

You and Amy, among others, keep asserting that the TSA amount to an ongoing grotesque 4A violation.

You are wrong. The 4A prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures. There is a law against pilots flying while intoxicated; I suspect few would find that unreasonable.

Pilots are subject to mandatory random urinalysis tests, in the complete absence of probable cause. That is not a 4A violation -- and it has been litigated. Since the law is reasonable, and the consequences of its violation so serious -- then urinalysis even in the absence of probable cause is a reasonable search.

I get that going through TSA is fricking annoying, and that it is inflicted upon millions of innocent people, but that doesn't make it, in fact, unconstitutional. (SFAIK, the court decision on pilot urinalysis is all the precedent required to make TSA searches constitutional, which is why no one is litigating them.)

Oh, BTW, that is such a perfect example of an ad hominem it should be the number one hit when searching on logical fallacies.

Fine, I'll take it as read that I am terrified of being blown up in an airliner.

Regardless, my argument rests upon three things: a plentiful supply of suicide terrorists, the ability to destroy an airplane with a small amount of explosives, and the consequences should there be multiple successful attacks on the same day.

You can argue that there aren't any, or bombs won't work, or that the consequences are no big deal. Or you could argue that there is a better way to keep suicide terrorists and bombs off airplanes. Regardless, I doubt very much you will be able to work my terror, or lack thereof, in there anywhere.

I said nothing of the Constitution... I think it's despicable that diabetic high-school-dropouts can build careers with gummint bennieswork for fondling free men, women and children in a bogus & theatrical pretense of containing terrorism. This is, amongst other things, not how dignity, courage or responsibility are executed.

That you imagined the argument needed to move straight to the Constitution, and that it could thereby be defended is telling.

No.

Sorrywork about the typowork.

[Crid:] That you imagined the argument needed to move straight to the Constitution, and that it could thereby be defended is telling.

I didn't imagine anything. Amy and others (although, to be correct, which I wasn't, not you) have made that argument plenty of times. It is wrong.

I think it's despicable that diabetic high-school-dropouts can build careers with gummint bennieswork for fondling free men, women and children in a bogus & theatrical pretense of containing terrorism.

Wonderful.

Presuming you don't disagree with my description of the problem, or the potential consequences, what would you do instead?

People here love aiming the offal hose at me for defending the TSA. What they, and apparently you, don't understand is that as much as I dislike the TSA (and I have far more experience of it then everyone here combined), given my conception of the problem, I am at a complete loss when it comes to suggesting a better alternative.

If I was an Islamist, motivated in the ways Amy insists Islamists are*, then my wet dream would be bringing down at least a couple airliners in the US on the same day.

Just try to imagine the consequences should that happen.

* I agree with Amy, to the extent that for practically all contemporary terrorism Islam is necessary, but not sufficient. That said, we have to keep in mind that although virtually all terrorists are Muslims, virtually all Muslims are not terrorists.

> what would you do instead?

I'd recognize the fragility of life, and the delicacy of the problem, in a masculine and proportionate way.

I'd hold space in my heart for irony... I'd recognize that no matter how fearful I might be (FOR WHATEVER PERSONAL AND UNSPOKEN REASONS) about the atrocities of terrorist attack or their consequences, the United States is in fact a national full of intelligent and courageous people who'd respond in good form anywhere on the planet were such an attack to occur.

Irony, more specifically: I'd recognize that American strength is as corrupt any force on Earth when it terrorizes good people; that no matter how great our power, we're judged as much by how we contain it as how we deploy it.

That's what I'd do. Y'know, all that stuff you think about when you're kid, figuring out right from wrong.

There are worse things on this planet than terrorism.

Regardless, my argument rests upon three things: a plentiful supply of suicide terrorists, the ability to destroy an airplane with a small amount of explosives, and the consequences should there be multiple successful attacks on the same day. -- Jeff Guinn at December 3, 2013 9:47 PM

The problem with your argument is that you want to assume that a small supply of explosives wielded by determined Islamist terrorist will be stopped by the TSA.

Did you read my link to the Axe body spray? Those items are all available post TSA screening. Or even with screening, carrying the components through the TSA.

Do you know the essential ingredients of Napalm™? It is high proof alcohol, chipped chunks of magnesium or phosphor and some sort of gel type material like liquid soap. So you can buy 51% percent alcohol at duty free shops. Or carry it in three ounce bottles. The liquid soap is in the aircraft bathrooms. The phosphor or magnesium is dense enough to show up on an x-ray, but is non-metallic. (No metal detector would spot it.)

So bombing a plane out of the sky might work. Doing it to multiples in a day is relatively slim. And tell me how the TSA would have stopped the bombing?

So when you want to argue that the TSA is effective shoot me down on the Napalm™ and also shoot down all the crap that is sold beyond the TSA checkpoints that can be used to make a weapon.

And as I said above, the panty bomber and the shoe bomber were taken down by "civilians" and zero have been stopped by the TSA.

Irrational Fear? Hardly.

[tinfoilhat ON]
The agenda here is that of the Fascist Oligarchy that runs the USA now and has for the last 200+ years. The intent is to create the infrastructure and train up the goons to enforce the will of the oligarchy and to hell with the will of the people.
[tinfoilhat OFF]