Cafe Hayek - Latest Comments in Stop Screening

Re: Stop Screening

Pablo — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 22:02:20 -0000

The day will come when carry-on items will be banned completely.

You'll have to strip and walk onto the plane with nothing but your TSA-issued gown.

Re: Stop Screening

Russell Nelson — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 22:04:57 -0000

No one will ever again be able to hijack an airplane carrying American passengers. Why? Because everybody knows that it's worth their life to mash the hijacker into a pulp. If a crowd is intent upon killing someone, no hand weapon will save that person. Consequently, disarming passengers is exactly the WRONG thing to do.

Re: Stop Screening

anonymous — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 20:19:37 -0000

After a recent international airplane trip, I was cleaning out my carry-on bag and realized that I forgot to remove my Leatherman knife, which apparently made it through both US and Foreign security without detection.

However on my next flight, they confiscated my 1" long glasses screwdriver though.

Re: Stop Screening

jdj — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 15:10:27 -0000

Given the topic, you may enjoy this pardoy: http://www.crainium.net/jdj....

It's really not Spam.

Re: Stop Screening

Joey Panto — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 12:47:52 -0000

Good ol' competition. Most govt services are still provided by captive employees who face no competition, managed by a bureaucracy that has no incentive to internally innovate to maximize service value. Outsourcing competitively is the only way to energize the innovation in people to minimize failure rates in weapon detection.

I'm going to record a rant about this one tonight at 9pm PST on an open conference line (712) 432 3900, access code 9732125. All on this thread are invited to rant for a minute or two. To guarantee rant time, RSVP me at joey@tinkertv.com. These are pilot recordings for an eventual animated tech policy blog.

Joey

"Terror, Death, Destruction,

Pour from the Eastern sands,

But the truth of all predictions,

Is always in your hands."

- Iron Maiden "Die with your Boots On"

Re: Stop Screening

ben — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 12:14:20 -0000

75% failure for government employees vs. 20% failure for employees of private firms. That is an extraordinary difference. I know a variety of mechanisms tell us why government is a relatively poor producer of services in many contexts, but do any of them, even combined, explain such a massive difference in productivity?

Re: Stop Screening

anomdebus — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 11:50:34 -0000

Even a modest detection rate should discourage incidents and particularly the multiple target incidents AQ has grown a liking to.

They could probably do a better job overall, though.

Re: Stop Screening

Thu, 18 Oct 2007 08:46:54 -0000

Is anyone surprised? I understand government should have some hand in aircraft safety, since the darn airplanes do hit things when they fall out of the sky. But I don't understand how the government taking control of security is justified, when they could just hold the airlines accountable for their mistakes. Imagine how smoothly everything would go if each airline competed for the fastest and easiest safety procedures.

Re: Stop Screening

Brent Buckner — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 08:11:08 -0000

Shouldn't that be twice not thrice as conscientious or effective (success in detection rate of 80% versus success in detection rate of 40%)?

Re: Stop Screening

Bret — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 07:42:26 -0000

True, it [screening] won't really make us safer, but NEITHER DOES THE CURRENT SYSTEM."

If 25% of bombs are detected, wouldn't that make us at least a little bit (25%) safer?

Re: Stop Screening

CJ — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 07:41:09 -0000

Couldn't agree more...what's the point of it if it's not working? It's just an illusion for people too stupid to know any better...actually, I guess I just answered my own question. Why hasn't it occurred to people that if I have to remove my tennis shoes and send them through the xray machine, then, really, our security system isn't actually useful? What exactly is it that I could hide IN a sneaker that I couldn't hide in my pocket or otherwise under my clothing?

Re: Stop Screening

dave smith — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 07:02:28 -0000

I wonder if it would be both better and cheaper for the TSA to have plain clothed officers who are trained to observe human behavior wondering around airports screening those acting strangely?

Re: Stop Screening

Sam Grove — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 06:55:02 -0000

Government I all about gesturing.

The image of competence is what matters when reality is obscured by the pretty words of politicians.