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thranx on 27 April 2012
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Mr Khan said:
Mnementh said:
What angers me, is the way discussion about this is made. Supporters of stuff like TSA discredit instantly any opposition, because TEH TSA IS FOR SECURITY, everyone who opposes it, let automatically terrorists go wild.

It's not even possible, to ask if this is even effective. How much crime, terrorism, bad things are prevented by this? Do we know? No, studies are for pussies. Instead if you oppose TSA, it is compared with a proven useful measure, like cops. And another point is the balance between interests. Does TSA prevent more crime, than it does restrict freedom? What is the more important value here? Both are important, you have to see which one is impacted how much in which direction to really decide about it. Police is a proven useful instrument against threats. And police doesn't impact freedom as much as something like TSA (at least if useful restricted, like done in most democratic countries).

"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." Benjamin Franklin

I would be all for a study into efficacy, the reason i tend to side with the TSA in arguments like this is because the opponents often embrace a brand of hysterical libertarianism that I find aggravating, and so feel motivated to shut them down such as i can.

The other issue being: how much freedom does the TSA *really* restrict? We're talking about a system where easily 99% of everyone gets through nice and easy, and even of the 1% that even get to the "pat-down" phase, how many of those then generate any real trouble?

don't know where you got the 1% number.I could only find 1 number from a TSA Spokesperson and it was 3% at atlanta. So with out knowing the rest its hard to say its not a big deal. I am open to more facts on how many people recieve pat downs and extra screenings but please dont just throw a number out.

"

Atlanta TSA spokesman Jon Allen told us that during March, 3 percent of air passengers were subject to a pat-down. The TSA collects this data by monitoring “data from select airports throughout the year,” he wrote in an email. That number is “consistent with that of previous time periods.” …

PolitiFact Georgia therefore took the TSA figures and did some math. The TSA’s Allen told us that “on an average day, about 2 million people are screened at TSA checkpoints.” Three percent of 2 million is 60,000 people.

That means that over the course of a month, roughly 1.8 million people receive a pat-down. That’s more than four times the population of Atlanta.

That doesn’t sound like “very, very, very” few people to us."

 

I also do not see that % going down. People will find other places to hide stuff and the pat down will get worse if we go down this path.

 

And what good does it do if pasengers can board us bound plane sin other countries and still get explosives on board?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126178158688405369.html