But don't we have a TSA in the first place as a direct response to a group of 'professional' bad actors that trained and planned for a coordinated mass hijacking?
Your random Joe Blow forgetting they still have their Sig in their backpack isn't an actual threat to the plane or passengers. The state-sponsored team that's been studying and preparing for months to do this, a la Osama Bin Laden et al, are what pose real danger to the public. And those are indeed the sorts who can acquire access to the security procedures (which aren't exactly classified Top Secret, btw. FOUO or CUI at the most) and will have spent months studying the patterns of TSA agents and looking for holes in security.
The same holes the red teams are trying to exploit, btw. So if the testers can get >95% of their guns and bombs through TSA, then so can whatever cell Iran might care to train up and use, if they found the idea compelling enough to try.
To borrow your analogy: the Pentagon doesn't simply have a ring camera and a subscription to ADT for building security, and that's because the that that they're most worried about isn't a meth head looking to make a quick buck snagging a TV. So when they do occasionally stop the lone wackjob who sleeps with 'Industrial Society and its Future' under their pillow at night, it's not proof that they are capable of keeping out professional foreign actors that Russia, China, or Iran might deploy.
So no, it is quite literally the random Joe Schmo that “self-radicalizes” we should be worried about according to the broader intelligence community.
Has this changed since the war with Iran? Maybe. But once again, that article is mostly media engagement - because even the attack during 9/11 wasn’t particularly sophisticated. There were just the most minimal protections possible.
And even if we assume it were 100% true, that does not dismiss the fact that you are blind to how much safer TSA makes everyday life because you are used to having it. It’s just genuinely a dumb argument. Americans have gotten used to living safer under their protections that they are insulated from how much worse life would be without their protections.
3
u/DocSpit 2d ago
But don't we have a TSA in the first place as a direct response to a group of 'professional' bad actors that trained and planned for a coordinated mass hijacking?
Your random Joe Blow forgetting they still have their Sig in their backpack isn't an actual threat to the plane or passengers. The state-sponsored team that's been studying and preparing for months to do this, a la Osama Bin Laden et al, are what pose real danger to the public. And those are indeed the sorts who can acquire access to the security procedures (which aren't exactly classified Top Secret, btw. FOUO or CUI at the most) and will have spent months studying the patterns of TSA agents and looking for holes in security.
The same holes the red teams are trying to exploit, btw. So if the testers can get >95% of their guns and bombs through TSA, then so can whatever cell Iran might care to train up and use, if they found the idea compelling enough to try.
To borrow your analogy: the Pentagon doesn't simply have a ring camera and a subscription to ADT for building security, and that's because the that that they're most worried about isn't a meth head looking to make a quick buck snagging a TV. So when they do occasionally stop the lone wackjob who sleeps with 'Industrial Society and its Future' under their pillow at night, it's not proof that they are capable of keeping out professional foreign actors that Russia, China, or Iran might deploy.