[something168581]

9/11 was not a result of lax security in airports, but lacking security measures onboard planes themselves which have since been addressed with reinforced locking cockpit doors being sealed before departure, etc.

It's been proven time and time again even by other government agencies that it is trivially easy to sneak "dangerous" things (including knives and firearms) through TSA checkpoints onto planes. The current state of airport "security" in the USA is 110% theatre which taxpayers and travelers pay through the nose for.

[Aloha]

I'm not even gonna go into if lax security was at the root of 9/11, I think it was certainly contributory but definitely not causal.

That does not answer my question - we dismantled the previous system and subsumed private sector expertise in airline security into TSA - so if not TSA, who should be doing it and how should it be done?

Like I think we could just as well have TSA doing it with policies returned back to 2000 (though I'm skeptical of rolling back the clock that much)?

Like, I don't disagree with the idea that TSA is about 50% theatre - it is, its meant to make Bob and Eileen from Cedar Rapids who fly twice a decade feel safe.

[KerrAvon]

The two things that have made airplane travel safer since 2001:

1. reinforced cockpit doors

2. widespread knowledge among passengers that you have to actively fight the hijackers instead of letting them alone (previously, the assumption was that they just want to fly to Cuba or something and it was safer to let them do that and get off the plane)

That's it.

TSA screening is worth nothing, costs taxpayers and businesses enormous amounts of time and money, and is a gigantic abuse vector. Dissolve it and replace it with a simple metal detectors and X-ray machine regime to check for obvious cases of idiots carrying firearms onto the plane; anything more than that is a waste of taxpayer money.