The policy began as a direct response to the Richard Reid shoe bombing attempt in December 2001 [1]. This was as America was still reeling from 9/11, and full body scanners weren't standard at airports yet. Now they are, and they've improved explosive detectors too [2].
It indeed seems like it was always something of an overreaction, but an understandable one that's now fully overlapped by superior modern scanning.
Every time an article about airport security is posted the comments are the same.
To prove that I'm sane and my memory has not been corrupted by time or cosmic rays I google "airline hijackings by year", I look at the graphs in google images, and I briefly wonder what happened in early 1970s and 2000s before remembering what happened in early 1970s and 2000s.
Then I murmur "that's some fantastically effective theater".
I don't doubt that the screenings are security theater, but it is impossible to know whether anybody was scared off from even trying. A 10% or even 5% chance of getting caught is deeply concerning. It risks not just you, but everybody else in the plot.
It could well be zero: the turrurists aren't dumb and they also know it's security theater. But I have to admit that I genuinely do not (and cannot) know.
Certainly in the UK it was linked to this attempted attack [1] but seemed very specific like banning laser toner cartridges as they were an attack attempt.
IIRC the modern "raise your arms" scanners had not been rolled out in 2006 when the shoe policy was instituted. perhaps the TSA has realized there's no point in making people take off their shoes when explosives/contraband within are easily picked up by the new scanners.
The article implies that passengers who opt out of the "raise your arms" millimeter wave scanner and go through the magnetometer instead will not have to take their shoes off unless the magnetometer alarms:
> Passengers who trigger the alarm at the scanners or magnetometers, however, will be required to take their shoes off for additional screening, according to the memo.
Let me start by saying I'm no fan of the TSA having been traveling for business for 20 years. But we do know exactly why it was originally enacted. Which is that someone tried to hide a bomb in the base of their shoe to blow up a flight.
While we don't know why they've stopped, it could be any number of things: from they have other ways of detecting explosives that don't require your shoes going through a scanner, to they just don't think it's an issue anymore.
While a lot of what TSA does appears to be security theater, saying "it never made any of us safer" is a claim you have no way of backing up.
The problem with this theory is that plenty of times (not just for PreCheck flyers), they arbitrarily decide you don't need to take your shoes off. It's not a technology thing, because they change it back and forth at the same gate at the same airport-- I fly enough to know. And whatever they've changed it to, they bark at you for not knowing, as though you could've known about whatever RNG generates TSA policy this week.
The claim is the old machines had issues with detecting and on the ground.
First time I went through Heathrow after the incident. You had to take your shoes off and went to a separate machine. The shoes were scanned then you walked back... Plenty of time to put something back on the shoe.
It’s always risk/reward. The risk isn’t only physical; it can also be intangible. For now at least, it looks like they’ve reassessed and decided it’s not worth the inconvenience.
That seems like a childish and unreasonable assumption. In addition to the technology changes everyone mentioned, it could also have to do with other factors, like the actual threats the country faces, or the relative weight the powers-that-be place on the different sides of each tradeoff. It's not like this is a controlled experiment where every other factor is held constant.
gryfft|7 months ago
It indeed seems like it was always something of an overreaction, but an understandable one that's now fully overlapped by superior modern scanning.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Airlines_Flight_63_(2...
2. https://www.dhs.gov/science-and-technology/news/2022/10/06/f...
Edit: whoa, groupthink.
os2warpman|7 months ago
Every time an article about airport security is posted the comments are the same.
To prove that I'm sane and my memory has not been corrupted by time or cosmic rays I google "airline hijackings by year", I look at the graphs in google images, and I briefly wonder what happened in early 1970s and 2000s before remembering what happened in early 1970s and 2000s.
Then I murmur "that's some fantastically effective theater".
privatelypublic|7 months ago
xnyan|7 months ago
What changed in 2017? They stopped publishing the results of the testing.
jfengel|7 months ago
It could well be zero: the turrurists aren't dumb and they also know it's security theater. But I have to admit that I genuinely do not (and cannot) know.
djaychela|7 months ago
[1] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Reid
Liquix|7 months ago
greyface-|7 months ago
> Passengers who trigger the alarm at the scanners or magnetometers, however, will be required to take their shoes off for additional screening, according to the memo.
tw04|7 months ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Reid
While we don't know why they've stopped, it could be any number of things: from they have other ways of detecting explosives that don't require your shoes going through a scanner, to they just don't think it's an issue anymore.
While a lot of what TSA does appears to be security theater, saying "it never made any of us safer" is a claim you have no way of backing up.
Analemma_|7 months ago
It's a power play, nothing more.
chrismcb|7 months ago
Jubijub|7 months ago
mc32|7 months ago
haiku2077|7 months ago
laborcontract|7 months ago
video tldr: 3d x-rays have made bag scanners more effective at screening
unknown|7 months ago
[deleted]
red-iron-pine|7 months ago
dataflow|7 months ago