How are the incentives in the wrong place? The airlines need security theater; people are already fearful of flying, and fear of being killed by terrorists while flying only makes that worse.
This is the problem really. Flying is one of the safest ways to travel. After 9/11 more people drove to their destination and traffic deaths went up.
Suspects are typically described by appearance,
When you have a suspect, or a witness... But when you don't have a suspect, who do you look for?
In both cases it was not the passengers subduing the attackers which prevented the deaths of those onboard... but instead luck that neither device went off.
Of course this happened AFTER he got through TSA screening.
You may be right, but since stopping such things is what they are supposed to do, there's no way to be certain, if only by their very presence, that they are not having some impact
They are having an impact all right. They cost us money and time. Anecdotal evidence suggests some tourists aren't coming to American because of them. And evidence suggests driving has gone up, and because driving is statistically less safe than flying, more people have died has a result.
So we can't tell if TSA has deterred anyone (would it really? What we did previously didn't stop anyone, why should the TSA) but evidence has suggested they failed to stop some terrorists, like the underwear guy and the show guy (well that one isn't on TSA, but still)
Because no terrorist would want to bring a grenade on a plane?
Uhm, pretty much. Just like you won't find many terrorists trying to bring a two handed long sword on a plane. A grenade isn't exactly the weapon to use in close quarters. And chances are wouldn't do significant damage to the plane itself.
To be a kind of moral Unix, he touched the hem of Nature's shift. -- Shelley
