Despite the budget sustaining efforts of former associate director of the FBI, Thomas Fuentes, Why Does the FBI Have To Manufacture Its Own Plots If Terrorism And ISIS Are Such Grave Threats? by Glenn Greenwald, you are really safer than you think.
Not because security systems are that great, but from a lack of people who want to do you harm.
Think about airport security for a minute. There are the child fondling TSA agents and the ones who like to paw through used underwear but how serious do you think the protection is by those methods? What about all those highly trained and well-paid baggage handlers and other folks at the airport?
The answer to that question can be found in: Airport Baggage Handlers Charged in Wide-Ranging Conspiracy to Transport Drugs Across the Country. Certainly would not want airport security to interfere with the flow of illegal drugs across the country.
From the post:
Fourteen persons have been charged in connection with an alleged wide-ranging criminal conspiracy to violate airport security requirements and transport drugs throughout the country announced U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag of the Northern District of California, Special Agent in Charge José M. Martinez of the Internal Revenue Service-Criminal Investigation’s (IRS-CI) for the Northern District of California and Special Agent in Charge David J. Johnson Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The case highlights the government’s determination to address security concerns in and around the nation’s airports.
In a criminal complaint partially unsealed today, the co-conspirators were described as a drug trafficking organization determined to use the special access some of them had been granted as baggage handlers at the Oakland International Airport to circumvent the security measures in place at the airport. As alleged in the complaint, the baggage handlers entered the Air Operations Area (AOA) of the Oakland Airport while in possession of baggage containing marijuana. The AOA is an area of the airport that is accessible to employees but not to passengers who have completed security screening through a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) checkpoint. The baggage handlers were not required to pass through a TSA security screening checkpoint to enter the AOA. The baggage handlers then used their security badges to open a secure door that separates the AOA from the sterile passenger terminal where outbound passengers, who have already passed through the TSA security and screening checkpoint, wait to board their flights. The baggage handlers then gave the baggage containing drugs to passengers who then transported the drugs in carry-on luggage on their outbound flights. After arriving in a destination city, the drugs were distributed and sold.
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I take the line:
The case highlights the government’s determination to address security concerns in and around the nation’s airports.
to mean the government admits that drugs, weapons or bombs are easy to get on board aircraft in the United States.
That should not worry you because since 9/11, despite airline security being as solid as a bucket without a bottom, no one has blown a plane out of the sky, no one has taken over an airplane with a weapon.
That’s 14 years and more than 10.3 billion passengers later, not one bomb, not one take over by weapon, despite laughable airport “security.”
The only conclusion I can draw from the data, is the near total lack of anyone in the United States who wishes to bomb an airplane or take it over with weapons.
I say “near total lack” because there could be someone, but is is less than one person per 10.3 billion. Those are fairly good odds.