Mastodawn

MicroWave 1d ago

More than 400 TSA officers have quit since shutdown began

https://lemmy.world/post/44607070

More than 400 TSA officers have quit since shutdown began - Lemmy.World

TSA employees have been working without pay during a partial shutdown of DHS over demands to reform immigration enforcement. More than 400 Transportation Security Administration workers have quit since a partial government shutdown that began on Feb. 14 left them working without pay, the Department of Homeland Security said. Funding was shut off to DHS over demands by Democrats for reforms at Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection following alleged abuses and the fatal shootings of two U.S. citizens by federal agents in Minneapolis earlier this year. There has also been a national callout rate of 10% at TSA on more than half the days of the last week, Lauren Bis, acting assistant secretary for public affairs at DHS, said Saturday in response to questions.

Gladly let the door kick them on the way out. Heard nothing but awful power tripping stories about them.

ICE is godawful and obviously worse. Both being gone would be great of course.

BarneyPiccolo 1d ago

You hear the occasional story, but MILLIONS of people interact with TSA every day, and it goes perfectly smoothly. There is nothing like mind-numbing repetition to create a smooth flow. And when you do hear of a problem, it’s almost always started by the passenger.

TSA workers are just hard-working Americans, doing a job that has to be done. Keep your animosity aimed at those at the top who really deserve it.

And ICE Apes. They really do suck.

NocturnalMorning 1d ago

Does it really have to be done though? The obnoxious security screenings don’t make anybody safer.

Airline hijackings dropped drastically after 9/11 due to enhanced security, moving from a relatively common occurrence to a rare event. While hundreds occurred globally between 1968 and 1972, and over 130 happened in the U.S. in one four-year period, there have been no successful hijackings in the U.S. since 9/11.

ourworldindata.org/…/airline-hijackings-once-rela…

Yes, it really has to be done. We live in a world of mass shootings nearly every day. The only reason it hasn’t happened in a plane is because of the post-9/11 security.

People don’t understand that TSA’s biggest impact isn’t in stopping weapons from coming onto planes in the airport. All of that is just theater, and we are unwilling players, like it or not. The impact is at home, when a lunatic who want to kill a lot of people decides to not do it on an airplane because he’ll probably never get through security, so he chooses a path of lesser resistance. Not great for that victim, but at least airport security eliminated against THEM.

Is it working? Who knows what’s on the minds of suicidal terrorists, but after a long period of many hijackings, culminating in the worst in history on 9/11, there have been no major hijacks in America since TSA and enhanced security were implemented in American airports.

Hard to argue with results like that.

Airline hijackings, once relatively common, are rare today

Airline hijackings are often considered a very visible and prominent form of modern terrorism, with the 9/11 attacks in the United States in 2001 being a well-known tragic example.

Our World in Data

NocturnalMorning 1d ago

I don’t believe that for a second. If there were regular airline hijackings before 9/11 we would have had that security already. TSA is there to invade people’s privacy and be a jobs program, nothing more.

This data lumps all aircraft together, and across the entire world. It’s a bogus source to support your claim.

BarneyPiccolo 1d ago

“Don’t bother me with facts, my mind is made up.”

If there were regular airline hijackings before 9/11 we would have had that security already.

Despite a mountain of evidence, easily available with a Google search, you just blurt out one of the stupidest arguments I’ve ever heard.

Are you actually telling me that there were no hijackings before 9/11, and that any reports of hijackings are fabrications? Because that’s an incredibly ignorant statement.

First of all, there WAS baggage inspections before 9/11, and people complained about it all the time. The videos of the 9/11 hijackers on that day ALL come from security cameras trained on the X-ray machines, and you can see plenty of people around them. It looks essentially the same as it does today. The security just wasn’t as strong as it is now.

Pre-9/11, security was handled by private security companies, different ones in every airport in every city, and standards were inconsistent. Post 9/11, the government formed TSA to maintain consistent airport security around the country, and a few private security companies probably went out of business. Also, stricter training and protocols were implemented, and have evolved due to emerging threats like shoe bombs, underwear bombs, and water bottle bombs.

Now let’s get into your primary assertion, which was that weren’t any hijackings before 9/11. According to Wikipedia:

Between 1958 and 1967, there were approximately 40 hijackings worldwide

According to the FAA, in the 1960s, there were 100 attempts of hijackings involving U.S. aircraft: 77 successful and 23 unsuccessful.

In a five-year period (1968–1972) the world experienced 326 hijack attempts, or one every 5.6 days

Between 1978 and 1988, there were roughly 26 incidents of hijackings a year.

During the 1990s, there was relative peace in the United States airspace as the threat of domestic hijacking was seen as a distant memory. Globally, however, hijackings still persisted. Between 1993 and 2003, the highest number of hijackings occurred in 1993

Then we had 9/11, the first time in history that an airplane had been used as a weapon of mass destruction.

So go ahead, Junior, and talk out your ass again how there wasn’t any hijackings or airport security before 9/11.

You’re conflating TSA with just putting a locked door at the front of the airplane. One of those was effective, and it was it the TSA. The TSA has an over 90% failure rate, by their own metrics.

BarneyPiccolo 1d ago

This may be the stupidest argument I’ve ever had. You people are arguing like MAGAs.

Hundreds of hijackings before TSA, including 9/11. None in the 25 years since TSA and the new protocols. The system isn’t perfect, but it’s clearly worked, and even with it’s imperfections, it’s far better than NOTHING, which seems to be the only alternative suggestion.

I get it, air travel is a pain in the ass, and there is always a bit of a wait for the security screening. So what? We wait everywhere - the bank, the barber, the fast food drive through line, the grocery store, etc. Isn’t spending some time in line worth not getting blown out of the sky?

Do you people actually think air travel will be SAFER without airport security? Because we had security before 9/11, and it still happened. Without any security, we’ll go back to that 4 year period in the 70s when we had over 300 hijackings, more than one per week. That’ll be fun, right?

I only made one point in my short post and you completely failed to address it.

Locked doors have stopped the hijackings, and those are already paid for. So why do we need TSA?

BarneyPiccolo 1d ago

You think that locked cockpit doors are the ONLY thing keeping trouble from happening in the sky? What’s to stop them from killing and torturing passengers, lighting fires, setting off bombs, etc.? All you really need to do is pierce a lithium battery, and you have 1000°C fire that is extremely difficult to extinguish. That will bring down a plane as surely as killing the pilot.

The locked cockpit door is the last line of defense. It’s not a good idea to get rid of every other defense before that. It’s pretty important to keep trouble off the plane in the first place.

But they do prevent hijackings…

BarneyPiccolo 19h ago

They prevent hijackers from getting into the cockpit, but you can hijack or bring down a plane in many other ways.

Damage or destroy, sure. But to me, hijacking means taking control of the aircraft, and I don’t see that happening without cockpit access. (Not that doors are impenetrable, but still.)

BarneyPiccolo 15h ago

Oh, come on, now we’re just arguing about personal definitions of words. If a guy is killing people and setting off bombs on a plane, he’s a hijacker, whether he is demanding a destination or not.

ScoffingLizard 20h ago

Those statistics are not realistic. There were not 130 hijackings in four years. Maybe someone stealing a plane, but nothing like 911.

BarneyPiccolo 19h ago

Did you get dropped on your head? When there’s a crazy guy waving a gun, and demanding to go to Cuba (that was really popular for a while, for some reason), NOBODY on the plane is thinking that this is just a guy stealing a plane, nothing to worry about. They are frightened for their very lives, not thinking that this isn’t a “real” hijacking. That’s about the most idiotic take I can imagine.

Yeah, and they were nothing like 9/11, which was the very first time a plane had been used as a weapon of mass destruction before, and they used 4 of them simultaneously. It was really, really serious.

But that doesn’t mean previous hijackings weren’t serious. People died in hijackings and rescues around the world all the time. It doesn’t have to be as big as 9/11, to still be serious.

We dropped 2 atomic bombs at the end of WW2. They were really big, bigger than anything that came before. Does that mean the fire bombing of Tokyo wasn’t serious? The fire-bombing of Dresden into rubble wasn’t serious? How about all the other bombings we did in WW2? Were those not serious, just because something much bigger was in the future? I doubt the victims of the bombings would agree.

And you know what, Einstein? YOU don’t get to determine which statistics are realistic or not. Get another couple of years of education, until you can spell Google, then look up the Wikipedia entry on Hijackings.

Hijackings went down because in the past the protocol was to let the hijacker do what they want since it just ended in a diverted plane with no one harmed. That doesn’t work anymore and it’s not because of the TSA.

BarneyPiccolo 18h ago

I’m arguing with people who have never seen a hijacking, while I lived through all of them in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, AND 9/11, which many people here don’t even remember.

No, that’s not how hijackings work, and not why they decreased. They did not “let the hijackers do what they want,” and anyway, how would that discourage hijacking? If they were letting the hijackers do whatever they want, wouldn’t that ENCOURAGE hijackers?

They decreased because of steady improvement in security, until they had discouraged all but the most froggy terrorist, which is what we got on 9/11. Then they tightened up protocols even more, and we haven’t had any more hijackings.

You guys are arguing with me, but this isn’t me saying this, it is the assessment of literally everyone who has studied it. All of the people in this thread are trying to support their arguments with invented facts that conflict with historical truth.

No, that’s not how hijackings work, and not why they decreased. They did not “let the hijackers do what they want,” and anyway, how would that discourage hijacking? If they were letting the hijackers do whatever they want, wouldn’t that ENCOURAGE hijackers?

Yes it was how it used to work, that’s why the planes would end up diverted. When that stopped being standard protocol, the hijackings reduced. You got it on that last sentence in that paragraph but for some reason think I’m arguing changing standard protocol to NOT allow hijackers to do their thing would encourage hijackers. You read my post backwards.