The attack on the WTC was a major wake-up call to the world, and a response was definitely needed. In Europe and Asia airport security was stepped up, with training, purchase of some new equipment and extra staff. I would say that it seems to be effective and appropriate.
But the US went crazy, with the new Homeland Security Department, TSA and full baggage screening.
Homeland Security is obviously just a power grab and how the American public can allow itself to be fooled so badly is beyond me. All I can think is that they are driven by fear. There is a word for that type, but I hesitate to use it here.
At the airport, the private screeners were thrown out and the new government system was put in place. We were told that the standards, like those for the Air Marshalls, would be high, yet both departments have been forced to cut back on qualifications and training, such that the people in place now are barely better than those who went before.
The responsibilities of the TSA are to prevent criminals from taking dangerous items on board airplanes. I doubt that they have the intention or the ability to stop the terrorist himself. We have seen many cases where airplanes have been put under threat by persons armed only with mundane items such as a TV remote, or have had no weapons at all. Some of the most dangerous weapons cannot be detected by the TSA equipment, and if seen would not be identified as a weapon. I won't go into what those weapons might be here, but suffice it to say that the terrorists know. Again, the TSA cannot detect or identify those weapons.
Thus the TSA cannot do a 100 percent job. It is manifestly impossible. If you believe that they are protecting you, you are quite wrong.
The private security firms used low pay employees, but through time they had a lot of experienced and effective checkers working for them. The TSA said they would not employ any of those people, since they had their heads in a dark place at the time, but many of those checkers are now working again. The majority are new to the job and the training they have received so far leads me to belive that they will never amount to much. It takes a certain ability to stare at a monitor for hours and to be able to pick out the weapon from the thousands of carry-ons pasing through the machine. It is not a job for most persons, being boring, repetitive and (still) low paid. Computers are used, of course, since they can be programmed to recognise certain shapes, and the detection rate is probably higher. But I would remind all that the 9/11 criminals used a weapon (boxcutters) that were allowed for carriage at the time. The best we can hope is that these people will find most guns, knives or pointy objects. Never mind that these items are rarely used to commit crimes on airplanes.
A more effective way to stop airborne crime is to identify the persons who are most likely to commit those crimes and stop them from boarding in the first place. This is done in most places in the world, but not in the USA. Profiling is a PC word and therefore is forbidden there. Thus we see children, old ladies, crew, fanilies and so on stopped for thorough checks while the 18-40 year old male is breezing through. Even Al Gore was subject to a full search when he travelled last year and he thought that was alright! Never mind that if the ex-VP of the USA is a threat then we might as well pack up and shut down all aviation. The sheer stupidity of the people who make the rules for this outfit is astounding.
Instead of using brains to select passengers for checking, the TSA uses a computer that randomly selects victims, or by counting (every tenth person or such). It is hard to imagine a more inefficient and wasteful way to do it. I challenge a mathematician to come up with a worse way. The present system is guaranteed to not only waste the resources of the TSA, but to give the terrorist the best possible chance to smuggle what he needs on board with the smallest chance of being stopped.
But to make the gullible public think that the TSA is doing a good job, they make a fuss about what they do, and the worse they treat those who pay their salaries (we who want/have to fly) the better the public seems to like it. Never mind that 15-20 percent of the peopple who used to fly no longer do so, mainly because they cannot suffer the abuse at the airports. They say a successful parasite will try not to kill the host, and in that regard the TSA is most definitely not going to be successful.
Then the TSA put in those great big Xray machines, even though they knew the technology was not good enough to reliably do the job of detecting explosives. They cost millions, and it would be interesting to see what politicians and their wives/husbands got the kickback for that purchase. The failure rate is some 20 percent, so we, the traveling public, see our bags being manually searched and we are told to leave the bags unlocked. Never mind that we get no compensation for theft or loss, and no protection if a smuggler chooses to use our bag to get drugs into Miami.
When the bag is rejected by the machine, one would imagine that this is because it might contain an explosive, yet the baggage handler then puts on the latest in bomb handling tools, rubber gloves, and proceeds to rummage through the suitcase. He would not know a bomb if it climbed out and bit him on the butt, and if there was a bomb in the case, his handling would be bound to set it off, killing and injuring the thousands who are forced to stand around the lobby area, waiting in lines to have their bags checked or to check in for the flight. What is being done is so stupid that it must mean that the authorities know that there is no threat. There has not been a bombing of a US domestic airplane for forty years or more, and this threat is so small that the old 5 percent screening was just as effective as this massive over-kill.
"Follow the money". Who stands to gain most from this massive increase in government? From the loss of rights and freedoms that Americans used to enjoy? Using fear and coercion, this travesty has been forced on us. That so many accept it and believe that it actually makes flying safer is the truly sad part.