That said, a couple of thoughts:
1. If we deem weapon detection (to choose a metric) to be vital, then what is the magic target that we want airport security (of whatever sort) to find? 10%? 25%? 50%? 95%? 100% ?
What level of intrusiveness and delay are we willing to take in order to reach that metric (esp. since one method of detection being successful will spawn alternatives to penetrate it)? Are there in fact more effective ways than what are being used?
What level of detection is sufficient to deter hypothetical terrorists?
2. The TSA gets a lot of grief over this, and rightfully so. But it's often done with an eye toward "if only we had competent airport security people taking care of this," which is a different matter. Recall that craptastic security pre-9/11 was one of the things that led to that event. Airports bought the cheapest rent-a-cops they could, with minimal training, to brush the donut crumbs off their bulging uniform shirts while squinting at the bag x-rays.
TSA may not being performing well, but the idea that they are easily replaceable with others who can (especially depending on the metrics we are looking for) is not well-founded.
3. Is a better metric "how many planes have been hijacked since 9/11"? Because, in that case, the TSA is doing fantastically. Maybe they are just lucky. Maybe they are more effective behind the scenes than any single layer of security indicates. Maybe there is something to the security theater. Maybe there just aren't that many suicidal / terroristic hijackers out there to be afraid of.
If that is the metric, then, again, what is the expected level of performance?
I don't have any easy answers to this. We know there are (or have been) people willing to hijack planes and drive them into buildings, or blow them up, or other anti-social acts — but also there aren't very many of them. Assuming we want to stop them, or some substantial part of them, what are we asking airport security to do, and what are we willing to put up with to do it?
The current arrangement doesn't seem successful, except in the metric of lives lost from hijackings / airplane bombings since 9/11. Is that sufficient? If not, aside from sniping at the apparent incompetence of the TSA (a sport I enjoy as much as the next air traveler), what is proposed instead?
TSA airport screeners’ ability to detect weapons declared “pitiful”
Security measures under “full system review.” Agency considering using dogs.
If a cockpit door can't be breached to weaponize the aircraft, then it deserves about as much security as any other mode of transporting similar amounts of people and cargo.
So when was the last time you spent over an hour waiting for security to get on a train or bus?
+Gary Roth OTOH, the DHS keeps making noises about adding similar security checks for passenger trains, so …
The fact is, the opportunities for Bad People with Suicide Bombs to kill gobs of people are endless. So your approach probably makes sense. I just wouldn't want to be the next TSA / DHS / White House person in charge when a bomb is set off in plane.
I think the solution is to look at other countries that are more successful. There was a Cracked article from a security expert at the Jerusalem airport, and he talked about how they don't screen for suspicious items, they screen for suspicious behavior. They use interviewers rather than scanners, and it's extraordinarily effective (because they're trained to be able to tell the difference between someone who's nervous because they hate flying and someone who's nervous because there's a bomb in their bag).
I think returning to sanity is a good solution too. Reduce the invasiveness of the searches downwards until it negatively impacts their current dismal success rate. That marks a level of security both realistically achievable and effective. That resulting process is demonstrably an appropriate level of search. Proven by the number of terrorist hijackings since they started playing this ridiculous game.
+Dave Hill Of course they're afraid of bad luck on their part. Sensible people know they're powerless to actually prevent disaster. But likewise, it would look bad to behave like that, because people are not always sensible.
In any case, I imagine if they ever tried to implement this sort of stuff over the NYC MTA, they'd find themselves in over their heads pretty quick.
+Brittany Constable +Al Hunt Right on. We need to focus less on distractions and security theater versus actual threat detection. Caution is required, though. If our current, item-focused security already has problems with racism, how bad night a people-focused system get?