I spent a little over three years in TSA and am firmly convinced that they are a deterrant, but not very much of one, and not worth the amount of money spent.
Yes there have been two failed terrorist attacks THAT WE KNOW ABOUT, but I am willing to bet that there are others that failed that neither we nor TSA know about. There is no way for me to know that the young lady who appeared to be of eastern descent to me, whose carry on bag contained an unlabeled jar of an unidentified clear liquid, which we refused to allow on the flight, was NOT part of a group which, once on the flight, would have assembled the binary explosive and taken down the plane. No way for anyone else to know either, she was allowed to take the bag and check it and flew without it in her carry on.
There is no way to know all of the probes and tests done by the terrorists that have taken place and this is nothing more than a training exercise for them, they try something, it doesn't work, they try something else, it doesn't work, until they find something that works, and in two cases almost. One plane would have gone down if it hadn't been for perspiration, the other if the explosive had been mixed properly, and in both cases it WASN'T pure luck that they figured out what the (current) best way to sneak the bomb through was, it was research.
Is it really paranoia if they ARE out to get you?
