I flew on a plane without going through security. It was amazing and no one died
Yet another in a long line of "data wonky" articles that misuse statistical data to support a position that is emotionally attractive.<p>> Would this increase hijacking? Probably. But there's no reason to believe it would increase casualties from terrorist attacks overall.  That's because increasing airport security just leads terrorists to direct their assaults elsewhere.<p>There are two huge problems with this statement.<p>First, you cannot draw such a causal conclusion from statistical data alone.<p>Second, it's pulling a subtle slight of hand--the goal of airport security is NOT to reduce terrorist casualties overall. It is to reduce violent attacks of any kind on airplanes, specifically.<p>At the base of this argument is an implication that terrorist attacks are zero-sum: reduce them in one place, get an equivalent more in another. But that's not how security works.<p>Look at it in digital terms--it would be like saying that we don't need to bother with strong passwords, because all those did was drive up the number of phishing attacks. Maybe we could just get of passwords, since the total number of intrusions would not go up. And besides, just think of all that wasted effort to create, hash, store, remember, and manage passwords.<p>Does that sound stupid? I hope so, because it is. But that's exactly the type of argument that this article is making.