Slashdot Mirror
TSA Lied About Protecting Passenger Data
wk633 writes "A report by Homeland Security Department Acting Inspector General Richard Skinner, said the agency misinformed individuals, the press and Congress in 2003 and 2004. It stopped short of saying TSA lied.
Bruce Schneier does say 'the TSA lied' on his blog." Scary stuff, and yet it's even scarier how little the general public has caught on.
yet another thing your typical slashdotter doesn't get. The general public DOESN'T CARE!! The TSA is doing 'a good thing', they are protecting us from all those nasty terrorists, and if you have a problem with what they are doing, what are you trying to hide?
if your conerned about who's information is in whos hands, pull yourself off the damn grid. people continue to whine about information security, and then turn around and (securely?) purchase some thing online with a credit card moments after complaining about it.
or consider this simple fact, the government is just doing their job. they've never had to tell you before that they were just doing their job. so why, in the name of protecting passengers in flight, is it such a big issue to screen passenger records before said flights?
you people seem to have it all backwards, scream and scream about not enough information being handed back and forth to keep the people who matter informed about potential terroists taking flight, but when that information reaches their hands, you scream and scream about privacy issues. grrrr.
I personally spoke with a large software firm about this very issue -- how can such a system keep the false positives low to nill while catching the ocassional needle or two in a very large haystack, and they waffled on the question. Considering the number of terrorists are extremely small with regards the rest of the population, how can you possible have enough data to be statistically significant? Again, they waffled on the question, giving a half-baked "executive response" rather than anything concrete.
The real truth is we are far more likely to die in a car crash than to die at the hands of a would-be terrorist. Yet, billions are being poured into Homeland Insecurity and the TSA efforts, and what do we have? High false positive rates, millions of needlessly harrased travelers, and it's hard to get a fix on the false negative rates since terrorists are so rare to begin with.
In short, the entire approach makes no sense.
But try explaining this to the general public, who tend to be dumb as boards when it comes to basic statistics and probabality.
90% of the public is simply unable to think, but merely jumps from one belief pattern to another. That my friends is the problem.
Ruby Neural Evolution of Augmenting Topologies
I worked for the TSA for over a year and a half. I was a god-damned screener -- I was checking passengers and baggage both. I have little respect for most of the other screeners and for the management. (Did you know the hiring process was little more than "first-come-first-served" and that people were hired before background checks were complete? They didn't even check resumes much of the time! People were placed in management roles at the age of 18! Their last job at a burger joint! This is a no-shitter!) But enough of that. The TSA is also filled with a lot of well-meaning people who really want to do a good job. But I have yet to detect deceit in any of the people I have encountered regardless of how high in rank. I am honestly shocked.
Governments should be all about protecting the individual, but on the moment theiy're fucking our privacy here, there and everywhere.
This world is getting weirder by the day now.
"But if you havent done enything wrong, you don't need to be affraid." Right. So implant me a chip and give me a barcode. That shouldn't matter either.
The only difference is that governments in the us and the eu are doing everything to tell me I'm living in constant danger of getting killed.
And a ctually that is true. I believe the chances of getting killed by a car or a insane criminal with a gun are way higher than getting killer by a terrorist.
Privacy is terrorism.
The general public doesn't want a democracy. It wants a group of people to solve all their problems. Protects us from these bad men. Give us free food because I don't want to work. Keep my comunity safe from drugs.
The government doesn't want a democracy. It wants a group of people to let them decide everything. To take their protection from percieved threats. To give them tax money because they don't want to work. To keep comunities safe from drugs so people will work and pay taxes.
The truth is usually quite simple. Real governments exists to serve themselves as much as the people.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The lie being that if the US government spend loads of money on checking on people who come into the country by air, this will have any effect on terrorists at all? As I see it, the known terrorists would all be planners, the operatives aren't expected to last long anyway (life expectancy as a human bomb is not good). So, unless you have some way to identify a person, who has never been heard of before, as a fanatic, you have no hope of catching anybody this way. Even then, terror operations can take weeks or months to plan and execute, whats to stop them from coming in via Mexico for example? So if the people involved in it lie, are you surprised?
I might not be a wit, but at least I am more than half way there.
The number is entirely made up, it was an example. However, this government DOES quantify the terror risk, which is why we are stuck with the DHS terror warning system. Even if we could not quantify it at all, that doesn't mean we shouldn't spend any money on prevention.
You also suggest that if we fight terrorism we can't do anything else. Ideally we would spend as much to prevent automobile accidents and cigarettes as it would cost us to not do anything. The main problem here is that each politician is doing on a cost/benefit analysis on their salary vs lobbying dollars. If they can bring in $1 million in funds from corporate donors and spend $750k on PR to prevent people from hating them for selling out rights to business interests, then the politician will take it. This is why cigarettes are still legal and the average fuel efficiency of vehicles hasn't risen since the Model T.
Well, you can be certain that that policy will
not be allowed to continue - thanks for pointing
that out to the TSA.
In the past, the TSA has allowed passengers to
carry butane lighters on-board planes, as well
as books of matches. Someone pointed out that
if the British "shoe-bomber" had had the number
of butane lighters allowed, that plane would
never have made it across the Atlantic Ocean.
That policy has been changed.
The Dubya regime has been far too busy trying to
convince the public that they are more secure now,
rather than doing what it really takes to do so.
No doubt, the TSA has a plan drawn up for air
passengers to disrobe and don paper hospital gowns
and slippers, just for added "security". All this
while air cargo goes largely unchecked, seaports
go largely unchecked, borders remain porous, and
none of the airport ground crews pass through the
same security measures as the passengers.
I am not impressed by the PR campaign that passes
for genuine security improvements. It's called
"feel good" politics, and it little more than a
soap bubble in the wind. But when the terrorists
do strike again, the current regime will claim
that they have done everything in their power
to avert the disaster. (NOT!)
And so, we get the endless debates about gay weddings, about living wills, about abortion, about the "theory" of evolution, about the role of religion in public structures, and so on.
Meanwhile debate about subjects that in any open democracy would make the front pages, would bring millions onto the streets, and would topple presidents... almost totally absent.
The general public does not debate the role of the state, the yawning chasms in the democratic process, the boom in military spending, gerrymandering, government-sponsored TV "news", political prisoners, torture, the corruption of every agency meant to protect the public, the environment, the economy into an agency designed to exploit and abuse...
So, you are saying that the issues like gay weddings, living wills, abortion, and the teaching of evolution simply are not worthy of debate?
The reason nobody in America debates about the issues you want to get us riled up about is because our current society is very stable, and there is nearly a consensus (for better or worse) on all of them.
Other than libertarian crackpots like me (and a handful of pie-eyed college kids), nobody cares about the concept of "limited government."
Almost everybody agrees that the military is one of the few things worth throwing vast sums of money at.
Most older folks still watch TV news, but more and more people are simply turning to other sources, to get away from the endless parade of Michael Jackson trials and whatnot.
The "political prisoners" and "torture" you speak of are not nearly the hot-button issues you wish they were.
Government agency corruption has always been with us. Anybody who thinks it's an invention of either Bush or Clinton is simply too young to know any better.
Meanwhile, the issues you dismissed so quickly are critically important to the culture.
Marriage is the basic unit of family organization upon which our entire civilization is built. While I happen to think that government has no business prohibiting families made up of same-sex couples (or even multiple-partner marriages), there are those who strongly feel otherwise, and not simply for reasons of puritan bigotry. Their objections are not entirely without merit.
Living wills and abortion both get down to a very fundamental question: At what point do your rights, specifically the single most important right of survival, begin and end? When does a person become a person? When to they cease to be a person? Are we entitled to waive our own right to life under certain circumstances? These are big questions, and the minutae of how the answers are applied can impact millions of people.
Evolution is the theoretical model upon which all of our modern knowledge of biology is built. It is absolutely vital to the long-term advancement of science that it is taught in schools. At the same time, Darwin's second book, The Descent of Man, runs afowl of several major religions regarding man's relationship to other animals. Balancing the need to teach "this is what our best science has established" with the need to avoid saying "your family's religion must be incorrect superstition" is a challenge which presents no easy answers (unless you are willing to dismiss the other side's concerns out of hand.)
The role of religion in public structures is also a problem. Our first Ammendment states that our government must neither endorse nor hinder any specific religion. Some people feel that public displays of religious dogma constitute an endorsement. Others feel that banning such dogma from all public places constitutes a hinderance. The problem with the debate is that both sides are completely correct. You can't really ban religion from all public places without restricting the free practice, and you can't really have public space and/or resources promoting religion without forcing those who oppose it to be in the position of contributing to it with their tax dollars.
The religion clau
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
In order for a government to make the common man depend on it, it needs to give the common man an arch enemy. It used to be the Kaiser, communists, drug dealers, and now it's terrorists.
When the common man doesn't have an absolute enemy to fear, he'll tend not to depend on the government as much. Of course this isn't in the lawmakers best interest.
Keep your dependents living in fear and they'll always remain your dependents.
Its often amusing how your political position can cause you to say things that go against what you'd normally say....
The "Ruling political class" is some amalgam of the democrats and the republicans, and both groups prevent debate about significant topics--espeically morality.
My basic morality is that people are not your property. This is a moral position that both democrats and republicans violate at will.
Both parties want people enslaved by taxes and absurd laws, and so they create this charade wher you are (like most americans) deluded into thinking its the other parties fault. And your republican counterparts are deluded into thinking its the democrats fault.
The reality is, the "Ruling Political Class" is both of these parties-- the socialist republic we have become (do you really think our elections are fair? Even if it were so, this is a republic.)
But your right-- the general public, including slashdot readers-- won't engage in debate. Who would consider the argument that taxes are immoral? (And yet, who can come up with a counter argument?)
We've all been trained to stop thinking about politics-- to reduce politics to a football game of hatred, whereby we blame everything on the "other party" and make them out to be evil.
I hate republicans as much as the next guy, but its amazing to me how my friends who are liberal will ascribe all evil to them, but never notice when democrats do the same exact things.
The reality is, the mafia is in control. Not the italian mafia, the political mafia. Our government is nothing more than a parasite and mechanism by which cowards use fools to enforce control over the populace-- and not for the populaces benefit.
If you actually think about politics for awhile, and look into economics, you quickly become an anarchist.
If government was worth paying for, taxes would be voluntary. But they aren't, and they aren't for a reason.
Government's role and purpose is to exercise exactly the kind of control you're wondering how they are exercising.
People don't debate politics? Could it be they were taught in *government* schools not to think about politics?
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
Correction, they're F-16's not F-15's. And not to be an apologist for the Bush Administration, but the same offer was made to India (to sell them F-16's). In addition, The US has offer to Sell F-18 Hornets to India to mollify them (not that India can be easily mollified). Like it or not, Sometimes the United States makes decisions to help prop up countries that are "Holding the Line" so to speak. It shouldn't make you happy, but at the same time, abandoning the region to Fundementalists doesn't seem to make much sense. (insert snippy comment about the US already having been abandoned to the Fundementalists here) To be honest, the United States doesn't have a coeherent opposition to the Republican Party at this point. It's quite likely that the Democratic party will be in the minority for the next 20 years or so, or until the Republicans manage to get themselves involved in a scandal they can't control. (CRef: Nixon) Not flamebait, or troll just keeping it real
"The bass, the rock, the mic, the treble. I like my coffee black, just like my metal" - Mindless Self Indulgence
I have an obviously foreign name, and my luggage was searched two in a row for the last two times that I travelled. They put in a "notice of baggage inspection" slip in my bag. Now, the fact that they were searched wasn't a problem. The problem is that last August, they (1) delayed one luggage for a more thorough search, and (2) when I finally got my luggage, my $300 minidisc player/recorder was missing. The minidisc player was kept in a soft pouch; the pouch was stored inside a hand bag, which sit inside the luggage. They apparently opened the hand bag, pulled out the contents, found the minidisc player/recorder and found it convenient to transfer it to the inspector's own pocket.
..."
Now, I tried to contact TSA and it wasn't helpful. The phone number they provided, (866) 289-9673, always responded with a busy tone. I e-mailed the airline, United Airlines, and they never got back to me. Maybe I was too cynical. I told them I don't think an innocuous little device like my minidisc player is a threat to airline safety.
But it is funny if you think about it. TSA steals my stuff and put a slip saying "we did it." Then the fact that there is no where to complain is like them saying to me, "nanner nanner nanner
I once had a signature.
Yeah, no kidding! Except that instead of good wholesome colosseum entertainment we have lame reality tv shows...
I know you wrote this in jest, but you inadvertantly made a valid point. Activities like gladiator fights and other such activities were ways to demonstrate and reafirm their values (contempt for the fear of death, physical and martial prowess, etc...). As such they were usually free (sponsored by wealthy families for prestige), the only ones that made any profit were the ones providing the animals and gladiators. The only value reality TV endorses is "do anything for money". Not that I agree with all or even most of the classical Roman values, but in a way it does seem like their entertainment had higher goals.
it was just released yesterday that FOIA requests have released official documents showing the Saudis were shipped out of the USA when noone else could fly right after 9/11 by the FBI.
...
Sigh, don't you hate it when the conspiracy theorists are right
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Sort of like how if a cop sees a guy in a Santa Clause suit walking through a shopping district in early June, he might pay attention to what that guy's up to.
Easy, he's a decoy.
If you want to take the legal point of view, you have to accept that Clinton did not lie under oath. He was asked if he had "sex" with Lewinsky, was given a written definition of "sex" that required mutual gentital contact and penetration, and truthfully said "no". Which is one reason why his impeachment failed. Bush and his lieutenants have repeatedly lied to Congress. And surely in the many courts in which they have perpetrated their actions since late 2001. Lying to Congress is a high crime, and treasonous when it sends our troops to a fraud war that destroys the Treasury and our international relations, to say nothing of destroying the credibility of the government among Americans.
--
make install -not war
One of the major instruments of the ruling political class is to divide and distract public opinion with intense moral-laden debate
The first part is correct, the second is wrong. Politicians divide not based on intense moral issues, they polarize their base when needed. Bush claimed we MUST fight the war in Iraq because WE were THREATENED. It turned out later, when the threat was shown to be non-exsistant, his reasons changed. Morality had very little to do with it. Morals have little to do with Social Security or Taxes or where government should build schools or highways. Governments function has very little to do with religion, unless you count the prayer the Senate says each morning.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
But who the fuck in their right mind cares. All politicians lie, that's what they do. Are they expected to spill out their real intentions at high-level meetings ? To answer questions about what CIA does in their country ?
The pres is not Jesus, why is everyone surprised the "he lied to us ?". He didn't lie about legislation or about what he's going to do with the country. He lied about his private life which EVERYONE does at some point, so none of that "he lied once, he can't be trusted" bullshit.
That's exactly what was said in one of the first comments. The sheep are blinded with "moral dillemas" so the real stuff can go through unchecked.
And you can make a knife using metal epoxy and a piece of posterboard. Fold the posterboard in half, pour in the epoxy, hold two minutes (presumably in the restroom), boom, knife. Hopefully not epoxied to your hand. Alternately, use the folds of one of those innumerable pamplets they have at the airport.
Granted, it has a non-straight blade and no handle, but is very sharp, and you could certainly hold it to someone's throat.
Of course, I think he's failed to notice you can make a knife from a CD by snapping it in half, if you don't mind flying shards of plastic going everywhere. Wear eyeglasses for that one.
Trying to keep the class of 'sharp objects you can use to hurt people' from existing on an airplane is idiotic. We've got hundreds of thousands of years experience with sharp objects, often with using them against other people.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
You missed the point and proved the point simultaneously.
Bread and circuses.
The definition of marriage does *not* fundamentally effect our society. Marriage is the basic unit of family organization upon which our entire civilization is built. Bzzt, wrong. The family unit is *not* defined in our society. We have single parent families, we have extended families raising children across marriages, we have the stereotypical husband-wife-'n-2-kids. We have kids being raised away from the family unit (daycares, schools, televisions). Yes, it's all about *marriage* (/sarcasm)
Step back and evaluate all these 'hot button' issues and see the common thread: morality. That's the point that was being made. These are not crucial issues that we should devote our existance to, they are moral questions that are being forced to the front.
Notice how so many of these issues cannot be answered. You cannot deny a person's faith (as it is just belief, it needs not be based on anything else). You cannot have a discussion where one party is arguing based on belief while the other is arguing based on observations and theories. You cannot assign simple answers to complex questions (aborition, right to life, "right to die"), yet the media treats the complex questions as a series of simple answers. This only further divides people, as they stick to the simple answer they like.
The stability of our society is part of the problem. That stability is almost a taboo, you can't buck it or question the real issues, you have to play with the majority and fight their morality.
The GP was correct, true issues are brushed aside for the issues that perfectly divide us and cannot be answered.
I had my digital camera stolen from checked luggage by these people! I accept that I am partially at fault but packing it in luggage in the first place. Still, it should not be defacto assumption that my items will be stolen by the same people that are checking for BOMBS and WEAPONS in luggage! If these people are engaged in petty theft, what's to stop these same people from accepting $10,000 to PLANT a foreign object into someones bag??? And I'm not basing my opinion solely on my own experience. After some research, I found that theft complaints went up after TSA started checking bags! If they can't even do simple background checks on their own employees, how can anyone feel safe???
It seems that all these "security" policies are about the "perception" of security and not about actual security. Geesh, they were even collecting fingernail clippers from people visiting the Statue of Liberty....
Even with all the holes in the original CAPPS system, WHAT were they actually looking for? After all, it flagged most of the hijackers. Then NOTHING resulted from that with regard to actually securing the aircraft. The easily opened cockpit doors also begged to question of how intelligent our security "experts" really are. I've only flown first class a few times but I remember my first time. When they closed the cockpit door and blocked my view of the instruments, I thought how silly it was since that door was so flimsy. This was the early 90's... People already knew about crashing airplanes to impart more damage beyond that of the aircraft and it's occupants.
All and all, when you look at they foibles of our security systems before Sept 11, 2001, you actually see a system which surprisingly flagged most of the hijackers AND exposed their plan. What else you see is how badly that information was handled. Somehow, this was taken to mean that massive changes in the management of all the existing security departments was required.... It's like a bad wheel bearing is causing vibrations in the car and the owner of the service station tells you to replace the car.
Bin Laden may have started the ball rolling, but WE are doing a great job at really messing up this country. What next, putting the 10 Commandments in front of every government building to help improve security?
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
The TSA didn't lie, and I won't explain to you why. Go look up what they did say vs. what is distributed data.
Blogs - an easy way to whore your free-form, dubious and conjecture based thoughts to the world.
I'll add that the Saudis also funded Bush Sr's Iran/Contra operation, under the National Security guise. And Manucher Gorbanifar, Iran/Contra contractor exec, is back in a driver's seat at the meetings with his old BushCo cronies.
Just the evidence that Cheney cleared the top-secret (NOFOR) Iraq invasion plan with Bandar, prior to informing Powell, should be enough to indict.
--
make install -not war
I might argue that government will always exist in one form or another.
Under a system of political anarchy, services once provided by the government are instead provided by private companies. There is no single "service" that the government provides that cannot be provided better and/or cheaper by a private entity. Take, to use your example, roads. Most people will contend that we would have no road system without the government. Who, they ask, would have built the interstate highway system? And, they argue, if road were private, we'd have to pay for them!
Many would then proceed to argue that this arangement places total control in the hands of the road company, and they will inevitably seek to screw their customers. Well, that's another place where good ol' fashioned free market competition shines. Anarchy is not, as many believe, a system of chaos and brutality where none organize for common goals. Communities (towns, cities, etc) naturally form when those whos interrests intersect decide to live and work in proximity to one another to more readily achieve their common goals. Suppose a group of people started buying land and building homes, and decided they needed a system of road in their community, but no one had the necessary facilities to maintain such a system. Well, they could get together and draft a contract proposal for a road maintainence company, and draft a covenant agreement for landowners in the community. Such a system could take many forms. The one I like goes something like this: Each person owns the section of road in front of their property; it is just a part of their property, and they paid for it, so they maintain rights over it. When the members of this community get together to draft a contract and covenant agreement, they determine the rules of the road, appropriate penalties, etc. The covenant would stipulate that the landowners that sign it are bound to follow the stated rules of the road and also stipulates that if they sell their property, they agree to have the buyer sign the same covenant as a part of the sale, thereby ensuring someone won't simply move into the neighborhood and switch up the rules for their section of road. They then hammer out the details of the contract with the road company, and everyone who accepts it signs on and is then bound. Of course, any good contract will specify terms allowing the participants to cancel the contract (i.e. poor performance on the part of the maintainence company, etc). And the really, really wonderful thing about this is, it's ENTIRELY VOLUNTARY! No one is forced to participate in the community road maintainence program, and is free to take their services to another company. And this won't result in disjointed traffic laws that change from block to block. Remember, a community forms out of common interests, so the initial members of this community will more easily work out a system that is mutually acceptable. And suppose that a neighboring community forms with different laws and a different company. Competition works again here. People will be more likely to join a community that best serves their self-interest, so the community with preferable laws will succeed. And again, this is but one system under which a community could form its road system. There are many others, and each sovereign individual would be free to choose how they will fill their own needs.
There are too many people who aren't interesting in just getting along, they have to win. They want to control others, or to liver better than others, or to work less, or just cause pain.
That's correct, such people do exists. They're so common, in fact, that they've been given a name: politicians. People who desire to rule are the first to get into government. Anarchy gives you a fighting chance against such people. Free market competition ensures that you can go elsewhere if you feel mistreated by a company. The right to keep and bear arms ensures your ability to defend yourself against the mor
Society should not have to subsidise childbirth in a marriage that is incapable of producing children.
excellent idea.
we should thus prevent infertile heterosexual couples from being able to marry.
Additionally, when a married woman reaches menopause, divorce is mandatory.
The libertarian solution to the failures of capitalism is to apply more capitalism til the failures are fixed.
Dark_requium nailed the points so very well, that he puts my original post to shame.
The basic reality is that most people aren't criminals. Those who are criminals-- those who want to exploit others-- are emboldened by being able to go to into government and pretend that their thievery has legitimacy.
They can do this because so many people in the population-- people who aren't criminals themselves-- endorse their criminality. They believe that the benefits of government outweight the cost-- and they believe this because that's what they've been told but they've never looked into it.
The judicial system is an excellent example: Where are the trials of government officials for the crimes that they have committed? You can say people who believe conspiracy theories about JFK are "tinfoil hat wearers" but Abu Grahaib is not a theory-- the laws were broken there. Waco is not a theory-- the proof is out there for anyone to see (now, many years later when most people are not looking into it, but just believing the falsehoods they were told at the time.)
Government schools do not teach logical thinking-- they don't teach a rational analysis of our current system. They glorify the founders and then glorify people who came after and undid all the things the founders warned against and fought (like income taxes, which did not exist prior to 1910, etc.)
Yes, some people are evil. IF you think these are the majority of people- you must regonize that government can't protect you from them. IF you think that they are the minority-- then what exactly is it about the nature of government that prevents the criminals from running it?
People are taught to worship government to the point that they think that anarchism means chaos.
That is a sad state of affairs, but it is considered canon much of the populace... to those who reject liberty, and libertarianism-- tell me exactly what it is that gives you the moral right to own people? (For socialism- as practiced by both the democrats and republicans is based on teh assumption that people are property- and the government has the right to control and tax its subjects.)
Drug laws are a great example- -they are not there to protect us from criminals, they are there to control the populace.
By what right? Certainly not the constitution, and certainly no logical/rational/scientific argument supports them. Yet both parties do, and the vast majority of american support one of those two major parties.
The TSA is just another agency who's sole purpose is to control the populace. Can anyone point to a major democrat or major republican who has called for its disbanding?
In the 60s people carried guns on planes. There were some hijackings, but the hijacking were NOT stopped by screening for guns (obviously proven by 9/11)
So, why has government given itself yet another monopoly on a service-- in this case security at airports?
ITs obviously not to protect against hijackings (note 9/11 again-- which happened after government had control over airport security.)
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
p.3: Respondents were presented the major items of the discretionary budget, including a breakdown of the proposed funding for each item, and given an opportunity to redistribute the funds as they saw fit.
So they were told how much we are currently spending, and asked if they wanted to keep it the same, reduce it, or increase it. The results were interesting:
p.11: ...defense spending was the area most deeply cut. On average respondents cut it
$133.8 billion or 31%, from $435.9 billion to $302.1 billion. Overall 65% cut defense spending.
This overall reduced spending mostly came from:
p.11: reducing spending on the capacity for conducting large-scale nuclear and conventional wars. However, majorities opposed cutting spending on personnel, intelligence, communication, and the capacity to conduct unconventional warfare: special operations, peacekeeping, and fighting insurgencies.
If you read the report, you'll note that people really knew what they wanted to cut.
Result: both democrats and republicans want to decrease overall military spending.