Slashdot Mirror
Auditors Question TSA's Tech Spending, Security Solutions
Frosty P writes "Government auditors have faulted the TSA and its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, for failing to properly test and evaluate technology before spending money on it. The TSA spent about $36 million on devices that puffed air on travelers to 'sniff' them out for explosives residue. All 207 of those machines ended up in warehouses, abandoned as unable to perform as advertised, deployed in many airports before the TSA had fully tested them. Since it was founded in 2001, the TSA has spent roughly $14 billion in more than 20,900 transactions with dozens of contractors, including $8 billion for the famous new body scanners that have recently come under scrutiny for being unable to perform the task for which they are advertised. 'TSA has an obsession of finding a single box that will solve all its problems. They've spent and wasted money looking for that one box, and there is no such solution,' said John Huey, an airport security expert."
Gee, TSA wasting tax payer money? Who'da thunk Chertoff's big money maker would be a big money waster for the rest of us "little people"?
Similar to the upcoming US election results
Used to be cutting edge
Uh, when the fuck was this? Was it back when the Internet had no trolls and everyone on slashdot wrote thoughtful, well-reasoned commentary?
Similar to the upcoming US election results
36 million on devices to puff air?
The TSA can blow me for free.
THL phish sticks
The TSA is simply a job creation program that has gone amok. At first it was extra baggage screeners, but it's now grown to the point that the only jobs they could think of involve fondling people. I think the idea is that if they get sued often enough, it will create lots of jobs for paralegals, expert witnesses and attorneys. The TSA likes machines because machines need operators, and each operator is one more job. In short the TSA is the biggest farce I've ever seen the government create, and it can't be closed down completely quickly enough.
-- $G
And this is what happens when you let magical thinking get spending power. Buy the magic box, and scare the monsters from the moon cult away. Seen any moon monsters lately? Magic box is working! Wait, scientist said magic box doesn't work? What does he know! Newspaper man proved magic box doesn't work? Nothing to worry about. My shaman/advisor says magic box doesn't work? Time to buy new magic box!
I'm wondering why no one is asking about using dogs for bomb sniffing.
I'm guessing that the reason the TSA isn't trying that is because dogs can be supplied by many "vendors". It's more difficult to patent a dog than a scanner.
Woooooooosh!
I don't think it really matters that they have improperly spent all this money. So what?.. Is someone going to get in trouble for it over at TSA? Obviously not, they couldn't care less. The machines aren't about making you safer, it's about training you how to be a slave in this new globalized terrorist-filled society. If they cared about people's safety, they wouldn't let their workers walk right past security because they too, could be a terrorist.
Or they wouldn't be raiding the pilot's house that blew the whistle on this blatant hypocritical mission that the TSA is apparently on. http://www.news10.net/news/article.aspx?storyid=113529&provider=top&catid=188
These scanners are obviously making their way to shopping malls, schools, gov buildings, and just about anywhere else - so don't let them fool you and tell you it's for the brown men in turbans, feeling up your 14yr old daughter and your 75yr old grandmother has nothing to do with brown men in turbans plotting evil things in caves.
The magical number is: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
seriously, I've done counter-terrorism and I can tell you that all the tech solutions are literal wastes of money.
Even the tests of TSA screening show a trained terrorist can get all the items aboard 4 out of 5 times, with a more than 95 percent success rate on getting them into the cargo hold as well.
The only things that work - and have worked - are:
1. Dogs.
2. Pigs. Even better than dogs.
3. Throwing your coat or blanket on top of any hijacker and subduing them, yelling "Terrorist! We're all going to die - get them!"
Everything else is an utter and absolute waste of time and effort.
And a whole lot of cash.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Lowest bidder only maximizing profit for shareholder.
Incumbent official only maximizing donations to reelection campaigns.
I do not see much difference.
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
If the pilot is behind a locked door (that the knife cannot cut through), are we really concerned about knives?
And dogs should be able to detect firearms.
does that include lessons on *landing* as well?
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Getting a pilot's license is not all that hard (almost every one of my co-workers has a VFR license and most of them own a single-engine ship.)
The hard part is getting and *keeping* an IFR ticket, where you have to put in so many flight hours that it's really tough to do if you're not a full-time commercial pilot. Let's not even talk about the costs of owning, leasing, or even just fueling and maintaining even a low-end private jet.
It's fantastically liberating to be able to fly your own plane, but it also tends to be quite limiting. Consider the range on your, let's say, Cessna 182, for the 7-8 hours max you'd want to be in the left seat. Also consider what happens when you're grounded or diverted by VFR.
Most private pilots still go via commercial carriers when they travel. Flying yourself from Los Angeles to Maine can be fun, but it's no less greuling (and often not much faster) than the equivalent road trip.
The "use it or lose it" factor of IFR currency (FAR 61.57) in reality pretty much requires you to fly continuously, and without IFR you're stuck with mainly recreational flying in a relatively limited geographical area, only in clear skies. It doesn't suck, but it is not in reality the substitute you hold it out to be, nor do the costs end at the price of school.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
That's why it needs oversight and auditing. But not from some bi-partisan committee bull that sees its right to exist rather in the ability to keep their cronies well fed.
Here's an idea for a great auditor: Every single company that wanted the contract but didn't get it. If there is someone willing and motivated to look for flaws in an implementation, it's them!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
A bloated bureaucratic behemoth that paid for iPods for cops and bullet proof vests for dogs? But didn't pay for extra employees for searches? Or keeping cops on the street?
The next thing you will be telling me is that there is a pattern of bribery and corruption between contractors and employees administering the contracts.
They need their budget slashed immediately.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Bollocks.
People have been hijacking and blowing up planes for decades and nobody's economies collapsed. It's only since it happened over American soil that The Terrorist Fear took over and America started fucking everyone (including themselves) in the ass and generally doing the terrorists' jobs for them.
The rest of the world has been dealing with this sort of bullshit for years and getting on with their lives. I was on the tube in London two days after a bunch of fucktards blew it up and we didn't have government agents groping passengers at every station (well, not officially, anyway). We got blown up by a higher class of arseholes in the 80s and we learned how to deal with that sort of shit. The correct response is the Glasgow response. You boot your local terrorist in the nuts as hard as you can, then go about your business.
The sooner America realises that they're amateurs at this and learns how to handle it properly the better.
My girlfriend and I sat down to figure out how we could fly to her dad's airport outside of Baltimore from the LA Basin in a Cessna 172SP. We were looking at 16-18 hours of flight time over two or three days, five or six stops, and a bill of about $2400 to $2700 for the rental -- each way. Even without the rental fees, it would be something in the neighborhood of $650-$730 in fuel each way. That assumes no diversions and reasonable weather the entire way. It would be an incredible trip and a lot of fun, but it would also be much more financially difficult.
Being a private pilot works when you can get a few friends to go in on a trip to someplace that can be pricey even commercially. Flying from the LA Basin into Sacramento, for example, the numbers and time just about even out. More popular places like San Francisco, Las Vegas, or even Phoenix are tougher to match, and most long-distance flights are just right out. Until one gets into higher-performance aircraft (175 knots or faster and 800NM range or more), long-distance travel just doesn't work economically, and often not even then. For example, the above trip in a Cessna 350 would be a two-hop flight requiring about 12 hours in flight, give or take, depending on the cruise speed. At the common rental rate of $350/hour, that would be $4200 each way.
I love to sit in the left seat, but for most serious trips, I turn it over to the professionals.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September
Yeah, the Jean Charles de Menezes incident was a royal cockup of monumental proportions. The Met got rumbled trying to lie their way out of it too.
When the IRA put bombs in bins in public areas, yes, we removed the bins (there usually are bins now - sensitive areas have heavy duty bins that direct explosions upwards) and put non-shatter windows into the bottom two floors of public buildings. That's a reasonable response to a sustained bombing campaign, much like reinforcing and locking cockpit doors.
You can't 'win' a 'war' against terrorists - you do what you can to limit damage and make large targets more difficult to bomb, and apart from that you have to accept that it's just not possible to eliminate risk. If you go massively overboard like the US has done, you really have Let The Terrorists Win.
The clue's in the name. They're terrorists. If you let them terrorise you, I'd say that's a pretty convincing victory for them. The IRA et al and 7/7 bombers were largely unsuccessful as terrorists - they scared the shit out of us for a few weeks, but that's about as far as it went. People kept going to the pub after the Guilford and Woolwich bombings, the tube was back up and running in a matter of hours after 7/7. The trick is not to give a fuck and make sure they know it.
I've got an IFR pilot rating and an RV-8 - which gets about 170 knots and a decent range, although it's pretty cramped (better than coach, though), and lacks de-icing capabilities, I regularly fly it around the central US, and for most flights it's faster than commercial (counting drive-to-airport, checking in, waiting, flying, retrieving baggage and leaving airport), and no 'freedom fondle' or worrying about breakage, theft or the TSA rule-of-the-week. As an example, from my home in west-central MN to a client site in Dallas is about a 20 hour drive (direct), about a 6 hour flight in my plane (with one pit stop), or about 7 hours commercially (3.5 hours to 'real' airport, 1 hour AT airport, about 3 hours in air). Fuel is a bit more than a typical coach fare, but less than two tickets if I bring a passenger (it's a 2-seater). I occasionally have to wait or divert for weather, but I get to do it on MY schedule, not the airlines. It isn't for everybody, but it's not as far fetched as many think. I've had the plane about 6 years and I've been (for business or recreation) all over - Fargo, Minneapolis, Chicago, Indianapolis, Cleveland, DC, Orlando, Key West, Dallas, Phoenix, St Louis, Atlanta, and hundreds of smaller towns around the country.
On top of that, the plane is fully aerobatic and fun as hell.
And before that, Caveman Ugg was drawing dongs on other people's cave entrances.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Was it back when the Internet had no trolls and everyone on slashdot wrote thoughtful, well-reasoned commentary?
When did this exist?
1946.
More on topic, am I the only one who thinks the TSA should be disbanded and Michael Chertoff should be standing in an unemployment line with Michael brown?
How about we spend some of that transportation safety money on guard rails? 45,000 people die on American highways each year, but there were no airline fatalities for two years straight. Seems that the government's priorities are highly illogical; the transportation safety money should be spent on safer highways, where people die every day, not wasted on the already safe airports. The only terrorist I'm terrified of is the blond in the SUV texting on the cell phone while eating a hamburger.
Free Martian Whores!
The problem is that there is a scale where the perception of the value of a single life is zero in Islamabad, 5 in London and 1000 in New York City.
Until that changes you have a health care system focused on putting off dying for two weeks at a cost of $500,000 and airport security focused on preventing any incident from happening at any cost.
If someone were to come out and openly say it isn't worth the trouble and cost to the American people to have the TSA and if a terrorist succeeds in crashing a plane ... well, that's too bad the result would be a riot. Certainly they would be thrown out of whatever office they held.
No, this is not a point of rationality in the US. And it goes way, way deeper than simply the TSA.