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Time To Close the Security Theater
An anonymous reader writes "An editorial at Forbes calls for the dismantling of the TSA, pointing to recent headlines as the latest examples of 'security theater' at its worst. From the article:
'The problem isn't that the TSA is harassing the wrong people. The problem is that the TSA is harassing anyone. The TSA is encroaching on fundamental liberties and providing no discernable benefit. ... Naturally, the TSA responds to incidents like these by saying that the agents are highly trained and that they have followed proper procedure. This indicates a signal failing for the agency: if "doing it by the book" involves touching people in ways that would be considered sexual assault in virtually any other context or telling a 90-year old breast cancer survivor to remove her bra lest it contain explosives (as happened to a friend's grandmother), then the book needs to be shredded and rewritten. Better yet, it needs to be replaced with a competitive market for air travel in which the airports, the airways, and the airliners are in private hands. Some might object that private firms will have incentives to cut corners on safety. It is a legitimate concern, but competitive mechanisms tend to weed this out.'"
Security theater. Education theater. Infrastructure theater.
And near impossible to get rid of once established.
I would bet you will see TSA checkpoints on street corners before we get rid of this cancer at airports and train stations.
Couldn't you just replace TSA with Federal Government in that story?
Couldn't you all vote to replace the Federal Government if you all really disliked it so much?
The fact is you either get security at the cost of freedom, or freedom at the cost of security. No amount of precautions and countermeasures will prevent the worst from happening; just like with computers and viruses. Doing damage is the easiest thing to accomplish, but prevention is a very inefficient, resource burning measure. Not saying any amount of prevention is necessarily wrong in itself, but it goes to prove my point.
is that they aim to fly as close to the line as possible.
In a system where safety rating is part of the commercial offering, you'll end up with cheap, dangerous, low margin airlines because (and it's a shame it has to be said so often) enlightened self interest is a myth.
of course the rest of this stuff is spot on. The TSA should be disbanded.
All animals are created equal, yet some animals are more equal than others.
The problem is that those people that created the TSA should have to go through this type of security screening. Make these invasive procedures personal to those in power. They'll have a change of mind when Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama and Nancy Pelosi are getting groped instead of hearing stories about some random grandmother. Too bad those three women always fly privately. I guess we're all equal under the law unless you get elected to office.
This isn't an either-or situation. The TSA's perpetrated a number of civil liberties violations, yes. On the other hand, some kind of free market libertarian fantasy should not come at the expense of public safety either.
The TSA needs to be re-imagined, but we shouldn't revert to the system we had before. But c'mon. A free market system has no incentive to improve in this kind of situation (oh, you died in a terrorist attack? Fine, go to some other airport next time!)
Take off every sig. For great justice.
They're a one-tune-band.
Private enterprise. Rah Rah Rah. Solution to everything .... blah blah blah... Capitalism, the savior of us all... blah blah blah. privatise airports, roads, the police, fire brigade, army, air, water, everything.... right to property, profit, business efficiency.... Private enterprise. Rah Rah Rah.
"but competitive mechanisms tend to weed this out."
This is just a free market troll. Competitive mechanisms favor the group that cuts costs, reduces quality and undercuts the higher quality competitors. The end result is the dodgy group raising prices sky high once a monopoly has been achieved.
This article one of the better I've read, and the author is right: the TSA is flawed to the core. The TSA also makes the case that law enforcement should never be above the law... sexually assaulting people, stealing people's stuff (taking away contraband) and creating a system of checkpoints with a do not pass list all are contrary to existing law and at least as bad as anything Eastern Europe had to offer in the 1960s and 1970s. If we are exempting law enforcement from sexual assault and theft laws, then we need to change that as there is not one good example where law enforcement should be able to rape, molest or steal from a citizen, EVER. The TSA also has little regard for citizen health as seen in it's apparent lack of safety testing for backscatter detectors and their treatment of people in wheelchairs.
TSA isn't impossible to get rid of. All it takes is one Senator or member of the House to stand up and hold public hearings where citizen after citizen get to tell stories of their wives, children, and grandparents being sexually assaulted, relieved of property or denied access to travel without any kind of right of redress, and the people will be more than happy to get rid of the beast the TSA has become. Personally, I have avoided commercial flights since the TSA became more Stalinist in its tactics because I fear that I would lose my temper and be arrested for questioning the TSA's right to sexually assault, irradiate people, steal stuff and impede other citizens right to freely move. I'll continue to fly privately or not at all (if the boarding+flight+bag claim time is under 5 hours, you usually can drive there in the same time) until this changes. In 2001, I flew over 340,000 miles. Last year, I flew 0 on a commercial airliner.
-- $G
No kidding.
"Some might object that private firms will have incentives to cut corners on safety. It is a legitimate concern, but competitive mechanisms tend to weed this out."
Competitive mechanisms promote corner cutting. See: Continental 3407, pilot pay and rest requirements, FAA's policy of promoting airline business over safety, and outsourcing of heavy maintenance. ST Aerospace, a maintenance provider, has committed some especially egregious offenses (see "Flying Cheaper" by Frontline).
is just crazy. Competitive markets have been shown, time and time again, that they will not implement safety measures unless they can profit from it (car companies through the 70s, power companies, coal mining companies, etc.). I, personally, do not want to live in a country that has planes falling out of the skys because all that happens when something like this happens is the company goes bankrupt and the government is left to pay for the disaster, I strongly suspect that I am in the majority on this. Having a set of base regulations which prohibit known unsafe behavior on the part of any industry should be considered the responsibility of any government. Living in a completely unregulated world is another phrase for anarchy.
if "doing it by the book" involves [...] telling a 90-year old breast cancer survivor to remove her bra lest it contain explosives [...], then the book needs to be shredded and rewritten.
That the person is 90, a woman, or a breast cancer survivor shouldn't matter. Perhaps the "book" should be rewritten so that a 20-year-old bra-wearing drag queen otherwise in the same situation shouldn't have to remove his bra, just like the old woman shouldn't have to. Randomly deciding some people aren't dangerous is dangerous.
replaced with what?
democracy has turned into picking the less of two evils
I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
The First Amendment guarantees freedom of association -- that means the freedom to travel and meet whoever you like. We used to laugh at the Soviet Union for requiring "internal passports" to travel. America, we proudly said, was a free country and we do not have "identity papers," much less need to carry them. Now you cannot board an airplane or train without Identity Papers in what we used to call America. The terrorists have won, we have become Nazi Germany, and nobody seems to care.
If the American people want airport security, the only way to do it right is through a government agency that takes a little bit from everybody to provide some expensive security to a small subgroup of people.
Except that it obviously is not working. There have been several breaches of security. The shoe bomber and the Christmas day bomb plots were NOT defeated by security. They failed because the explosives did not work. Proving if anything the higher hurdle crafting an effective portable explosive device; not defeating airport security.
I am not suggesting we should have no airport security but going back to someone asking if you have your bags in sight the whole time, checking ID, and going through a metal detector would be reasonable. We are not getting much in terms of safety for the steps we take beyond that; and that little if any added safety comes with a very high price tag socially and economically.
The only way everyone is going to truly safe from terrorists on planes/trains/buses is if all passengers spend the entire ride naked and handcuffed to their seats.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Interviews conducted by experts, not groping and searching by minimum wage automatons, provide effective security. Bags do need to be searched, and passengers screened, but this searching does not need to be intrusive. Anything else is just theatre.
Whether the airport, the government, or the airline directly foots the bill, you still pay for it. You pay for directly in your airline ticket or via taxes which spreads out the cost more.
Some things are not done better by the private sector. Government is not universally incompetent, they actually do many things well. Changing to private security from government security will not magically improve security. If the airlines provide security it will just be done as cheap as possible without breaking any laws. Government regulations ARE required when it comes to health and safety issues. The free market simply does not give the average consumer the required information in a timely manner to prevent health and safety abuses.
Anarchists never rule
Safety that requires groping grandmas is not worth having, even if it really is safety.
Thing is: NOBODY voted for the TSA.
No sig today...
That's because there is a serious dumbing-down of the entire US population. Many of them can't even find or identify the capitol of their own state now, and at least half are religiously-brainwashed morons who will believe any anti-gay, anti-women, and anti-minority hate speech that is thrown their way by the 'Good Ol' Boys' (who strangely enough are usually the ones arrested for doing a transsexual black hooker at the rest stop).
Republicans, Democrats, and all of their kind are DESTROYING this country, and they have their fingers, propaganda, and moral bullshit embedded so deeply it will require a full-blown guns-blazing revolution to oust it.
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
If the American people want airport security
Who says we do? We did pretty well for a few decades without the TSA or a private firm equivalent. Why the hell do we need them now? Because some loonies pulled one over on us 10 yeas ago? Whoopty-doo. Even the toughest kids on the playground get a black eye from time to time.
I say bring in some bomb sniffing dogs at every airport. Dismantle the scanners and sell the materials on e-bay to pay off some of the debt. Lay-off every single TSA employee. Get on with our lives. I'm tired of living in a country where wanting to travel long distances quickly and conveniently is a reason to suspect someone is a terrorist.
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
Terrorists don't have to get past airport security. They can wheel in a huge bomb on an airport-provided trolley and blow up the queue for the scanner.
If there's no terrorist attacks in the USA it's not because of the TSA, it's because there aren't any terrorists who can be bothered to do it.
If you don't believe me I've got a magic tiger-repelling stone I'd like to sell you.
No sig today...
Bags do need to be searched, and passengers screened
Says who? Did you read TFA, in particular the part about the number of deaths due to terrorist+airplanes vs. accidental deer strikes?
There is no statistical justification for searching any bags or for any kind of passenger screening.
Imagine this: suppose after the first WTC bombing (truck in the parking lot), some authority decided the only way to make cities safe is to stop every car, bus, and truck on the way into the city, search all occupants and their luggage, and do to the vehicle. Absolutely ridiculous? Now tell me how the airport+TSA crap is any different.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
You forgot one thing: If you cut too many corners then you might find your passengers vote for your competitor (with their wallets).
The real problem with the TSA is that even a child can see they're not actually increasing security. Mostly they're just making scanner manufacturers/shareholders rich and keeping unemployment figures down. All at taxpayer expense and passenger inconvenience.
No sig today...
Don't be an idiot. If the TSA were having measurable successes like those, the leaders would be on TV regularly extolling their successes.
With political incentives like they are, absence of evidence is evidence of absence.
Someone mixing up some TATP in the lavatory is about as likely as the TSA stopping twenty terror attacks just this year but has been keeping quiet about it.
We've only got two choices and they're both completely crap.
You're doing it wrong.
Candidates in the 2010 Ohio Senate election:
Rob Portman (R)
Lee Fisher (D)
Dan La Botz (Socialist Party)
Eric Deaton (Constitution Party)
Michael Pryce (Independent)
2008 Presidential Candidates On Enough State Ballots to Reach 270 Points:
Barrack Obama (D)
John McCain (R)
Ralph Nader (Independent)
Bob Barr (Libertarian)
Chuck Baldwin (Constitution)
Cynthia McKinney (Green)
Incidentally, in the 2008 presidential election 1,623,078 people voted for a 3rd party out of 131,014,789 votes (not counting "others"). 1,623,078 people voted for what they believe. Do you think that many people will revolt when they have food in their bellies and a roof over their heads? Two party system? That's the defeatist attitude that ensures a two party system. If it doesn't matter who wins, democrat or republican, focus on raising that number. 1,623,078 people voted 3rd party in 2008, in 2012 don't focus on which R or D wins (in presidential elections or congressional elections), focus on raising the number of 3rd party votes. That's the real victory. Every election with less votes for R and D is a triumph for freedom. Democracy sometimes takes a long time to change direction, don't give up now on the idea that men can govern men with ideas instead of violence.
If I can just reach out with my words and touch a butthole, just one, it will all be worth it.