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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.
Incorrect. True security *has* stopped another 9/11.
That 'security' includes exactly 2 things:
Reinforced and 'locked' cockpit doors.
Flight #93 passenger response.
Those 2 things will prevent another 9/11 from happening. The TSA is preventing bombs 'on' planes which is *not* what 9/11 was. It was using planes as flying missles. Very. Different. Threats.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
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.
Most of the TSA officers I've seen look like they just stepped out of the ghetto with their shiny new high school diplomas. I don't even think they're salaried employees. It looks like a barely-above-minimum-wage job. You can't expect to get professionals on $10 an hour.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
"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.
Incorrect. True security *has* stopped another 9/11.
That 'security' includes exactly 2 things:
Reinforced and 'locked' cockpit doors.
Flight #93 passenger response.
Those 2 things will prevent another 9/11 from happening. The TSA is preventing bombs 'on' planes which is *not* what 9/11 was. It was using planes as flying missles. Very. Different. Threats.
Reinforced and 'locked' cockpit doors are things that should have naturally been implemented into design by common sense. That would be passive security that works on its own without further human intervention after fabrication and production.
Who cares. Around 3000 people died on 9/11. That's over a decade ago and since then, not much else has happened.
We put up with orders of magnitude more deaths on the highways over the same time period because the states' DMVs are too protective of an individuals "right" to drive a car to keep incompetent morons off the roads. Want to save lives? Have the TSA fondle everyone who is trying to juggle a Big Mac, fries and a milkshake behind the steering wheel.
>Personally, I'm willing to put up with ~300 fatalities a year to not get groped while boarding an airplane. I'd also be willing to fly on an airplane if anyone with a concealed weapons permit was permitted to carry onboard. Go ahead. Try to storm the cockpit with box cutters.
Have gnu, will travel.
The Israel's airport security model is very effective. But it is very difficult to follow in the US. You can google for a number of sources such as this. Excerpt:
While American and European security procedures rely mainly on technological solutions for screening luggage and passengers, Israel’s security philosophy is based on a mix of advanced detection devices and personal interaction with the passengers.The multi-layer system begins outside Israel’s biggest port of entry — Ben Gurion airport. Cars approaching the terminal are stopped by guards and asked one or two questions, usually about where they are coming from or what is the purpose of their visit. A nervous response, or one revealing an Arab accent, could trigger further scrutiny even before entering the airport.
When walking into the terminal, visitors pass by another set of security agents searching for passengers behaving suspiciously. The next stop for human evaluation is before the check-in counter, where passengers are required to show their travel documents and answer a series of seemingly standard questions from trained security personnel. (Did you pack your bags by yourself? How long did you spend in Israel? What was the purpose of your visit?) Screeners are interested more in the tone and body language than in the content of passengers’ replies.
This is also the point where profiling takes place: While most Jewish Israeli citizens will be waved through after the brief conversation, others, mainly Israeli Arabs and non-Jewish visitors, will be taken aside for lengthy questioning and a thorough luggage and physical check.
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
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
-- Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759
Tried that, unfortunately it hasn't worked yet.
Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity, though I'm not yet sure about the universe. - A Einstein
I hear the government is looking for places they can cut spending. This would be an excellent place to start. The TSA has done absolutely nothing to make us more secure since 9/11, and it's about time people start realizing this fact.
giggity
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?
Yes, and we have the opportunity to do so with great regularity: 1/3 of the Senate every two years, the entire House of Representatives every two years, the the President every four years. We, as in the US voters, fail to re-elect a new government with equal regularity. Even with in-the-sewer approval ratings, Congressional incumbents tend to enjoy a remarkable re-election rate (I've seen figure in excess of 90%).
I worked with a guy who had the right idea: whomever the incumbent is, vote for the challenger. Don't worry about party affiliation, they're both essentially the same anyway. The effect on the Senate would be less dramatic then the House, since only 1/3 of the Senators are up for re-election at the same time. Can you imagine a House of Representatives where all 435 members were replaced at the same time?
Government's idea of a balanced budget: take money from the right pocket to balance...oh who am I kidding?
A first post AC who has something insightful to say? Color me shocked. The gist of the editorial isn't that the security theater is ineffective, it is that the government shouldn't be groping grandmas when the free market could provide security without having to grope grandmas. This is nothing but the standard trope of "government is evil" mixed with taking advantage of people not understanding security.
But that's a sham.
#1 Physical profiling doesn't work. Terrorists would just do dry-runs until they find a combination of people and materials that is outside the profile.
#2 Behavioral profiling is somewhat better, but requires much more expensive training. It is unlikely to be implemented in all airports.
#3 This leaves random sampling. In order for random sampling to work, grandmas and babies have to be groped. Otherwise, we're right back at #1.
Do people have to be groped? Honestly, I'm not up-to-date enough on the latest explosives to know what kind of damage a fake boob or a full diaper's worth of C4 can do to a plane. I'll leave that decision to the experts.
What I can guarantee you though is that the free market doesn't have a better solution for this? Why? Money.
There are two ways to pay for it: airports and airlines pay for it, or travelers pay for it.
If airlines and airports pay for it, the motivation is to keep bringing as many people in as possible - which, since everybody thinks they're innocent and shouldn't be hassled, means a reduction in safety. If individuals pay for it, they'll want to pay for it only when they travel, which is a huge individual expense. The only people able to afford proper security are the wealthy, and at that point, they might as well rent a private jet.
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.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
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.
And even if they didn't, I do not think that that is a reason to violate peoples' rights. Some people seem to be greatly overestimating the chances of a terrorist attack actually happening (as well as greatly overestimating how useful the TSA actually is).
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Also, 9/11 changed our mindset around hijacking. Previously, everyone on the plane would have thought "They'll get us to the ground safely, they just want us as hostages" so complacency had much lower risk than heroism... but 9/11 showed that some folks want to use the plane as a missile and don't care about the people on board. That means if someone attempts to hijack the plane, even with a bomb, the passengers have plenty of motivation to respond because the risk of complacence is now *higher* than the risk of heroism.
I would add one more thing: The FBI. They've stopped some actual terrorist plots from getting past the planning stages. But if a terrorist manages to elude the FBI, the TSA isn't going to be more than a minor inconvenience.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
"Why should anyone want to be in the USA?"
A: Because I've got a better overall standard of living for the work I do than I would have in many other countries.
B: It's home. My family and friends are here.
C: (Fill in one of a large number of reasons people stay in the country they were born in.)
[blockquote]We still need one additional security measure.
SAMs for defense on all buildings taller than 1000'
If the WTC had that, there would have been no successful tower strikes.
It doubles as defense for a large section of major metropolitan areas.[/blockquote]
So instead of having towers that fell largely within their own footprints we'd have shot down a large airliner flying at low altitude over 2 really populated areas. How is that better?
We'd also have commercial real-estate developers with responsibility or access to SAMs. I'm not sure I'm ready to trust Donald Trump with missiles.
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 cost of always locked cockpit doors is that no longer will children be able to go up and check out an airplane cockpit flown by a real life pilot. That's a pretty sad thing, as someone that did get to check out the cockpit many years ago.
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.
Because, at the time, no-one saw box cutters as a risk. The security then was aimed at non-suicide terrorists - either trying to put a bomb on an airliner, then leave it, or with a gun which provides a credible hostage situation. No-one had foreseen a certain-suicide attack in which the intention was not to hold the plane hostage but to use it as a missile.
This was not a public/private problem, but a foresight problem. And what we have now is a hindsight problem. The TSA, and other security agencies, are trying to prevent repeats of every attack that has happened in the past. Shoe bomber? Check shoes. Underwear bomber? Design machine to check underwear.
The trouble is that we have here a situation resembling that by which the US defeated the USSR Essentially, the US outspent the USSR, which simply could not keep up. But that was a level playing field, which the US won by being richer and able to throw more money at defence. This is an asymmetric situation, in which an attack, even a failed attack, by terrorists which costs a few thousand dollars causes a response by the security forces which cost hundreds of millions or billions. How much did it cost the hidden powers of Al Qaeda to set up the shoe bomb attack? How many extra sniffer machines have been bought and how many millions of hours wasted in queues as a result?
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
"As far as the specific example .. it's unfortunate, but as soon as TSA says they won't examine women who have had mastectomy is the day certain nefarious organizations start recruiting women who have had a mastectomy to take a defacto one way flight somewhere."
Okay...so? So a bomb goes off, so a plane blows up, so people die, so the airline industry suffers as people fear flying for a while and then everything goes back to normal when the fears die down.
The risk of lost life is neither an excuse nor a justification for violations of the inviolable rights upon which the US was founded. Simply put, freedom trumps lifesaving, all the time, every time, without exceptions.
Help protect civil rights from abuse by the TSA - visit TSA News Blog.
http://www.tsanewsblog.com
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
You fail to take into consideration that it could be that no REAL terrorists have tried to hijack a plane and try to use it as a weapon. Could very well be that after the September 11 attacks it was decided that the amount of coordination and effort that went into these attacks might not be possible again. Just because there have been no attempts similar to the ones in 2001 since passengers tried to attack hijackers and reinforced doors have been installed you can't really claim that THAT is what's responsible, that's called 'jumping to conclusions' and is the reason why a great many people actually believe that the TSA is doing a good job.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law - Aleister Crowley
That's because it's not democracy. It's theoretically-representative democracy. They do represent their base, of course, for large-corporate-donors values of "base".
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...
It isn't the TSA that makes the conditions different, it is the passengers reaction to the hijacking. The TSA does in fact allow all manner of items aboard planes, and planes have numerous items already on board that can be used as improvised weapons. The current security theatre will not stop a determined group from hijacking a plane. What is going to stop them is hundreds of angry passengers fearing for their lives rising up and stopping them, as has been demonstrated .
Anarchists never rule
I agree - it is a jobs program, and therefore difficult to cut. But it's not impossible. TSA should be ordered to slowly scale back what they check for: no more shoe removal, then no more liquid limit. Gradually, perhaps we can get to a point where screenings are more like pre-9/11. With a simplified screening system, fewer agents should be needed.
That's what all the protests in Spain (and Greece) are about: We've only got two choices and they're both completely crap. All they seem interested in is diverting taxpayer money into their own personal retirement funds.
No sig today...
So when a colleague of mine went to catch his plane home, and they asked him where was the latest place he visited, he said "I was in a meeting with the Defence Minister".
So they locked him in a cell with an armed guard outside. After several hours they were persuaded to, you know, actually try the Ministry. Most of whom had gone home. They eventually reached the Defence Minister, who confirmed that indeed Dr X. Y. had been in a meeting with him that morning and had left to catch a plane to the airport.
Now, you would think that in any civilised country an apology would be in order. Not in Israel. Instead, they refused to speak to him or make eye contact, and eventually almost pushed him onto the plane home without a word of apology.
This apologia is unwarranted. Israeli security goons are surely no better, no worse than security goons anywhere. There are just far more of them and they search far more people more thoroughly.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
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!
You forgot #4:
#4 There is no real threat to our safety on a regular basis, and we should go back to 1995-level airport security - you know, when it worked the best?
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
I'm not sure I'm ready to trust Donald Trump with missiles.
I dunno..."You're fired" could take on a whole new meaning. That might actually make his tv show interesting.
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...
You're really using the Flight 93 situation as a citation of functional security? It fucking crashed. Everyone died. Way to go, security.
Also, the locked/strong doors should have been there from the start. I always assumed they were locked, and not a flimsy piece of particleboard before that happened, but I must have been incorrect.
Furthermore, there's no evidence that Flight 93 stopped anything from happening. For all we know, they could have flown into the ocean with the exact same results, even without passenger intervention.
The TSA doesn't prevent anything. They have repeatedly failed to prevent the bombs from getting on the plane, and it is only the 'terrorists' complete ignorance and lack of skill at blowing things up that saved those people. The underwear bomber? He didn't do it right, and it had nothing to do with the TSA. Shoe bomber? He made it on the plane. Razor-wielding crazy man? He made it on the plane. Psycho flight attendant opening doors on the runway? On the plane.
The TSA does NOTHING but waste our money, and it needs to go away - NOW.
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
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.
Nope. One (easy) way to get explosives past the TSA is inside a body cavity.
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
"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." - Ben Franklin Bin laden could have never of dreamed of how successful he would have become and must be laughing in his grave that Americans are allowing organizations like the TSA to do this.
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...
The vote doesn't matter!
Once again, for emphasis..
The vote doesn't matter!
Bush did not get elected nor did he get re-elected, do you really think that the government is really those mindless clownish petty crooks in Washington? The Government is and has been made up by the largest corporations in the world, both in and outside of America! The little crooked scumbags in Washington collect money and read from the scripts provided to them by their corporate masters!
Obama is Bush in dark pajamas.
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
Lets look at safety history.
... after many years, we did start to see cars advertized based on their safety features. When the public values safety and can look at independent data (government crash tests, insurance claim rates) they can and do make decisions where safety is a factor and sometimes safety is the deciding factor. So a free market of security features can occur where there is competition and independent data. (The government still sets a minimum security level, but car makers routinely exceed it because it helps them make money.)
In the auto industry, the government moved first to require seat belts and passive restraints. After all the public would never buy a car with safety features. But
In the air line industry, El Al still runs their own security independent of the TSA. Their customers have a choice and deliberately choose to use an air line with higher security.
So tell me again, why is it that free market economics cannot drive effective and increasing security?
engineers are all basically high-functioning autistics who have no idea how normal people do stuff
How about the FBI and CIA keeping doing their jobs, and catching the terrorists when they're planning and building up? I mean, we pay them for something, right? The TSA is a boondoggle, a handout to the various companies that supply the machinery to the TSA. There's no increase in security, as evidenced by the number of times that the TSA has let terrorists and weapons through their "checkpoints" while simultaneously harassing little old ladies and sexually assaulting children.
This shit does not make us safer. It makes us more complacent, more willing to give up our freedoms just to hear the government say "there are no monsters in your closet".
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
To play devil's advocate here... Aren't these same "competitive mechanisms" the same arguments that are regularly cited as the reason open source software is better than closed source? Whoever makes the best product or implementation wins? The only difference being that it is somehow assumed that profit is never a motive for any open source project. (Easily proven false, but that is always the assumption...)
I agree that the article is in fact standard issue Forbes free market trolling.. but you should really come up with a better argument for it. OSS proves that competitive mechanisms don't always favor groups that cut costs, reduce quality or undercut "higher quality" competitors. Or at least that they don't HAVE to favor those things.
Should have. But common sense and hindsight are 20/20. Most terrorists just wanted a ride to Cuba before 9/11, so there was no need to escalate the situation. When 9/11 turned the planes themselves into weapons, the attitudes of the passengers and the pilots changed. That is all that it took. We don't need anything else.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
There is no information about how good a job the TSA is doing.
They could be collecting thousands of pounds of explosives every day and we would never know about it. There could have been 20 major airline bomb incidents this year that were stopped and we would never know.
Or there could be nothing. With no information most people are assuming that there has been nothing. I have heard from "reliable sources" that the TSA has actually prevented some significant incidents but no information beyond that. If they think they can continue to spend billions of dollars and provide the current hassle to people they are with no justification whatsoever, I think they are wrong. Eventually the PR nightmare will catch up to them at a Congressional level. Either their funding will be cut or they will be forced to go public. If there is in truth nothing being being found by the TSA searches, it is likely the agency will cease to exist.
How damaging would it be to reveal what they have actually done last year or this year? Like an annual report? Nowhere near as damaging as not reporting anything to the public. I suppose there is some top-secret report that a few in Congress get to see, but that does nothing for the public distrust.
"You're really using the Flight 93 situation as a citation of functional security? It fucking crashed. Everyone died. Way to go, security."
The point is that it reduces the expected value for hijackers to something much less than their objective, i.e., no longer a good investment.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
The Israel's airport security model is very effective. But it is very difficult to follow in the US..
Yes. Because 1) Israel has only one major airport (Ben Gurion) and perhaps 50 smaller ones 2) It's the physical size of New Jersey and 3) They do obvious racial profiling.
The latter point alone is responsible for most of the TSA excesses. Undressing children and grandmas in wheelchairs (anybody could be a terrorist) is the price we pay for political correctness.
Like a lot of nice solutions, it just doesn't scale well.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
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.
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
Irony or intent?
Honestly though, you have to wonder what would happen if kids were actually taught about our history, the reasons, and the people that got us here today in a school building that they don't feel ashamed to go to for fear of a brick falling on their head.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
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.
They could be collecting thousands of pounds of explosives every day and we would never know about it. There could have been 20 major airline bomb incidents this year that were stopped and we would never know.
and using that argument there could have been 20 bombings that happened and they gagged the media and everyone involved..
think about it - in your normal day there are only 1-200 people you see - normally less than 20 you converse with - the rest is media/net.. prove the statement wrong?
after reading that - take your frame of mind and read your statement..
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
but you do prove my point THE PLANE OR THE TERRORISTS WILL NOT SURVIVE THE ATTEMPT.
You're assuming the terrorists make it to the controls in the first place.
The people who voted for Bush in 2004 sure did.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
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.
May your wife have breast cancer and she be groped every time she goes through the airport and force you to listen to her bitching about it for the next few days after. That is the real boat that people are in right now, but because it is happening to other people and not yourself you can shrug it off. You would be amazed how much your wife will effect your opinion over time.
Passengers at airports get the shit end of the stick right now. You don't deal with this kind of crap on any other form of mass transportation. This disparity is a magnitudes larger issue than the "randomly deciding that certain people aren't dangerous" problem and serves to further highlight that something is very very wrong.
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
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.
Don't single out a guy who's just following orders
Subtle Godwin.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
That reminds me of an old bumper sticker.
"Vote Cthulhu! Why settle for the lesser of two evils?"
Bullcrap.
If you want reasonable security, it can be provided very, very cheaply. Walk through Central Park at noon with enough bling to attract any thief worthy of the title. Walk through Central Park again at midnight when nobody else is around. Will you most likely be mugged at noon or at midnight? Noon, of course, right? Certainly not, because a thief is very unlikely to mug someone in a crowded area when there are lots of people around to intervene -- or at the very least, to provide a description to the cops.
Applying this principle to airline security, consider Flight 93, the shoe bomber and the underwear bomber. The would-be terrorists in these incidents were all stopped by other passengers on the airplanes because they had a vested interest in the safety of the flight. No one on board an airliner today is going to sit there and behave like a good little sheeple while a terrorist does whatever it is he intends to do because the paradigm changed on 9/11. TSA doesn't provide any meaningful security; you and I do.
If you want to be safe on an airliner, stop expecting the government to take care of you, and learn to take care of yourself. The government sucks at that job. You, on the other hand, can be as good at it as you want to be. But you are seriously fooling yourself if you think TSA will -- or even CAN -- keep you safe.
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
Pressure sensor. Cabin pressure in flight is something like 7000 feet (I used to have a watch with an altimeter in it), so even a Faraday cage wouldn't guarantee detonation. If some organization wants to blow up an airliner bad enough, they WILL blow it up, because they only have to find a crack to slip through once. Airport security has to get it right EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. How likely is that?
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
...I'd be surprised if they don't want to expand their coverage to trans and buses as soon as it's feasible.
Have you been living under a rock the last six months? They are already moving that direction. Here's a short list of links, for your reading/viewing pleasure:
...and again.
In train stations.
In a bus station.
Video of the Savannah, GA train station search.
TSA's spin^Wresponse to the Savannah, GA search.
What a VIPR operation is.
Napolitano musing about expanding the scope of TSA's operations before the above searches happened.
HTH!
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
Yeah, the point of Flight 93 is that terrorists are never going to gain control of the plane again. I was on some of the first post 9/11 flights and at that time the social contract among the guys on the plane was rather explicit. Those first few months everyone made eye contact and there was lots of implied "we've got each other's back" subtext to all of the conversations with strangers on the plane. Anyone trying to hijack a plane with boxcutters post 9/11 would have been torn to pieces before they got the first demand out of their mouth. Heck, even a bunch of AK-47s would have failed, unless they managed to kill every person on the plane.
If there's some doubt as to the intent of an assailant, it is in your interest to mitigate the conflict and get out alive. If you know for sure they intend to kill you and everyone else, your incentive to cooperate drops to zero.
Come on, any major bomb or hint of a bomb, and everything gets shut down for several hours... I really doubt the TSA would discover a bomb and just say "oh good job we caught that one. Next!"... If there had been 20 bombs this year, there would have been 20 airport shutdowns, 20 airspace shut downs, and 20 instances of week-long yapping of every moron who can get on TV...
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
No-one had foreseen a certain-suicide attack in which the intention was not to hold the plane hostage but to use it as a missile.
Really?
You mean the times the FBI committed the crime of incitement, to locate punks with neither the brains nor motivation for any type of action let alone terrorism, then filled said delinquent's heads with violent thoughts and grandiose plans of mayhem, and then provide them with fake bombs or weapons right before they arrest the lot? After which, said FBI agents strut on the mass media proclaiming themselves heroes to justify their existence and raise their self esteem?