Slashdot Mirror
TSA Makes $400K Annually In Loose Change
Hugh Pickens writes "NBC reports that airport travelers left behind $409,085.56 in loose change at security checkpoints in 2010, providing an additional source of funding for the Transportation Security Administration. 'TSA puts (the leftover money) in a jar at the security checkpoint, at the end of each shift they take it, count it, put it in an envelope and send it to the finance office,' says TSA spokesperson Nico Melendez. 'It is amazing. All that change, it all adds up.' Melendez adds that the money goes into the general operating budget for TSA that is typically used for technology, light bulbs or just overall general expenses. Rep. Jeff Miller (R-Fla.) has introduced legislation that would direct the TSA to transfer unclaimed money recovered at airport security checkpoints to the United Service Organizations (USO), a private nonprofit that operates centers for the military at 41 U.S. airports. The recovered change is not to be confused with the theft that occurs when TSA agents augment their salary by helping themselves to the contents of passengers' luggage as it passes through security checkpoints. For example in 2009, a half dozen TSA agents at Miami International Airport were charged with grand theft after boosting an iPod, bottles of perfume, cameras, a GPS system, a Coach purse, and a Hewlett Packard Mini Notebook from passengers' luggage as travelers at just this one airport reported as many as 1,500 items stolen, the majority of which were never recovered."
at the end of each shift they take it, count it, divide most of it up amongst themselves, and put it in their pockets
FTFY.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Great. The we should decrease their budget by at lease this much for the next fiscal year.
I pick up every coin I find and put it in a large jar. Once it's full I take it to the bank and, though it really upsets the teller to have to deal with it, I end up netting around $300. Granted it takes a few years, but every little bit helps. :\
I, for one, am happy that the TSA is staffed by people who seem to hate their job as much as we do. The alternative, that an arm of totalitarianism is entirely staffed by people who are ideologically committed, would be far worse.
That loose change was mine. I'd like to reclaim it.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
All the stuff they take from you is auctioned off, as well.
The TSA is just taking the DEA's lead. They've been funding themselves by taking property from "drug dealers" for decades. For instance, in many states, if you get busted in your car with drugs, the state can take your car, even if it's personal use amounts. Unless, of course, you still owe money on it, than they'll let you keep it so that you are obligated to make those payments, of course.
This is nothing more than thievery masquerading as a public service, but then again, one could say the same about a lot of facets of our government as of late...
Why doesn't he just create a bill to give $400,000 of taxpayer money to the USO? It's the same thing financially as redirecting this money that currently goes into the general budget to a private organization, but I guess it sounds better the way he puts it?
Then again, $400,000 is not that much money in the first place. He and a couple wealthy friends could almost certainly cover it.
At the international arrivals area in Hartsfield-Jackson in Atlanta, you go through security after you pick up your bags, go through customs, and recheck your bags. Many passengers forget to put their duty free alcohol in their bags before they recheck them, and try to carry them through security, where they are told to either check the alcohol or have it confiscated. I worked for an airline back there for several summers and would often have to check the alcohol, but sometimes they would just leave it with us(got a bottle of Absinthe this way). Once I asked a TSA guy what they did with all the alcohol they confiscated. He said that at the end of the day they were packaged up and sent off site for destruction and disposal. But we always figured that the TSA screeners would help themselves to any good stuff before they sent it off.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
http://boardingarea.com/blogs/flyingwithfish/2010/11/20/how-the-tsa-legally-circumvents-the-fourth-amendment/
Yet, Americans are sheep and will do nothing. According to CNN, 80% of Americans are in favor of the mm wave scanners in spite of the fact that they haven't caught a single terrorist. Ever, and they appear to be no more than 20% effective in catching weapons. And in spite of the fact that the USA is going to die under the burden of excessive debt, yet we spend tens of billions on useless agencies like the TSA. In spite of the fact that the TSA is now trying to move into other areas like buses, trains, and even roadside stops.
"Papers please"... didn't we used to ridicule the former Soviet Union for that very same thing?
But as long as people don't care about their civil rights, they will continue to lose them. As long as people continue to be driven by irrational fear, they won't care about their civil rights.
Those elements in the TSA are a fucking embarassement to both their agency and their country; that behavior should not be tolerated, and this situation can be easily remedied with heavy penalties that will act as a warning to the rest of the TSA lot that is there to loot while in uniform.
The three laws of thermodynamics:(1) You can't win. (2) You can't break even. (3) You can't even quit.
Exactly. The TSA reported that they collected $409,085.56 in loose change. But how much else went unreported that was left behind? The TSA guy making a low annual salary doesn't pocket half of the money that he finds, or splits it up with the rest of the low level employees? Or how many guys don't even bother to report any left behind change at all?
The manager doesn't skim a little off of the top before sending in the money to the TSA headquarters? If someone gives him $50 in change he might not pocket a few dollars here and there? The TSA headquarters president doesn't skim a little off of the top before reporting the money? You get $750K in coins and you might skim a thousand dollars worth, right? It's all part of the game.
This is like when a drug dealer gets pulled over with $15,000. By the time the money makes it to the station it magically becomes $10,000. Then somewhere in between the time the money enters the station and is processed it becomes $5,000. It's just part of the game.
When I was in the Government, keeping any money you made "on the side" was a big no-no. You could (in some cases) charge for expenses, but otherwise, if you made any money, it had to go to the Treasury.
Under our system of government, the Congress sets the budget for government activities. Setting up some branch of government as a money making entity, and thereby evading the oversight and control of Congress, is flat out unconstitutional. Now, I know that this is literally small change, but still...
They rape and pillage.
Table-ized A.I.
Their entire agency is already a fucking embarrassment to their country, a few agents "stealing" abandoned pocket change pales in comparison.
Porquoi?
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for bashing the TSA and their dubious practices in the name of 'security' when it's warranted, but whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty? I'm referring to the extremely obvious bias (bordering on the Faux News drooling fanatic level) in the article summary:
"The recovered change is not to be confused with the theft that occurs when TSA agents augment their salary by helping themselves to the contents of passengers' luggage as it passes through security checkpoints."
This isn't particularly relevant to the news post, other than to immediately bias readers into thinking that the TSA steals all that change and lines its coffers with it, when in fact it might just be left behind by passengers as the news article implies. What are they supposed to do? Sprint after a group of passengers and ask them if this is their quarter? Hate to say it, but ever since CmdrTaco left, the quality of Slashdot news posts has fallen noticeably.
If you have to keep your employees in line with threats and monitoring, then your primary problem is with the people who gave them the job in the first place.
Perhaps the TSA shouldn't have just settled for the least-bad applicants who bothered to show up.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
No, Florida Republican, do not give the loose change to the military service corporation. I know you want to ensure that all money goes to one kind of military subsidy or another. But you created the TSA, with its vast budgets largely wasted on abusing Americans and subsidizing contractors. Its security theater subsidizes the military by pretending to protect us, while militarizing routine travel which of course paves the way for more military and more military subsidies. Making the military further dependent on the TSA's unnecessary operations that generate that loose change further ensures we'll be doing TSA dances forever.
Keeping the loose change reducing the debt spending you created its budget out of is an efficiency. Leave well enough alone, despite your grabby Florida Republican instinct to make a bad thing even worse, and forever.
--
make install -not war
As much as one bashes the inefficiency of government, I've contracted with large companies and have seen a lot of bloat and BS there also. While not quite as bad as typical gov't, it's pretty close. Big organizations are just that way.
Table-ized A.I.
Step 1 - Force people into situations where they're likely to have things fall out of their pockets
Step 2 - Collect all found things and put them in your own pockets
Step 3 - Profit!
Sounds like theft to me. You make it a profit center and the bosses start including incentives to maintain that budget line item. "Hey, you guys didn't shake down enough...'customers'...this week! We're not going to be able to give you a bonus this quarter."
If they really want me to believe that this isn't theft, they should be donating all proceeds from lost and confiscated items to charity. An ACTUAL charity, I mean, not the TSA Agent's Retirement Collective 501c.
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
Low paying crummy jobs tend not to attract the best candidates.
You solve that by getting as little as the receiver to a firearm. Put it in your bags. Declare a firearm when you arrive at the airport ticket counter. Your bag is searched in front of you. Then a lock only you have a key to is put on your bags. Rest assured you will receive the bag as is when you reach your destination. Also a great way to assure your bags actually get to your destination. As bags with declared firearms get special treatment.
It would be interesting to see how much change is really taken. Perhaps one could determine, on average, the ratio of large denomination coins to small denomination coins carried in travelers' pockets. We could call this ratio A. We could then compare this ratio to that of the money collected and turned in by TSA agents - Ratio B. I think it's safe to assume that TSA agents are more likely to be selective of the coins they keep if, indeed, they keep some. I would suspect that ratio B would differ substantially from ratio A if TSA agents were keeping money for themselves.
The one other thing to consider - travelers are probably less likely to leave behind large denomination coins. As such, ratio B might differ from ratio A for reasons other than theft. One would probably have to create a representative sample when finding ratio A so as not to taint the results.
I grew up with a guy that didn't have a lot going for him, not a lot of ambition, who finally decided it was time for work, and became a State Trooper. He told me that once when he was searching a crime scene he found a box with almost $300 thousand in it, and none of his fellow officers saw him find it. I asked him if he kept it, because it's the kind of thing I would do: There was plenty of other evidence, the money was not stolen and had no rightful owner to which it could be returned.
No, he turned it in.
I hate how companies tell us where some specific source of income goes. Even if it doesn't just go into a big pool of budget money, then some part of a budget somewhere is changed so that other money is available for other purposes.
The bottom line... if $300k can be added to the overall budget, then that's $300k more that can go to paying a CEO's bonus.
It's not like they weren't going to replace light bulbs without this money.
As a teenager I worked at Six Flags Great Adventure on the Great American Scream Machine. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_American_Scream_Machine_(Six_Flags_Great_Adventure)
The way the seats were deep bucket seats and at the end of the night we would look under all of the seat pads and would find about $40 daily in change in the three trains. We would divide it up among the 8 people working the ride and it was enough to buy some drinks and snacks.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
I doubt anyone would care if no loose change was accounted for. The frickin' budget of the TSA is over $8 billion. Who cares about $400,000? That amount (.005%) could be added or dropped from their budget by an intern in Congress.
I've learned that they're worthless, so I don't read AC comments anymore.
Never leave anything valuable in your checked bags. Take it as carryon, leave it at home, mail it, or check it with a gun since those bags are inspected in front of you then kept locked and tracked for the whole trip.
Or you can do as Bruce Schneier does, and many others have reported: Include a starter pistol in your luggage, and declare it. It seems the TSA's rules include starter pistols as "weapons", and if you have one, they'll inspect your luggage before your eyes, lock it, and store it in a separate part of the airplane. Bruce and others have reported that this not only works; it also reduces the "loss" of luggage (or valuable contents like cameras and computers) to around zero. In effect, for the cost of a starter pistol, you are using the security folks to lock and guard your luggage and guarantee delivery.
I see that another reply deals with New York's stringent gun laws. Does anyone know whether a starter pistol (or stage pistols that just fire smoke) are considered "weapons" in New York or other states? If so, it might be interesting to push for Federal registration of such pseudo-guns, to avoid the hassle of trying to register them with the bureaucracies of N different states.
Anyway, if you try this gimmick, you might want to write up your experiences. And you might want to thank the TSA "agents" for their assistance in making the flight safe for you and your belongings. ;-)
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
There is no honor among thieves.
They care not a whit about you or your possessions.
Whether they Love, like, dislike, revile, or hate your, what you represent, or their own life will not change the fact that they robbed you, and got paid for it, and will still probably get a raise and eventually a retirement.
The raise and retirement are also probably on your dime.
No brain, no pain.
You DO know how the TSA recruits people, right...? They put adverts on pizza delivery boxes
You couldn't make this shit up it you if you hired a whole team of comedy writers...
No sig today...
I might add that a number of people have written about another strategy for preventing "loss" of luggage or contents: Sending important/valuable luggage to your destination (typically a hotel) via any of the package delivery services (postal, FedEx, etc). This has become especially common since airlines started charging extra for more than one small piece of luggage. All the package delivery services have faster and more reliable service than the airlines, and it often costs less. They'll deliver it to any address, and it's likely to arrive before you do (so you may want to tell the hotel to be on the lookout for it ;-).
I know a number of musicians who have sent their instruments this way, after reading all the horror stories of what airlines do to fragile instruments.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
As someone who's administered TSA testing in the past, thus having seen the "tests" first hand, I assure you, they're not looking for people that think for themselves. They want idiot drones that do what they're told, no matter what.
In a given day I'd have maybe 2 applicants out of 10 that didn't look like straight up gang members (and half of them looked like crystal meth tweakers, I shit you not), and based on what I'm hearing from family members in the service, the military is starting to have it's share of gang-bangers, too. Which makes sense, if you think about it: who's more likely to argue with an order or take a stand based on their principles, someone with an education and respect for human rights, or someone that was raised on the streets in a dog-eat-dog world?
Plus, now that the TSA is expanding to domestic rail service, highways, and sporting events, it won't be long before these state sponsored criminals are shaking us down at checkpoints all over the place, just like in Mexico or any other third world country.
So, sing with me, boys and girls: AMERICA! FUCK YEAH!!
WRONG.
The are supplementing their budges with property seized/stolen from EVERYONE.. Including the innocent.
They don't have to convict to keep the money. The don't even have to CHARGE them with a crime.
They only have to SAY that is was 'drug' money, and then they keep the cash.
The charge the PROPERTY with a crime, and then you, the rightful owner, have to sue and PROVE that the property is 'innocent' of any crime to get it back.
It's called Asset forfeiture and Civil Asset forfeiture.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2010/02/take_the_money_and_run.html
http://reason.com/archives/2010/01/26/the-forfeiture-racket
http://www.isil.org/resources/lit/looting-of-america.html
http://www.fear.org/whatodo-1.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asset_forfeiture
Now, there were changes to the law in 1999 that in theory should stop some of this abuse, but in reality cops are completely ignoring it.
All of this stems from ancient common-law dating back to Rome iirc.. The idea being that if a bull were to get loose and go on a rampage and kill someone, the State can kill the animal and not compensate the owner because there was a crime committed by the property.
The owner would have to prove that it was not his animal that caused the death to get compensation from the State for the loss of the Bull.
Fair enough.
But currently in the US people are stopped, cops find cash, even a completely 'normal' amount of cash, and then just fucking take it, say it was GOING to be used to buy drugs, and then tell the person to be on their way.
No charges, no probable cause, nothing. The just say.. "$500? I bet you were going to buy drugs with this. Thanks, I'm keeping it. Fuck you."
And you have to get a lawyer and sue to get it back.
Usually the lawyer costs more than the value of the property stolen by the police, so people just have to bend over and take it.
Cops know this, their raises and fancy SUV's are funded by the stolen $$, so their incentive is to steal as much $$ and property from as many people as possible.
They have even taken peoples HOUSES using this.... Even when they found nothing criminal and no charges are filed.
It's so sick that prior to 1999 you had to post a 'bond' of 10% of the property they stole just to fucking FILE.
What is even sicker is that many states passed laws where the owner had to be found guilty of a crime and the property must clearly be related to it.
What happened?
The police set up 'asset sharing' agreements with the FEDERAL goons.
Now when they know they can steal something juicy, they just call up the local feds, do a 'joint task force', have the feds file the paperwork, and still steal all the money and property since Feds are not bound by state law, and then get a big cut of the money back from the Feds.
It is unconstitutional, immoral, and just plain sick. And it happens every day in USSR of America.....
LOL, WUT?
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Curiously enough, every attempt to staff the TSA with robots has failed. To quote TSA-02134's post-termination interview, "ERROR: CRASH IN LOGIC.C:1338: INPUT 'GOALS' INCOMPATIBLE WITH PROVIDED METHODS".
"boosting" can mean "stealing", though it is not a common usage.
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
The alternative, that an arm of totalitarianism is entirely staffed by people who are ideologically committed, would be far worse.
That would be the DEA.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
until you screw up a decimal place and $305,326.13 ends up in your account in just one weekend.
The TSA guy making a low annual salary doesn't pocket half of the money that he finds, or splits it up with the rest of the low level employees?
Well, let's run some numbers.
$409,056.56 divided by about 450 airports is $909 per airport. We're talking about a year, so divide that by 365 and we're talking about an average of $2.49 per day per airport. Figure that an entry level security screen makes a little over $10 per hour and he's basically getting the equivalent of 15 minutes.
Yup. These guys are makin' bank, I'll tell you.
Local Police can be just as bad. We had an employee stealing things from work, from simple plumbing fittings to electronic controls. A few thousand worth of gear. His roommate turned hi in, police took everything for evidence. We were told once the evidence was not needed they would let us know. We called a few weeks later since we hadn't heard anything - He pleaded to some charge, no trial, they sold the stuff at auction. We couldn't even get the money they got for selling out things.
So we were robbed, twice.
This sounds like a whistleblower series I went to a while back. Some guy from the Army Corps of Engineers stood up and started by saying he went through all he did and eventually lost his job to save 5-7 million. He was exposing a gross amount of money that wasn't being spent correctly, but received very little attention. He said, when the whole budget of the Army Corps of Engineers is less than the rounding error on the national budget, saving a small portion of it didn't amount to much.
Yeah, now it counts as seized assets and it becomes part of the operating budget of the police department.
If there's even a *hint* of drugs in your vehicle, it's seized. Home? Seized. Oh, you have more than $10,000 cash on hand? Why? You're a drug dealed - seized.
You wanna talk opportunity for corruption...
I really do try my best to be an honest person, but more and more I'm seeing stuff that makes me think I'm a sucker for playing fair when so many people (especially our government) are stacking the deck in their favor as much as possible. I would have had a very difficult time turning that in to be honest.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
Plus, since it's TSA, there's probably a rule in there about how they can't send more than 3 dollars per envelope...
In a strictly free market, capitalistic mindset, yes playing fair makes you a sucker - you should lie, cheat and steal in order to get ahead.
In a more holistic view though, playing fair lets you sleep at night, or to look at your children (or significant other) and admit to no wrongdoing. They won't suddenly discover what you did in order to buy that huge diamond, but that everything is as you said it is and there's no guilt nor trouble.
The problem is, government and corporations have no such conscience. Maybe if you can get enough shareholders together to instill one, but that's about it. It's why companies pollute (polluting costs nothing - not polluting costs money, and the benefit is so some humans down the road can breathe?) and try to screw over as many people as possible.
Those elements in the TSA are a fucking embarassement to both their agency and their country; that behavior should not be tolerated, and this situation can be easily remedied with heavy penalties that will act as a warning to the rest of the TSA lot that is there to loot while in uniform.
Heavy penalties, like hanging pickpockets?
http://aler.oxfordjournals.org/content/4/2/295.abstract
Findings suggest that 76% of active criminals and 89% of the most violent criminals either perceive no risk of apprehension or are incognizant of the likely punishments for their crimes.
You DO know how the TSA recruits people, right...? They put adverts on pizza delivery boxes
You couldn't make this shit up it you if you hired a whole team of comedy writers...
And yet, the best part of all is the come-on at the top
Really illustrates their target demographic: immature dropouts who fall for those 'x-ray vision' glasses ads...and who love pizza, of course!
"I love animals! Some are cute, others are tasty, what's not to like?" - Betsy Schroeder, Jeopardy contestant
Buying the instrument a ticket makes a lot of sense for the larger instruments. I've taken a few small instruments in my carry-on bag.
One of those cases produced a fun anecdote. I had a pennywhistle in my carry-on, and the guy at the X-ray machine was very suspicious. He took it out and asked me what it was. I took it out of his hand, and started playing a nice, lively jig. Everyone around broke out into smiles, and a couple of people started doing Irish jig steps. They waved me through, with smiles on their faces.
It occurred to me afterward, though, that if you look at a pennywhistle closely, it's a small tube of thin steel (or sometimes brass, or tin-plated other metals). It would make a serviceable stiletto, and you could do a lot of damage to someone if you used it to "take a core sample" (as a forest biologist might say). Of course, you might not want to play it afterward, until you've cleaned it up well. But I didn't mention this to the airline people.
There have been a few funny stories about people on an airplane realizing that they'd brought along serious weapons without the security folks noticing. One I read a while ago was a physician who used obsidian blades in his scalpels, and had a packet of them in his pocket. These are among the sharpest blades that exist, good for making fast, clean cuts, and a person comfortable with handling them could kill a lot of people very quickly. Of course, he used them professionally, to save people's lives. But they were still a serious violation of the rules, since they're much more dangerous than box cutters l. He also didn't report himself to the airline security people. But he blogged about it, and NPR interviewed him.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.