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DHS Budget Includes No New Airport Body Scanners
OverTheGeicoE writes "The Electronic Privacy Information Center has been examining the White House's proposed budget for Department of Homeland Security for 2013, and they point out that it doesn't include any money for additional airport body scanners for TSA. Did the recent scandal involving TSA workers targeting women for scans make the White House realize that TSA is a national embarrassment? Does the executive branch finally understand the questionable safety and effectiveness of these devices? Or does DHS just think it has enough scanners once TSA installs the 250 new scanners in this year's budget?"
...I am sure some will be added as a "plus-up" when Congress gets hold of it.
It's a step in the right direction, though if you ask me only the full, outright abolition of this pathetic, unconstitutional joke of an agency qualifies as "enough." It'll be "fun" to see what kind of tantrum Chief Molester Pistole throws about being denied his latest batch of toys. Here's hoping Congress tells him to shut up and be thankful he got any money at all. Why they don't just strip all funding from TSA at this point is beyond me.
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Maybe they figure with crude over $100/barrel, unemployment 25%, inflation 10%, collapse of the EU, etc, that no one will be flying, so they're planning to install prairie schooner scanners and horse wagon scanners.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
pat downs are cheaper
The new DHS budget should include no money for the TSA, period. The whole organization is an ineffective, Constitutional-rights breaking embarrassment and a waste of money.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
Seriously? In a country where reality TV is king and our presedential candidates are in the pockets of corporations, the last thing the US cares about is embarrassment.
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i'll go with option D: you're making up hypothetical scenarios, based on assumptions, which inevitably leads you to exclude what's really going on as an option. thanks for trying to limit my choices to just what you perceive, though! let's all make unqualified conjectures and then argue about them as if they were true! yay!
insensitive clod overlords obligatory xkcd car analogy russian reversals whoosh pedant fanbois ftfy in 3...2...1..PROFIT
Or does DHS just think it has enough scanners once TSA installs the 250 new scanners in this year's budget?
Probably that one. It's not like they're going to --GASP-- spend less money by not buying full body scanners. They're just going to spend that money on other stupid stuff.
Porquoi?
Any other questions?
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
Oh, the budget will get amended to include them after the elections. Political donors are invested in the company from which the government buys the machines. First rule of an election year is to understand that anything said, promised or done in favor of the citizens is an attempt to buy their votes. Once the citizens have cast the votes bought by the politicians (foolishly believing anything a politician said), everything will resume it's normal path of securing more power for the government and funneling more money to politically-connected donors.
What about the long-shot of a Gary Johnson administration?
Any advanced information on supposed White House budget requests a year away are public relations. They release what they want us to believe. The DHS budget newly approved added 900 strip screeners to what they already have. That's the news that matters, fellow subjects.
short of a complete takeover by Republicans
Eh? It was republicans that created the TSA.
Why would the republicans get rid of the TSA? They are the people who created the DHS and TSA in the first place!
Within 25 years, our goal is to give 80% of Americans access to high-speed rail, which could allow you go places in half the time it takes to travel by car. For some trips, it will be faster than flying – without the pat-down. As we speak, routes in California and the Midwest are already underway.
Excerpt from Barack Obama's Third State of the Union Address. Emphasis added.
Our politicians aren't stupid. They may make plenty of decisions you disagree with, but they are well aware of this fact. The White House never had any illusions that the TSA was not a national embarrassment.
The French built the "Maginot Line" of fortifications along their border with Germany--at enormous expense--between World War I and World War II. The Germans simply went around it through Belgium and defeated France in a few days. The TSA is our Maginot Line.
Only in the Bush era could a treasury-looting boondoggle this bad actually go all the way to implementation.
These machines can be defeated by any illiterate petty criminal. Hello... body cavities?
Every actually respectable expert is on record against them, from Bruce Schneier to El Al's former head of security.
This is not just garden variety incompetence. The program was so wildly and thoroughly stupid that it goes beyond negligence into prima facie malicious intent. The bigs from the vendors and the feds on the procurement side should see prison on the grounds of corruption alone. It's no different than selling the army a billion dollars worth of non-working guns or vehicles to pocket the profits. God willing, someday we'll watch the trials on CSpan.
That's leaving aside the laugh-till-you-cry repugnant aspects of what they actually did - which is, let's not sugar coat it, take nude photographs of thousands and thousands of children.
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Rather than a knee-jerk reaction about this, there is some compelling evidence that the TSA is, forgetting everything, NOT good value for money. For the 8.1 Billion (2012 budget), you're getting some 1,035 arrests over the last five (5) years. Some 30% of which were for immigration related issues. That's approximately 145 arrests per year. If my math is right, that comes to 55.9 MILLION DOLLARS PER ARREST!!
I don't know about you, but I don't think that that is very good value for the money spent.
There's more. I travel a lot. There is virtually no consistency between airport and the rules under which each airport operates. The staff are seriously under-educated about what documentation is acceptable. If there was consistency with the management of the programs, I would not mind. However, there is not. I have met with TSA staff who are travelling (not working). They are appalled at just how badly the various rules and procedures are implemented.
Quite frankly, the whole program suffers from a serious lack of accountability. The real winners are the vendors of scanning equipment, uniforms and staffing companies.
This response is in no way meant to disparage the good men and women who are trying to make sense of this mess and who toil day in and out trying to get passengers through a seriously flawed system.
I thought it was a democratic congress that approved the TSA, and as we now know, it is the fault of whoever runs congress.
Did the recent scandal involving TSA workers targeting women for scans make the White House realize that TSA is a national embarrassment?
> Assuming that the DHS has any common sense at all.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
to make some campaign contributions.
You clearly have too much time on your hands.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
I thought it was a democratic congress that approved the TSA, and as we now know, it is the fault of whoever runs congress.
The .01%?
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)