Congress Wants Your TSA Stories

McGruber writes "Transportation Security Administration (TSA) program challenges and failures will be the focus of a joint hearing of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, on Monday, March 26, 2012. The Hearing is titled 'TSA Oversight Part III: Effective Security or Security Theater?' Bruce Schneier is scheduled to be a witness at this hearing. Additional information on the hearing is posted on the oversight committee's website. The Congressmen who serve on these committees are soliciting questions from the public to ask TSA officials at the hearing ... provided the public is willing to submit their questions via Facebook."

Comments

via Facebook only?

[AliasMarlowe]

There's the first complaint, right there...

Re:via Facebook only?

[El_Muerte_TDS]

Indeed. It's aol all over again. For someone that doesn't have a facebook account it becomes more and more difficult to access parts of the internet.

Re:via Facebook only?

[vux984]

This problem is much cheaper to solve: get a facebook account. The only tie back to you is an email address, and you can buffer that through a throwaway gmail account.

And agreeing to a 3rd party commercial entities terms of service to participate in democracy doesn't strike you as lunacy?

Why -exactly- should I need to agree to facebook's terms of use as a prerequisite for any sort of participation or interaction with my elected government?

Not everything is about the money something costs me. The fact that I -can- get a throwaway facebook account for free in no way changes the fact that I absolutely should not have to.

This is wrong.

It may well be convenient for many citizens, and even expedient and efficient for the government, but it is fundamentally wrong.

Re:via Facebook only?

[causality]

Yes, how sad that someone who refuses to use facebook for any reason won't get to participate in anything that happens on facebook.

In that condescending tone you are using I see what you are saying. But you're missing the point.

The point is, Congress did not have to restrict this only to Facebook account holders. That's the only reason why there is any question of missing anything due to not having such an account. This is the US federal government. It's not like they couldn't afford their own site.

There is only one reason why such a well-funded, well-connected, powerful organization would do it this way. They want to restrict commentary to Facebook account holders, which is another way to say they only want to hear from people who jump on bandwagons. If you use Facebook there is a slim but non-zero chance you might be an individual who did so by your own decision and not as a result of caving in to some kind of social pressure. But in this day and age if you do not choose to participate in Facebook it is definitely because you are an individual who can resist all of the people trying to get you to jump on the bandwagon.

Wow, you mean a top-down organization like Congress doesn't want to hear from individuals who can think for themselves and make their own decisions, even going against the way the wind blows? Color me surprised.

It's a filtering mechanism. That's the only reason to do it this way. You really can't see that? Or is this personal to you -- you do have a Facebook account and don't want to admit that certain inferences can be made about you from that? That's fine and good but it has nothing to do with the effect this has. Two plus two does equal four even if you're really offended about it.

Re:via Facebook only?

[vux984]

"We should be allowed to send an email..." means you must have an email account.

I can choose any of umteen zillion mail providers, or self host if I'm so inclined.

"We should be able to poke stuff into a web form..." means you must have Internet access AND a web browser.

And I've spoken out before against government dictating what browser we use too. Remember when a lot of government sites only worked with Internet Explorer? Was that ever a "good thing"?

"We should be able to mail them a letter..." means you have to be able to afford a stamp and have the ability to write.

The country has a publicly funded school system to teach you... you really don't have much to complain about.
As for the stamp... Canada lets you write your representatives without one. Good idea there.

Facebook is free. Get a free account under a dummy name. You get to participate, facebook gets nothing. What's your problem with that?

So your solution is to violate facebooks terms of service? So not only do you want me to deal with specific commercial entity I dislike, but you would have me violate my agreement with them too...

I don't have a facebook account because I don't want to agree to their terms of services, because I have principles. Not because I don't think I could get away with lying to them. Your attitude is what is wrong with the world...

Re:via Facebook only?

[Anonymous Coward]

Clearly, using Facebook logins to register your stories is an effort to catalog dissenting citizens. What else could it be?

Re:via Facebook only?

[tburkhol]

Besides that, people under 30 aren't the only ones who should have input into this.

This is very important to remember. People under 30 were under 19 when TSA was imposed. They've lived their entire traveling lives under the 'new' system, and have little or no recall of the more reasonable and traveler-friendly screening processes. By choosing a communication mode biased towards younger people, they're excluding a large portion of our greater social memory.

There is some value in theater

[SuperKendall]

The thing that annoys me about the anti-security theater rant, is that in fact there is a non-zero value even to security theater.

Yes you CAN get past screen checkpoints as we have them. But it does not mean we should give them up totally. Even just a veneer of security can be enough to dissuade a lot of people from trying something, or to make them nervous enough they screw up. It's enough of a deterrent that a lot of people simply will not try who might be convinced otherwise, because signing up to die in a glorious explosion is one thing but being set up to rot in jail is quite another and without honor.

That said, the TSA as-is has gone way, way too far. We should have an immediate jump back to pre-9/11 security screenings, meaning we all get to keep shoes, bring water, and walk only through metal detectors, not the stupid body scanners that mean you cannot even keep a kleenex in your pocket but you can strap a gun to the side of your body.

I do not care about the remote chance of a plane being blown up in the air, and there is no way hijacking a plane will succeed any more. Sure they could blow up a plane over a city but that's not going to take out a building as they would like to do. So let us have some dignity and easier passage on to our plane again. Heck, let loved ones meet you at the gate instead of shutting down the airport if one guy gets through the line with an unregistered kleenex by accident.

Re:There is some value in theater

[dgatwood]

Yes, there's non-zero value to having some visible security. I would argue that the security checkpoints aren't useful at providing visible security, though; the screeners are not even armed. They're about as relevant to security as the bag checkers on your way out of Fry's. If someone gets caught, they can simply run away, and there's probably a pretty good chance they'd make it to a car waiting for them curbside.

Want to make people honestly feel safer? Station armed national guard or actual police at every checkpoint like they did right after 9/11. Then ditch the body scanners in lieu of either metal detectors or nothing at all, and perform a cursory X-ray of people's bags. Train the national guard troops to make eye contact with every passenger. That would be about a thousand times more effective at making people feel safer and a billion times more effective at scaring the bejeezus out of would-be attackers than what they're doing now, all while being a lot less invasive for legitimate travelers.

Re:Questions

[causality]

That's because most people are sheep.

What an original idea! You sir, have proven that you are not a sheep!

Very much against your original intent, you have provided a great illustration of a certain blindness principle.

When someone makes a good point that's true and valid, and you happen to find it painfully uncomfortable because it's a bit too true, why that's easy! Just get political! Take the point they made, put a little twist on it, and turn it around to try to falsely reflect it back on the person pointing it out. This has two effects. First, it takes a generally true statement and makes it into a personal ad-hominem statement. That's a sure distraction technique. Second, it discredits the truth of the statement without ever having to formulate a refutation. It's the lazy, stupid man's way of effecting a dismissal.

And all the while you get to remain in your comfortable little bubble where most people are not blind sheep who place far too much importance on things that can be centrally controlled like mass media. That's why you stoop to what amount to crude PR tactics against this poster: he was threatening to pop your bubble, making him the enemy, making any below-the-belt dismissal immediately appealing to you.

This capacity, this mentality is why people don't rise up en masse and reject the bullshit they're spoonfed on a daily basis. Because attacking the messenger like a spoiled child is so much easier, and so much more convenient than taking on severe systemic problems.

Re:Questions

[fluffy99]

Wow, US tourism is absolutely booming! That's an increase of at least 4% (average of 8%) every year for nearly a decade!

The reason for that is the weak US dollar. We have a govt that is artificially keeping "inflation" low to convince the public we aren't in a recession, but at the same time printing money like crazy and devaluing the dollar. We have lots of foreigners coming here for vacation because it's cheap for them.

http://www.wealthdaily.com/articles/us-dollar-value/2627

The point you're missing is

[shiftless]

Nobody cares about "communicating with the Congressman." If we wanted to do that, we could easily write one any day of the week and send it in, only to get a form letter back (if you're lucky) explaining why you're wrong and how your letter doesn't affect shit, but thanks for wasting everyone's time anyway.

The real complaint some people are making here is that a supposedly "public" discussion is taking place in a closed off, walled off private community. So if the guy wants to air his voice in this "public forum", he effectively can't do so without having to agree to 3rd party terms and conditions. This isn't how a democracy is supposed to work.