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Former TSA Administrator Speaks
phantomfive writes "Former TSA head Kip Hawley talks about how the agency is broken and how it can be fixed:
'The crux of the problem, as I learned in my years at the helm, is our wrongheaded approach to risk. In attempting to eliminate all risk from flying, we have made air travel an unending nightmare for U.S. passengers and visitors from overseas, while at the same time creating a security system that is brittle where it needs to be supple. ... the TSA's mission is to prevent a catastrophic attack on the transportation system, not to ensure that every single passenger can avoid harm while traveling. Much of the friction in the system today results from rules that are direct responses to how we were attacked on 9/11. But it's simply no longer the case that killing a few people on board a plane could lead to a hijacking. ...The public wants the airport experience to be predictable, hassle-free and airtight and for it to keep us 100% safe. But 100% safety is unattainable. Embracing a bit of risk could reduce the hassle of today's airport experience while making us safer at the same time."
10 char lameness filter
With the first link, the chain is forged.
Let the experience of other countries (where terrorist attacks are unfortunately common) be a lesson here: big crowds are targets. The TSA's security checkpoints at airports, especially busy airports, create big crowds, and those crowds are not behind any sort of security. A terrorist who wanted to kill a big crowd of Americans could walk in to a major airport just before a holiday and kill hundreds of people without ever dealing with security.
The fact that it has not happened yet is an indication that airport security measures are not what is keeping terrorist at bay.
Palm trees and 8
Gee, this is new, how many times have we seen officials make statements about this regarding any of the current 'War on ______' policies? Hey, how about you fix the damn thing before you had 'Former' amended onto your title.
Please get rid of it.
Not only is it expensive, it is total theater.
It's useless and doesn't help anybody or anything but TSA agents and the companies selling cancerous porno x-ray machines.
The thing is the TSA should NOT be the ones preventing a "catastrophic attack on the transportation system". That should be the CIA, even the military!!
The TSA should, at best, be simply a light wall to keep things reasonable as far as who goes on a plane. That is it. Thus if you think about it, the TSA really has NO proper role. Not at the level they are at anyway - security would be better managed by airport managed security.
But you say, what about the centralized no-fly list? Well what about it? Who cares who flies? That list has done WAY more harm to innocent people than it has ever helped. Even if we let someone who truly is a terrorist on, it doesn't matter. Either they fly somewhere, or the try to hijack the plane and get mauled by passengers, or possibly they get something by regional security and blow up a plane. Oh well; we lived under that system just fine for decades.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This is a reference:
In September 2006, in response to the new policies limiting the amounts of liquids and gels that passengers could carry on airplanes, Milwaukee resident Ryan Bird wrote "Kip Hawley is an Idiot" on a plastic bag given to passengers by airport security for those substances. As a result he claims he was detained and told that the First Amendment did not apply to security checkpoints.
With the first link, the chain is forged.
...and with that comment, Mr. Hawley makes the USA no-fly list.
As you were, citizen.
Weapons have never been necessary to take control of an airliner. They just make it a little easier.
I really do not see any chance of the suggestions in this article happening. All it would take is one suicidal terrorist whose goal is simply to bring down a plane and kill all its passengers to scuttle it. I do not think the American public will view this is "acceptable", especially if it turns out that what brought down the plane in my mythical scenario was something that the current screening methods would likely have caught.
I really do not know what to think of the article's suggestions on liquids. I've read where various chemistry experts essentially say that terrorists cannot construct liquid bombs that will work at all without having to basically use chemistry equipment, ice baths, lengthy mixing sessions that no one could possibly ignore, etc. Yet here the former TSA head insists that there is a very real risk here. Who is right? Does the former TSA head know something that chemistry experts have somehow missed? Or is the former TSA head working on crap information? I sure don't know but that's one question I'd like resolved.
My experience has been that the people who bitch the most about screening are those who travel the least. I'm not saying that there aren't regular travelers who don't complain. Not at all. But in my circle of acquaintances, the people I know who just completely and utterly cannot talk about this subject without getting completely bent out of shape about it simply do not travel by plane. One of them hasn't been on a plane in more than 5 years. He's likely to travel by plane less than 5 more times in his lifetime. The other guy I know actually gets the most worked up about this. He hasn't been on a plane since before 9/11 and he is extremely unlikely to ever travel by plane again in his life, yet this whole subject of TSA screenings is some kind of hot button issue to him.
Let me get this straight. He seems to get it now, but he didn't do anything to fix it when he had the chance. WTF?
Or did he only realize how !#%!!-up it was until he had to travel as an ordinary citizen?
is to accept the fact that terrorism is extremely effective even if it fails. it builds police states and makes everyday things like travel difficult at the expense of the target nation. it forces them to divert energy and resources into possibilities and not actualities.
a better solution is to stop this "war on terror" crap and pay closer attention to what it is exactly we do that leaves a group of people so determined with nothing left to lose that they will kill thousands of your innocent civillians.
should you consider Osama Bin Laden the cause of the terrorist attacks against america, here are his demands: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/nov/24/theobserver
now, while some of them are outlandish so are some promises from a politician seeking to gain or maintain an elected office. and so to have our demands on the middle eastern region been for the past 30 years. regime change, cia government overthrow, perpetually cheap oil, proxy wars, military bases at the expense of the indigenous citizens, propping up dictatorial regimes and the list goes on. But Bin Laden asked for some rather reasonable things as well that we could have done.
1. stop treating israel like some sort of king among theives. if their only justification for their city is rooted in religious text, thats fine for them. They should not have the right to force that opinion on other nations however and by virtue of their creation should at least attempt to get along with them instead of bombing the hell out of them semi-annually. the bombs, helicopters, and american artillery are what hes complaining about. our complicit enforcement of the palestinian 'warsaw ghetto' could probably be eliminated and save the tax payers a few billion dollars a year.
another quote, "You steal our wealth and oil at paltry prices because of you international influence and military threats. This theft is indeed the biggest theft ever witnessed by mankind in the history of the world." Well, yeah. The carter doctrine sort of mandates we do that. our free market policy at the hands of the plutocracy has become more reliant on war as a revenue source and as a big stick lately, and we could probably reign that in.
he complains about our sanctions against iraq, how we support countries like egypt and syria despite the fact they routinely murder their own people. the most contentious place in the middle east for alot of muslims is jerusalem, and we stuck a goddamn embassy there.
im not saying the guys a doctoral scholar here; the rest of his argument is based largely on the same religious crap our evangelicals push. Im just saying we could have done maybe 25 things in the middle east differently after the 9/11 attacks that would have negated the strip searches, pat downs, border searches, and other security theater that are killing the "land of the free."
Good people go to bed earlier.
The public wants 100% safety? I think most of us know very well indeed we can't have that. In fact, if we stop and think about it, "safer than driving a car" we already have, indeed already had before 9/11, and that wasn't changed either way by the TSA. I think we can safely do without them. The resulting financial windfall could be used in many ways that would improve our daily lives including making us safer in real ways. Or simply to pay off some debts and give the economy a whirl. For recall that all security spending is overhead, it doesn't buy us much. If all the economy did was "security services", everybody'd starve. I think I'd rather have a shoe event horizon than a security event horizon, thank you. Better yet, no event horizon. Let's go back to do things that make the world better, instead of "safer", for which read "hassled witless".
Before proposed change: The TSA is a broken agency, as every day thousands of Americans endure our broken security system...why isn't anyone in Washington working for the American people instead of the TSA bearuacracy ? After proposed change, first time someone gets a hangnail because of lax security Today, the TSA found itself under serious criticism from all sides, as it became clear that the lack of oversight by the agency has led to a hangnail on a passenger. Politicians in Washington are promsing hearings to look into this. Says Pundit Gasbag "it is clear that the TSA dropped the ball on this, and as a result, thousands of American lives are at risk every day"
History suggests that is nearly impossible.
It is very difficult to turn a corporation around. Corporations are much more in contact with reality, and the bottom line controls everything, but corporate cultures, group think, general dithering can nevertheless take down big corporations. Yahoo seems like the latest example.
Federal agencies respond to political reality. Chertoff is still making money from scanners, so they will buy scanners, no matter how much radiation they emit. Chertoff has major political influence. TSA has political clout. It takes a lot of votes to overcome political clout. Until a lot of Congresscritters are threatened with being un-elected, TSA won't change.
It has been nearly 10 years since I was on an airplane, until last week.
I drive across the US to avoid those idiots.
I am currently on a business trip, had to fly. The moronic security provided by TSA is a complete outrage : intrusive, ineffective. "Your papers please" , a proto-Gestapo.
it's simply no longer the case that killing a few people on board a plane could lead to a hijacking. Never again will a terrorist be able to breach the cockpit simply with a box cutter or a knife. The cockpit doors have been reinforced, and passengers, flight crews and air marshals would intervene.
I wanted to reduce the amount of time that officers spent searching for low-risk objects, but politics intervened at every turn. Lighters were untouchable, having been banned by an act of Congress. And despite the radically reduced risk that knives and box cutters presented in the post-9/11 world, allowing them back on board was considered too emotionally charged for the American public. We did succeed in getting some items (small scissors, ice skates) off the list of prohibited items.
He has a list of five things he suggests to improve the TSA:
1. No more banned items
2. Allow all liquids
3. Give TSA officers more flexibility and rewards for initiative, and hold them accountable
4. Eliminate baggage fees
5. Randomize security
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
As far as I remember, a proposal to install lockable, steel-reinforced cockpit doors in airliners was floating around well before September 11th ever happened. Because airlines didn't want to pay for these doors (they would have to be custom manufactured), and didn't want the extra weight of these doors added to their planes (profits, profits, profits), there was literally nothing preventing the 9/11 hijackers from taking over 4 different airliners on that day. Instead of making air-travel hell for everybody, why not make airliners themselves more secure, by simple measures like installing lockable, reinforced cockpit doors?
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
I said it back in '01 and I'll repeat it now. By giving up our freedom in the name of security, we have allowed the terrorists to prevail. Pursue them. Hunt them down. Deal with those who have harbored them as enemies of the US. But we should never have relinquished a single liberty for the sake of security.
Benjamin Franklin said it best:
"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Franklin's Contributions to the Conference on February 17 (III) Fri, Feb 17, 1775
"Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup."
I do agree with some points in the article, but one stuck out like a sore thumb:
-ELIMINATE BAGGAGE FEES-
Because people are so worried about being dinged for baggage, they make the security lines longer by having more stuff to check.
In my opinion, the fees should actually be on the carry-on, not the checked luggage, or just outright charge all luggage by weight and discourage the morons from packing so much crap to begin with.
Point of interest.
New luggage, and lockable luggage needs to be made of of a specific material and packed a certain way for it not to be "flagged" and hand-examined.
Luggage should be designed so that instead of being 'sandwich' where stuff is layered, it's instead compartmentalize like dresser-drawers in leg-brick type configurations. Make your luggage one solid piece that can be individually sent through the scanning machine with a cable connecting all the bricks do they don't get lost. If all luggage is the same size, it makes it a lot easier to automate. If the TSA opens any luggage, it must be tagged by who opened it. Take ownership of molesting other peoples stuff.
The most embarrassing part of the TSA bull****, are the people who are obviously pedophiles or perverts who search babies or fondle people. This **** needs to stop post-haste. These aren't well-trained people, these are 10$/hr McJobbers who happened to find a "better paying ****ty job"
It's weird. When they're in charge they never have this opinion or at least never act on it. people from the outside say this and they say we're naive or ill informed. Then when they get out of office they start agreeing with the very people they had previously said were naive.
Wtf?
I can't wait till Eric Holder steps down... he'll suddenly spill the beans on fast and furious and etc (I know, different department but same difference)... anyway...
Food for thought the next time one of these bozos tells everyone they're naive. Just wait a couple years and he'll agree. Conveniently after his opinion no longer matters...
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
I say the deserve another billion/yr because, afterall, look at all the terrorism they've stopped just this week!
Finding a legally registered, unloaded, gun belonging to a law abiding (if forgetful) citizen does not count as stopping terrorism. Not to mention that all of these objects are things that would easily be caught by standard X-rays. The TSA has NEVER stopped a terrorist. Not one. In the years since 9-11 any terrorist activity was either stopped well before they got to the airport, or they actually got on the plane and the attempt failed. But I guess the TSA needs to brag about something to justify their existence, so they point out all the absent minded people they've detained for forgetting about something dangerous in their bag.
Terrorism is stopped by law enforcement work outside of the airport. If a terrorist plot made it that far without being discovered, you've already failed and you need to move farther up the chain to figure out what went wrong and how it could have been foiled sooner. In terms of value for our dollars, the TSA is a huge waste.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
Also, we can learn from other countries that being attacked by terrorists does not mean you have to institute a police state, or go off and start a couple of unnecessary wars. We've spend many times the actual cost of the 9/11 attacks trying to protect ourselves from anything like it happening again. But as TFA implies, nobody's asking if the cost exceeds the benefit. And now we have a monstrous national security apparatus and a military-industrial complex more entrenched and extensive than ever before.
The U.K. had terrorist attacks for years, including the fairly horrendous one in London in 2005. But they haven't gone crazy about it, or at least not as crazy as the U.S. has.
Over and over again we hear from ex-bosses etc. Well, for one thing the TSA won't ever be 'fixed'. It is evil by its very nature. It must be abolished. Which, of course won't happen either because nobody will vote for a politician that will do the job. Bling wins every time, and that's that.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
This year, the TSA is requesting 8.2 Billion dollars. In the past five (5) years, the TSA has made some 1,035 arrests. Approximately 30% of those were related to clear immigration violations and had nothing to do with security. If we use today's annual budget number, multiply it by five and divide it into the remainder of the arrests, we get a figure of approximately $53,000,000. This is extremely rough math. Give or take $5,000,000 either way, we are looking at a price of around $50,000,000 per arrest. I don't know about you, but I thank that's extremely expensive. Swirl in the unbelievable cost in TIME for each passensger to screened and you have a serious net drain on the economy. The question becomes not can we have 100% security but, as Mr. Hawley states, what will be the ACCEPTABLE level of security that will be a reasonable balance between risk and cost?
*** Don't be dull.***
Which politicians can we vote into office that will make things any different? Folks blamed the Bush administration for excessive tightening of freedom -- and yet what has Obama done to lift those restrictions? Hope and change, right.
As in the US, like other countries, the period of 1920 to 1933 marks the Prohibition Period of alcohol (see wikipedia). There was the 18th ammendment to the US constitution, Al Capone, J. Edger Hoover and the FBI, Temperance Movements, The Great Depression, and the madness finally ended with the 21st ammendment to the US constition in 1933.
Given this as a guide I suspect that TSA's and Homeland Security's days are numbered, only not short enough. One of the points about Prohibition in the US is that Congress, i.e. those represenatives of Congress in 1920, and the State Legislature delegates who voted for it in the run-up, were gone by 1930. And that is how the madness of Prohibition in the US ended.
This gives us a time frame for when the New Prohibition madness, TSA (and Homeland Security) will end: 2015. This is something to look forward to.
It needs to be put to sleep, its a horrid waste of money causing nothing but headache and problems for each and every person traveling in the USA and our gains has been about the same net effect as elephant repellant
Just today we hear of another TSA screener busted, this time for stealing iPads. How hard would it be to find one who would happily pass anything at all through his checkpoint if the price was right?
Add Hawley to the list of people for whom wisdom (or the audacity to voice it) came too late in their careers to make any difference.
Tenemus pyrobolos atqui jacimus cognitiones.
We no longer fly or holiday in the United States. Our money goes to Mexico, Central/South America, and Europe.
The crux of the problem, as I learned in my years at the helm, is our wrongheaded approach
Considering the TSA is not even a decade old and is fraught with issues from top to bottom -- we'd do well to pay attention to these indicators and end the TSA. It is a failure that has served no useful purpose other than act as Security Theatre and subject law abiding Americans to indignities. Once a Company or Organization develops a mindset or culture, it is near impossible to change that. It's too late to change the TSA, and it's most likely that the TSA does not want to change.
The major problem is the way campaigns are funded. When was the last time you donated money to a political organization? Most people reading this will probably say "Never" and even if they did it would pale in comparison to the donations by a handful of multinational companies. Until this is addressed we'll continue to see politicians elected to solve a problem followed by them exempting their sponsors from any 'solutions'.
While I'd love to say that we're getting a taste of our own medicine, it is patently untrue. No system this broken can realistically be called a democracy until politicians solve the problems assigned to them without such a direct conflict of interests.
This problem is solvable by politicians because, for them, only a handful have access to massive amounts of donations. If there were a usable public alternative most candidates would hop on that right away to compete with candidates that did have more sponsors. Until there are some major media outlets magnifying campaign funding or there is money to push politicians in the right direction, it will continue to be this way.
Perhaps, but I don't have enough information to either support or refute that claim. I pretty much agree with everything he said above, however. Do you have anything to substantiate your claim? Would you care to share your reasoning and turn an equally idiotic post into something worth reading, or do you just want to sit in the kindergarten sandbox calling names?
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
I've only read half of the article as of last night (before it showed up on /.), but I'm in agreement with what I've read so far. For some time, I've been telling people that, with the simple addition of lockable cockpit doors, we've reduced the maximum number of people a terrorist can kill with an airplane from 3,000 per plane to about 100 or so. I think it's myopic to spend billions chasing after that last 100. We accept 100 casualties all the time (that many die in car accidents every day. That many die of heart disease every hour... and of cancer every hour).
Since there are more techie types here, I guess I can use the analogy of software profilers (I can 't use this example on lay-people, unfortunately). After you profile the execution of your software, you direct your efforts toward the routines which will get you great gains with just a small improvement in the actual code (like the routines which are called a zillion times). But you don't obsess over that one routine; you improve it how you can and then move on to other targets.
So, okay... lockable cockpit doors. Yay! We reduced the number of expected casualties by 97%. Now, can we direct our efforts toward better cancer screening? Or improvements in highway safety? Or something which is killing *thousands* of times more Americans than hijackings?
When you see what is actually going on and are unable to do anything you QUIT or you fight back and are asked to resign.
Plus on the outside the perspective is different. Remember when you are an insider you have all these special tools and experts surrounding you; you get information the public will not know about in your lifetime. You make decisions based on stuff nobody else has or knows about-- it is easy to think that everybody outside your tiny elite group is "naive".
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Greetings.
Frequent flyer here. Moscow and San Francisco are my homes, and I travel for business around 3 out of every 4 weeks (I've been to Novosibirsk, New York City, Kiev, and Paris for at least 3 days each in the last 3 weeks). I deal with airport security screenings several times a week. The only difference I see in the security screenings from the US is that removing your shoes isn't a requirement in most of the rest of the world. I've even ran into the body scanners a few times outside the US. I dislike the current TSA at the same level as I dislike every other screening group because they all offer almost the same experience.
International airports and airlines with connections to the US must enact similar policies and procedures to allow flights into American territory. I've been traveling like this since 1993, and I always noticed that any policy or procedure implemented in the US is soon followed by similar one (or even more draconian, like in Poland) by the rest of the world.
Mr. Hawley's Top 5 Things to Improve would be a welcome boon to us travelers. I overall enjoyed the article and agree with the information it provides, and look forward to the improvements, if our hated asshat politicians manage to heed his advise and enact most (or all!) of his recommendations. Security theater isn't a US-only travel issue; doing away with it at the TSA will soon result in better travel conditions everywhere else.
Cheers!
http://eugeneciurana.com | http://ciurana.eu
1. No more banned items: not sure about this one. Terrorists don't value any life-even their own. What makes him think only taking a whole airliner out is at stake. I'm betting they'd be willing to give their lives for just a few passengers being knifed to death and the resultant chaos and fear- it is terrorism after all.
2. Allow all liquids: I'd like to know more before I acquiesce. They're definitely trying to get explosives on board. He needs to assure us that his statements are true by citing the science behind his claims.
3. Give TSA officers more flexibility and rewards for initiative, and hold them accountable: Right after 9/11, the airline provided security was "fired". Remember those fine folks at Argenbrite? I'm not trying to denigrate anyone, but those employees of privately contracters were mostly high school dropouts that were immediately rehired by TSA- many, it was discovered later, had criminal records. Things have improved but ten years have passed- shouldn't things have progressed further?. Who wants to be a TSA officer? I doubt the government would pay enough to hire the quality individuals needed to implement this kind of approach. The professionalism has advanced leaps and bounds, but they still pay them poorly
4. Eliminate baggage fees: YES- the airlines often create their own problems, like this. However, this policy is in response to customer economic behaviors. They want CHEAP airfares, not quality products, forcing the airlines to nickle and dime the fare payers. Look at Spirit for how bad this has become. If we want this, it will have to be enacted and regulated by the government. Good luck in this political environment of Tea Partyism.
5. Randomize security: agreed, however, this will ultimately decrease security. The issue is how much is lost compared to how much convenience is gained.
As a pilot, I'm subjected to nearly the same security requirements as passengers. I find this to be a waste of time. Thankfully, we are making headway in the area of trust based security- the one thing Hawley felt was unworkable. The Registered Traveler program needs a second look. If we can trust crewmembers with our lives, then we can start adding passengers to the list of trusted individuals.
Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?
Just give people the option to choose. Set up two types of flight, one with full TSA screening and the other with pre 2001 screening. Those who want to fly secured by current TSA security screening procedures chose first option, those who do not agree with TSA procedures choose second option.
I think he deserves some kudos for this. After arguing against Schneier a few weeks ago on The Economoist about how things were peachy, it takes a lot of guts to come out and say "I was wrong, TSA policies suck, and its partly my fault and due to my leadership".
Calling him an idiot doesnt really help, whereas his admission and piece hopefully WILL. Or would you have preferred more bullheadedness and denial from Kip?
I think this tidbit was the most important part. It's the first official confirmation that a lot of what happens in the inspection lanes is pure theatre as many had claimed before:
And despite the radically reduced risk that knives and box cutters presented in the post-9/11 world, allowing them back on board was considered too emotionally charged for the American public.
I don't get it. The content of your post doesn't really support the subject. That's kinda lame...
RON PAUL
RON PAUL
(RON PAUL)
The US tourism is starting to complain, lobbyists are closing their wallets and, someone needs to fall on their sword so that the TSA can change it's direction, from tourist hostile to tourist friendly.
Catch is an the agency has allowed a culture of ego driven superiority where any hint of resistance from uppity foreigners is brutally and sadistically punished. Each and every abuse is published and millions of potential tourist read about and a percentage alter their holiday plans well away from the US, the more frequent the events the greater the percentage.
By the time the agency is rebuilt and it will take years and many dismissals to rebuild it, US tourism industry will be crippled for many years to come. Bush to Obama and years of more of the same, has just set the rot in place.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
I drive across the US to avoid those idiots.
Unfortunately, unless something changes, the days of being able to do that are coming to an end.
Check this out
We need to end this agency once and for good.
because after 9/11 we found out that many of the airports relied on contractors that were borderline. Little to no training. Enormous turnover. Effectively no ability to arrest or detain people. Subject to pressure from the airlines, etc. So someone had, what was probably a good idea, hire people as full time, highly trained screeners that could server or coordinate with law enforcement
It was never a good idea. It was a reaction.
If they had thought through it at all, they would have just left things as they were.
If you think about it we are NO BETTER OFF TODAY then we were under the old system. People can still easily sneak on board the exact weapons used in the original attack if they really want to.
What has changed that actually demonstrably improved security is two things:
1) Lock cockpit door and prevent someone from taking control of the plane.
2) Passengers taking out potential threats before they become huge problems.
The second happened in real time, even as the original attacks were unfolding. The passengers on the Pennsylvania flight took out that flight rather than letting it hurt more people. Ever since then a number of attacks have bee thwarted by passengers.
The TSA just happens to ALSO exist at the same time as those two improvements are made, and yet they seem to get credit for something that has nothing to do with them.
Disband the TSA, and go back to the old way. The security was not perfect but it was humane. Passengers can take care of the rest thanks.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Sounds like you're advocating a police state there, buddy
Patrolling places like train tracks or fences does not a police state make. It simply makes for a well-secured nation.
When it turns into police state is when they start going around homes looking for materials to make things... that's when you'll know we've come to be a police state.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Yes you cannot be 100% safe but Americans like to fool themselves into a safezone. As a frequent flier I am amused by the differences in airport security. The rules make no sense but going through the motion makes the traveler "feel safe" . I virtual ritual that is a waste of time.
I'm not going to argue we didn't get what we needed. What we got was a mutant hybrid that may not be producing no better an outcome than the old system. A lot of people recognized the old system was a large, potential security hole.
Yes, but the thing is that since the new system is also a large potential security hole, we don't NEED anything better. No attack has succeeded from that day exactly because of the two factors I mentioned; you cannot gain control of the plane in a swift attack, and passengers will stop you from trying pretty much anything else.
So since we do not NEED anything better, lets go back to where passengers were not treated like animals (which is really a poor metaphor since PETA would long ago have put a stop to any process that treated animals as badly as airline travelers are treated) to the degree they are now.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Had they succeeded the "passengers will stop them" argument would show itself to be the non-starter it really is.
Since they had no time to succeed because of passenger action (in the case of the shoe bomber) pretty obviously the idea is not as much a non-starter as you would make it.
Simply blowing up planes worked before and will work again, eventually. But nothing the TSA is doing now, or in fact CAN do will change that fact. You are chasing a chimera imagining you can make air travel any safer than it was made under the old rules and procedures. You simply have to accept life is not 100% safe,
What will NOT work with near 100% certainty now is using a plane as a missile. That was what was really dangerous because it allowed for a huge damage multiplier to the attack. The TSA could not stop that either...
Since you cannot have a perfect system, stop trying and start focusing on making things more pleasant for the living.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Yes, Hawley's starting to understand some of the technical issues now that he's no longer in charge. But fundamentally, TSA was always about bullying, intimidation, and dishonesty, and that culture hasn't changed.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
TSA thieves are an evil twist of the knife.
http://gizmodo.com/5902383/a-tsa-agent-has-been-stealing-ipads-from-passenger-luggage
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
She got traded to the majors and they brought up their second string. Evidently not much depth in the lineup.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.