Slashdot Mirror
TSA 'Secured' Metrodome During Recent Football Game
McGruber writes "Travel writer Christopher Elliott touches down with the news that the U.S. Transportation Security Administration was spotted standing around outside a recent American football game between the Minnesota Vikings and the Green Bay Packers (picture). According to Mr. Elliott, the 'TSA goes to NFL games and political conventions and all kinds of places that have little or nothing to do with ... travel. It even has a special division called VIPR — an unfortunate acronym for Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response team — that conducts these searches.' He continues, 'As far as I can tell, TSA is just asking questions at this point. "Data and results collected through the Highway BASE program will inform TSA's policy and program initiatives and allow TSA to provide focused resources and tools to enhance the overall security posture within the surface transportation community," it says in the filing. But they wouldn't be wasting our money asking such questions unless they planned to aggressively expand VIPR at some point in the near future. And that means TSA agents at NFL games, in subways and at the port won't be the exception anymore — they will be the rule.'"
Oh, you're going to the movie theatre? Didn't you say you were a student? How is a student able to afford gasoline and movie tickets?
(I have actually been asked by a TSA agent how I was able to afford airline tickets.)
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
...actually, being a Canadian, I started giving my life story until she told me to shut up. I think the only thing people can really do to defend themselves against the TSA is to waste the agency's time.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
To be governed is to be watched over, inspected, spied on, directed, legislated at, regulated, docketed, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, assessed, weighed, censored, ordered about, by men who have neither the right, nor the knowledge, nor the virtue. ... To be governed is to be at every operation, at every transaction, noted, registered, enrolled, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under the pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, trained, ransomed, exploited, monopolized, extorted, squeezed, mystified, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, despised, harassed, tracked, abused, clubbed, disarmed, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and, to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, outraged, dishonoured. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality.
- Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.”
--C.S. Lewis
Is what I've been being told for years now. When I point out that it's been the plan ALL ALONG to expand them out into a Stasi-style force on the highways, in the subways, at the shopping malls, at sporting events, I was branded a tinfoil-hat nutter.
Now what, bootlickers?
If they stopped a bomb/terrorist attack every day, I might be willing to put up with the erosion. As the actual rate is, at this point, somewhere below a thousandth of that, we could suffer a 9/11 attack something like once every 3 years and STILL be better off without the TSA.
Some practical changes like the reinforced doors make sense. Combined with the attitude changes of the passangers and that threat has already been pretty well remediated.
Making us take off our shoes and go though the x-ray scanners as opposed to a simple metal detector is overkill.
The TSA is practicing risk avoidance, not risk management. The military learned that lesson over 30 years ago. It simply costs too much to avoid ALL risk; you end up not being able to do anything. Thus, you manage the risk - don't take stupid chances, but don't fret over extremely unlikely events, out of proportion of the damage it could cause. The underwear and shoe bombs were too small to have any realistic chances of taking the plane down. Ergo, they could have done as much or more damage in the waiting line at the TSA. More, if they turned it into a proper suicide vest with fragmentation additives. Or at a mall or some such.
Risk management is simple in theory. You look at the risk - the chance that it will happen as a percentage, and the average damage it would cost. If mitigating the risk would cost more than the damage multiplied by the chance it'll happen, then you don't perform that mitigation.
That's the simple type, of course. Some mitigations fix multiple risks, for example. Armored windows that will stop a gunshot also tend to be rather overkill for hurricane/tornado, after all. Vehicle barriers not only stop vehicle bombs, they stop drunk drivers. Etc...
I don't read AC A human right