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Government Study Finds TSA Misconduct Up 26% In 3 Years
rullywowr writes "CNN reports that a recent government study found TSA misconduct has risen sharply in three years. Most have heard of the problems such as stealing, but the report also notes that some employees are sleeping on the job, taking bribes, and letting friends/family through the checkpoints without screening."
I'm conducting a "highly" scientific study of my own.
Please reply here if you are surprised by these news...
morcego
While not specifically mentioned in the report, notable cases of theft by TSA agents include a 2012 case in which two former employees pleaded guilty to stealing $40,000 from a checked bag at New York's John F. Kennedy Airport, and a 2011 guilty plea from an officer who admitted stealing between $10,000 and $30,000 from travelers at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey.
And what does the poor schmoe who had his travel money stolen? Did the TSA make all those people whole?
Doubt it.
More then likely the local agent supervisor threw a from at them and told them to fill it out and mail it in and if they objected further, they would be threatened or at the very least, their balls busted by being "detained" and missing their flight. And for those who haven't flown in the last decade, flights are always booked to the max so good luck getting on the next flight - or the next - or the next - or the....
They are not all bad. It's just the 99% of them who make the other 1% look bad, is all.
I think we could probably just say this across the board in our government...
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
What is wrong with social security?
It is fully funded for decades and simply upping the cut for contributions with inflation would extend it even further.
Collecting from folks who take $1 salaries and get stock instead would help even more.
I traveled via plan; I went through the security checkpoint..
. It was the typical experience that everyone has come to expect. But once it is over, you're free to roam the "Secured" area of the airport. I don;t know how often this happens, but as we were getting ready to board the airplane, Three TSA agents showed up in their hands of blue, (One too many for a good firefly reference.)
Anyway, it was announced that the TSA would be doing random luggage checks as we boarded the plane. I watched what was happening and the "random" checks were that they stopped everyone with a backpack and/or large purse. No one with a regular wheely-carry on luggage was randomly checked. I observed about 30 people board the plane and "predicted which people ahead of me were randomly selected. As my turn to board the plane approached, I stepped in line and said to the agent, "Some back at the regular checkpoint not doing his job and taking a nap?" The TSA guys scowled at me, physically pulled me aside, and went through every article of clothing and compartment of my regular luggage carry-on. At least he attempted to fold everything back and put it in the way it came out.
I should have asked him for a piece of paper saying my luggage was checked by the TSA,
I wonder if they are trying to police up their "faults" by doing even more checks past where we are used to them happening?
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TSA is the main reason I have been refusing to fly to and within the US for years now. Colleagues, friends and acquaintances reporting the same. The security craze is costing the US money.
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The security screeners make between around $23000 to $35000 plus locality pay. That is not minimum wage. 40 hour per week minimum wage job pays only $15000 a year.
these all should be grounds for immediate termination and prison time.
Not to mention it has, over the years, produced billions in surplus. It's not the fault of social security programs that all that money gets skimmed off and rolled into the rest of the budget to pay for things that *aren't* sustainable...
Hey now, calling them "rent-a-cops" is a unfair... to security guards.
I prefer to refer to airport screeners as "TSA-holes".
One of these days, I'm going to cut you into little pieces.
The glaring fault that I found in scanning the GAO report is that there is no plan to follow-up on any of the cases where TSA employees are reprimanded. So they can issue letters of reprimand or whatever and there is no review process to make sure that the agent does their job correctly. And their job is to provide security?
What is wrong with social security?
Absolutely everything? To start with, there is the fact I'm going to pay tens of thousands (or hundreds of thousands, probably) of dollars into it and won't see a single dime of it back, because it will be bankrupt a decade or more before I'll even come closer to considering retiring. The system is inherently and utterly broken in a world were people are living longer and having fewer children. It cannot remain viable unless there are far fewer people retired than working, which, with the modern birthrate and age of living, is impossible. The only people who will benefit from the system are those who are already retired or relatively close to it. People under 30 or so? Won't see a dime from it. People in their 40s are likely to retire, only to discover the money drying up soon after.
Social Security was devised in a world with radically different demographics than the current one. Unless our society undergoes a massive reversion (which would have negative impacts in other areas), it's a totally non-viable system.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
Sure. But their point was to impugn the TSA agents by mocking them as mininum wage earners which they aren't. Now a number of themdefinitely deserve criticism but not based on something so silly.
You don't think the fact that they are paid like mall security is something to mock?
They are supposed to be this professional force of protection for our nation's airports and we pay them like the guy guarding the Orange Julius. One of these things is not like the other.
Misconduct cases involving TSA employees -- everything from being late to skipping crucial security protocols -- rose from 2,691 a year in 2010 to 3,408 in 2012.
I would bet that any company as large as the TSA would be happy to have only 3,408 misconduct cases. There are about 55,600 TSA employees.
About a third of the cases involved being late or not reporting for work, the largest single category of offenses.
That would be about 1100 shift late or missed. Considering that there are 55,000 employees * 5 shifts per week * 48 working weeks/year = 1.32M shifts per year that would mean that the late/absentee rate was 0.008%. Any company would love that late/absentee rate. Most companies have rates upwards of 10%.
About a quarter involved screening and security failures -- including sleeping on the job -- or neglect of duty offenses that resulted in losses or careless inspections.
So about 852 incidents are security related. That would be 1 incident for every 64 employees. Considering that most offenders will repeat and some of the incidents are mistakes rather than willful that is less that 1% of employees being an issue.
TSA employees are humans not robots ans they screw up some times; give them a break.
The numbers rose from 2,691 a year in 2010 to 3,408 in 2012. That is an increase of 717 incidents. That is about 2 more incidents per day. Not bad for a company that has 55,000 employees covering hundreds of locations. That's the problem with small numbers; even small increases seem big.
It will be paying out 71% in 2047 so exactly how young are you?
What is wrong with social security? It is fully funded for decades and simply upping the cut for contributions with inflation would extend it even further.
Social security is not properly funded. The Social security administration has (by congressional decree) taken a very sizable position in Special US government bonds. There is no Cash in those accounts, just US government iou's. If congress decides to welch on those debts, then social security is bankrupt. These are not small amounts of money. By most estimates the debt is as large as 4 Trillion dollars. With our current "discretionary" budget this would take the U.S. approximately 40 years to repay not including interest due, and not spending any money on any other discretionary expense like infrastructure maintenance, or NASA, etc... This debt is cripplingly high, and the debt maintenance on the bonds alone is high enough to cause a massive budget deficit every year. Congress spent the money over two decades starting in the early 80's, and all thats left are the iou's. Social security is bankrupt in all but name. They made bad loans to the US, and congress wants to welch on those debts.
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From TFA:
"I think John Q. Traveler should not so much be concerned, but take an active role in security," he said. "As they are willing to point out things we do wrong, we should be ready to report on the failure in their security operations, as well."
Yeah, that'll work out well...
-- "Oh. This guy again."
Available here.
A quick scan indicates it does not say exactly what news reports are claiming it does. The title gives a hint: "TSA Could Strengthen Monitoring of Allegations of Employee Misconduct".
The media (including /.) has seized on one fact out of the report, that the number of misconduct investigations has increased about 27% (not 26% as reported), and erroneously concluded that the rate of misconduct at the agency has increased by 26% (e.g. the title of this /. piece). This conclusion is not necessarily *wrong*, mind you, but the data in the report simply doesn't give us any basis for drawing it. For one thing, one of the main criticisms of the report is that the TSA is not tracking the *outcome* of investigations. For all we know the increase is the result of a higher rate of investigation, or even the increase in the agency's head count.
The whole point of the report is that the TSA has been so slapdash at tracking investigations of employee misconduct it doesn't know the degree which employees are violating policies or even the law. Consequently nobody really knows whether the rate of misconduct has gone up or down. That's damning enough to be going on with.
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I don't retirement fund.
I'm investing in my debt. Going to pay off my mortgage in 3 years. I make $65k/year. I'm paying off a full mortgage on a house in 3 years.
Going to invest in savings after that. You know, have $500/mo expenses, put $2000/mo in bank. Keep some, spend some. I'll spend enough to live a life of luxury (I do now, but I'm very good at maximizing the effectiveness of my spending), because youth is wasted on the young and I don't want to save up enough money being miserable my whole life to spend the end of my life being miserable struggling with health issues trying to not die. It's like people who hurry up and get married when they're 18 because girls are like... "I don't want to be an old maid stuck with kids!" You are going to have kids when you're like 19, then when you're 38 they'll get out of the house. You'll be almost in your 40s, you'll be married or divorced and struggling, your college years will be gone, your youth will be gone, you'll have missed all the time to party, and the best you can do is maybe spend that time being a cougar--which you could have done with a couple teenagers in the house anyway. Good job, idiot.
Economics dictates that retirement is essentially cheating. The system will continuously try to derive as much money from you as possible. Most people are too dumb for this and so are easy, so the smart ones of us can totally escape in impossible ways. If everyone was this smart, they would invariably decide that they need $X for their retirement goals and take that as a fixed expense, and so the entire system would still facilitate saving money. Instead, people are dumb and invest in index funds in 401(k) thinking it'll "grow", when that's not how it works; the funds managers take a percentage in any case, so they're happy with this.
Then we want everyone to pitch in to pay for old people, but then we want better health care to extend life from about 35-45 years (medieval lifespans) to 60, 80, 90 years, and then half the population is between 55 and 82 because the mean lifespan is 82 and nobody wants to put 50% of their paycheck into social security (twice as many old people as young people) and so the retirement age gets raised. Then people go, "Why I have to work until I 70?!?!?!?!" (if there's 1 person of retirement age for every (n) people working, you need to pay 1/(n+1) of your income into social security PLUS overhead; that means, for a stable mean lifespan (L) and retirement age (R), you need to pay (1/(R/(L-R))) of your paycheck into social security payout to keep it afloat. This would be absurd, except that people keep buying houses and now are going to have mortgages until they die and so aren't going to get to retire on 1/5 of their living income).
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It will be paying out 71% in 2047 so exactly how young are you?
I'm in my 30s and I have over 30 years until I hit social security age. So it'll be about 2047 when I am even eligible to collect my first cent... I've been contributing to social security for over 16 years now, and the last 6+ I've been capped out at the max contribution.