TSA Screening Barely Working Better Than Chance

rwise2112 writes "The General Accounting Office (GAO) has completed a study of the TSAs SPOT (Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques) program and found the program is only slightly better than chance at finding criminals. Given that the TSA has spent almost a billion dollars on the program, that's a pretty poor record. As a result, the GAO is requesting that both Congress and the president withhold funding from the program until the TSA can demonstrate its effectiveness."

Comments

Fuck the TSA

[sexconker]

Fuck 'em. Disband that shit ASAP.

Re:Fuck the TSA

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn............

I will say that the TSA will spend a little extra time on males with olive skin....Sure my olive skin is from my Cherokee heritage, but that is besides the point. The fact that they are still below chance suggests that males with olive skin aren't criminals more often than chance.

lolololololololol

Re:Fuck the TSA

[sjames]

Honestly, with the addition of locks to cockpit doors and passenger awareness of the problem, we can roll the rest back to pre 9/11 levels. It worked just fine for the most part, and the locks and passengers no longer being instructed to sit quietly and enjoy the stopover in Cuba would have taken care of 9/11 just fine.

Re:Fuck the TSA

[pluther]

I wish I had modpoints left.

But, this is an accurate assessment. it became obvious within days of the attacks that these two measures were about the only thing that would have made a difference. Every thing else is pure theater.

Re:Fuck the TSA

[noh8rz10]

the point of TSA screening isn't to search for dangerous items. the point is to intimidate the populace into submission to an autocratic state. I agree with P, fuck 'em.

Re:Fuck the TSA

[reboot246]

I agree completely with you, sjames. The way we're going now makes the government much more dangerous than any terrorists ever thought about being. Of course, I believe that's the whole point of the government's actions. They want the citizens to be afraid of their government.

Re:Fuck the TSA

[rahvin112]

That plane was full of hero's. They knew they were dead, they called family and said goodbye. They were determined that they would not be used to kill thousands.

As others have said, the TSA hasn't stopped anything. There have been two major incidents since 9/11 where terrorists boarded planes with bombs. Those terrorists weren't stopped by billion dollar security measures, they were stopped by other passengers beating the shit out of them. Between the air marshals and the other passengers I don't believe terrorists could take another plane unless they controlled more than 50% of the seats.

Disband the TSA. It's a terrible waste of money and a downright infringement of rights.

Re:Fuck the TSA

[tompaulco]

If gatorade is so dangerous, then it seems like they shouldn't let it through security even if you drank it.

Re:Fuck the TSA

[TheGratefulNet]

of course.

but you DO realize that the security theater is not about security; its about compliance training for 'citizens'.

seriously, its what the main unwritten goal is about. that, and pork barreling money to pet projects for lawmakers (kickbacks).

arguing that the TSA does not make us safe is a non-starter. no one with control or power will listen to you.

Re:Fuck the TSA

[Entropius]

Do we need safety, or do we need the TSA? The correlation is a bit weak.

Re:Fuck the TSA

[triclipse]

That is absolute bullshit and I continue to be embarrassed by Slashdotters who believe in this fairy tale. Just how did these "heroes" call their families? On cell phones as was initially reported?

Now I dare you to GIS "flight 93 crash site" and tell me a 757 crashed there.

Cognitive dissonance at its finest.

Re:Fuck the TSA

[hairyfish]

I'm no conspiracy theorist, frankly I find that lot to be quite looney and not open to information that doesn't suit their story, but after 9/11 I tried many times to use my mobile phone on domestic flights, even when flying slow and low over well populated cities with saturation coverage in preparation for landing and could never get a call through ever. I don't believe any of the 9/11 truther BS, but the mobile phone calls mid-flight for me seems to be a bit hard to swallow.

Magic rock.

[NettiWelho]

But I don’t see any tigers around, do you?

Purpose of the TSA

[Anonymous Coward]

Neither Congress nor the President will withhold funding because the purpose and effectiveness of the TSA is not defined by how many criminals it catches. The purpose, rather, is to condition the American public to accept ever increasing government restrictions on our various freedoms. By that measure, the TSA is reasonably effective.

Re:Purpose of the TSA

[Anonymous Coward]

Pfffft...
It's apparent that you and most of the other slashtards don't understand bureaucracy. PAY ATTENTION. No one wants to take away your rights because none of you are important enough and it's too much work. Instead, the people behind the TSA, NSA, and other parts of the runaway government want the same thing that everyone else wants, Republican or Democrat, "Conservative" or "Liberal", they want more money, more power, and more importance.

And none of you fools understand that this is just as bad as any megalomaniac. One megalomaniac can be killed, but hundreds of thousands of greedy little bureaucrats are like an incurable disease. Until all politicians and bureaucrats have term limits and can be exiled at the end of their "service", it won't stop.

Nazi Germany, Soviet Union, Pol Pot's Cambodia, Mao's China, North Korea, etc. were never the work of any one monster. They are all the work of thousands of people who'll do anything (including selling their very souls) just for a little more money, power, or status.

Feel free to rage against me or mod me down, but you know I'm right.
 

Re:Purpose of the TSA

[AthanasiusKircher]

No, it's not. Don't be stupid. There's no grand conspiracy out to get you.

Hmm... can you still say that with a straight face after the Edward Snowden stuff?

Look, I'm NOT a conspiracy theorist. I think the 9/11 "truthers" and the "birthers" and whoever else are mostly lunatics.

But when I first started hearing about all the crap that was loaded into the Patriot Act, it was pretty scary. And little-by-little, over the years, more and more crap about SECRET government power grabs has come out. After all the stuff with Snowden, etc., can you seriously go around calling people "stupid" who suggest that the government is gradually increasing its power grab into our rights?

I agree with you that the TSA is security theatre, and Americans wanted something that made them feel safer about flying. But that doesn't explain SECRET initiatives in the past decade or so created by the government that are intent on gradually eroding the First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments (among others).

If these "rights overrides" were supposed to make us all feel better about how the government is protecting us, why the heck aren't they made public knowledge?

Don't get me wrong -- I'm not suggesting that there is some secret group of government officials planning to take away our rights piece-by-piece. It's nothing so organized and calculated.

Instead, politicians are generally interested in two things: (1) getting re-elected, (2) having personal power.

Politicians are probably just as scared as many Americans are about having another terrorist attack -- at 9/11, it swung in the way of the incumbent administration, which convinced the People that its bungled attempts to be aware of the terrorists should be forgotten. Instead -- "Hey, look over there -- bad guy in Iraq! He must have some bad stuff. Let's go attack them!" Of course, there's oil interests and all sorts of other power/money crap tied up in that, but let's not get into that now.

The point is: the next time something really bad happens, the public could turn against incumbents. So, all the secret crap is a massive attempt at CYA. Hopefully lots of drones attacking apparent "terrorist civilians," the NSA spying on EVERYONE, etc. will be doing something... and if not, at least it's probably paying a lot of government cronies through contracts and such, who probably can help at election time. Even if they don't manage to prevent an attack, they could trot out all the stuff they did do.

And along the way, the government gradually ratchets up the power they're taking and consolidating, which doesn't generally make any government officials unhappy.

It's not a "grand conspiracy." But the power grabs are deliberate and often kept secret, as they erode our rights. So even if it's not an organized attempt to take away our rights, effectively it does condition us to gradually accept more "flexibility" about our rights (as the GP argued)... something which can be helpful at times for people who like to be in power.

And contrary to the ravings of the conspiracy theorists, this IS a democracy. The people get what they want, for better or worse.

Yeah, sort of. Any psychologist would tell you that people often tend to make bad choices for themselves. They may think they "want" something, but they really don't -- nevertheless, they keep making stupid choices.

Hence, Congress has had approval ratings in the toilet for almost as long as anyone can remember (generally excepting wartime, after 9/11, and such, when one has to be "patriotic" and support our Congressmen!). How is it possible that Congress can consistently have approval ratings in the 10-25% range (and even lower), yet incumbents generally keep getting reelected?

All it takes is a little stump speachifying and a little "bacon" to bring home to the district/state, and people say, "Yeah, let's keep this guy!"

Similarly, all it takes is some minor continuo

Re:Purpose of the TSA

[artor3]

I have read the news, and clearly I pay closer attention than you. I repeat: there is no grand conspiracy out to get you. The US government is run by TENS OF THOUSANDS of people, who are often fighting against each other. You think that's all an act? You think that many people, working over so many decades, could pull something like that off without leaks? No. It's not possible.

People are people. Most people think they have good ideas about how to run things. These aren't wannabe tyrants. They legitimately believe their ideas would make life better. You are probably one of these people.

Now, some of those people don't just daydream, they actually try to put their ideas into action. So they get involved. They get on their local school board, or run for mayor, or whatever. If things go well, they try to move up the ladder, to a position where they could spread their good ideas to more people.

At some point, they run into other people, who have different ideas. They argue, and fight, and try to convince the public to side with them. In order to win over the public, they do things that they might not really believe in. And like all people, when they do something they don't believe in, they rationalize it. They convince themselves that it is for the best. You do this too. We all do.

If you can learn to set aside your hatred, and remind yourself that people are people, not comic book villains, the world will make a lot more sense. There's no big evil conspiracy, except within your own imagination.

Re:Purpose of the TSA

[ebno-10db]

There's no grand conspiracy out to get you.

Nor does there need to be - this erosion of freedom is far more pernicious than any plot hatched in a back room. The "it's for your own good", or worse, "it's for our own good", is corrosive. Every "security enhancement" for the sake of feelgood eats away at freedom. Every step is justified as being only a minor intrusion, and thought to be worth it because we supposedly live in dangerous times.

Re:Purpose of the TSA

[AthanasiusKircher]

These aren't wannabe tyrants. They legitimately believe their ideas would make life better.

You may want to take a history lesson at some point. Go read about the fall of the Roman Republic and how it gradually morphed into a dictatorship. Almost every step along the way was a guy trying to "make things better for the common man," and many if not most of them actually had noble intentions. Take a look at the sequence, from Tiberius Gracchus and his brother Gaius, Marius, Sulla, and Cinna all the way to Pompey, Crassus, and Julius Caesar, most of them were "progressive" reformers, trying to help the downcast and improve the plight of people in Rome in general.

Plato knew this too, and placed democracy as just one step away from a dictatorship in his classification of governments. The quest to help people can easily turn to a quest for power (since the downtrodden tend to give away any power they have to someone who will given them anything)... and pretty soon you find yourself with a tyrant or at least a "noble, well-meaning" dictatorship at first.

All through a sequence of people with good intentions and ideas to "make the world better." So was Hitler. Seriously -- this is one place it might actually be appropriate to bring him up, along with just about every other wacko dictator in history. Almost all of them started from a place where they legitimately believed their ideas would make life better.

"Tyrants" don't have to be "wannabe." They just happen when somebody's "good ideas" turn out to be really bad for lots of people.

And like all people, when they do something they don't believe in, they rationalize it. They convince themselves that it is for the best. You do this too. We all do.

Yeah, the issue is that you need to draw the line somewhere. There has to be some action you can't rationalize just to make your vision for the world come true. Unfortunately, I seriously think that most people who have the initiative to get very far up the ladder in government usually are the people who don't have that "line," or at least it's so malleable depending on circumstances that they'll do whatever to maintain their position or power or ability to try out their "good ideas" for the world.

So, no, I don't and cannot rationalize the way "rights" have been rapidly redefined in the U.S. in recent years. Most of our public officials are clearly even embarrassed themselves by what they're doing, since they bury their actions in secret documents and clandestine actions or try to hide things in piles of legislation.

It doesn't take a grand conspiracy to erode rights, and it doesn't take a "wannabe tyrant" to end up with a really, really bad government. It just takes a series of gradual shifts, and people doing what they can to -- as you put it -- "spread their good ideas to more people."

The danger is when people like you fail to see that a sequence of such bad trends can accumulate into something really bad, without necessarily a grand conspiracy of any sort.

Ah, but the real test

[Anonymous Coward]

is how much taxpayer money can it funnel into private hands thanks to paranoia and security theater?

Why all the suprise? TSA is not about security.

[bobbied]

TSA is not about providing security, despite the word being in it's name. TSA is about the appearance of security..

If it was about security, they would have never spent a billion on such worthless tripe. They would have spent a billion buying blue gloves for pat downs, doing background checks and buying boat loads of video cameras to watch.

This was somebodies billion dollar boondoggle idea to try and sound like they where doing something.

Re:yes and no

[Anonymous Coward]

"I want the ability to carry my firearm, which all will agree is a political non-starter."

No, it's not a political non-starter, it's a common sense non-starter. Americans seem to have no common sense whatever on this particular issue.

Re:yes and no

[sjames]

Had flight 93 had a lock on the cockpit door (a measure that I DID say is appropriate), it wouldn't have crashed at all. None of the other planes would have crashed either had they had locks. The problem is entirely solvable by a trip to the hardware store.

As for weapons, one of those dinner plate sized belt buckles will mess you up before you can even get close enough to someone to harm them with a box cutter.

So yes, I absolutely positively *DO* advocate a return to pre 9/11 when people were free(ish).

If you like, the cabin crew can have guns.,/p>

Re:yes and no

[kylemonger]

A terrorist with brains still has his edged weapon onboard. A piece of broken glass makes a fine weapon and passengers are free to bring laptops, cellphones, and tablets with glass screens aboard. Break the screen, extract a nice glass shard and all you need is a handle.

Airport security is just a big wank. Think how many people that yahoo at LAX could have killed if he really wanted to. Dozens of people trapped like cattle in the security line waiting for be mowed down.

defund and...

[Anonymous Coward]

Step 1. Defund TSA
Step 2. Terrorist attack 2015
Step 3. Blame Obama
Step 4. Republicans/Tea Party for 8 years.

Re:yes and no

[arth1]

Giving guns to the cabin crew sounds like a terrible idea. Then, instead of having to try to sneak a weapon onto the plane (possibly getting caught, which could ruin any sort of 9/11 style simultaneous multi-plane conspiracy), the terrorists merely need to overpower a crew member to obtain a firearm.

It would also discriminate against pilots who are pacifists, and would refuse to operate a weapon.

Not to mention the risk of a pilot going postal with a gun. And there have been several instances of pilots flipping. They have a high stress job, abnormal sleep patterns, and it's expected that they have a higher risk.

try it, I have. Autoland okay in no wind but fog

[raymorris]

Autoland is useful when there's little flying to be done because there's little to no wind, little traffic, an uncomplicated approach, but the pilot can't see. That's when radar based systems have the advantage, when visibility is poor.

I've landed a plane a few times, with help from my instructor. You read Wikipedia. You go land a few and then come back and tell us about it.

Mission Accomplished!

[billstewart]

Yup. They don't have to catch criminals and terrorists significantly more often than chance, and even catching them less often than chance is just fine, as long as most people submit to the bullies and they can beat up the ones who don't. (Occasionally they fail, like the other week when some loser decided to shoot up the TSA because he had a problem with authority.)

I'm skeptical about the "scientific study", though, because TSA is almost never actually dealing with terrorists; they're much more likely to be dealing with people who are carrying politically incorrect plants and pharmaceuticals, or reading politically incorrect books, or worrying about the TSA thugs rooting through the underwear in their carryon bags.