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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."
Fuck 'em. Disband that shit ASAP.
But I don’t see any tigers around, do you?
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.
This is just another example of the government cutting funding for the arts. Sure, it may be security theatre but these days that is the only kind of theatre I see to have time for.
Maybe we can get the National Endowment for the Arts to pick up the slack. Or they could move to an NPR model and hold pledge drives.
...as all of the other security theater they spend billions / year on. Why stop with SPOT? How many terr'rists have been caught by body scanners versus good old metal detectors? How many terr'rists have been caught by Freedom Gropes? Oh, I get it, travelers don't actually see SPOT in action. Carry on.
Both clips are from the episode: Reverse Cowgirl. That's a Security Camera and Mind if I Touch Your Balls, Sir? Enjoy!
With random chance you get free cancer and ass-probing. Random chance just not offer that level of customer care and retention.
The report isn't about the nudie machines or the crotch groping. This was a program designed to spot potential problems based on the way people act. If it worked, they'd ditch the zappers and replace it with eagle-eyed security guards.
But it doesn't work. Presumably, they spent a billion dollars because they really wanted it to work. This is, after all, patterned after the program that they use in Israel, which is very familiar with terrorism, and has been widely touted as better alternative. In Israel, though, it amounts largely to racial profiling, which has its own drawbacks (as the report points out).
This isn't about the effectiveness of the security theater, one way or the other. It's about something that was supposed to make the security less theatrical. Except it doesn't.
I love a good story about government ineffectiveness.
Unfortunately, this particular story is bull. Their conclusions are based on "meta-analysis of 400 studies over 60 years", not an analysis of the TSA's current procedures. They looked at studies on whether college students can tell when reach other are lying.
The TSA has some problems for sure, but this article doesn't address those.
Terrorists at airports try not to look like terrorists, details at 11.
19 terrorists that *knew* that they were hours away from their deaths and their 72 virgins managed to get on planes and not arouse suspicion from security, the attendants, or surrounding passengers. Some Rent-A-Cop TSA agent is going to improve on this by looking *really* hard? Ummm...no.
What we need is a serious application of SPOT remover.
No brain, no pain.
Chance has been working pretty hard lately, and from what I hear he is very thorough.
for decades, and is a nation that much more frequently faces domestic terrorism. What are the chances they have a better, and cheaper method? Oops, they use common sense. Never mind.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/01/11/yeffet.air.security.israel/
Sent from my ENIAC
is how much taxpayer money can it funnel into private hands thanks to paranoia and security theater?
That means that for each 100 people abused by the TSA or just detained for a deeper inspection, 50 were found guilty of something? Or must be read like it could be random chance throwing 100 dices and that all hit 6?
Anyway, if they are forced to improve numbers, they will find enough victims, after all everyone commits 3 felonies a day
that's the strongest argument against the TSA I've ever heard.
That which is not dead may eternal lie,and in strange aeons even death may die
maybe not -those- 19, or not any of those?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylNgK8k2kt8
Sent from my ENIAC
This would have never been an issue to begin with.
200 armed assholes, err, passengers wouldn't have let any jerkoff crash a plane intentionally to begin with.
Then we wouldn't need TSA screening us.
I can't believe i still live here.
Flame on, pussies.
zenlessyank was here.
Again, slashdot, fuck your karma & your advertising.
Look at this rock. This magical anti-tiger rock. It has a 100% success rate at repelling tigers. Do you see any tigers? No. See. That's hie you know it works.
On the off-chance that you're actually being serious, what makes you think that the lack of successful attacks since 9/11 has anything to do with the TSA?
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.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Well, to be fair, the TSA was not created to catch terrorists, it was created to prevent terrorist attacks. And it does that, like nothing would.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
On the off chance that you're serious, I have a rock to sell to you...
In order to obtain (ok, to actually EARN, sadly they get it regardless) funding, they have to prove that they're doing their job. How? Well, if they have a 100% success rate, they probably have a few terrorists to show, right? Well, show off what you caught!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The NSA spying on the US may be why the TSA results are slightly better than average, instead of abysmally worse than average.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
I'm thinking of selling strands of hair from my brush to golfers. I have never been struck by lightning.
"We have an Accountability Office?? How much does THAT cost??"
That is why they were given the job, think of the spin-offs:
- make work, how many new government employees were trained and hired? That probably required an entire infrastructure to be built out.
- Keep the "security theatre" front and centre. Every time you go to the airport you are reminded of what your gvt is doing to keep you safe.
- See, after all this there are no more bears in the streets (they lack of caught terrorists prove it works).
Well that's much better than I would have guessed.
Since when is that the job of the TSA? Surely, the TSA's job is to stop people from bringing bombs, guns and knives onto airplanes.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
It looked at the meta-analyses to see if there was any support at all to behavioral detection. It looked at the TSA data to see if the TSA could defend its own assertions. The few positive points were basically nullified by poor data collection.
Half of the GAO summary was devoted to the part of the story you ignored, which was the relevant part. It's like you can read, but chose not to for the middle half. The story you will love is that the TSA is inept at capturing relevant data. The GAO is capable of seeing through that.
Don't bother straining yourself, I'll even paste the words here so you can ignore them more easily.
The TSA was founded to extend the welfare state. Why else would you create an agency that's sole purpose is to stack grey trays. Remember, the original name for the agency was The Tray Stackers of America. At the last minute, they were forced to change the name, but since their spiffy uniforms and badges were already on order they needed to keep with the "TSA" initials.
After all, if the TSA was really supposed to catch weapons, terrorists, etc. at the airports I believe that even the Feds could have set up a better system.
Another technology that gives essentially random results in polygraph testing.
...this kind of government idiocy, ineptitude, and invasion of privacy is exactly the same kind of crap we're inviting into our healthcare system. TSA, NSA, DMV...ACA. Yeah, gimme more of that fucked up shit.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
"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.
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>
3. Not harassing American citizens other than domestic terrorists like the Tea Party.
I don't much care for the Tea Party folks myself, but I wouldn't call them domestic terrorists. When was the last time they blew up a building? Refusing to compromise with the broader populace and causing government gridlock are not illegal terrorist actions.
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.
El Al has about fifty international flights per day (not much point to domestic air inside Israel). The USA has tens of thousands.
El Al can hire high-end, experienced intelligence operatives for this task. TSA obviously doesn't.
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/10/01/elal-usat.htm#more
They can spend 10 minutes asking question to half the passengers of each flight.
Aye, Fuck the TSA. All you need is someone to make sure that passengers aren't getting on the planes with guns or highly flammable materials (gas, explosives, etc). A couple of bomb sniffing dogs should be able to take care of that.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
is this again how intelligence doesn't scale with population, being also the reason for ballot machines?
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
pistol ports in the doors would probably be an easy solution to this problem. Of course, a much simpler solution might be a trap door in front of the door...
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Putting a gun in the locked cockpit seems basically reasonable. Maybe it could provide a last line of defense against terrorists who somehow manage to take over the cabin and pacify the passengers, and start working to bust down the door.
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.
If we're really worried about this sort of thing, well---the Air Force can have operators fly drones over Iraq from New Mexico. Can't we put some kind of emergency button in the cockpit that gives control of the plane to a remote operator, so if terrorists do storm the cockpit, the pilots can push the button to disable all local control of the plane?
Full disclosure: I don't own a firearm and don't really understand people who do.
Imagine if they only spent half a billion; the program wouldn't even be as good as random chance!
Liberty in your lifetime
The cruise portion of the flight can be handled by autopilot, 98% of the time. Landing is a totally different matter. Landing is HARD. During my first flight lesson, I flew figure eights at altitude. I never could manage to learn to land safely. Landing requires a skilled pilot.
Also, while 98% of the cruise can be handled by the autopilot, there's another 2% that can't. Shit happens, just like with any other activity, and when shit happens aboard an airliner you want a good pilot handling the situation.
Taking off is the other dangerous part. If you've flown a few times you've probably felt turbulence, when the wind blows the plane up and down. If you're at 30,000 feet and a downdraft pushes you down 150 feet it feels like going over a hill. If you're 120 feet off the ground when you drop, you're dead.
There is zero chance that Congress or the White House will withhold as much as a penny from TSA. As soon as someone says "do you want the terrorists to win?" the GAO and everyone else will collapse.
how is this better than in the 90's?
it's the exact same scenario only thing has changed is that they're taking home 100x the money. where do you think their uniforms come from, who they buy their xray machines from and who went to work for tsa middle management??
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Of course, a much simpler solution might be a trap door in front of the door...
I believe you were joking but look at the 2013 winner of the Ignobel prize for safety engineering.
Step 1. Defund TSA
Step 2. Terrorist attack 2015
Step 3. Blame Obama
Step 4. Republicans/Tea Party for 8 years.
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.
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.
I've only landed Cessnas, but it's easy. Line it up, get the right approach (easier with a computer than by eye, especially for the beginner), and wait until you hit the ground to apply the brakes. Flare at the end more comfortable, but not required.
Learn to love Alaska
Why do you think the Israeli method is cheaper? They spend about 10 times as much per passenger as we do:
http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/01/07/would_you_pay_25_for_71_seconds_of_scrutiny_in_an_airport
Well, yes and no.
The only reason the hijackers were able to take the plane down is that the door was unlocked. Lock it and the plane wouldn't have gone down.
Learn to love Alaska
Arming the cabin crew also makes the renegade pilot scenario more likely. Wait til the other pilot is sleeping or in the bathroom, pull gun, kill other pilot, now you have flying missile ala 9/11.
PS, if by chance you ARE a commercial pilot, I would defer to your expertise. My comments are based on primarily on performing a few landings myself and some knowledge of accident rates, reinforced by experience in realistic simulators and flying models.
They're not banning gatorade because it's dangerous - they're banning it because there are liquid explosives that you can dye unnaturally fluorescent colors and carry in a Gatorade bottle.
On the other hand, even pre-9/11 you couldn't bring an open beer onto a plane at most airports, because the US has silly laws about such things. Even though there's a bar in the airport right across from your gate, that'll give you your beer in a to-go cup so you can drink it at the gate while waiting for your plane.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
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.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Should have been from the security-theater-tickets-proven-expensive dept.
VKh
Our method doesn't work any better than flipping a coin, so ALL of our money is wasted. Any method that works better is therefore cheaper lol.
Sent from my ENIAC
Scales fine. 50:10,000 flights, $90,000,000 per year:45,000,000,000 per year. Cost for screening taken from your link. $45 billion isn't that much, compared to the cost of going after Iraq and Afghanistan. Yes, even $45,000,000,000 per year. But it doesn't matter. Even if it was funded to that level, we'd still screw it up. The simple point is that it does scale, and not that poorly.
Learn to love Alaska
Looks like that Ph.D. in Melodrama is serving a government employee well somewhere!
I'm pretty sure government kills more people every year than terrorists ever have, so it should logically follow that shutting down government was a Good Thing.
Meanwhile... since considerably less than half the populace actually favors Obamacare, what was that about thwarting the will of the majority, again?
Yeah. Go die in a fire.
That I'm right, and you don't like it, doesn't mean I'm a troll.
No, there were other names on the ballots, but no other choices. You are confused as to how politics works in the US. In my personal defense, I've voted in every election since 1988, and never voted for the winner.
Learn to love Alaska
Police interrogation techniques (not torture, that never works - ever)
Torture works fine. You threaten someone with violence (jail) until they agree to confess (plea). Go torture. The point of torture was never to find the truth. It was to beat a confession out of someone, true or false didn't matter. And it works. If you torture someone, they will crack. Then they will tell you what they think you want to hear, regardless of what the truth is.
Learn to love Alaska
Seems like a group Tim McVeigh would have liked. Though Ted wouldn't have.
Learn to love Alaska
If we're going to worry about that, we need to make the planes transporter proof too so Gary 7 can't beam in and sabotage it.
In other words, it hasn't been a problem, isn't likely to be a problem, and if it becomes one, it will be with or without guns in the cockpit.
The problem with locks is that there might be instances/emergencies when you want to access the cockpit. Locks would cause deaths in these cases. On average, how many people do locks save from terrorist attacks and how many extra deaths do locks cause by preventing access to the cockpit in emergencies?
Hm. Maybe they should hand out weapons to all passengers before the flight starts. Not guns, but maybe clubs and knives. Sure, one passenger may try to pull something, but he has to know that everyone else is armed, too. ;)
Autoland does just fine with windy conditions. IIRC (and this may have changed) the 777 is/was certified for a higher crosswind component with autoland enabled than under manual control.
-- "...I'm a bad guy because I, well, I sing some rock-and-roll songs." M. Manson
(not an armchair pilot here either - commercial multi engine rated).
-- "...I'm a bad guy because I, well, I sing some rock-and-roll songs." M. Manson
Humans are pretty good at noticing anyone that looks or acts different. We are social animals and this type of observation provides all kinds of useful information in all kinds of contexts. My guess is this capability was heavily selected for all down our primate lineage.
The problems here are two. The first is that looking or acting slightly strange in a situation ( air travel ) that is common and normal for some, stressful and foreign for others and somewhere in between for the majority isn't necessarily as good an indicator of malicious intent as it is of who is going to need help filing out the gate check slip for the luggage.
The second is hindsight bias, everyone who does have some malicious intent gave some indicator, if you look hard enough after the fact. That indicator is probably imaginary and meaningless. You get a bunch of people saying "you know the underwear bomber guy did kinds shuffle funny when he walked". So now you get a bunch of agents standing around watching how everyone walks, the next guy they see shuffling though is just in uncomfortable shoes.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Well, yes and no. The folks on Flight 93 paid the ultimate price for resisting the hijackers. They saved a lot of lives on the ground, but the choice between "take the bastards with us" and "keep the bastards off the flight to begin with" is a no-brainer.
That may be true but look at the terrorists perspective. If you know the most you can accomplish is the destruction of a airline filled with mostly unimportant people, it does not advance the cause as much as destroying a major military complex, or symbol of Western Culture does. It may even hurt the cause because even people sympathetic to you might see it as just killing and maiming the innocent.
Not as easy to find people willing to die to accomplish that.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
(1) They hire idiots
(2) They tools they have won't find shit
Ist, I've flown a bit lately, and lets be honest, abusive and uneducated are the only words I have for TSA. Just assholes with a uniform there to make your life miserable, not to make people safe, but to make people "feel" safe. A prison cell with a locked door is pretty safe too.
2nd, none of the toys and scanners they have can find anything they are looking for because they really don't understand them or their use.
Welcome to the police state where abuse of citizens means an effective police force.
TSA was put in place under Bush. Just a reminder.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
Well, to be fair, the TSA was not created to catch terrorists, it was created to prevent terrorist attacks. And it does that, like nothing would.
That's not true. I bought a terrorist prevention rock right after 9/11, and ever since then, there hasn't been a terrorist attack.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
I don't much care for the Tea Party folks myself, but I wouldn't call them domestic terrorists. When was the last time they blew up a building? Refusing to compromise with the broader populace and causing government gridlock are not illegal terrorist actions.
Convincing poor old people that they don't want health care is pretty evil, and will end up killing more than the 9/11 attack. So, yes, I think it's pretty apt to call them terrorists.
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
While popular in '70s drama, in real life there haven't been any cases on a jetliner where the pilots are incapacitated and a passenger saves the day EVER. So I'd put the death toll of the locks at zero.
You didn't address the rest of my post. I always vote for a loser of one kind or another. It doesn't help. There's nothing *I* can do to change it. I don't have the charisma or money. Voting for a major party candidate will let you select between them. Voting for a 3rd party candidate gets your vote ignored because nobody else votes 3rd party.
Learn to love Alaska
You are worried about the guy who can literally drive the plane into the ground if he chooses shooting himself?
He can't - other cabin crew will take over and prevent that from happening. Unless he has a gun, of course.
I wonder if the BDO's were not allowed to use all the same techniques, like racial profiling, that they use in Israel. It didn't say in the report.
Why do you think the Israeli method is cheaper? They spend about 10 times as much per passenger as we do:
http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/01/07/would_you_pay_25_for_71_seconds_of_scrutiny_in_an_airport
Which still only amounts to 76 dollars per trip for real security instead of security theater according to your link.
I bet a lot of people would pay 76 dollars extra to get through the line faster and without having to endure all the new crap. Get to bring full bottles of shampoo or bring your drink on the plane, leave your belt and shoes on, don't have to be seen naked with the new xray machine or be groped, etc..