TSA Fails To Find Links To Terrorism of Airport Workers

schwit1 writes: An audit of the TSA has found that the agency failed to uncover the terrorist connections of 73 aviation workers when it did background checks of them. According to a report released Monday, the people were employed by major airlines, airport vendors and other employers, and were not identified because the agency lacked access to terrorism-related information from within the government. The agency's "multi-layered process to vet aviation workers for potential links to terrorism was generally effective. In addition to initially vetting every application for new credentials, TSA recurrently vetted aviation workers with access to secured areas of commercial airports every time the Consolidated Terrorist Watchlist was updated," the report found. "However, our testing showed that TSA did not identify 73 individuals with terrorism-related category codes because TSA is not authorized to receive all terrorism-related information under current interagency watchlisting policy." This report comes on the heels of an internal TSA investigation that found 95% of agents testing airport checkpoints were able to bring weapons through.

Comments

Real banner week for the TSA...

[erp_consultant]

First there was the disastrous results of the audit (95% failure rate). Top dog resigns. Now we find out that the TSA does not even have the proper inter-departmental authority. If this wasn't a serious matter it would absolutely hilarious.

Cue the Benny Hill theme in 4...3...2...1

Re:Real banner week for the TSA...

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there anything the TSA does right? Aside from being a federal jobs program for tens of thousands of people?

If conservatives are so in favor of small government and so against welfare, maybe they ought to take a good hard look at the TSA. I'd vote for a presidential candidate who pledged to eliminate this useless boondoggle agency.

Re:Real banner week for the TSA...

[Shakrai]

It's not like the private companies that they replaced were any better. A buddy of mine is the Operations Manager for our little regional airport; in the pre 9/11 days he watched the private outfit miss firearms as they scrolled past on the x-ray machine. In the post 9/11 days it's still a joke; he can get me into the secured area with a simple, "He's with me." statement to the TSA flunkies. Not even a metal detector. That's the gaping hole in airport security, incidentally, insiders. Just buy one off or blackmail them and you're set to do whatever nefarious deed you have in mind. Once you're through the secured area at one airport you're into all of them.

The bigger problem is that our body politic is incapable of having an adult conversation about risk. We live in a society that won't let kids use playgrounds where they might scrape a knee. Good luck having a conversation about the proper balance between security and liberty in that environment.

Re:Real banner week for the TSA...

[Anonymous Coward]

Spot on. The TSA is utterly useless. A complete waste of taxpayer money. Worse than that, it gives Americans a false sense of security where none exists.

People keep forgetting that the TSA is NOT about security, never has been. It is all about training citizens to mindlessly obey a pompous asshole with a semi-official-looking uniform or be punished (being back-roomed to miss your flight).

Re:Real banner week for the TSA...

[phantomfive]

It's not like the private companies that they replaced were any better.

In the pre-9/11 days, I never had my scrotum stroked.

Re:Real banner week for the TSA...

[Obfuscant]

When you start a discussion by referring to the people you disagree with as "nuts", you've pretty much given up the moral high ground on having an "adult conversation".

I could point out that "walking around with loaded firearms" doesn't hurt anyone, and those who wish to use a loaded firearm to hurt someone will simply ignore any laws that prevent everyone else from walking around with them. I'd also point out that "hurting someone with a loaded firearm" is also a law that people who wish to hurt others with a loaded firearms are ignoring, so you gain nothing by a prohibition on "walking around" with them.

It's already illegal to hurt someone with a loaded firearm, so what do you gain by prohibiting law abiding citizens from carrying them. What is the next law that will solve the problem of bad people doing bad things with guns -- a law against THINKING about loaded firearms?

Patience

[Irate Engineer]

My karma is good, so I think I need to off burn some excess. Mod me as you will.

What the TSA and every other TLA agency can't protect against: a previously law-abiding person who decides that they must act against America. Their first criminal act may be the one that kills. The 9/11 hijackers did nothing illegal until well after the cabin doors of their aircraft closed.

The TSA can't do shit against someone who has a brain and patience. Not. a. fucking. thing.

Everyone with CT experience knows TSA is a farce

[WillAffleckUW]

And that's because we're being kind.

If anything, it's an expensive waste of time and resources that makes terrorism more likely, especially when combined with unnecessary and counter-productive unconstitutional search and seizure and monitoring of American citizens in America, when the only useful actionable intel we have ever had has been due to intel gathering that started in the Middle East.

Period.

Living in Fear is the wrong answer. Americans are made of sterner stuff than that.

Re:Grammar

[sjames]

"TSA: Fails to Find Airport Workers. Links to Terrorism."

Doesn't it matter what the "link" actually is?

[hey!]

I mean, if the workers *are* terrorists then they should be arrested, right? Short of that there are countless ways a non-terrorist can be "linked" with terrorists, and due to the "six degrees of separation" phenomenon it's quite common to have surprising looking connections.

For example Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan and I happen to have a common common friend. I met the friend through work and Bandar knew him because his family was a neighbor in Aspen where Bandar has a house. And since Bandar is in the Saudi royal family and Osama bin Laden belonged to a prominent Saudi family, it's almost certain that Bandar knew him from before his Mujahideen days in Afghanistan. So I'm only two two acquaintances removed from Osama bin Laden. That sounds alarming! But in fact I've never *met* Bandar, in fact I've never met any Saudis at all.

I've been racking my brains for people I've met from the actual Middle East, and it turns out that at one point in my career met the Egyptian-American space researcher Farouk el-Baz (who has a TNG shuttlecraft named after him!). El-Baz comes from a connected family; his brother for example was high up in Hosni Mubarak's government, and Farouk himself was at one time a science adviser to Anwar Sadat. It's a fair bet that he knows somebody from Egypt who later went on to be involved with the Muslim Brotherhood -- it wouldn't reflect on him at all. But if that were true I'd be just one acquaintance away from a direct "connection" with the Muslim Brotherhood.

Now it also happens that my wife went to graduate school with someone who was the first woman valedictorian of the US Naval academy. Since I know her directly, I have all kinds of one-degree of separation relationships to people in all kinds of sensitive military and national security positions. I also two different one-degree of separation connections to the Clintons and current Secretary of State John Kerry. If you count my "connections" to my college professors at MIT I'm one-degree of separation away from several Manhattan Project scientists.

If you plotted out my social network to two or three links away it'd look remarkable, in some cases even disturbing. But it's not. "Connection" means almost nothing. There have been cases of people "connected" to terrorists because the frequently called the same number -- a Manhattan pizza restaurant.