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TSA Replaces Security Chief As Tension Grows At Airports
HughPickens.com writes: Ron Nixon reports at the NYT that facing a backlash over long security lines and management problems, TSA administrator Peter V. Neffenger has shaken up his leadership team, replacing the agency's top security official Kelly Hoggan (Warning: source may be paywalled) and adding a new group of administrators at Chicago O'Hare International Airport. Beginning late that year, Hoggan received $90,000 in bonuses over a 13-month period, even though a leaked report from the Department of Homeland Security showed that auditors were able to get fake weapons and explosives past security screeners 95 percent of the time in 70 covert tests. Hoggan's bonus was paid out in $10,000 increments, an arrangement that members of Congress have said was intended to disguise the payments. During a hearing of the House Oversight Committee two weeks ago, lawmakers grilled Mr. Neffenger about the bonus, which was issued before he joined the agency in July. Last week and over the weekend, hundreds of passengers, including 450 on American Airlines alone, missed flights because of waits of two or three hours in security lines, according to local news reports. Many of the passengers had to spend the night in the terminal sleeping on cots. The TSA has sent 58 additional security officers and four more bomb-sniffing dog teams to O'Hare. Several current and former TSA employees said the moves to replace Hoggan and add the new officials in Chicago, where passengers have endured hours long waits at security checkpoints, were insufficient. "The timing of this decision is too late to make a real difference for the summer," says Andrew Rhoades, an assistant federal security director at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport who testified his supervisor accused him of "going native" after attending a meeting at a local mosque and that TSA's alleged practice of "directed reassignments," or unwanted job transfers were intended to punish employees who speak their minds. "Neffenger is only doing this because the media and Congress are making him look bad."
How can such failures even get their pay checks, let alone bonuses?
USA, land of the corrupted.
And have the TSA pull out?
Mandate that if wait times exceed one hour, the TSA is required to let all travelers through without screening until the lean clears.
That is a balance between there being some possibly security someone would have to traverse with a bomb or what have you, and actually letting people make flights.
It would also eliminate the massive human backlog the TSA is creating at every airport which we all knew for years, and now we ESPECIALLY know after brussels, are the juiciest targets.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
despite the fact I got to SEATAC more than two hours early, screw the TSA.
Poorly trained, poorly managed non-English speaking minimum wage employees working for entrenched bureaucracies who believe that the bureaucracy is the important task, not safety or transportation. It's why Boston was chosen as the departure point for 9/11: Chicago TSA is almost as bad as Boston was before the event, and about as filled with managers and no actual competent policies or personnel on the ground as Boston is now.
I've walked throwing several juggling daggers through Logan repeatedly by accident, with six inch double edged blades. They were not sharp, but Logan never caught them. Neither did Chicago, for that matter. *Salt Lake City* caught them, as did LAX, and I had to apologize for the mistake and mail them back separately. I don't carry them anymore, which is a shame. They were good for my mild RSI.
(Seattle) when I got to the airport more than two hours before my flights, screw the TSA. Two hours early should be more than enough.
You do realize they laugh? They would be everyone but the one getting their ass searched. How can stupidity and paranoia morph into what is waiting for you at an airport? Laughter is the best medicine.
>> TSA administrator Peter V. Neffenger has shaken up his leadership team
Translated: thrown his #2 under the bus in the hopes he gets blamed for the #1 guy screwing up.
More realistically, the command to slow down came from the top, to put political pressure on Congress to increase the TSA's budget. (Remember all the news stories crying about "not enough staffing" a few weeks ago?)
It's really time to disband the agency, only now it will be impossible since there are entrenched federal jobs.
The entire TSA thing seems to be a farce and a fraud, little more than security theatre as so many security specialists have described it over many years. I suspect the TSA knows this too, but they probably don't care or they'd have done something about it by now.
Indeed, their main interest in practice may be to siphon American tax dollars into contractor pockets and nothing else. Their real goal clearly isn't effective security nor dollar efficiency nor streamlining public air transport, so what explanations are left?
In an organization built upon such flawed foundations, it's almost natural that the top honchos are lining their own pockets with ill-founded bonuses. The whole thing stinks from top to bottom.
Oh, so the Indian tribes of Minneapolis have starting convert to Islam. That's a new thing. Also, the TSA clearly forgot to give the basic queuing theory refresh course for the new managers.
http://stuffblackpeopledontlik...
That black-hating blog puts the number at 21% But I guess that rounds to 50%, right?
Learn to love Alaska
60,000 employees, a $7.5B budget, and all they have to show for it is $90K in graft?
If they privatized that train wreck of a federal agency into a train wreck of a corporation, their top brass would be getting millions in unearned bonuses, millions more in golden parachutes, and that's not even counting the embezzlement.
Government inefficiency at it's worst.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
She's a socialist with Microsoft connections. Of course she hates the Internet.
TSA will only be successful when they find individual who will say it loudly and clearly: King has no clothes, and current TSA is a security theater. Without naming the problem, it is not possible to resolve the issue efficiently and effectively.
Reality is that the median throughput of one TSA checkpoint is approximately 5-6 seconds per person, 20 persons per minute, or 1,800 per one hour, but it could be even faster.
Another fact is that every passenger pays, $5.60 per check. At that throughput TSA collects approximately $7,000 per one hour through one lane, and in an airport in a terminal there can be 5, 6 or 7 lanes. We are talking about approximately up to $50,000 revenue per hour. The truth is TSA does need funding from budget, because they collect all the money that they need from the passengers (via airline fees, non negotiable)>
As we said, it is not about the money. Literally, to quote a famous quote from movie the Bug's life, it is literally: to keep them in line.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
We could have just banned box cutters and other tools that could be used to hijack an aircraft or to threaten aircrew and passengers as well as creating and enforcing security standards for air port screeners.
The reason is they are making powerful people mad, in particular airlines and port authorities. The port authority over the NY and NJ airports has told the TSA they either fix their shit, or they are getting replaced with private security. These are the guys that oversee JFK, LaGuardia, and Newark Liberty. Those three together are basically the biggest transit hub in the US. So the port authority has some force behind them. They'd have to pay for their own security by airport fees, of course, on top of the TSA fee, but they could do it because they are airports that are so important.
Well, if they do it and it works, that paves the way for other airports to do it as well. Enough do it and they'll push back against the TSA fee saying it is unfair and shouldn't be charged.
Now yes, Congress could change the law and say "You can only have TSA security, otherwise we shut down the airport," but as a practical matter such a thing would face very difficult push back not just from the port authorities, but the states themselves and of course the airlines who are large, important, and well connected.
Individuals getting mad won't do much unless people make it an issue for the ballot box, which isn't likely, but the institutions involved are getting sick of the shit.
Wouldn't this be the perfect opportunity for a lame-duck president to cut some fat without fear, leaving a hugely popular legacy? :) One can dream... sigh
In which way is this nerd related..?
I've flown 4 times in the past month (Denver, Chicago, Seattle, Boston) The lines were always reallllly.....short! I have no idea what all the TSA fuss is about.
There is a provision in law that allows an airport to kick TSA out. There are a number of airports that are TSA free. The TSA cannot be removed completely since they still have some authority on oversight of private screeners but the screeners would not be TSA employees and the airports would be free to hire as many security people as they wish to keep wait times reasonable.
What needs to happen is the people that run the airports need to grow a pair and get rid of the TSA. I'm not sure of this but I suspect that the TSA screeners do not cost the airports any money but private security would. In markets with competition between airports I'd think that showing short wait times, freedom from TSA ball grabbing, and generally a more pleasant traveler experience would make up for any monetray losses for having private screeners. Passengers missing flights costs money. People choosing to stay home or drive costs money.
There is no such thing as a free lunch. The TSA may be providing a service to airports without charging them money but this comes at a cost of fewer travelers, missed flights, passenger complaints, etc. which comes with costs. One huge cost is the loss of control over their own airport and piss poor security.
The only reason, IMHO, we have not lost another plane to terrorism since 9/11 is because they stopped trying. Why did they stop trying? Again IMHO, it's because they got what they wanted. They want people to fear another attack. The terrorists won and it is because of the TSA that they won.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
In order to kill lots of people, you need bioweapons, good chemical weapons, a big bomb, or an airplane full of people.
Airplanes are fragile vehicles. That, combined with sardine conditions, and high tech jet engines, allows the inherently inefficient process of flying to get 70 passenger miles per gallon. It is an engineering tradeoff. That means a small bomb, carried by an individual, can take down a Boeing 737 (150 people). ISIS used a coke can sized bomb to blow up a Russian A320. In contrast, the high speed rail bombings in Spain used 10 backpack bombs to kill ~200 people. A suicide bomber with a backpack bomb in a crowed area might kill 10 or 20 people. There will be a lot of injured people, and expensive medical bills, but it is cheaper than the military. See also the 7/7 bombings: 4 bombs, which only killed 52 people. I also want to point out that the bombs used in Columbine failed. The 2 shooters only killed 15 people. Brussels bombing: 3 bombs only killed 32 people. San Bernardino shootings killed 14 people.
Accused of "going native"? I knew the police did it, but I was unaware that ALL representatives of government power were ordered to view themselves as an occupying military in a land they hate.
They are federal employee union employees. That means they pay union dues which goes to the DNC. He would not be interested in cutting that.
Remember, we have $4Trillion in infrastructure that needs to be done, same amount as 8 years ago. He got $800 billion for "shovel ready jobs" to fix this in 2008, and because Congress just repeats budgets instead of rewriting new ones that $800 billion has been spent every year since for same reason. We have now spent $5.6 Trillion on "fixing infrastructure" and have the same amount to fix as before we spent that. It really was a money laundering scheme to get money into hands of union workers and back to the DNC.
There is no interest in the DNC cutting a single union employee job, even if it is hurting the country.
I want the head of whoever the hell authorized payment of those bonuses to this jackass.
Just another day in Paradise
Terrorists seem to have won....
Why do we take this any longer? We paid for our ticket, we should be able to use it. There are many more passengers than security agents, what happens when the crowd mentality hits and the passengers storm security?
This is our country, we want it back! Let's take it!
Don't you remember?
"You can't professionalize unless you federalize," Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D.
My colleagues regularly discuss various security theater we observe and how easy it is to bypass, circumvent or otherwise thwart (in this case, use it against itself).
I understand that in Brussels now they have checkpoints on the road to the airport...
In a 100-0 vote, the Senate passed a security bill that would put all 28,000 screeners and other airport security personnel on the federal payroll.
The USA PATRIOT Act passed the Senate by a vote of 98 to 1 and passed the House by a vote of 357 to 66.
Every time there's a TSA post, the same responses always come out. "They haven't caught anybody, therefore it's a waste." It's possible that they are effective in that they've discouraged people from trying to repeat the incidents of 9-11 as the terrorists have decided that the odds of being caught aren't worth the risk. Yes, even with tests showing the TSA keeps failing to catch what it should most of the time, it still may be enough of a risk that terrorists are skipping it.
i fly sometimes and I have no problem with the TSA. What really gets me is how people who never, ever fly sometimes have the most strident opinions about how bad the TSA is. I knew a guy who took his last flight around 1999 or 2000 and very likely he will die with never again going on a plane. He has no reason to do so - ever. Yet you couldn't even mention TSA without him giving you a rant and rave session about how bad they were and he never personally has experienced them. Many of you here are the same.
just ban the fees that airlines charge for checking luggage.
Only, he wasn't trying to hijack a single airplane.
He was hijacking the whole system.
And judging by the size of the lines, pretty successful at it.
The guy was caught a guy hijacking TSA funds.
He may have managed to get a bonus for services not rendered.
He hid the payments by splitting them into smaller payments.
(Similar to the congressman who got in trouble for paying a bribe this way.)
Kind of a 'we found the enemy and he is us' moment.
Not really a surprise.
So, how did he get the bonus?
Did he actually do something useful.
Did he cover up the facts? (That might be fraud.)
Was his manager clueless? (That might require yet another scape goat.)
Or was the system he was working in rigged for failure.
I'd bet on the last, with a scapegoat thrown for a bit more theater.
It is after all the election season.
7.5 billion budget and 60,000 employees works out at 125k per employee.
Of course there is/was some capital expenditure, but most of the money goes on wages.
I am wondering about the economics of this whole system.
What is the real cost of an airplane blowing up ? Not including the human element, it's at most 100 million (average).
Question: If we shut down the TSA, how long would it take for 75 airplanes to be blown up ? Let the free market figure it out. Let's somehow incentivise insurance companies to cover acts of terrorism, then see how long it takes them to insist upon *effective* screening. And see how efficiently it can be done.
Seriously. Why the fuck do we need a GOVERNMENT AGENCY to handle what should be getting handled by standard, ACCOUNTABLE, airport security?
There's literally NOTHING these security theater freaks are doing that couldn't be done by old-school airport security.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
We have TSA-Pre, which usually means shorter lines. Last year I was flying home from Boston - the regular security line snaked back and forth several times. The "Pre" line didn't exist as there was nobody ahead of me - the TSA guy was reading a magazine when I got there.
More recently the lines exist but are still short. Maybe 5 minutes.
I live just north of Fremont and can't get DSL or cable despite Comcast's government-granted monopoly. I had a connection over a hundred times faster in rural Georgia over fifteen years ago.
Are we going to do this EVERY thread?
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
All of the hours wasted in these long lines. All of the expensive equipment salaries and benefits for thousands of government bureaucrats. All for an agency that confiscates your water bottle and molests your children but fails 95% of the time when their effectiveness is tested. Pitiful.
They force you to throw your water bottle in a trash can because it might be an explosive device. Never mind the fact that hundreds of people are walking past that same trashcan. They also create a bottleneck so that hundreds of people are standing in a queue, making a nice target for a potential terrorist.
Let the airlines handle their own damned security. The customers and insurance companies will decide the appropriate level of scrutiny that passengers should receive.
My scientific mind could not resist. How many times out of the 70 trials they managed to get weapons through checkpoints?
66 out of 70 is 94%
67 out of 70 is 96%
In many ways, Congress created this mess, and it's frustrating that it's not getting more reporting. Back in 2013, TSA had 47,000 screening agents. Today, it has 42,000, a reduction in about 5,000 screeners. This reduction is a very large part of why TSA lines have gotten worse this year - fewer agents despite a trend of steadily increasing passenger traffic year-over-year. Why did they cut the number of screeners? Because since 2013, Congress diverted $13B of the 9/11 fee on airline tickets to spend on unrelated budget items. So it's no surprise that TSA screening times and quality have dropped: if you cut funding, which leads to 10% headcount reductions, it's not a big surprise that screening times increase.
The TSA isn't needed anymore because the procedures around admittance to the cockpit, and reinforcement of the cockpit door, have been adopted. Nobody is walking onto planes with bombs. They're stashing them onboard when they're being serviced, and that points to focusing on the security of the airport and monitoring of personnel. When I was flying out of the Dominican Republic, there was a cop body-searching everybody that approached and walked away from every plane. That's all he did was scan IDs and do pat-downs. It's all taken care of. We can go back to treating passengers as we did before 2001.
.. pa-ra-bo-la, pa-ra-bo-la, 2 pi R, 2 pi R, where's your latus rectum, where's your latus rectum, 2 pi R
I've waited for two hours in Heathrow, and was set to wait about that long at the Frankfurt airport except some kind airport person brought us to the front of the security line because our plane was going to leave in 30 minutes (transferring from USA flight to one going to Africa so it was an internal security line)
Long waits are hardly only the domain of America, though we have now perfected it into some kind of monster where two hour waits seem now to be the norm at some airports, heading into three hours at times.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
He successfully made lots of people slightly more paranoid, and accepting of government "protection" in areas where they hadn't previously felt the need. So he's done his job well.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
The methods they use actually increase risk factors, by bunching up large numbers of people, as Brussels Airport shows.
End the ineffective security theatre entirely, it's a waste of time.
And screen anyone who goes to/from the following: Saudi Arabia, UAE, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.
All the rest are a total waste of time. And make everyone in those lines VERY UNSAFE.
Did nobody else get proper Counter-Terrorism training?
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --