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Long TSA Delays Force Airports To Hire Private Security Contractors (popsci.com)
An anonymous Slashdot reader writes:
TSA checkpoints caused 6,800 American Airlines passengers to miss their flights in just one week this spring, and the problem isn't improving. "Two years ago the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) offered $15,000 to anybody -- literally anybody -- who could come up with an idea to speed up airport security..." writes Popular Science. "They wouldn't say who won or for which idea, but since we're here two years later with longer wait times than ever, it's fair to say it hasn't lived up to the groundbreaking ideals of that call to action... Now in summer 2016, the TSA recommends arriving three hours early instead of a mere two."
So this spring the Seattle-Tacoma airport replaced many of the TSA staff with private screeners, although "Private security operates under strict direction from the TSA, and even those airports that heavily utilize private contractors still have a lot of TSA personnel in the back rooms..." according to the article. "The ability to do exactly what the TSA does, only faster and cheaper, seems to be the major draw." Now 22 U.S. airports are using private screeners, although the Seattle and San Francisco airports are the only ones with significant traffic.
The article also cites a Homeland Security report which discovered that investigators were able to smuggle a test bomb past security checkpoints in 67 out of 70 tests.
So this spring the Seattle-Tacoma airport replaced many of the TSA staff with private screeners, although "Private security operates under strict direction from the TSA, and even those airports that heavily utilize private contractors still have a lot of TSA personnel in the back rooms..." according to the article. "The ability to do exactly what the TSA does, only faster and cheaper, seems to be the major draw." Now 22 U.S. airports are using private screeners, although the Seattle and San Francisco airports are the only ones with significant traffic.
The article also cites a Homeland Security report which discovered that investigators were able to smuggle a test bomb past security checkpoints in 67 out of 70 tests.
Obviously since something is easy and sensible it will never be done but for 15K I'll take a whack at it.
To speed up the lines, get rid of the TSA.
It's that simple.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Now in summer 2016, the TSA recommends arriving three hours early instead of a mere two.
Drive to your destination -- even if it's overseas.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Because then they don't have power over us and they can't whine that they need all sorts of extra funding. They also refuse to return to only using the magnetometer instead of the nudie scanners or they insist on groping everybody's privates. And yet they are as effective as Walmart door-greeters when it comes to actual security. So why don't we just hire Walmart door greeters with the magnetometer to use, and be done with it?
Yes how entitled of us to expect that the TSA improve their procedures as time goes on, instead it gets even more inefficient! Last I checked us entitled slashdot users can't drive to Hawaii or any other place outside the continental US. But hey, thanks for your valuable input TSA agent.
Here's a better idea: go fuck yourself.
The TSA hasn't caught any terrorists yet. It's expensive, intrusive, and useless. Not only that, since a perp could just wander into the midst of several thousand people and blow them up while the TSA is making them stand in serpentine lines waiting for the bullshit obedience ritual, the TSA is only increasing the danger to the traveling public.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
wasn't that one of the reasons given for forming the TSA in the first place? Better efficiency? The TSA was going to replace those inefficient, untrained, low paid knuckleheads with....inefficient, untrained HIGH paid government knuckleheads. All the while, they would create another bureaucratic tar pit with a multi-billion dollar annual budget.
Folks - this is why our infrastructure is falling apart and our schools are going to shit. It is not because there is not enough money. It is because of how the money gets spent. There is zero accountability. The TSA is yet another perfect example of this. It is a failed experiment. Were this a private company it would be abandoned, with a follow up study and lessons learned. In government they just throw more (of our) money at it.
This is why whenever the government wants to launch yet another massive program (be it Obamacare or what have you) I am flatly against it. Why? Because they have shown time and time again that they are incapable of managing anything of scale without it turning into a bottomless pit.
No need to scare them away. After 9/11 nobody expects a hijacking to be a flight to Havana and an inconvenient delay. Passengers will kill the next terrorists before they can get into the cockpit or light their underpants on fire.
Have gnu, will travel.
The TSA hasn't caught any terrorists yet. It's expensive, intrusive, and useless.
The purpose of the screenings is not to "catch terrorists" but to deter the terrorists from even trying. I am not say that the TSA is effective, I am just saying that the lack of arrested terrorists isn't proof that they aren't.
Exactly. This and the lock on cockpit door is all that was needed.
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
To speed up the lines, get rid of the TSA.
Even if the TSA is practically useless, at least it scares away most people having bad intentions, including terrorists.
This is easily tested. Pick one major airport and remove TSA screening from it. Fall back to standard security such as metal detectors and explosive particle detectors as people walk through. Let people bring toothpaste and bottled water. Finally, count the number of successful terrorist bombings/hijackings that happen through that airport over the next year. If it's zero, expand the experiment.
Frankly the TSA could continue to draw their paychecks by simply charging a "TSA-free" surcharge at the airports they're not at.
I'm a simple guy, but it's nerve-wracking passing through US airports simply because I realize that all it takes is someone to misunderstand a gesture, or to mis-hear something I say that rhymes with something naughty ("no, officer, I said 'get your Mom', not 'set your bomb'!") and I'll end up missing my flight, plus get stuck on some "person of interest" list for life. The most negative thing I have any interest in doing while in a US airport is leave the country, but still I'm nervous.
"Oh no... he found the
90% of it is Security Theatre to get people flying. Politicians only care about what 50% + 1 of the voting public thinks and reacts to - not what actually works.
The only thing the TSA gorillas are achieving is to make tourists stop visiting the US.
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
So conventions of spelling, sentence structure and such don't apply on the internet?
You know, that explains SO MUCH.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
Perhaps you are caucasian and has rich man appearance
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
Well, if the pilot wants to kill you, you're screwed. Duh. Anything else new?
There are certain things you cannot protect yourself against. But it is absolutely and positively certain that no terrorist passenger will EVER again crash land a plane in a building. It's just like the trojan horse. The first was a huge success. The trick hasn't ever worked since.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Not so much. For most foreign tourists, the real pain is passport control. I flew in to San Jose two weeks ago on a 789 from London. There were about two hundred non-US citizens in a single line to see a single border guard, who was taking an average 7 minutes to process each person. I was near the front and got away with only a 45 minute wait, but I shudder to think how long the folks at the back would have to wait. I'm sure that once the US citizens were all processed, the guards would start processing non-US, but I still think it would be a four or five hour wait for many. That is beyond ridiculous.
And yet, no terrorists. No bridges or malls or trains or buses blowing up, no water being poisoned, etc.
Perhaps not in the US, but in Nice, France, there was recently that Tunisian fellow who drove a large truck through a crowd (on the sidewalk) for two kilometers, killing nearly 100 people, and injuring slightly over 200. Pretty good soft target: a diffuse crowd gathered for Bastille Day celebrations. Quite effective terrorism.
Then in the US, there was that couple in San Bernardino who shot up a Christmas party in 2015. Another effective act of terrorism on a soft target.
And the recent shooting in the night club in Florida.
And the Boston Marathon bombing.
Oh, and the ricin mailed to a senator and the US president.
(and there are more)
So what were you saying again?
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.