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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.
If you don't like it, don't fly. The sense of entitlement among Slashdot users is ridiculous. Take an Amtrak, a bus, or drive.
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2016/05/19/airports-are-fed-up-with-tsa-heres-why-it-will-be-hard-to-break-up-with-them.html
Especially to the fact that these private companies are hired by the TSA
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. . . .
They're hiring actors for security theater.
The only thing the private sector can do more efficiently here is maintain good contacts with agents and friendly relations with the acting unions.
private TSA
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?
Oh, they don't like the long lines at TSA checkpoints? Well then, close all the public airports and ground all but military and police aircraft.
Abolish the money drain security theater that is the TSA and let the airports go back to using security methods that were shown to be more effective. Keep DHS as merely a top-level organization and make use of air marshals as has been the standard. Use best practices that have been shown to work, and abandon the costly, ineffective, dangerous (unregulated x-ray), and intrusive methods that do not improve safety.
The ability to do exactly what the TSA does, only faster and cheaper, seems to be the major draw.
I'm sure it's easy to hire people to harass travelers and waste their time for less than the government pays.
offered $15,000 to anybody who could come up with an idea to speed up airport security
Shut down all the "security" theater. Shut down the TSA. Shut down the whole DHS.
That will not only speed things up at airports, but it will result in a huge improvement in the quality of our lives, with the added benefit of saving some money.
That's a win/win/win for everyone.
The logical answer is that the TSA has done very little to improve security. It's an "improvement" over the previous maligned standards when airports just hired incompetent people to run metal detectors, and every airport had different levels of security. Where we are now, every airport has the same level of minimum standards, due to still having TSA personal managing them.
Yet, the problem is that people are choosing to fly. Sure, it might be faster, but only if you are flying somewhere that you can't drive to in 6 hours. For most of us that means flying is no longer reasonable in-state. Amtrak is faster. In fact you can not fly any faster than you can take the train for any in-state destinations, pretty much everywhere except Texas and California, or Canada for that matter (Canada has no rail service outside of the Toronto-Montreal corridor, it is cheaper and faster to go to Seattle and take the Empire Builder to Chicago and then switch trains than it is to The Canadian from Vancouver to Toronto directly.)
Here's how I'd solve it. Bear with me...
Remove ALL TSA, Metal detectors, x-ray machines, drug/bomb sniffing machines and dogs, and instead push this towards Luggage handling. Allow no carry-on, everyone gets an airline-provided spandex/cotton catsuit with the logo of the airline and flight number that they must be wearing when they come to the gate or they will be turned away. Once onboard they may use the onboard entertainment services only. All cell phones and laptops are stored in checked luggage, and anything emitting radiowaves is not permitted.
Luggage handling:
- Suitcase: Charge $50, if it emits radio waves, $150
- Smaller personal items (normally carry-on) $25, emits radio waves $150
- Anything that triggers a search alarm on the x-ray conveyor belt will be tagged with a search notice, and the passenger will be required to use the onboard entertainment to watch the luggage be searched. If they refuse or ignore it, then the luggage will be searched without their consent and charged an additional $50 if anything is held. If they watch it, they can confirm what objects are removed and what to do with them (eg hold (will be left at the airport until picked up,) destroy, mail (will be mailed back to the owner.)
The point of all this is to get people to not take anything with them to their destination, and to "mail back" anything they buy at their destination. Wearing the airline-provided suits is the best, although most embarrassing way to speed up the inspection because that makes it so people can only hide things up their ass, and are taking a risk to do so. No need for a TSA grope.
1. Stop patting down infants and old, white grandmothers in wheelchairs from Kansas.
2. What are the historical odds that someone intent on doing a catastrophic act of terror on a plane is not Muslim man? The are infinitesimally low, statistically zero.
Programs that purport to keep us safer are little more than programs to steal our money. Through threat of government violence and theft we're forced to submit to taxes which do nothing more than benefit private individuals and corporations. We need to end this security theatre. Put responsibility for oneself back into the peoples hands. We should get rid of funding public programs of any sorts. Nobody should have there livelihoods stolen from them for "security" (which is really little more than security theatre). We should get rid of social security, TSA, FBI, state police, mandatory health insurance, mandatory vehicular insurance, mandatory vehicular registration, mandatory drivers licenses, taxes, and all the other things the government mandates. Let people hire there own security, pay for there own children’s education, and so on. The cost of government is extraordinary, unnecessary, and little more than security theatre. I have no problem being charitable. We've had charity longer than we've had government programs stealing funds in the name of charity. Charity is worth something when it actually goes to the mission at hand. But my neighbours certainly don't need government schooling. They can cover these costs if only the government hadn't stolen the money from them in the first place.
Escape to Keene, New Hampshire: Where freedom lovers from all walks of life are migrating to overthrow the violence that is (and new Hampshire in general). We don't need government. Lets just end it.
www.freestateproject.org www.freekeene.com www.freetalklive.com
Seeing as how the TSA has never once prevented a single act of terror, consistently fails field tests and creates larger and larger delays and inconveniences for travelers ranging from hours long lines to outright assault, theft and harassment -- at what point do we the people demand an end to this costly charade?
Your idea is simple but is too costly to implement. We are talking about billions of dollars (was it $4b/year just for screening?) of "cost" (i.e. not ending up in the right pockets).
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
I can arrive at my local, SF Bay Area commuter airport, drive straight up to my plane, pull the plane out, park in the hangar, taxi and be in LA, Reno or Las Vegas usually before a commercial flight takes off. People keep saying that General Aviation is suffering but it's only because people are willing to deal with 3 hour waits for security.
I rarely need to go across the country. You'll never see me at SFO, SJC or OAK for anyplace that I can fly to in less than a tank of gas for my private plane...
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.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Increase the number of checkpoints and screeners?
Do I win?
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.
Clearly the long wait times are the passengers fault. If people would quit waiting around to get on the 3 out of 70 planes that don't have bombs on them, everything would go much faster.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
I know a guy who couldn't hold a job even at Target, Wendy's, corner gas station... Now he works for the TSA.
He's not making fat cash, but this is a guy who wasn't even capable of working at Target as a shelf stocker and now he's working at security checkpoints. If I thought the TSA actually did anything I'd be horrified.
And they're union (I don't think union is automatically bad, but government and union is the worst possible combo), so performance is a joke and he can't get fired short of doing something blatantly illegal (and maybe not even then). Luckily he's just dumb, not crooked, but there are plenty of low class criminals working for TSA. Sometimes they even get caught.
I can tell you We just need all airplane travelers to strip down naked and spread checks. Is is extremely difficult to conduct a proper non-naked 'pat down'. My job required me to do it. An effective pat down that would detect a razor blade would take about 20 minutes. If you really want security, you need naked travelers. Of coarse this will never happen because it would mean evil white men would see women and children naked. You will get more jail time and more hatred directed at you for seeing a naked female baby than you will for trying to blow up a plane. We could have separate planes for women, men and children, but I don't think the business interests would not consider this viable. Since we can not really ensure the safety of the plane, we need to say fuck it. Let's arm all passengers. That way the 'terrorists' know that there is no way to keep a plane 'hostage'. Terrorist should know that if you blow up their plane the USA will track down your parents, your children, and anyone you have ever loved and kill them in a long slow painful process that goes on for decades. Make terrorism disadvantageous to the terrorist. Don't punish everyone who is not a terrorist.
-This post has been sponsored by Coke-Cola(tm). If you disagree with it, you should stop drinking coke and drink a more politically correct beverage that agrees with your more sensible ingrained opinions ( ugh I meant correct view of the world)
At least SFO and few other airports no longer require to take off your shoes.
BTW If you want a check to be deterrent you can simply just use it on 10% of the passengers. Like the shoe check for example. Uncertainty is still sufficient deterrent and it will speed up the lines quite a bit. I would even go as far as simply just screen 10% of the passengers for anything. The checks could be much more thorough, just like we do with the customs. There is no reason why the model that works for customs should not be replicated for the security checks.
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
...Buy more explosives checkers, and get ones so sensitive they'll detect the explosives inside a firearm cartridge loaded inside a gun. Don't look for the metal. Look for the cartridge.
In any system, there are always two complementary failure modes. We call these "type 1" and "type 2" errors. For example, a switch can fail open (does not conduct when it should conduct) or closed (conducts when it is not supposed to conduct).
For a detector, the error types are "false negative", failing to detect an explosive that is there, and "false positive"-- detecting an explosive when one is not there.
It's easy to make a detective super sensitive. Of course, this means that the false positive rate will be astronomical.
The United States isn't the only country in the world with airport security. In fact, the US has forced most countries to implement similar security measures--or face not having international flights to the United States.
And yet, Europe, Canada, and many others have security systems that work (and meet US standards) without significant delays.
Perhaps the TSA could take a look at what is done in these countries.
For example, in Holland, security clearing is done at the gate just before you get on the plane. This means that there is a lot more room for security and not one central choke point.
Terrorists are not normal people. They have super human powers. A pair of tweezers and a small bottle of water is all it takes for them to blow an Airplane out of the sky. How they do it is, of course, top secret.
That is why merely bolting the cabin doors is not sufficient. Every passenger needs to be thoroughly searched, inside and out. Just looking for guns and explosives is not nearly enough. A pair of tweezers hidden in a terrorist's shoe is all that it takes.
""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."
So if someone did come up with such a great idea, why not implement it themselves and make more than a relatively paltry $15K for coming up with an idea of that could save millions.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Any time you think that private industry sucks and such and such needs to be taken over or regulated to the point of virtual takeover by the government. It's not that the government is inherently incompetent, but they lack the crucible of the market. Do you really think the government would be this bad with the TSA but somehow get universal healthcare, child protective services, or anything else right? Some thing really do just HAVE to be done by government. Government should just stick to those.
Yeah, I think this gets closer to the root of the problem. There are some jobs that are just so shitty that the only people who take them couldn't really work elsewhere. Just ask yourself: Would you want to be one of those TSA people? I mean, who would quit a good job to work for the TSA? That gives you a good idea of what their recruiting pool is.
There are also very important jobs that have been made really shitty, and this fact is causing great damage to this country. Consider what kind of person wants to go be a cop in the USA right now. Not me, probably not you. Who wants to deal with that kind of hate, disrespect and idiot administrators constantly treating you like a racist monster who needs weekly "cultural sensitivity training so you don't shoot people in the back" like a retard? What's sad is that many cops probably do need this, because they really are stupid. But that's what happens when recruitment becomes a downward spiral: The dumber your colleagues get, the worse your work conditions get, and the more likely the above-average are to go work elsewhere, which pushes the average even lower. The training that cops receive might be outstanding, for all I know. But when only the least employable people are willing to take the job, then we just won't have very good cops.
Another profession that's sadly in a downward spiral just like this: teaching k-12. If you're curious what the people who graduated at the bottom of your college class are doing, it's teaching. And because of their deficiencies, school districts are allowing less and less discretion for their teachers - understandable damage control. But this means that teachers who have any dignity and the skills to work in the private sector just defect, leaving only those who couldn't. I think it's tragic that the cops and teachers in our country are people that nobody else wants to employ. These are two of the most important jobs that there are, and they should be filled by some of the best people we have, like in Finland. But the best people we have unfortunately go into finance, where they produce fuck all in terms of social good. So think about that the next time you see incompetence in these jobs. What incentive to truly competent people have to take them? If there is no good answer to that question, then that job will continue being done by ... TSA types.
Frequent fliers should sell their house or move out of their apartment, rent space at the terminal, and just live there.
Strange, back when the connies were flying it used to take more or less eight hours to get from LA to New York. And here we are over fifty years into the jet age, and now it takes that long again.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Don't know about you, but I sure appreciate being able to turn the tap on after I've flushed your bullshit ideas down the toilet.
I wouldn't consider the people going into jobs to get rich and fuck over everybody else as our best and brightest nor would I want them teaching. These people are scum.
This needs a serious rethink. Everyone seems to want "bulletproof" security. Well, we don't have that now and we're wasting millions of hours of travelers time. And yet... flying isn't really all that dangerous. Each bombing is terrible, obviously. But there haven't been that many of them, and we catch a lot of the terrorists mid-flight.
Several of the really high-profile flight disasters in recent years haven't even been the stereotypical terrorist. Two have been inside jobs by the flight crew (one confirmed, one suspected).
So let's rearrange our priorities. First, every flight leaves on time except for weather or mechanical delays. Second, no passenger needs to arrive more than 30 minutes before departure domestically, or one hour internationally. Third, wait for it, we end all luggage searches. Hear me out. Fourth, we dramatically increase the number of Air Marshalls. Put them on all international and 2/3 of domestic flights. Make it much more dangerous for terrorists to try a bombing.
Instead of having a gated security checkpoint, we have free-roaming security people. They randomly stop people and search them, as well as doing targeted searches. Set a standard, say a minimum of 10-15% of all passengers get searched. It can be higher but that's the minimum.
How much do you want to bet, such a system could meet the standard of being able to smuggle a test bomb past security checkpoints in 67 out of 70 tests? For the record, our existing system is only successful at detecting test bombs, 4.3% of the time. And yet flying is still relatively safe. So that's as high a security performance level as we need to achieve.
Our air transport safety system needs a serious rethink. We inconvenience, delay and annoy our average flying passenger for terrible, awful, totally unacceptable levels of achieved security. Untold hundreds of millions are spent to achieve mediocrity. So ditch that idea and make flying convenient again. Only the TSA and stuffy, stodgy, bureaucratic thinkers will hate this new idea.
No wonder security now is fast as fuck. Not,
Private business is "faster and cheaper" than government, really? If only the USA had politicians who stood for 'little government'. Wait, they're the very politicians who socialized airport security and created this mess. Private enterprise is cheaper because they lose customers if they don't stay lean and mean. It's not perfect but most of the time, it works. Government can always say "Not my fucking problem", which sooner or later, wastes time and money.
Dumb? The last TSA agent gave me a colonoscopy and a clean bill of health after that. Didn't even ask for my insurance card.
Maybe we should merge TSA with ObamaCare and save money in the long run. Jokes aside, we as Americans are fucked either way.
Post about privatization of TSA screeners, and then link to a report done in 2015 about failures of government TSA agents to detect a bomb.
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.
Given that the salaries are already $14k-$29k +/- regional adjustments for TSO's, what makes the private contractors any better? You're going to get even less motivated individuals given that contractors would expect a cut out of the already-abysmally low wage, never mind the higher instability of a contract job.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
This article was written in April. Since then, the TSA did a lot of hiring, and the long lines are gone. Yes, they messed up, and their role is a bit dubious, but if we're going to trash the TSA, let's at least take into account the improvements they HAVE made!
Given the numerous times when the security screening or testing has proven to be almost entirely pointless or even acutely dangerous...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3105820/EXPOSED-dozens-explosives-weapons-TSA-checkpoints-95-PERCENT-undercover-airport-tests.html ... I think the best thing to do is to acknowledge that security screening is effectively pointless and, under peak times, simply allow people to rush through using the old fashioned metal detector and bag scan method, forego the shoe / underpants search, cand just carry on regardless.
http://www.theage.com.au/news/news/dutch-journalist-takes-fake-bomb-on-plane/2008/02/07/1202234003407.html
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/slovak-security-test-leaves-explosive-on-plane-1.898278
Naturally this will never happen so the best thing to do is to continue to tout the massive success of the program as a whole (look at all those nail clippers, stacks of them!) and ignore the fact that it's completely pointless and just keep ruining peoples trips.
Go back to reasonable searches and stop being shit scared of everyone. Now, where do I get my cheque?
Wanna buy a shirt?
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Note that the 9/11 terrorists selected their departure airport carefully. Boston was already _infamous_ among American airports for having untrained, overworked, underpaid, incompetent airport security personnel.
This is not to support the TSA's expensive and fraudulently advertised radiation based scanning, nor to support the genuinely physically invasive searches and abuse of passengers that has occurred under their more rigorous searches. But the handling of private contractors is rife with opportunities to let security systems fail very badly indeed.
what a load of BS
The GOP in congress refuses to fund zika (!!!!)
They refuse to fund TSA, which has been swamped by the rise in air travel which stems from the improving economy
This is like clinton coverage (see paul krugmans column in n y times today)
total complete utter bs
Apparently you've not heard of the VIPR Program.
I've flown out of Boston, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, Nashville, San Francisco, Seattle, and the longest it ever took me to get from curb to past security was maybe 10 minutes. Usually there is little to no wait.
I am probably just spending too much time under my aluminum foil hat, but it seems like the TSA doesn't care that the lines are long- or really care if the people in the lines get blown up. They are there to protect the airline industry and the revenue. Contractors are a cost savings, just like they are in the IT world. It is not done to optimize the screening process, but to reduce to the costs. Government won't change it now, because the next incident after the TSA is disbanded will be blamed on the party in charge at the time. We are all going to have to learn to love it. It is not going to change in the next 10 years.
I fly out of LAX about once a month for work and I have Global Entry aka TSA PreCheck so I can use the fast lane (i.e. pre 9-11 screening). 50% of the time, TSA has failed to make a dedicated PreCheck lane available and instead combines it with one of the regular lanes. Suddenly I have to take out my laptop, liquids, and all that BS to put in a separate bin. Well I, and all the other PreCheck passengers, weren't expecting that. So now us "fast" travelers are holding up the line even more as we root around to pull out our shit for unecessary screening. I couldn't have designed a worse system. In contrast, SFO always has a dedicated lane available and I show up to the airport 5 min before my flight is scheduled to board. It's not fucking rocket science, TSA.
To be honest, the TSA is about as effective at stopping terrorism as police are at deterring crime.
See the reports of how often teams were able to smuggle test bombs and weapons through TSA security to understand how effective they are.
I am far more concerned with the theft problem with airport employees than I am with terrorism. Odds of my getting on a plane with a terrorist are laughable in comparison to the odds my high $ camera gear actually surviving a run through any given airport and their trustworthy staff :|
1. Abolish TSA and use simple scanners. 2. Use secure cockpit doors PLUS a red button that any flight attendant can trigger that requests immediate safe landing and that shuts down all communication with cockpit until landing.
How much buisness are the US airlines losing because flying is only worth it for 300+ mile journeys? how much are they losing because people chose routes that avoid the US?
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
echo "replace those inefficient, untrained, low paid knuckleheads with....inefficient, untrained HIGH paid government knuckleheads" > /etc/qotd
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
Can you imagine what kind of backups we will see at airport security lines when they start dragging giant wooden horses through the metal detectors?
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But what are you trying to fix? No airport would have stopped box cutters pre 9/11; I thought a 4" knife was still ok.
That said, airport security still sucked, screening lines were too long, and the results were inconsistent at best. Not much has changed, beyond the cost.
"The ability to do exactly what the TSA does, only faster and cheaper" - wtf why doesnt the TSA just get faster then... what about being a private security agent make you able to do the same shit faster than a TSA agent? does the TSA only hire cavemen?
Avoid big airports with high number of union employees and problem is no more. Only lines for airports are easth coast, LA, Atlanta. No issue with local airport.