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US Airports Still Fail New Security Tests (go.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the an-F-for-the-TSA dept.

schwit1 quotes ABC News: In recent undercover tests of multiple airport security checkpoints by the Department of Homeland Security, inspectors said screeners, their equipment or their procedures failed more than half the time, according to a source familiar with the classified report. When ABC News asked the source if the failure rate was 80 percent, the response was, "You are in the ballpark." In a public hearing after a private classified briefing to the House Committee on Homeland Security, members of Congress called the failures by the Transportation Security Administration disturbing. Rep. Mike Rogers went as far as to tell TSA Administrator David Pekoske, "This agency that you run is broken badly, and it needs your attention."

10 of 182 comments (clear)

  1. It's Taxpayer-supported Theater! by BobC · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Anyone who confuses TSA checkpoints with actual security is sadly missing the point.

    These checkpoints are truly, in the words of Bruce Schneier, "Security Theater". And I'm not using that in a pejorative manner equivalent to saying they are useless. Far from it!

    First, the checkpoints are first aimed at discouraging the stupid, a category that includes most terrorists and mass-murderers. It can't prevent folks smart enough to see behind the curtain, but it can discourage those unable to think at a deeper level. For simple folks intent on disruption, the checkpoints work.

    Second, the checkpoints are intended to reassure the public. Even when the public is told how ineffective the checkpoints are against real threats. Even when the actual risks of airborne terrorism in the US are statistically tiny. Again, despite our knowledge to the contrary, the checkpoints work at an emotional level to reassure the public.

    The above successes do come at a substantial cost for taxpayers, but we can't say the results are "worthless", even though the checkpoints utterly fail to meet all of their stated purposes.

    1. Re:It's Taxpayer-supported Theater! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      "Terrorists" are not a homogeneous group. They come in varying levels of intelligence.

      It's a reasonable bet that many people who are tempted to commit terrorist acts are, simply, too stupid to figure out a way around those "immense resources" you speak of.

      After all, the Twin Towers attack - was simple. It could have been done, at minimal cost, by anyone from about the late 1960s - when air travel became cheap enough and planes big enough - onwards. But it took until 2001 for it to actually happen, because it took a genius to think of it.

    2. Re:It's Taxpayer-supported Theater! by Opportunist · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I have a hard time imagining the goofballs blowing themselves to kingdom come for the promise of goodies in some afterlife as anything resembling intelligent. Then again, I have a hard time giving anyone above the age of 8 with imaginary friends much credits in the mental department.

      There are intelligent ones, no doubt about that. The whole planning and logistics is certainly run by people who use religion for what it was invented for, but the goons they send to redecorate the interior of airports are hardly Nobel Prize material.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    3. Re:It's Taxpayer-supported Theater! by drinkypoo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The TSA isn't for any of that stuff. It is first and foremost a jobs program for deplorable unemployables (no one who is not deplorable would be willing to sign up to sexually molest air passengers, and no one who is not otherwise unemployable would want to in the first place) and second a way of making the American public more used to doing whatever they're told no matter how insane it is.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  2. This keeps getting proven again and again by whyyisthissohard · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Anti-terrorist measures are actually terrorism themselves...against the people they are supposed to protect

  3. Airport "security" is not about security by gweihir · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It is about giving the appearance of "doing something" to impress the stupid masses and it is about giving some top bureaucrats a lot of power and boost their egos. Remember that a bureaucrat becomes more important by being able to "bind" time of others (i.e. waste it) and hence any bureaucracy tries to waste as much time of their victims as possible. Of course, any pretext is is acceptable. "Security!" is the best of them, as it will cause an immediate shutdown of all intelligence in most people.

    I.e. the TSA wastes time, money and insults people, while it does not create security. This is as intended.

    --
    Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
  4. Re:Hasn't Changed by Opportunist · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's kinda arbitrary what's allowed and what's not. I was nearly tackled and pinned over a bottle of water, but they didn't have a problem with my lockpicks...

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  5. Re:wrong problem... by Opportunist · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Because the only two possibilities are total absence of security and the insanity we have now?

    The older ones among us might remember a time when you could actually use planes for a faster transport from A to B than ... well, by now pretty much any other form of transportation. You'd put down your bag to be x-rayed, you'd go through a metal detector and you'd be done. And, lo and behold, the amount of planes that were bombed or otherwise "terrorized" was pretty much on par with today.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  6. Re:wrong problem... by BlueStrat · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Because the only two possibilities are total absence of security and the insanity we have now?

    The older ones among us might remember a time when you could actually use planes for a faster transport from A to B than ... well, by now pretty much any other form of transportation. You'd put down your bag to be x-rayed, you'd go through a metal detector and you'd be done. And, lo and behold, the amount of planes that were bombed or otherwise "terrorized" was pretty much on par with today.

    Locked cockpit doors made the TSA's mission obsolete for all practical intents and purposes. That's why they've tried to expand to train stations and buses, and even post offices and other locations under the VIPR program.

    I remember back when you could smoke on a flight, and you were also trusted with steak knives to eat your in-flight dinner with.

    It's easier and more profitable for the government to punish us than do the hard work of solving real problems.

    Strat

    --
    Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
  7. Re:TSA Intro by mjwx · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Actually they were very respectful of the TSA goofballs. They depicted them as being able to talk in whole sentences.

    First off, I get that you're joking.

    But as a frequent traveler I've found the TSA frontmen to be quite polite and personable. Sure there are bound to be exceptions but I've never been mistreated or misdirected by the TSA agents I've had to deal with. The problem with the TSA comes from up high, their key metric is how safe passengers feel, not how safe they actually are so they run a 3 ring security theatre circus based on perceptions rather than proven security methods.

    Also, I think a fair few TSA agents are ex-military.

    --
    Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.