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

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."

Comments

It's Taxpayer-supported Theater!

[BobC]

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.

Re:It's Taxpayer-supported Theater!

[drinkypoo]

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.