I make at least one round trip flight at least once a week. The thoroughness and extent of my search varies greatly depending on which co-workers I am traveling with. When I am traveling with mostly white co-workers it's very quick. When I am traveling with non-white co-workers we always end up waiting on at least one or two people who have been selected for a secondary screening.
Nice to know that this time consuming, expensive and racist process is also pointless.
As a brown skin, I love how often they randomly check the person in front of me OH and me too :) They at least try to pretend its random now as opposed to pre TSA when I would get picked all the time for random screening directly out of a large line.
I wonder what the racial profile of the red-teamers are (the ones assigned to try to smuggle stuff past the inspection points)? I'm really curious as to whether or not the skin color of the red-team agent played a part in getting caught.
I wonder that too.. I can only guess that if your name begins with K or ends in Z, or something with K and Z in the name you get flagged.
My ex-wife's son, Kruz gets flagged every time for secondary screening, from when the TSA first started, until even recently... he hasn't traveled yet without being "randomly" selected.
I once got on the air as a caller to NPR or some other beltway radio show where a TSA rep was trying to justify scanners and all kinds of other things. I asked if the rep read Bruce Schneier regarding the fact that the TSA was simply security theatre, and then asked about the former head of TSA who approved the scanner purchases and then went to work for the company making the scanners. He deflected like a pro and afterwards I could no longer call in, as I would immediately get disconnected. Honestly though, I was most angry because those are the sort of things that real reporter worth their salt should be asking, but NPR is such a tamed softball throwing limpdick entity I consider them almost as bad as CNN. Just listen to any given interview with anyone of note. Never a tough question to be heard. BBC is slightly better but I shouldn't have to rely on a fucking British propaganda outlet to hear even a modicum of good reporting. It's sad that these days RT and Al Jazeera english have better reporting on the US than any other mainstream shows I know of. (not counting the handful of very good youtube/podcasts,etc)
They know it's all theatre and don't care because the guys at the top are making tons of money playing the revolving door system, and no one is going to do anything about it because the beltway is full of kissasses and naive idiots "just trying to pay the mortgage."
>"NPR is such a tamed softball throwing limpdick entity I consider them almost as bad as CNN"
I used to have rather high regard for NPR until, and I don't know if this has just changed or I just started realizing that NPR has significant backers that are not only Republican and Conservative in spirit, but also beltway bandits, big recipients of government contracts. I always feel like NPR is really not all that different than Fox News albeit far less angry and hateful, but always quick to tuck their tail and throw a flash-bang at any possibility that light is shone on certain things. It really reminds me of the self-congratulatory liberal aristocracy that loves to make itself feel better with insignificant and meaningless efforts.
Welcome to the system. If a show / journalist asks hardball questions they'll quickly find that they no longer have access to the folks worth interviewing. This is the self-censorship model that's well established here.
We may have a free media, but with self-censorship like this, it's effectively only marginally more free than a state run system.
Al Jazeera meanwhile has absolutely no chance (I'm assuming here) of getting an interview with a high level player, so they can pose hard hitting questions as they have no downside risk in doing so.
According to one report, undercover TSA agents
testing security at a Newark airport terminal on
one day in 2006 found that TSA screeners failed
to detect concealed bombs and guns 20 out of 22 times.
A 2007 government audit leaked to USA Today revealed
that undercover agents were successful slipping simulated
explosives and bomb parts through Los Angeles's LAX
airport in 50 out of 70 attempts, and at Chicago's
O'Hare airport agents made 75 attempts and succeeded
in getting through undetected 45 times.
Meaning, that the system did not work then and does not work today in providing security. It only seems to be there to instill the feeling of security in Jane/Joe Average.
So it really seems to be just security theater...
It is not designed to work - and you could argue it being this way by design. It detects the idiots (smugglers & the little guys, et al) - but if something severe happens the only consequences are making the system more secure by adding to it. not by questioning it. That way the systems is kept alive and politicians have the ability to be seen doing something, after a tragedy happens. Everyone is happy - except Mrs. Taxpayer - but she does not get asked.
TSA isn't theater so much as it is insurance. Do you want to be the President or political party that disbands TSA? Look at how much flak Hilary Clinton got for a few Americans dying in an actual warzone. What do you think happens when terrorists blow up a flight from Topeka to Minneapolis, whether or not TSA would've stopped it?
Which says more about the media than the merits of the TSA. The majority don't know who edward snowden is either (or as john oliver found out -- think he's the wikileaks guy).
Fact of the matter is that the TSA is doing a bad job and is a colossal waste of time and money. People should be outraged at the misuse of $7.4 billion from the annual budget. The media should be calling out the US government for mismanaging tax dollars.
If the program actually outraged people, taking about it would draw viewership and the media would talk about it. But in the grand scheme of things $7 billion is a drop in the bucket compared to the real hot button issues. Especially considering that TSA is paid for by user fees and not general purpose tax dollars.
But if only 12-13% of people think they're doing a bad job then they are just not informed on the topic and what they think is really of no consequence. The media is to blame for not educating the general population on this. People get outraged talking about single government officials claiming a few thousand dollars of expenses they shouldn't, I think that most people would get somewhat upset if they knew that the TSA by and large was a complete waste of time and money which provided almost zero additional security.
As to the drop of water argument, I don't see that as particularly valid. Either it's a waste of money or it isn't. Wasting money should be cut out whenever possible. Happy to debate the merits of the program being a waste or not, but not going to dive into a conversation about how it's OK to waste money frivolously.
In a democracy and a free market economy, being "right" isn't what makes your opinion matter. These are citizens and consumers. It's politicians' jobs as well as the media's to give them what they want. If they need to believe that spending $7 billion a year on TSA keeps airliners from blowing up, it's proper for the government to spend that money.
Sorry, but that is not a valid reason for spending $7 billion. Agencies are accountable for not wasting money and oversight should be in place to prevent this sort of abuse.
Also, we aren't in a democracy or free market economy. The people who have the most to profit from the TSA's budget being as large as possible are also the people pulling the strings here. Follow the rabbit hole and find out how much companies like Rapiscan spent on lobbying and tell me again how this is a free market economy.
Most people don't fly more than once every few years... and even then kind of expect it to be a pain in the ass. That's why only 12-13% (probably those that actually fly more than a couple times a year) really dislike the TSA.
> The media is to blame for not educating the general population on this.
Most of the media exists to sell advertising, and the content provided to consumers exists specifically to attract a particular demographic to the outlet to support advertising sales.
Educating the general population is not part of the media's business model.
No, the media has evolved to become advertising. News corporations definitely should have the responsibility of education, despite what the Murdoch empire would have you believe.
> No, the media has evolved to become advertising.
If true, it was quite a long time ago -- advertising has been the dominant source of revenue, and media has served that revenue source for a long time. Even in the days when print newspapers were strong, their "paid circulation" wasn't important because it brought in a lot of revenue, it was important because advertisers viewed it as the best indicator of engaged audience.
For-profit businesses serve their owners and generally act to maximize profits; there are exceptions, but expecting something different to be the norm without any structurally-imposed constraints mandating is naïve.
If you want a media whose mission is educating the public, You aren't going to get it from privately-owned, for-profit, media corporations because "educating the public" isn't something they can monetize as well as providing a combination of both a source of distress and the appearance of a salve for that distress for a targeted demographic to get them dependent, and then selling advertising access targeted to that demographic.
This is nothing new, and my comment was made with all of this in mind.
Here's a thought experiment however, ask someone why they watch the news, buy a news paper or visit sites like the new york times. Then re-read your comment and see where the differences are. :)
What should be is of really no significance in analyzing causes. What should be is ideology and that has no empirical bearing.
I could also state, that people are dumb for not demanding to be informed truthfully about real important issues. But then at least the following question arises:
Who gets to decide, what is important?
Is it American Idol, Dancing with the Stars or is it TSA not working properly?
Most people would root for entertainment I believe yes I know I am a misanthrope).
The TSA is also succeeding in another one of their goals. Their very public and very disruptive "security" measures are a visceral reminder that reinforces people's beliefs that there are terrorists behind every corner and that we need to be protected from them. And as long as we're afraid of terrorists the government can institute more sinister measures such as mass surveillance and domestic spying.
I'd argue essentially the opposite. That TSA is there to make people believe they are safe from terrorism. Fear of flying crippled the airline industry post 9-11.
People have a very irrational fear of flying. It's the safest mode of travel, yet, single incidents panic people and multiple panic the entire country.
That may be true, or at least was true when 9/11 was still fresh in our minds, but the TSA is also there to get us used to the idea of being manhandled, questioned and/or detained by government officials.
El Al has had a better security record without the digital "strip searches" and junk-grabbing. The USA accomplish the same... if it wanted (i.e., Congress/the unions/everyone but the taxpayers).
> El Al has had a better security record without the digital "strip searches" and junk-grabbing.
Actually, El Al is just as bad as well. El Al also had an open and explicit policy of racial profiling until last year (when it was ruled illegal in court to practice this policy openly[0]). If you are white and carry a US or Israeli passport, you'll breeze right through. But the experience of flying El Al is very different if you:
a) have an Arab name, or
b) "look" Arab, or
c) are Palestinian.
El Al has been very heavily criticized by Arab Jews (yes, they exist) as well as non-Arab and Arab Muslims and non-Muslim Palestinians for treating the aforementioned groups very badly. There have been multiple cases of Arabs, Muslims, and/or Palestinians winning civil suits against El Al for their shocking treatment of these groups - in many ways worse than what the TSA is usually criticized for doing.
By the way, this doesn't happen only in Israel, but in other countries as well (including the US), which let El Al conduct their own security procedures at foreign airports for flights to Israel. In at least one lawsuit, the plaintiffs won and were awarded five figures in part because their mistreatment by El Al happened in New York, where open[1] racial profiling is illegal.
I wonder if the the subliminal conditioning to think there are terrorists around the corner also make us distrust the guy lurking around the streetcorner.
I don't think it's all that new... it's just another witch hunt... nobody is found, and the cycle continues... we need more military, more weapons, more useless tools, and projects to make a few people on this inside millions of dollars.
I have worked with simulated explosives in the past for training. They are designed to be nearly indistinguishable from the real thing, and have trace amounts of material that will cause detectors and trained dogs to trigger.
Literally the only thing that saves you from going to super jail when working with these types of objects is a signed letter of authorization.
I'd like to see this test repeated, but with investigators smuggling bottled water instead of weapons. I bet the TSA would have a much higher success rate with that.
It would be trivial. Go buy a large bottle of contact lens solution, empty it, and re-fill it with water. Tell them it's contact lens solution and you're all set.
Doing this with explosives may be more difficult, what with the fancy chemical detectors.
You'd have to buy the bottle after screening, not before.
You're only allowed to take 3.4 ounces through screening unless you have a medical need. I'm not sure people have a medical need for more contact lens solution, even on long flights.
Maybe the TSA rules changed? I'm going by what they said on their website:
Contact lens solution is considered "medically required", and "reasonable quantities" is sufficiently ill-defined that nobody really cares. I'm sure if you had a barrel of the stuff they might ask questions, but a standard 14oz bottle from the store gets at most a quick swab and you're on your way.
That swab is what makes this scheme impractical for bringing dangerous liquids, of course.
Bruce Schneier once took two 12 oz bottles of "saline solution" through security to test that.
>Later, Schneier would carry two bottles labeled saline solution—24 ounces in total—through security. An officer asked him why he needed two bottles. "Two eyes," he said. He was allowed to keep the bottles.
That probably has to do with the detection tools they have. I imagine a bomb is hard to spot if it doesn't look like this: http://i.imgur.com/WyY4d4f.png
One thing I've always wondered - who at the TSA is requesting these tests? Surely they know their own security is crap. It's not like it's an outside watchdog agency. It's like if some surgeon lost 19 out of 20 of his patients, but then asked a nurse to keep count and publish the numbers. Just bizarre.
And whoever set this internal audit process up - what did they have in mind afterwards? As jeffcoat said, there has been no change over the last 5 years, so... is it just like "/bin/internal_audit | tee /dev/null"? Aside from rubbing our faces in how they're wasting their $7 billion annual budget, what did they intend for this audit to accomplish?
Wait, you mean the millions, possibly billions spent already haven't done a thing? Shocking! And now you can pay (TSAPre) to bypass the security theater essentially proving that the whole thing is a massive sham. I'm all for security, but nobody can seem to define what that would actually look like, as opposed to what we have now.
I don't see how Pre exposes it as a sham. I'm no fan of the TSA and I think a lot of the stuff they do is useless at best, but giving people differing amounts of scrutiny based on their risk profile seems pretty smart to me. It's not as if you pay your money and automatically get through. They check you out first and make sure that you're a suitably low risk, and only let you bypass some of the checks if you actually qualify.
You don't just pay money and get a pass. There's a significant background check involved which, I suspect, does more to enhance security than some millimeter wave scanner in the security line.
> There's a significant background check involved which, I suspect, does more to enhance security than some millimeter wave scanner in the security line.
No, there isn't.
I walked into the interview booth on a whim one day, when my flight arrived early. They were booked solid, but someone had missed their time, so they slotted me in. My "extensive" background check was completed and KTN issued in less than 24 hours. They may run some sort of cursory criminal records check, but any such check is automated and too fast to be called "extensive."
Edit: I should add that I do not have (and have never had) any sort of security clearance, but people who do tell me that the process for the lowest level of "real" security clearance takes many months and costs many thousands of dollars.
The Nexus program in Canada, for example, involves among other things an extensive interview and background check by the opposing country (for example, as a Canadian, the US performs my check).
I flew a week ago from Oakland to Burbank. Prior to showing any boarding pass or ID to a TSA official, or identifying myself in any way, my colleague and I were waved into the TSAPre line. I've never signed up for TSAPre. Basically we walked in the door straight out of BART.
There is no way any background check was involved for this.
So significant that my mother who has flown a total of no more than 30,000 miles in her whole life (spread out over no fewer than eight airlines) has pre-check, gifted to her by one airline for no discernible reason. She was very pleased to get it of course, but the "significance" of the background check is highly questionable in my opinion.
Initially there were two large groups of people who got Pre. One group was people who were already enrolled in another trusted-traveller program like NEXUS or Global Entry (I have Pre courtesy of Global Entry, for example), presumably because they'd already been through background checks -- potentially more rigorous ones than Pre strictly required -- and thus were deemed a useful and trustworthy pilot group. The other group was people in the upper tiers of frequent-flier programs, who again were deemed useful and trustworthy (anybody who clears security as often as the top-tier FFs do is either trustworthy or a complete systemic failure of security).
After running that for a while, they started up another avenue into Pre, called "Managed Inclusion". This was advertised as a test of real-time capabilities to assess who does and who doesn't need more rigorous screening, but from a cynical perspective was really just a way to expose casual travelers to the fact that Pre exists and give them a taste of it. Managed Inclusion is why you see random Joe and Jane Traveler told to go to the Pre lane; it's not a consistent status/membership like the other trusted-traveller programs, it's just a thing that does or doesn't happen sometimes when they check in and get a boarding pass.
As an aside: Managed Inclusion has significantly reduced the usefulness of Pre, because people who end up in it have been conditioned to do the typical process (remove stuff from bags, take off shoes/belts/etc.), and don't get the fact that, when their boarding pass has the Pre logo, they don't have to do that. Which eats up more time as they get lectured by a TSA person, repack their stuff, put their shoes back on, and so on.
And now you can just enroll directly in Pre by paying the application fee and getting background checked (though why anyone would, when NEXUS or GE are more useful and come with Pre as a side effect, I don't know). So the frequent-flier-status enrollment is being wound down, Managed Inclusion keeps going as a way to expose the general public to the idea, and that's where we are today.
Which leads to my statement of "pay-to-play" unlike zzalpha's claim above.
Managed Inclusion is akin to Movie Preview in hotels back in the day...
I stand by my statement that Pre should be the norm not the exception. Make Global Entry the premium tier, that's fine but Pre needs to be the new norm.
But GE involves CBP going through employment/address history as well as every time your passport's been used and any issues you've ever had at a border (I know because I heard a guy at the next desk being grilled in his interview about a piece of fruit in his luggage when I was in my interview). And NEXUS involves having both the US and Canada run checks on you independently.
So in terms of rigor, NEXUS > Global Entry > Pre seems to be the way it goes.
The number of miles / times / airlines that have been flown has no relationship to the Pre Check. It is literally a background check, which your mother passed. Meaning she is lower risk than others who have not.
I get that it's a background check. That's very clear to me.
My mother didn't apply for it, nor did she pay for it. If it costs money to get, why would the airline give it to her? It's not because she's "high status" as she doesn't have an appreciable number of miles.
You are missing the point that her background is reevaluated for every single time she flies. Also, the Airline does not give it to her, the TSA does. It is used to filter extremely low risk individuals into the Pre system so they don't clog up the normal lines.
But it gets printed on the boarding pass right? So what's to stop a terrorist from forging the boarding pass with "pre-check" on it and going into the low-security line instead of the high security line?
Before entering the security line the bar code on your boarding pass is scanned, decoded, and checked against the traveler database. If any of the information does not match, you will be detained. The circles or lines that a TSA agent will draw on your boarding pass are part of a system to help the agent remember to check each piece of information, part of which is verifying it against the scanner.
She only has it when she's flying on that airline, and as other commenters have mentioned, that program is being phased out, so she will soon need to subscribe to a TTP herself.
Why would the airline give her an $85 gift if she didn't have a lot of miles, and therefore a lot of "status" as the airlines call it? I see a lot of people in this thread suggesting that more miles equals more likelihood of the airline giving it to you.
The point is that if airlines (or the TSA) can afford to give it to people that don't spend tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, perhaps the $85 "background check" isn't terribly thorough and therefore more of a joke than real security.
That sounds like something different (or maybe the airline lets random people into TSA Pre-check?). This is the service people are talking about: http://www.tsa.gov/tsa-precheck.
You pay $85, and the government basically does a background check on you. If you pass the background check, you are in TSA Pre-check.
> That sounds like something different (or maybe the airline lets random people into TSA Pre-check?).
It is not something different, but I think some airlines do automatically sign some of their clients up for pre-check, particularly if those clients have status. E.g., United Airline's pre-check information page discusses people who have opted-in through their frequent-flier program:
You're forgetting the cost of surrendering your (illusion of) civil liberties by voluntarily disclosing private information about yourself to the government.
I have Global Entry. The application form didn't ask for anything more than what a typical job or rental application would (basically, employment and address history going back a few years).
My Global Entry enrollment "interview" consisted of "Put your hand on the scanner. Now look at the camera. OK, you'll get your Known Traveler Number in an email later today, and a card you can keep with you in the mail in about a week."
The CBP people who do GE generally seem to be on a whole different level of efficiency and understanding-actual-security compared to the average TSA blueshirt at the airport.
If you have traveled internationally, you've already given up the vast majority of the information required by Global Entry. I've had to submit to medical examinations, interrogations, and forced fingerprinting to enter some countries. Most of that stuff is sent back to the US to verify your identity.
You can. Get a "Known Traveler Number" by paying for PreCheck. Due to changes in TSA policies, your frequent flyer-granted PreCheck is already a lower tier - you're not going to be getting the perks as often as you used to.
I find it interesting that my parent comment has been voted down to -1 (without reasons provided as to why) while the child comments seem to imply a lively discussion.
If you are going to down vote, at least say why (other than zzalpha's pointless assertion)
FWIW, if people are going to sign up for Pre/Gobal Entry/Nexus, it's the best bang for the buck to sign up for Nexus at $50 and included GE/Pre benefits. The only drawback is that you need to get to a Canadian border for the interview.
the millions, possibly billions spent already haven't done a thing?
That's not correct at all. The billions spent have done a lot: they've created an entire class of "cleared" people, and support industries for them. I'm not sure that creating a new aristocracy was the desired end point, but that's what we've gotten to. The "cleared" people Know Better Than Us, and Keep Us Safe, so We Give Them Special Privileges.
How much time has been wasted of people waiting in line, taking off their shoes, unpacking their laptop to go through security? how much money has been wasted by the government on the program?
People end up on the no fly list. Kids in wheelchairs and little old ladies get felt up for bombs and are put through a needless trauma.
I regard the TSA as basically a public work program for low-skilled employees. They certainly do little to improve security, maybe even worsen it, but hey, at least some tens of thousands of people aren't out of work.
One could argue that the TSA checkpoints benefit overall airport efficiency. Optimizing for flow of millions of people per day, it makes sense to funnel through predetermined pipelines. This way passengers enter the terminal at a constant rate.
Consider two passages. One has a mantrap or airlock style set of doors which only permits two people per minute. The other has a set of turnstiles which -collectively- permit six-hundred people per minute.
Through which passage are you going to fit the most people in a sixty-minute period?
Consider also that -regardless of how many people you fit through the passage- at the destination of each one of those people is an orderly queue designed to never be overloaded. This means that the only thing lowering throughput at the passage does is lengthens the queue to pass through the passage. If you lengthen that queue, then folks waste more time waiting in that queue; time that could be usefully spent doing anything else.
What? I'm not even sure what you are trying to say. How does creating a bottleneck that can take an hour or more to go through, efficient?
ATL is on of the worlds busiest airports with about 100 million passengers or about 250K a day. Some of the busiests European train stations get twice that. Yet they don't seem to have thus efficiency probably.
When you think about it, the most successful terrorist ever is Richard Reid. He might not have killed anyone but following up his failed attempt to blow a bomb hidden in his shoes, literally billions of people have had to remove their shoes at the airport. This guy changed the society ..
PS: while I hate removing my shoes every time I go through security in the US, I am glad Richard didn't opt for using his arse as a C4 stash :P
Just as I suspected. Those that really want to smuggle weapons and such can do so with some minimal amount of homework. And yet the other 99% of people that are about to board a 10 hour red-eye have to waste time in lines, taking shoes off and have semi-naked 3D models made...
You don't have to have nude photos taken. You can ask to "opt out" (that's the key phrase, the TSA clowns know what it means), and they will take you aside and pat you down by hand.
I do it because it takes longer. If everyone opted out, the lines would become so ridiculously long that they'd have to change their system. I'm doing my part.
That's half of why I do it too, whenever I (grudgingly) fly to the US. The other half is that I don't want people taking naked photos of me, and especially not for security theater.
I wish more people did it, though. Whenever I fly I'm the only one I see opting out. When I was flying from Munich to DCA they had one of these scanners installed to a lone US-only gate, and I said I wanted to opt out, and the (German) airport employee looked at me surprised and said "why?". He couldn't understand why someone would opt out of the machine, I guess he thought it was some kind of metal detector or something.
I opted out for years and realized that I don't have to anymore.
After they direct you to the scanner, just say "I can't lift my arms above my head" and they'll put you through the metal detector and swab your hands. They don't "test" you because if it's true, they could hurt you.
I've been doing it since last fall (30 flights?) without issue now.
Doesn't this knowledge completely invalidate any legitimate use case for the pat down? If a bad actor only requires a simple lie to avoid a pat down _and_ the mm wave machine, what advantage is there to having either?
I am going to try that next time I'm in a hurry, thank you! I'm half opting out for the principle of the thing, though, which this doesn't have, but it's great to know.
Whenever I opt out (which is every time they try to send me through the scanner) they always attempt to take me to a "private" screening room for my "privacy" concerns. And every time I insist they do it right therein front of everyone, at the table where they're looking through my bag. Mostly because I don't trust what's in a "private" screening room, and partly because I think if we're gonna do this...then lets do this all the way.
I always opt out and when they explain the pat down to me and use the "till I meet resistance" euphemism, I look at the officer and say "excuse me, im unclear as to what you mean by resistance. do you mean my penis?". Similarly a woman might say vulva. One time an officer said no, its the groin and I pointed out to him where the groin actually is (between the belly and the genitals)
"
“[Testers] know exactly what our protocols are. They can create and devise and conceal items that … not even the best terrorists would be able to do,” Pistole told lawmakers at a House hearing.
"
I honestly don't think there's much specialist knowledge required. Just fly a few times, sans contraband, and keep your eyes open.
The TSA has always been about security theater. Unlike some I feel like their heart is in the right place (the same for the NSA too). It's too bad there's this huge expensive machine now with lots of entrenched interests and risk-averse leadership.
Of course, being the hackers that we are, we might wonder how that money would be better spent. I for one advocate for a 2 hour "passenger mixer" prior to the flight. It would be mandatory, but catered, open bar, where you get to know your other passengers, and vote on whether someone needs further attention from authorities. A free party and you take your fate into your hands? And even with premium booze it would be far cheaper than the TSA. Plus if you get blown up you have no-one to blame but yourself.
I'd be willing to lay money that if you gave me a "you won't be prosecuted" pass, I could do the same thing with about the same success rate with no training, a nice suit, and a smile.
Every few months, the TSA in the fairly large city I live in, with it's fairly large airport, announces that they have stopped 10 guns from getting on our airplanes! Thank God for the TSA. They make it sound as if these criminals trying to bring guns onto the plane, had plans to take the entire plane hostage and do another 9/11.
What they don't mention, is that in about 99.9% of these cases (internet statistics), it was a guy who had left his pistol in his bag after going to the range and completely forgetting it was there. There was no ill intent, no criminal desire, just plain forgetfulness. But the TSA crows about what a great job they're doing keeping us safe.
But it's just another case of security theater. It's the way they spin the story that gets me. They don't acknowledge the fact that these people weren't too criminals (I still believe in intent), but the TSA, in order to prove their worth, treat them like such. They're catching the people who are only guilty of forgetfulness, not the ones who actually are willing and able to do harm. Like every other giant bureaucracy, the TSA is only interested in self-perpetuation, not actually protecting our constitution and keeping us "safe." And all the while, they're really not stopping anything, especially all the guns that get put on a plane everyday without anyone noticing.
I can't think of a better example of how the Patriot Act and all of our knee jerk reactions after 9/11 have been ineffective and need to be reexamined. Unfortunately I think the response is going to be even more of the same. Sort of like the saying "the beatings will continue until morale improves."
Not, knee jerk, carefully planned years ahead, just like 9/11.
Communism has a tendency to require greater levels of force in order to maintain state control.
And the the numbers financially are just getting too lopsided to maintain the uneven consumption for much longer. China will start to get a much larger share, and the bankers will have to go along with it, because of basic realities of math.
So the global military and economic control will shift to China, but before/during/after the primary economic model in places like the US will have to shift.
This means some people will have violent disagreements with the new control structure. So they are trying to lay the groundwork for a carefully monitored and controlled population now. Part of that is conditioning to not expect privacy, which is one main function of the TSA.
Your article seems like warmed-over John Birch Society material from the 60s. That is, you posit some world wide hidden planning or conspiracy that is set on degrading some Pure American state we've got now (or in the 60s, according to the Birch material), and substituting some centralized control system led by non-Americans.
I would say yes, as the TSA's failures doesn't really have anything whatsoever to do with the patriot act. This is a failure of the government, not an excuse for or reason for more powers.
> the TSA's failures doesn't really have anything whatsoever to do with the patriot act
Not directly, but they both are connected to the overarching theme in American politics of "OMG TURRURRUSTS" (and the overarching subtheme of "our various means of removing the privacy of Americans are not actually doing anything they were marketed to do"; with this article, it seems that neither the TSA's security checks nor the NSA's surveillance are actually doing anything to stop terrorists).
I would bet most of those handguns are from idiots who forgot they were carrying it or knew they had it but forgot that they needed to move it to their checked bag and declare it.
Someone sneaking it through the x-ray machine would probably try harder to pack it in a way that makes it less obvious.
Handguns aren't radioactive. Someone actually has to pull the trigger to cause a problem. If pedestrians on a random block of a busy downtown somewhere were scanned like this, lots of handguns would be found there as well.
It would be nice if they just decided that the security theatre doesn't work but I doubt it. And there is an argument that without 100% chance of success, and the number of steps that have to go right for a "big" event, that even a small detection rate is sufficient. But I would much prefer a more systemic fix.
“[Testers] know exactly what our protocols are. They can create and devise and conceal items that … not even the best terrorists would be able to do,” Pistole told lawmakers at a House hearing.
You know, like taping a bomb to your body. How would you ever think that up without the playbook.
The TSA is not actually there to catch 'terrorists'. Its mainly there to play a role in the mythical world that supports war and hegemony, and despotic rule domestically.
It was mostly created to relieve the airlines of responsibility and potential liability for security incidents: airport security, including federal regulations of what you could bring on to planes and what had to be verified before you got on them, existed before the TSA federalized the actual screening.
Yes, and several were sued based on screening responsibility that for damages resulting from the 9/11 attacks.
> My understanding was that third party security companies were responsible for screening pre-9/11.
Yes, the function was outsourced and often provided jointly by one contractor contracted to the the airlines at any given terminal, but the airlines were responsible for it. The proposal to federalize the function going forward first arose, IIRC, as part of discussions about the legislation to bail out the airlines by capping liability stemming from 9/11.
You can sue anyone for anything. A skilled prosecutor can indict anyone for anything.
Can you provide a citation of such a case that either went to trial, or reached a non-trivial settlement? Links to random blogs won't cut it, unless they actually link to court papers.
Nice to know that this time consuming, expensive and racist process is also pointless.