Things the TSA doesn't want you to see
elliott.org
elliott.org
FTA: “The experience to date is 50,000 false positives and 16 known terrorists not flagged,” says Thomson. “No known terrorists have ever been flagged.”
That's some pretty obvious and epic fail on the part of the Agency. Why hasn't it been eliminated or reformed by now?
Government's inability to allow its ideas to fail, or at very least its inability to pivot toward success is so disheartening. This has really been on my mind a lot today. I watched "Waiting for Superman" last night and I can't get the images of the poor kids just looking for a decent public education out of my mind. The crimes against humanity perpetrated upon us with our own tax dollars should really be prosecuted with all vigor.
My guess is the TSA's long-term purpose is not to prevent terrorism, but to provide the federal government with a means of visibly asserting authority over the travel of citizens (and the opportunity to intervene in the travel of dissidents). Otherwise it makes little sense.
Because Americans are so terrified of "terrorism", they don't even have to prove efficacy of their methods in order to continue existing.
It's a whole lot of easy money for a bunch of pigs with their snouts in the trough.
The first is the domain of the structuralists in Anthropology. The second is the domain of the politicians.
Does the TSA assist with customs now?
And the TSA will call the police if they find drugs while they're scanning for explosives. Apparently people think that cannabis can be hidden inside jars of peanut butter, but the TSA say that peanut butter looks like some forms of explosive when scanned, so they normally check it, especially if it has some inconsistency.
There are links on the TSA blog, but I can't post URLs with this new account.
I personally assign blame straight on the general public. The general public is a bunch of scared nitwits who can't stand any possibility of any risk when flying on an airliner, even though they literally stand a higher chance of dying on their trip to the airport than on their flight. This irrationally frightened public demands that their elected officials protect them from the imaginary monsters under their figurative beds. Government simply complies with their wishes.
In fact, the only place I've heard of the "general public" proclaiming "something must be done" is in the media. But the media isn't the actual general public.
http://www.wmctv.com/Global/story.asp?S=13392236
http://www.sharonlbegley.com/the-latest-trouble-with-racial-...
http://www.ummah.com/forum/showthread.php?291386-Nun-forcibl...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jalees-rehman/catholic-nun-for...
People don't seem to like the TSA in general, but they like it more than not having it.
The TSA is about establishing the infrastructure for real restriction of movement, using terrorism as a mere pretext.
Well, I didn't cry, per se. I think a bug did fly into my eye right around the time that poor little Daisy didn't get a lottery spot. Total coincidence timing-wise, though. I swear.
Because of the way large bureaucracies work. For one, a clearly defined role of prevention means that false positives are essentially not a concern. Second, rigid promotion and pay rules limit rewards and thus incentives: the old "work only so hard not to be fired" ham.
Still, people want to try. But it seems risky to do something different, and if I'm different and it goes bad, then it's obviously my fault. So we'll just keep installing more anti-virus programs and x-ray scanners. At least then we have something to count, and quantifiable bullet points always look good on annual reviews.
Because the TSA has many other purposes that are beneficial to politicians:
- Now, there is someone to blame when the next terrorist attack happens (i.e. one poor TSA agent failed to detect something)
- TSA is a jobs program.
- Politicians can say show that something is being done to prevent airline attacks. It doesn't matter if it's effective.
The crimes against humanity perpetrated upon us with our own tax dollars should really be prosecuted with all vigor.
The problem with this is that may of the victims of these crimes are too stupid (EDIT: under-educated / let down by the schooling system) to vote for the right person (or at all) during elections.
They are not necessarily stupid, see rational ignorance: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_ignorance
Even assuming there was a 'right person' to vote for, your individual vote only has an infinitesimal chance of affecting the outcome of the election, while the upfront investment in informing yourself about all kinds of topics and how they match the platforms of each candidate requires considerable effort. (And that ignores how candidates often then go and do something else once elected.)
This being said, I don't think we can assume the best here. I think it's easier rather than harder to get prohibited items onto airplanes than it was pre-9/11 and that's the real metric of success. Use of shiny new machines without a thorough review of weak spots and clear efforts to compensate is a recipe for bad security.
I don't think it's just a matter of government refusing to allow its ideas to fail. It's also a product of two more major antipatterns here, which is "Never use the tried and true when you could be using the new and shiny instead" and "security is a product, not a process."
The shoe bomber got through airport security in Paris.
When people say that the TSA has stopped no terrorist plots, that's the literal truth. All that money spent. All of the loss of our ability to fly conveniently. All of the loss of our liberties. Not a single foiled terrorist plot to show for any of it.
Not one.
(Sorry, couldn't resist... or access.)