Things the TSA doesn't want you to see

http://www.elliott.org/blog/5-things-the-tsa-doesnt-want-you-to-see/

by diminish • 14 years ago

143 39 14 years ago

joejohnson• 14 years ago

Off topic: can you edit the title to "Things the TSA doesn't want you to see"? This is the preferred format for titles beginning with a number: http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

rhizome2• 14 years ago

Thank you for informing us that this is just an "X Things..." post without having to visit the link. ;)

dsr_• 14 years ago

Things the TSA doesn't want you to see: this site.

(Sorry, couldn't resist... or access.)

sp332• 14 years ago

Try this (you can't see the videos in this version though) https://www.readability.com/articles/bleqmeer

ck2• 14 years ago

cache http://google.com/search?q=cache:www.elliott.org/blog/5-thin...

crusso4• 14 years ago

The thing I love about the TSA is that their record of failure is so numerically concrete.

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.

mcantelon• 14 years ago

>That's some pretty obvious and epic fail on the part of the Agency. Why hasn't it been eliminated or reformed by now?

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.

crusso4• 14 years ago

I'm a bit cynical, but I don't think that it's anything quite that sinister. The TSA is just another agency that gives budget dollars and a corresponding amount of power to the bureaucrats and government representatives who run it and a lot of contract dollars to the crony companies that supply it.

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.

maratd• 14 years ago

While it can certainly be used for that, Adam Smith had it right a very long time ago. The purpose of the TSA is to purchase millions of dollars worth of useless equipment, lining someone's pocket. Oh, the unions get a little slice too. Oh, and "Homeland Security" gets to expand and have more clout. Like businesses, government loves expansion. Everybody gets a cut and we have to pay for it.

patrickgzill• 14 years ago

That plus, with the ability of the scanners to see anything and everything you are carrying, the near-complete ability to turn the continental USA into one big lockdown, a sort of free-range prison. Gold, silver, jewelry and other forms of portable wealth will not be able to be taken out of the country.

mikeash2• 14 years ago

The public demands that Something must be Done. The TSA is Something, therefore it is Done.

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.

gaius• 14 years ago

That's exactly it. As another example, witness the internet porn censorship debate in the UK at the moment. No-one in government cares about porn. Jacqui Smith MP even buys her porn using her parliamentary expense account! What it's really about is putting the machinery in place for real censorship and control later.

The TSA is about establishing the infrastructure for real restriction of movement, using terrorism as a mere pretext.

click170• 14 years ago

Waiting For Superman is a remarkable documentary that I would recommend to anyone who is curious about the many things that are wrong with the American education system, it honestly brought tears to my eyes at moments -- small kids who have to enlist in a lottery hoping that they are allowed to go to the good school.

crusso4• 14 years ago

> it honestly brought tears to my eyes at moments

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.

majelix2• 14 years ago

> Why hasn't it been eliminated or reformed by now?

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.

epoxyhockey• 14 years ago

Why hasn't it been eliminated or reformed by now?

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.

luriel• 14 years ago

> 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.)

rsanchez13• 14 years ago

They're not stupid. They're either too scared to stand up to government intruding on civil rights, or they've been misled with false promises (which is a consequence of the schooling system).

einhverfr2• 14 years ago

First, I think you have to assume that the TSA will always fail and visibly so. If we assume the best, the goal of setting up an organization like that is to increase the barrier to such an attack, not to be the organization that directly prevents it.

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."

rsanchez13• 14 years ago

Officially the purpose of the TSA is to deter terrorism, but it's looking more and more like it's just there to intimidate travelers in the US. It's obviously not working for it's intended purpose, so why do they insist on keeping the TSA?

nextstep• 14 years ago

Don't we now have to remove our shoes because of the shoe bomber? Didn't the TSA catch that guy?

spullara• 14 years ago

He was trying to light his shoe on a plane when he was stopped.

crusso4• 14 years ago

As another poster pointed out, the shoe bomber was caught by alert people on the flight.

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.

Things the TSA doesn't want you to see

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