Or we could finally just get rid of the agency altogether, I don't think I'm alone hoping there will be a day when there's finally a straw to break the camels back and shutter the entire TSA.
I'm waiting for a politician to make this a campaign plank. There are so many Democratic candidates this year I'm hoping one of them seizes the opportunity.
Genuine question from someone outside the US. I see lots of Americans object to the TSA but is it the agency or the function that people object to?
I only ever flew once pre-911 but I seem to recall a security process here in Europe not hugely different from today. What changed in the US with the introduction of the TSA?
It’s the agency. They make arbitrary rules and then they enforce different arbitrary rules. You can fly with the same luggage 100 times and get a different item banned every time.
For example, sometimes ice is ok, sometimes not. It’s supposed to always be ok, but even if you quote the rules ack at them, they pull out the “final determinations are at the discretion of the supervisor”. Which means you can never count on getting your stuff through.
Also they are terrible at their job (they fail over 90% of their tests) and they spend a ton of money. And all those new scanners they bought just happened to be made by a friend of George Bush.
Aside from arbitrary rules there is also a long history of shady and intrusive behaviors (e.g. sharing pics from naked body scanners, groping kids, no fly lists, racial profiling, radiation concerns, ...)
To be fair, in the pre-TSA era, airport security was also pretty ineffective. But now it’s much more in your face, and insanely expensive.
I sympathize with the agents somewhat. It seems like a shitty job.
Did you take your jacket, shoes, and belt off, and dump out your drinks, while waiting in line for an hour while getting yelled at for not following the ever changing instructions?
Airport security in the US used to be privately contracted until 9/11. In the aftermath, TSA security replaced the private security at all but a handful of airports, and simultaneously tightened screening procedures. Over subsequent years, the airport security experience got significantly worse in terms of longer lines, privacy invasion, and more burdensome screening (although these changed at different time and in lumpy ways). Because of this history and the lack of alternatives, it's hard to tell how much of this is because the agency is dysfunctional and how much is an unavoidable aspect of increased security standards which are pretty widely supported by the general public (but not HN).
Yes, the US pushed many countries to tighten their security in the aftermath of 9/11. It's still unclear to me exactly where things are worse, and how much of this is rules vs. agency.
Not sure why the scare quotes. Having to open up your luggage for strangers and get patted down on the crotch seems pretty unambiguously an invasion of privacy (in the sense of "invasive surgery"), whether or not it's justified.
The security standards have not improved - tsa fails more than 90% of their audits, and there are many private security professionals screaming into the void about the pointlessness of TSA's methodologies.
Easy example - the addition of tsa creates huge lines that are excellent, dense targets for terrorists.
The TSA is indeed embarrassing, but since we don't have audit data from the private security in previous eras we don't actually know if things are getting better or worse. There is also the notable fact that airplane-based terrorism in the US is now extraordinarily low, significantly lower than before 9/11. The causality here is hard to disentangle.
In any case, I purposefully said "tightened" not "improved". All I need for my comment is that the rules have become more stringent since 9/11 (e.g., shoes off, no liquids, etc.), which is obviously true.
Pre 911 airport security was privately run and in the wake of the attacks it was taken over by the Federal government.
I believe that although new security measures were felt to be necessary in light of the awareness of how much damage a hijacked plane can cause, the change to management by a federal agency with no real incentive to make things move quickly, or to even demonstrate that precautions are reasonable, wasn’t as successful as we might have hoped.
It is odd, for example, how they screen pilots ... who are obviously already in a position to do the thing we are most avidly trying to prevent ... this causes many people to feel this is all “security theater” that may create a deterrent effect through psychology but may not be doing much to prevent future attacks.
Also the TSA employees don’t seem to fear for their jobs much ... which would be consistent with many other government employees ... so they are occasionally quite rude, although many are friendly and professional.
Obviously the airlines are perfectly positioned to have motivation both to speed boarding and reduce risk of damage to people and equipment. It’s plausible that if they were in charge of security, and had to answer to insurance e companies who also assess risk, we would end up with a far better implementation.
The biggest problem is the rank inefficiency of the TSA. I don't think I've flown in the years since 9/11 where I didn't have to wait in line to get into the terminal, with everyone funneled through one or two scanner lines, while there are a dozen TSA employees lounging around doing nothing, and four or five additional lines that could be used sitting idle and unused.
Throw in some stupid, arbitrary, and unpredictably enforced rules, and hassling about taking off your shoes, belt, unpacking all your luggage, dumping out your ziplock baggy of minuscule volumes of toothpaste and shampoo, confiscating your fingernail clippers, and all the other indignities that are forced on you by petty tyrant mall-cop types.
Seems like there's some sort of alternative option - whatever arrangement the state of California has with the department of Homeland security. I don't fully understand it, just get glimpses from brief conversations with tsa agents as they pat me down, but it seems California self-funds tsa, meaning for example all stations are usually manned, and there was no slowdown during the government shut down.
1. Security Theatre: if the goal is security, you shouldn't be able to pay to receive less scrutiny (the baddies aren't poor). I realize TSA aren't the only guilty party here, but they are able to inflict more suffering than most.
2. Nonsensical Rules, like how they treat nail clippers and water as threats to national security, and after the shoe bomber everyone has to take off their shoes, but after the underwear bomber we… still keep our underwear on? Laptops out but a pile of tablets can stay in the bag? "Randomly" selecting elders and children for enhanced screening?
3. Lacking accountability: as stated in sibling comments, the agency has little incentive to do their job efficiently, and with usually only one local airport, people have few alternative methods of travel.
4. Ineffectiveness: lots of normal people have unwittingly snuck banned items through security checkpoints. And as has been much publicized, pen test teams have managed to make fools of the checkpoints many times. And it's not like all those fancy scanner machines and employees are cheap.
So at significant cost to the US taxpayer, TSA checkpoints slow, inconvenience, annoy, and degrade travelers while providing little actual security, only the theatrics of such. We would be safer without them.
Yes... To both. TSA and dhs don't do anything.
The process has gotten worse, although it is similar to other countries. It is so a farce. It doesn't catch criminals, most policies are reactionary. Three are other ways to stop hijackers than to essentially great everyone as criminals.
I don’t think it’s the workers that are the problem. If some executive at coke changes the formula and it sucks now, it’s not the delivery guys fault. They’re just doing what they get paid to do.
The TSA, like the military, is a jobs program for people that are otherwise unemployable. Probably many people would be disadvanted if it were shut down
I stopped flying altogether when the body scanners became mandatory. Biometric collection frightens me because it could be used in the future for presently-unknowable reasons and purposes which today might seem absurd but in the future could be terrifying. It’s hard to discuss without sounding like I’m wearing a tinfoil hat, but then I would never have believed in the 80’s that in the 00’s I’d consent to have an agent put his hand down my pants in order to board a plane, certainly would never have believed we’d actually have a Department of Homeland Security, TSA, FEMA...
I hear you. You can opt out of all of it (so far). Checkpoint body scanner opts out to a full body pat-down (which takes maybe 5-10 extra minutes, but not that bad). This new facial recognition boarding system airlines are rolling out can be opted out of. That should be it in terms of biometrics needed to fly. Unless you include some countries' customs, which collect face photos or fingerprints or vials of blood——those you can't dodge without diplomatic privilege or a private jet.
I was speaking from personal experience but I guess it's just that I haven't been "selected for enhanced screening" (yet). Most likely still in effect.
>Either way, barring a major outcry, the new opt-out rules are likely to stick.
If your enemy cannot be defeated in one stroke, bleed him to death by a thousand small cuts.
They've been much more willing to harass me about how it's going to add ten minutes wait time but they haven't denied me an opt out. I've never walked through a scanner in the tens of times I've been through the airport.
No, it's what you get when consumers choose low fares. Slack costs money. Extra capacity to make contingencies less painful is expensive. People don't want to pay for it. It's not an unreasonable choice.
So if fares were higher airlines would spend that money on nearly always unused planes sitting somewhere? Not quite sure that's what happens.
Ryanair in Europe must run at one of the highest load factors (over 95% compared to American Airlines 80%).
Ryanair also has some of the lowest cancellation/delays in Europe too. They had a fair few 737 MAX in service but don't seem to be suffering from mass cancellations as far as I can tell.
Seems to be what they used to do prior to deregulation and to a lesser extent in the 90s/2000s. Every flight being full is a more recent phenomena and they are getting better at it over time [1]. When flights aren't full you can pull a plane out of its normal route and fly those passengers on the later one.
TSA is funded via specified, mandatory fees added to the cost of every plane ticket. High or low fares do not affect how much is spent on TSA, other than the indirect effect of low fares --> increased passenger demand --> more fees paid to TSA (along with more passengers to screen).
I recently took a look at which of the large US airports had the greatest delays/early departures
Haha nice. It could be interesting to have the same map for # of flights and some others, and from there, determine a map which indicate when the airport process may be in fault, not the conditions in which it operates. It seems each airport has it's own pattern, so maybe it's possible to remove the conditions from of the maps and what's left should be the process. I guess.
This article popped up for me as I stood in line at Atlanta airport for 40 minutes. They have 20 checkpoints, one is opened.
Finally they gave up putting everyone through the genital analyzer and just had us all go through the metal detector, only first I had to get yelled at for not putting my stuff in a bin ("but sir there are no bins"), then for putting it in the orange bin ("orange means stop! Don't use the orange bin!"), then for not going through the metal detector at I guess the flat out Sprint they wanted me to go through it at.
The fuck is the point. This shit depresses my partner every time we travel. It feels like we're cattle. It's dehumanizing and none of my representatives have the power to do anything about it - why do I even have representatives?
Edit: to the poster who asked why I refer to men as "sir," then deleted their comment, I'm not at all offended. I code switched to my southern dialect while I was in Georgia. Using the honorific will typically garner me more good will down here. If I was back in Wisconsin, it'd piss people off, so I don't use it there, for example. Or anywhere else really cause it's kinda weird.
Meanwhile I just went through security at PDX and it was seriously the nicest thing ever. It's amazing how vastly different TSA is depending on what airport you're at.
Yea, I've seen all kinds. For a federal agency there's very little consistency.
California has been the best. Hawaii was pretty good but mostly because they were so chill and nice. Los Angeles was the most strict but most engaging in conversation. They picked apart my lockpicking set, then let me in after making sure there wasn't a knife tucked in there, talking about the hobby the whole time.
We had brunch at a local diner that is co-located at a small airport. A helicopter took off next to our car as we arrived, and the back door of the diner opened to the tarmac. The security amounts to not allowing small kids to be seated near the back door. It was so refreshing to see that kind of chill and pragmatic atmosphere.
It's amazing how vastly different TSA is depending on what airport you're at.
Even within the same airport it seems to differ. I flew international out of JFK for the first time in a decade a few weeks ago and had been hearing horror stories of what to expect. Yet when I got there I spent less than 15 minutes in line for security, spent less then 60 seconds going through the actual security scan (metal detector, not x ray scanner) and was treated perfectly fine.
That's what has always driven me nuts. No matter what the security process is, you know exactly how many people are going to show up within a couple hour window. So you should be able to make at a fairly constant amount of time. The flights are scheduled months ahead, everyone bought their tickets weeks ahead and confirmed within 24hrs. Everyone is beholden to adding more security steps like adding a personal phone number, DOB, and showing government ID, so if needed, we could add more steps to make things faster or help with capacity--many people are glad to pay for it with Clear and PreCheck.
I bought Global Entry two years ago. $100 for 5 years. The cost compared to tickets is pretty much a rounding error, and the experience at US airports is like night and day compared to having to go through regular security.
Yes, it's a fucking protection racket, yes, it's a shakedown, but it's so worth it. If you fly more than once a year just go apply for it like yesterday.
Considering TSA Pre means you can keep your belt on, your shoes on, don't need to take out your laptop, you can just stuff everything in your carry-on, and don't have to go through the cancer-scanner, it's a massive win just for that alone.
I'm not sure reading the phrase "genital analyzer" makes me feel like you are giving an unbiased description of the events.
In the future I would highly recommend overnight Amtrak service. At most someone may ask for an ID. And I find it to be a much more pleasant overall experience.
I had a similar experience recently. Looking at a family road trip from SF Bay to Eugene - for four people, it's a 6 hour drive, a $900, 14+ hour train ride (overnight without beds), or a 2 hour, $800 flight.
> I'm not sure reading the phrase "genital analyzer" makes me feel like you are giving an unbiased description of the events.
I obviously am not a fan of TSA, but what is "unbiased" in this context? TSA tells us it's some sort of security analysis device, which is obviously biased because they've gone and bought thousands so I can't trust them to report accurately on it. It's also not as they say it is - independent security auditors have regularly defeated the device.
Hence I posit that the device is a genital analysis device, as that is another purpose it serves.
> The fuck is the point. This shit depresses my partner every time we travel. It feels like we're cattle. It's dehumanizing...
It sounds like you understand the point of this program juuuust fine.
The effective rate of capture of dangerous weapons is pitiful (less than 10% according to both their own internal audits, and external tests performed by citizens).
At best, it was a jobs program for many lacking education, and was also good reason to sell those backscatter machines that someone in Congress' cousin or business associate's company was selling at the time.
What I found really interesting is all this shit treatment has not effected tourism to the United States. I would think there would be huge backlash to all of this, but nope US continues to be a popular spot for foreigners to visit. They don't care about the dehumanization. If there was a huge backlash they might stop to not hurt all the tourism dollars, but no they just keep on keeping on.
Because is it really that terrible? Yeah airport security is a bit annoying and maybe you get sternly told to do something. So what?
The comments here make it sound like the TSA is committing war crimes or something.
I think it's dumb, I think it's a waste of time, I think it's ineffective.
I also think that most of the time, most people spend 5-40 minutes in line, get through it, and promptly forget about it. Expecting it to affect tourism to the US seems totally absurd to me.
Yes it is terrible. It wastes billions of dollars plus additional billions of dollars of time. It is unconstitutional. It doesnt do anything. And it purports to make us safe by making us unsafe. We have to stand in line that can easily be targeted, stands next to a barrel full of suspected explisives, walk barefoot across a dirty floor, and potentially felt up.
This point grinds my gears toothless. I've been angry enough at the misery and indignity of TSA procedures to point out (in an airport) how easy it would be for anybody to bomb the dozens/hundreds of people stuck in the 'security' line. Fortunately I wasn't prevented from boarding my flight. I guess the counter-argument is how much more damage could be done if they got on a plane and hijacked it, but I feel like some other safeguards would be far more effective than having somebody in a back room looking at a scan of my naked body (and my family's).
You can add me as a datapoint as well, it definitely factors into some of my decisions (eg. Should I layover in the US or somewhere with saner immigration + security controls?).
The TSA exists for one reason: to take the insurance risk of another September 11th sized attack without grinding the air travel industry to a halt. No private company could possibly afford the liability insurance for "our guards allowed a few guys with box cutters to kill thousands of people" risk. Paying them well enough to actually do a good job is impracticable at the scale of the US air travel system[1]. So the TSA was created so that the Federal Government would bear the risk, but the pay was not really improved over the private contractors who did the job for as little as possible pre-September 11th.
[1]: Many people talk about the Israeli system, especially when they are trying to justify racial profiling here in the US. What they fail to grasp is that the scales are radically different. Total air passenger #'s in Israel in 2018 was roughly 20% of just Atlanta Hartfield-Jackson, and it was basically all at one airport- US carriers carry more passengers every 10 days than fly in and out of Israel in a year. That means that individual attention is possible in ways that are not in the US context.
How do you feel about the idea that the 9/11 terror attacks are virtual impossible in a post-9/11 world?
Remember that pre-9/11, plane hijackings meant you would get landed and then used as a bargaining chip for a ransom. So, now passengers know a hijacking attempt is a fight for their life (whereas before the recommended advice was to sit tight and let the hijackers do their thing).
Also, now, cockpit doors are reinforced and pilots won't open them for hijackers, no matter the cost.
I agree that a 9/11 style attack will never work again: it didn't even work for the fourth plane on the day of, leave alone in the future. But I am explaining the business case for the TSA, why it exists and is the way it is.
I've gone through security at the Atlanta airport about 20 times a year for the last 10 years. I've never had an experience like the one you're describing.
I've also had TSA Pre-check for most of that time, which may account for the difference. It's worth every penny, and many credit cards will cover the cost for you.
I'd like to suggest an alternative to bashing the TSA. (most of the comments on here)
Let's invest more in non-road infrastructure. We need bigger airports, faster trains, better mass transit connections to these hubs.
Airports are over capacity in the US. I was in Chicago O'Hare yesterday, there were about 100 people sleeping on the floor throughout terminal B and C. When my flight boarded, nobody got up from their chairs, since they were waiting for a different flight, at a different gate, where there was no seating. Not only that, the roof was leaking, there were 10-15 buckets dispersed in the terminal catching rain drops from the ceiling. This is potentially the most important air transportation hub in the country and it is crumbling. There are plenty of other examples of this around the country.
We probably wouldn't even need half of the short to mid range flights if we had a decent rail system. Amtrak is a joke though - at least in the North East Corridor
What you’re pointing out is just one expression of the larger phenomenon of America’s third-world-ification.
We absolutely should have new airports. And trains. And not only should we have new airports and trains, we should have underground and undersea trains. Transatlantic undersea trains. Transpacific undersea trains.
And we should have gleaming cityscapes of marble and gold, and great wide shaded streets free of cars and trucks and vehicles larger than mopeds or maybe sportbikes.
And parks and water sculptures and street-corner quartets, flying cars and space elevators and O’Neill colonies, underground hydroponics farms and enormous vaulted subterranean spaces with artificial skies indistinguishable from a summer’s day.
And you know why we don’t?
Not for lack of industry or energy or technology or imagination.
The people who rushed the bill through to create the TSA correctly predicted the problems the TSA would mature into. Lack of competition, federal inefficiencies, too much power, etc. They included a sunset clause to end the TSA, it was after all to handle the perceived increase in threat because of 9/11.
Problem is, no airport wants to take the risk of replacing the TSA then becoming libel for anything that happens.
Every time there is a massive line for security check I think to myself "why do they allow more people to cogenerate pre security check then on a plane"
110 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 168 ms ] threadhttps://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/compost/post/rand-paul-...
I only ever flew once pre-911 but I seem to recall a security process here in Europe not hugely different from today. What changed in the US with the introduction of the TSA?
For example, sometimes ice is ok, sometimes not. It’s supposed to always be ok, but even if you quote the rules ack at them, they pull out the “final determinations are at the discretion of the supervisor”. Which means you can never count on getting your stuff through.
Also they are terrible at their job (they fail over 90% of their tests) and they spend a ton of money. And all those new scanners they bought just happened to be made by a friend of George Bush.
To be fair, in the pre-TSA era, airport security was also pretty ineffective. But now it’s much more in your face, and insanely expensive.
I sympathize with the agents somewhat. It seems like a shitty job.
Not sure why the scare quotes. Having to open up your luggage for strangers and get patted down on the crotch seems pretty unambiguously an invasion of privacy (in the sense of "invasive surgery"), whether or not it's justified.
Do you have your genitals physically examined if you opt out of the visual examination?
Easy example - the addition of tsa creates huge lines that are excellent, dense targets for terrorists.
In any case, I purposefully said "tightened" not "improved". All I need for my comment is that the rules have become more stringent since 9/11 (e.g., shoes off, no liquids, etc.), which is obviously true.
I believe that although new security measures were felt to be necessary in light of the awareness of how much damage a hijacked plane can cause, the change to management by a federal agency with no real incentive to make things move quickly, or to even demonstrate that precautions are reasonable, wasn’t as successful as we might have hoped.
It is odd, for example, how they screen pilots ... who are obviously already in a position to do the thing we are most avidly trying to prevent ... this causes many people to feel this is all “security theater” that may create a deterrent effect through psychology but may not be doing much to prevent future attacks.
Also the TSA employees don’t seem to fear for their jobs much ... which would be consistent with many other government employees ... so they are occasionally quite rude, although many are friendly and professional.
Obviously the airlines are perfectly positioned to have motivation both to speed boarding and reduce risk of damage to people and equipment. It’s plausible that if they were in charge of security, and had to answer to insurance e companies who also assess risk, we would end up with a far better implementation.
Throw in some stupid, arbitrary, and unpredictably enforced rules, and hassling about taking off your shoes, belt, unpacking all your luggage, dumping out your ziplock baggy of minuscule volumes of toothpaste and shampoo, confiscating your fingernail clippers, and all the other indignities that are forced on you by petty tyrant mall-cop types.
Probably many states can't afford that though.
1. Security Theatre: if the goal is security, you shouldn't be able to pay to receive less scrutiny (the baddies aren't poor). I realize TSA aren't the only guilty party here, but they are able to inflict more suffering than most.
2. Nonsensical Rules, like how they treat nail clippers and water as threats to national security, and after the shoe bomber everyone has to take off their shoes, but after the underwear bomber we… still keep our underwear on? Laptops out but a pile of tablets can stay in the bag? "Randomly" selecting elders and children for enhanced screening?
3. Lacking accountability: as stated in sibling comments, the agency has little incentive to do their job efficiently, and with usually only one local airport, people have few alternative methods of travel.
4. Ineffectiveness: lots of normal people have unwittingly snuck banned items through security checkpoints. And as has been much publicized, pen test teams have managed to make fools of the checkpoints many times. And it's not like all those fancy scanner machines and employees are cheap.
So at significant cost to the US taxpayer, TSA checkpoints slow, inconvenience, annoy, and degrade travelers while providing little actual security, only the theatrics of such. We would be safer without them.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/travel/what-the-tsa...
>Either way, barring a major outcry, the new opt-out rules are likely to stick.
If your enemy cannot be defeated in one stroke, bleed him to death by a thousand small cuts.
They've been much more willing to harass me about how it's going to add ten minutes wait time but they haven't denied me an opt out. I've never walked through a scanner in the tens of times I've been through the airport.
If airlines can find a way to do both they’ll win customers from other airlines who do not
Ryanair in Europe must run at one of the highest load factors (over 95% compared to American Airlines 80%).
Ryanair also has some of the lowest cancellation/delays in Europe too. They had a fair few 737 MAX in service but don't seem to be suffering from mass cancellations as far as I can tell.
[1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/flights/todayinthesky/...
https://www.tsa.gov/for-industry/security-fees
I do not suggest disabling javascript globally, just for certain sites. The reading experience is dramatically improved.
A bit buried, but yes.
Thanks
It might be interesting to take another look overtime by season/year. (the impetus was a tweet which identified that SFO has been getting worse over time: https://twitter.com/felipehoffa/status/1111050585120206848 )
Haha nice. It could be interesting to have the same map for # of flights and some others, and from there, determine a map which indicate when the airport process may be in fault, not the conditions in which it operates. It seems each airport has it's own pattern, so maybe it's possible to remove the conditions from of the maps and what's left should be the process. I guess.
Finally they gave up putting everyone through the genital analyzer and just had us all go through the metal detector, only first I had to get yelled at for not putting my stuff in a bin ("but sir there are no bins"), then for putting it in the orange bin ("orange means stop! Don't use the orange bin!"), then for not going through the metal detector at I guess the flat out Sprint they wanted me to go through it at.
The fuck is the point. This shit depresses my partner every time we travel. It feels like we're cattle. It's dehumanizing and none of my representatives have the power to do anything about it - why do I even have representatives?
Edit: to the poster who asked why I refer to men as "sir," then deleted their comment, I'm not at all offended. I code switched to my southern dialect while I was in Georgia. Using the honorific will typically garner me more good will down here. If I was back in Wisconsin, it'd piss people off, so I don't use it there, for example. Or anywhere else really cause it's kinda weird.
California has been the best. Hawaii was pretty good but mostly because they were so chill and nice. Los Angeles was the most strict but most engaging in conversation. They picked apart my lockpicking set, then let me in after making sure there wasn't a knife tucked in there, talking about the hobby the whole time.
Pretty sure the worst TSA award goes to MCO though. I dread flying through there, even with pre.
Even within the same airport it seems to differ. I flew international out of JFK for the first time in a decade a few weeks ago and had been hearing horror stories of what to expect. Yet when I got there I spent less than 15 minutes in line for security, spent less then 60 seconds going through the actual security scan (metal detector, not x ray scanner) and was treated perfectly fine.
Yes, it's a fucking protection racket, yes, it's a shakedown, but it's so worth it. If you fly more than once a year just go apply for it like yesterday.
In the future I would highly recommend overnight Amtrak service. At most someone may ask for an ID. And I find it to be a much more pleasant overall experience.
Every time I've looked at Amtrak as an option, it was more expensive, and took several days to get to my destination.
I obviously am not a fan of TSA, but what is "unbiased" in this context? TSA tells us it's some sort of security analysis device, which is obviously biased because they've gone and bought thousands so I can't trust them to report accurately on it. It's also not as they say it is - independent security auditors have regularly defeated the device.
Hence I posit that the device is a genital analysis device, as that is another purpose it serves.
You've succinctly described interactions with the legal system, customs, immigration, and just about every other 'security'-sensitive bureaucracy.
It sounds like you understand the point of this program juuuust fine.
The effective rate of capture of dangerous weapons is pitiful (less than 10% according to both their own internal audits, and external tests performed by citizens).
At best, it was a jobs program for many lacking education, and was also good reason to sell those backscatter machines that someone in Congress' cousin or business associate's company was selling at the time.
The comments here make it sound like the TSA is committing war crimes or something.
I think it's dumb, I think it's a waste of time, I think it's ineffective.
I also think that most of the time, most people spend 5-40 minutes in line, get through it, and promptly forget about it. Expecting it to affect tourism to the US seems totally absurd to me.
There are plenty of other places that are higher on my destination list, so it's unlikely to factor in any decision.
https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/tourist-arrivals
The TSA exists for one reason: to take the insurance risk of another September 11th sized attack without grinding the air travel industry to a halt. No private company could possibly afford the liability insurance for "our guards allowed a few guys with box cutters to kill thousands of people" risk. Paying them well enough to actually do a good job is impracticable at the scale of the US air travel system[1]. So the TSA was created so that the Federal Government would bear the risk, but the pay was not really improved over the private contractors who did the job for as little as possible pre-September 11th.
[1]: Many people talk about the Israeli system, especially when they are trying to justify racial profiling here in the US. What they fail to grasp is that the scales are radically different. Total air passenger #'s in Israel in 2018 was roughly 20% of just Atlanta Hartfield-Jackson, and it was basically all at one airport- US carriers carry more passengers every 10 days than fly in and out of Israel in a year. That means that individual attention is possible in ways that are not in the US context.
Remember that pre-9/11, plane hijackings meant you would get landed and then used as a bargaining chip for a ransom. So, now passengers know a hijacking attempt is a fight for their life (whereas before the recommended advice was to sit tight and let the hijackers do their thing).
Also, now, cockpit doors are reinforced and pilots won't open them for hijackers, no matter the cost.
I've also had TSA Pre-check for most of that time, which may account for the difference. It's worth every penny, and many credit cards will cover the cost for you.
> TSA staffers volunteer to take on unspecified work at the U.S.-Mexico border.
What are they going to be doing down there?
Let's invest more in non-road infrastructure. We need bigger airports, faster trains, better mass transit connections to these hubs.
Airports are over capacity in the US. I was in Chicago O'Hare yesterday, there were about 100 people sleeping on the floor throughout terminal B and C. When my flight boarded, nobody got up from their chairs, since they were waiting for a different flight, at a different gate, where there was no seating. Not only that, the roof was leaking, there were 10-15 buckets dispersed in the terminal catching rain drops from the ceiling. This is potentially the most important air transportation hub in the country and it is crumbling. There are plenty of other examples of this around the country.
Air travel is a different story, I think we should think twice about expanding: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_transp...
We probably wouldn't even need half of the short to mid range flights if we had a decent rail system. Amtrak is a joke though - at least in the North East Corridor
US is unlike Germany or England or Japan, where the density of population (and thus of railways) is much higher than in most of the US.
We absolutely should have new airports. And trains. And not only should we have new airports and trains, we should have underground and undersea trains. Transatlantic undersea trains. Transpacific undersea trains.
And we should have gleaming cityscapes of marble and gold, and great wide shaded streets free of cars and trucks and vehicles larger than mopeds or maybe sportbikes.
And parks and water sculptures and street-corner quartets, flying cars and space elevators and O’Neill colonies, underground hydroponics farms and enormous vaulted subterranean spaces with artificial skies indistinguishable from a summer’s day.
And you know why we don’t?
Not for lack of industry or energy or technology or imagination.
But because the money men aren’t interested.
Problem is, no airport wants to take the risk of replacing the TSA then becoming libel for anything that happens.