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Do we really need the TSA anymore? Have we EVER?
Henroid
Mexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered User regular
Mexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered User regular
EDIT ON 01/06/10 - This thread is suitable to the discussion of the specific event of the crotch bomber as well as all future incidents and news on the TSA.
There's an article up on Gizmodo titled President Obama, It's Time to Fire the TSA.
The bolded bit is the action the TSA is taking in response to the attack that attempted to set fire to a plane. Which is to, for the final hour of a flight, make passengers stay in their seats and have nothing in their laps.
At this point, the entire idea of the TSA is a goddamn joke. A single failure of prevention would've been one thing, but everyone knows fake bomb tests have made it through undetected so the TSA failing a real world scenario isn't excusable. The response is a goddamn joke though. Unfortunately I don't see the TSA being brought up this term, maybe even by this president. It'd certainly be admirable but the amount of shit he'd catch for helping terrorism would be a headache.
There's an article up on Gizmodo titled President Obama, It's Time to Fire the TSA.
Today, DHS's Napolitano's response to the crotchbomber: "We're looking to make sure that this sort of incident cannot recur." But the TSA's response to Abdulmutalib's attempt makes one thing clear: We must stop pretending the TSA is making us safer.
Security expert Bruce Schneier nails the core incompetency: "For years I've been saying 'Only two things have made flying safer [since 9/11]: the reinforcement of cockpit doors, and the fact that passengers know now to resist hijackers.'"
So what has the TSA done in response to the attempted attack? They've told airlines to make passengers stay in their seats during the last hour of flight. They've made it verboten for passengers to hold anything in their laps, again only during the last hour of flight. Perhaps most hilariously telling, they've forbidden pilots from announcing when a plane is flying over certain cities and landmarks.
There is no other way to interpret it: The TSA is saying clearly that they can't prevent terrorists from getting explosives on airplanes, but by god, they'll make sure those planes only explode when the TSA says it's okay.
I want our government to prevent terrorism and to make flights safer. But we are spending billions of dollars and man-hours to fight a threat that is less likely to kill a traveler than being struck by lightning. In the last decade, according to statistician Nate Silver, there has been "one terrorist incident per 11,569,297,667 miles flown [the] equivalent to 1,459,664 trips around the diameter of the Earth, 24,218 round trips to the Moon, or two round trips to Neptune." (Sadly, this does mean that in the future we can expect one out of every two round-trip flights to Neptune to be hijacked.)
The TSA isn't saving lives. We, the passengers, are saving our own. Since its inception, the TSA has been structured in such a way as to prevent specific terror scenarios, attempting to disrupt a handful of insanely specific tactics, while continuing to disenfranchise and demoralize the citizens who are actually doing the work that a billion-dollar government agency—an agency that received an additional $128 million just this year for new checkpoint explosive screening technology—has failed to do.
We just had the first legitimate attempted attack in years, and the TSA changes the threat level from orange...to orange.
This goes far beyond simple customer satisfaction issues like "Take Back Takeoff." (Although they are of a kind.) It has to do with wildly irrationally response of a government agency in the face of failure. An agency whose leader, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, said at first blush that the attempted attack showed that—here comes the Katrina-class foot-in-mouth—"the system worked." (She shoveled shit in her mouth this morning, while still talking up the asinine new measures that the TSA will be taking to respond to this isolated threat.)
I don't want to die on an airplane. I don't want to die in my home while eating an organic bagel infested with parasites that lay eggs on my liver. I don't want to die from starvation or bad water or a thousand other things that I pay our government to monitor and regulate.
But I also don't expect the government to protect from the literally endless possibilities and threats that could occur at any point to end my life or the life of the few I love. It's been nearly a decade since terrorists used airplanes to attack our country, and last week's attempt makes it clear that the lack of terrorist attacks have nothing to do with the increasing gauntlet of whirring machines, friskings, and arbitrary bureaucratic provisions, but simply that for the most part, there just aren't that many terrorists trying to blow up planes. Because god knows if there were, the TSA isn't capable of stopping them. We're just one bad burrito away from the TSA forcing passengers to choke back an Imodium and a Xanax before being hogtied to our seats.
President Obama, don't let this attack—this one attack that was thankfully stopped by smart, fearless passengers and airline staff—take us further in the wrong direction. I don't think I'm alone in feeling this way. Americans of all stripes and affiliation standing up to say, "This isn't working. We gave you our money. You're not making us safer." We appreciate the attempt to make us safer and acknowledge that it came from an honest attempt to protect American (and the rest of the world's) lives.
But it's a failure. It's wrongheaded. It's a farce. Tear it down. Put the money towards the sort of actions at which our government excels, like intelligence. The failure of the TSA leaves us no choice, but it's okay. The American people are ready to take back the responsibility for our own safety. Really, we already have.
The bolded bit is the action the TSA is taking in response to the attack that attempted to set fire to a plane. Which is to, for the final hour of a flight, make passengers stay in their seats and have nothing in their laps.
At this point, the entire idea of the TSA is a goddamn joke. A single failure of prevention would've been one thing, but everyone knows fake bomb tests have made it through undetected so the TSA failing a real world scenario isn't excusable. The response is a goddamn joke though. Unfortunately I don't see the TSA being brought up this term, maybe even by this president. It'd certainly be admirable but the amount of shit he'd catch for helping terrorism would be a headache.
Henroid on
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You are absolutely right, I have amended the title.
This.
We need the TSA.
We just need them to not be fucking retarded.
Indeed.
The problem with new TSA regulations is that they seem to always just be coming up with things that would have prevented the LAST attack, and never looking forward to what might prevent the next one.
A guy ALREADY tried to light his shoe on fire. No one intelligent enough to get away with it is ever going to try that again, because they know that people are watching for it. You don't have to focus on everyone's shoes.
Not being allowed to have anything in your lap for the last hour of a flight seems like it's reaching undue burden territory.
Yes and no. Some of the basic stuff and checked baggage screening does help. If you'll notice, none of the suicide bombs that have gotten past security have actually worked. I have a feeling the tricks they have to use to defeat security make it harder to re-assemble the bomb. If they could get it through intact, like they used to do with checked luggage, it'd be a lot easier.
Buuuut 99% of that is just the basic security stuff they were doing prior to 9/11. Most of the added crap doesn't help all that much.
re: the "let passengers do it" idea: Remember that with this flight the thing WENT OFF before anyone noticed. The passengers failed just as hard as the rest of the system!
"idiotic regulations" is pretty much all the TSA does. That's also pretty much all it can do, without violating people's constitutional rights, or making air travel ridiculously slow and expensive.
How many people died on 9/11? 2000? With the billions of dollars we've spent on the TSA, we probably could have saved that many lives, by spending it on human aid instead.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
If you're going to hijack it and crash it into a building, that's the logical time. If you do it too soon, someone's going to realize what's up and they'll shoot down the plane.
Also, if you did want to bring something liquid and above regulated volume onto a plane in your carry on, all you apparently have to do is slap a prescription sticker on the bottle.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
I guess this makes sense. It seems like it would be pretty trivial to choose a flight going somewhere other than your intended target to hijack, though. It would just have to be flying sort of near whatever you wanted to blow up at some point.
Do planes' flight paths change that much either prior to takeoff or during flight? I had it in my head that they change quite a bit but maybe that's wrong.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
So much this.
The TSA should be a federal organization with hiring and training standards on par with the FBI. Rentacops who hate their job aren't going to cut it if we want to be serious at all about security in the public transportation sector. Federally trained security personnel, annual inspections and random airport security drills all seem like ideas that should be employed. The problem is, of course, logistics. I don't know how many people the TSA employs, but with all the airports we have I'm sure it is somewhere in the metric fucktons. Overhauling the TSA with that kind of training doesn't come quick or easy, and it is sure to be a pain to airlines and passengers in the beginning.
Also, more of these in lieu of metal detectors please.
I saw this article on Reddit, and I feel like it's pretty relevant. Just chalk up the TSA to those needless costs in the "War on Terror."
you really think we need crack field agents in order to wave people through metal detactors and make sure their liquids weigh less than 3 ounces? I really doubt it's even possible to FIND that many FBI-caliber agents, much less pay them all.
1) Reinforced cockpit doors
2) The fact that a plan full of people is going to stop someone from hijacking the plan, even if a few of them die doing it
the rest is all just smoke and mirrors giving the ignorant the illusion of security
Also, how many possible liquid explosives are there that we couldn't get people to do something simple like splash a drop on something to prove it's water. You know, given the fact that I've carried 700mL water bottles, full of water, through airport security without realizing it on internal flights and all.
I mean shit, according to Burn Notice if I could get a bunch of styrofoam and cornflower aboard, I'd have a pretty god damn lethal incendiary explosive if I could light it.
hint: a lot
I know. Why terrorists haven't tried this yet I do not know.
Because successfully pulling off a terrorist attack involves more than just a dude with an idea somewhere. Hell, wasn't there an SE thread where people came up with the worst possible terrorist attack scenario completely fucking over large swathes of the US which came up with some rather simple but horrific possibilities?
There's probably thousands of ways to commit an act of terrorism on a commercial airline. However, they all require at least one person to act as a suicide bomber, as well as several others to coordinate with him. There's just not many people in the world that are willing and able to do that.
It's the basic idea that someone who wants it bad enough will do and will find a way to do it. Nothing sort of flying naked strapped full body into your seat will fully prevent someone smart and insane enough
I know this. The thing is, presumably when planning these types of things you research how you'll do it. Is there something fundamental about batteries which means they won't work, or what's the deal?
The guys that are willing to blow themselves up for an ideology generally aren't the sharpest tools in the shed. If they were the types to thoroughly research things before they undertook them then they wouldn't be in the situation to begin with.
What exactly is the advantage of blowing up a plane compared to an office building or a subway? 9-11 was devastating because they used the planes as bombs, but since passengers now won't allow a hijacking I don't see the advantage to actually blowing up a plane over any number of other targets.
Planes have anywhere from 50 to 600 people in an environment where they are all guaranteed to die if it is rendered less then flightworthy in a substantial way.
Why do you believe this to be true?
9/11 wasn't the first reported case of hijacking either, after all.
It was the first time the hijacking involved crashing the planes into something.
Before that, if you were hijacked you cooperated, waited for them to land and then either be talked down or the plane stormed and the terrorists put down.
9/11's big change was that that dynamic is now gone - if someone tries to hijack a plane, either you fight back or die without ever landing.
It was the first suicidal hijacking. Before that it just meant you were going to Cuba or being held hostage for random prisoner dudes to be released.
I know if I'm on a plane that's getting hijacked, I'm at least attempting to take the hijackers out regardless of outcome.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_8969
First time it was actually pulled off, more like.
Things like laptops go through the security screening process, though.
The problem is that prior to Richard Reid's brilliant plan, shoes did not. They went only through the metal detector (and often weren't really being scanned by that).
The whole thing is still pretty silly, but there is theoretically a reason for it. It's only, like, 90% "security theater."
The liquid thing is silly as all fuck, though. Unless you're actually patting down a significant portion of your fliers, or have the "sniffers" at all airports, it's a waste of time. It's trivial to hid much more than 3 oz. of liquid on your person.
I've travelled with a laptop 100 times and I've had it go through the screening(with the paper sheets and the explosive traces look up) once. It takes time and when the number of laptops is almost equal to the number of passengers, it's impossible to apply the moment there is a line at the checkpoint.
I'd go with 99.98% security theatre. The whole fight against terrorist activity is irrational, inconvenient and wasteful. TSA is like the champion of those.
Where not the 9/11 fligths cross country flights hijacked soon after take off? It depends on where the target is really. Hijacking a flight outta JFK would be best if you are going to hit New York.
Anyways, I can see the point of having a TSA, so you have a federal security program for airlines to prevent the low hanging fruit attack attempts that would be easy to stop. They do seem to be rather mired in bullshit security theater though, and a lot of the stuff they do doesn't really make you much safer. However, fixing it might be a bit of a problem due to the strength of the paranoia bloc in US politics.
Didn't he do it when they were at relatively low altitude? Wouldn't depressurizing the cabin cause more trouble at a high altitude where the air is thinner? Maybe if it would cause the pilot to lose control I could see the point of that so he could cause a crash, but it seems like he would try to aim for a bit more than just depressurization at low altitude.