TSA - Theatrical Security Association
The TSA’s “Red Team” (they’re like super-heroes!) has been testing airport security and found out that despite the absence of toothpaste and swiss army knives, bombs and IEDs are still perfectly easy to get on planes.
“The good news is we have our own people probing and looking and examining the system,” said Rep. Ed Perlmutter, a Democrat in the 7th congressional who sits on the House Homeland Security and transportation committees. “The bad news is they’re finding weaknesses.”
What a wonderful quote, I wonder if he does Play-by-Play commentary in his spare time?
If they miss something that’s obvious, often times that could happen, we will pull them off the line and retrain them,” said Security Director Earl Morris at TSA headquarters in Washington, D.C.
My advice would be more along the lines of…don’t hire idiots in the first place. Perhaps something in the interview like:
“If a woman tells you the bandage on her leg isn’t a bomb…but it’s setting off the metal detector, you should”:
- A. (In a friendly manner, not accusing) Ask her what surgery she had that would cause the metal detector to go off, ask her if she would mind taking off the bandage in a private screening room
- B. Rip off the bandage while yelling, “I found a trrrrrrrist!”
- C. Take her word for it, after all, she’s not brown.
“There’s very little substance to security,” said former Red Team leader Bogdan Dzakovic. “It literally is all window dressing that we’re doing. It’s big theater on TV and when you go to the airport. It’s just security theater.” *snip*
Dzakovic was a Red Team leader from 1995 until September 11, 2001. *snip*
Dzakovic, who is currently a TSA inspector, said security is no better today.
Can someone explain to me why, if you believe it doesn’t do any good, you would continue working for the TSA? Are the benefits particularly good (I’m sure they are), like enough to outweigh knowing that every day you work for an organization that wastes billions of taxpayer dollars in an effort to make people feel safer than they actually are while simultaneously making travel about as enjoyable as eating broken glass. I feel less safe just knowing people like that work for the TSA.
“We have a very robust program of which we are very proud, in which we utilize testing at all of our airports every single day,” said Morris.
I don’t give a flying rat’s ass if you’re proud of your system, what bearing does that have on it’s efficacy? He’s also apparently an idiot since he’s still maintaining its robust, when it was proven not to be.
According to the GAO, screeners at 15 airports missed 90 percent of the explosives and guns agents tried to sneak past checkpoints.
That’s kind of deceptively worded. Does that mean that 15 airports had 90 percent of the mistakes? or that 15 airports each failed 90% of their tests. Because one of those is fixable and the other isn’t.
Most test results, including results from the Red Team, are secret, classified as SSI or sensitive security information. Morris says they do not make them public because they could point out holes in the system.
…what? If there are holes in the system…YOU FUCKING FIX THEM! NOW! Why shouldn’t this all be public knowledge? For the money we’re paying them there shouldn’t be a single god-damn hole in the system. Why not make it a big open project? I’d say this is a place where the wisdom of crowds would excel. Ask 1 million people, “If you were a terrorist, how would you blow up a plane?” I bet they’d get some answers they never even imagined being possible. More importantly if they opened up the process they might get experts (on say, explosives) commenting on things instead of untrained bureaucratic buffoons who make decisions like banning toothpaste and bottled water.
