by John Q.
Next to Homeland Security, the TSA may be the second largest government boondoggle since 9/11/01.
With over 60,000 employees shaking down passengers at airports and a whopping budget of $5 billion dollars per year…exactly what have we accomplished? Not much. No terrorists have ever been caught, but tossed tons of banned into the trash can at the boarding gate. Passengers must also go through the indignity of removing their belts, shoes, jewelry, watches, etc., and place them in bins for xray and that process has led to some thefts. Billions upon billions spent, millions of passengers harrassed in the name of security and yet not one terrorist was ever caught? Osama must be so proud.
The Transportation Security Administration is in the news a bit too much with stories of their staff stealing from our luggage.
The problems at JFK airport were so serious, that the TSA and Delta Airlines worked together to try and nab the crooks in action.
It didn’t take long till the sting operation turned up its first victims – TSA worker Brian Burton and baggage handler Antwon Simmons were caught on camera stealing a laptop, an iPod and 2 mobile phones.
The very people who are hired to keep our airlines safe are too crooked to be trusted with our valuables, a very worrying statistic, especially since this is by no means the first time TSA workers have been involved in luggage theft.
TSA is an embarassment. It’s a government’s good intentions gone awry once again.
In tests of their TSA security net, contraband that included bomb parts, restricted items and firearms were run through inspection points and agents reported at least a 50% failure rate and in some airports it was in excess of 80%.
Several years ago TSA was exposed for it’s failure to track security passes and uniforms of former employees, creating widespread vulnerability to terrorists. The Transportation Security Administration lacked centralized controls over the secure passes issued to some of its employees, according to Department of Homeland Security Inspector General Richard Skinner. The passes grant people access to the most sensitive areas of an airport, such as where baggage is screened or planes are parked.
“The PSE failure rate nationwide is alarming–more than 50 percent on the first test and as high as 80 percent at some airports” AFGE National President John Gage
In 2005 Veronique de Rugy wrote: “A new Government Accountability report shows that private airport screeners do a better job at detecting dangerous object than the bureaucrats at the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). This report is the last in a long series, all of which demonstrate the poor performances of the 60,000-employee bureaucracy. So isn’t it time for Congress to acknowledge its mistake and abolish TSA?” Apparently not, it’s still with still using highly questionable search tactics that even Israel doesn’t use!
Check out how some of your taxpayer dollars has been spent in the name of improving security at the nation’s airports only recently:
$526.95 for one phone call from the Hyatt Regency O’Hare in Chicago to Iowa City.
$1,180 for 20 gallons of Starbucks Coffee — $3.69 a cup — at the Santa Clara Marriott in California.
$1,540 to rent 14 extension cords at $5 each per day for three weeks at the Wyndham Peaks Resort and Golden Door Spa in Telluride, Colo.
$8,100 for elevator operators at the Marriott Marquis in Manhattan.
$5.4 million claimed for nine months’ salary for the chief executive of an “event logistics” firm that received a contract before it was incorporated and went out of business after the contract ended.
Those details are contained in a federal audit that calls into question $303 million of the $741 million spent to assess and hire airport passenger screeners for the newly created Transportation Security Administration after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Despite the obvious and well deserved criticism TSA has been slow to make corrective changes and the government continues to shell out billions, for what has at best been a “perception of security” and at worst, a complete waste of billions of your tax dollars. This does not take into consideration the costly delays to commerce and passengers which could equal losses of billions more.
From Swapping Liberty for Security… by Ek Buys
“Although no doubt products of the best of intentions [I doubt now.], airport security measures are in practice elitist, ineffective, unacceptably intrusive, and even counterproductive.
Their elitism is reflected in the pittance that is allocated to protecting those who travel by bus or train. During the year following the tragedy of 9/11, federal security dollars were distributed as follows: $4 billion for air travelers, $55 million for Amtrak customers, and $15 million for motorcoach passengers.
It should not have taken the Madrid tragedy to make it evident that buses and trains are as susceptible to terrorist attacks as are planes, probably more so. In a three year period, 1997 to 2000, there were 195 terrorist attacks on public transit systems worldwide. Of course, most corporate executives and political leaders are not frequent passengers on buses or trains.
To avoid the airline “security” assault on my liberty and privacy I have traveled by bus from Tucson to Michigan (94 hours roundtrip) and by Amtrak to and from Kansas City (50 hours total). Security measures were few and far between on the “Dog” and nowhere and never evident on the train. Neither the motorcoach operators nor the Amtrak attendants were able to identify any significant efforts to protect them or their passengers from terrorist assaults.
Even if the over 750 million passengers riding buses annually got their fair share of security funds, they would not gain much, if any, security. Why? Because the $5 billion plus budget of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has been largely unproductive. The ineffectiveness of airport security, the focus of TSA efforts, has been revealed every time it has been tested since 1990, as recently as March of this year.
Yes, screeners confiscated about six million items during 2003. Unfortunately, the last test for which statistics were released, March 2003, (Specifics are now classified!!) revealed a failure rate of 25 percent in identifying weapons smuggled through inspection stations by Government Accounting Office undercover inspectors. Assuming a very optimistic general failure rate of 10 percent, that would mean 600,000 illegal items made their way by screeners last year.
Even if passenger inspections were 100 percent effective, there would remain thousands of airport and airline employees who have access to planes, shoulder-fired missiles easily transportable across the border with Mexico, freight that is loaded unchecked, dozens of stolen uniforms, hundreds of missing identification cards, and counterfeit passports and drivers licenses all available to would-be saboteurs.
Casualties of attempts at airline security are the rights to be assumed innocent until proven guilty and to protect one’s privacy against unreasonable invasions, rights that thousands of Americans have died to preserve. There is no reason to sacrifice such rights given the demonstrable ineffectiveness of “security” measures which ostensibly serve as the grounds for their abrogation.”