Friday, November 17, 2017

The TSA is a waste of money that doesn't save lives and might actually cost them

Few post-9/11 security measures have proven as enduring as the creation of the Transportation Security Administration, which effectively nationalized airport security and dramatically increased screening procedures on flights. In a matter of months, flights went from something you could arrive 30 minutes to an hour beforehand and be fine to something you needed to budget two hours for, what with the shoe removal and the liquids and the possibility of a random pat-down.
It's annoying, but it's also worse than annoying. The TSA's inefficiency isn't just aggravating and unnecessary; by pushing people to drive instead of fly, it's actively dangerous and costing lives. Less invasive private scanning would be considerably better.

Why the TSA falls short

The TSA is hard to evaluate largely because it's attempting to solve a non-problem. Despite some very notable cases, airplane hijackings and bombings are quite rare. There aren't that many attempts, and there are even fewer successes. That makes it hard to judge if the TSA is working properly — if no one tries to do a liquid-based attack, then we don't know if the 3-ounce liquid rule prevents such attacks.
So Homeland Security officials looking to evaluate the agency had a clever idea: They pretended to be terrorists, and tried to smuggle guns and bombs onto planes 70 different times. And 67 of those times, the Red Team succeeded. Their weapons and bombs were not confiscated, despite the TSA's lengthy screening process. That's a success rate of more than 95 percent.

https://www.vox.com/2016/5/17/11687014/tsa-against-airport-security 

No comments: