Amy, I think you had a little cut and paste issue. Part of the article that you posted seems to be doubled up.

Otherwise... If everyone aknowledges the waste that the TSA is, why aren't they actually DOING something about it? Typical of government... talk, talk, talk...

Limits have not been placed because they would make TSA out to be liars about the state of risk to the nation and its travelers.

Can't have that. Also, can't have bureaucratic jobs placed at risk from complaints when, not if, the next horrible incident happens.

And the public is no help. Even professionals, like Jeff here, have a twisted idea about how aircraft travel safety is to be provided. The bulk of people want to be left alone, but this also means they want to be left alone rather than insist on their rights.

That's somebody else's job.

TSA supporters are one of those things that just truly baffle me. I just cannot understand how people, who usually will admit that the TSA is mostly useless, are willing to defend them in "principal" because they feel that "it's better than nothing." IMO, 'nothing' would be better than the TSA (or as I refer to it... the Theatre Safety Ass-ociation.)

I also cannot wrap my mind around the bass-ackward logic that some people use when they claim in makes us safer when there is factual evidence to the contrary. As soon as you start arguing with logical, fact based statements, these same generally passive people become almost vicious in their defense of it.

It's like they've been brain washed.

I also find myself consistantly stunned at the governments obvious disregard for the Constitution and lack of attention to the incompetence and wastefulness of the TSA. There is obviously a problem. Fix it. It seems like a no-brainer. I guess my simple little American mind just can't possibly comprehend the complexities of thought it requires to be such a royal screw up, which is apparently mandatory, to be in Congress

"TSA supporters are one of those things that just truly baffle me. "

The KGB had lots of supporters in its day.

I'll give Amy Alkon twenty dollars if she promises to never again begin a sentence with "But, ..."

I may be wrong, but I do think that Congress is limited in their ability to compel someone from another branch of government to appear before a committee. The same holds true that the President can't pick up his phone and order the Speaker of the House to appear before him.

Congress is certainly free to defund the TSA (I wish), but considering that they ok'ed the creation of the TSA and their gargantuan budget, I am not going to hold out on any hope.

I am sitting at a cafe in MSP airport. I just arrived from London, and connect from here to MT. I got through security at Heathrow in a heartbeat: I mean it was fast, efficient, I didn't have to take off my shoes and watch, did not get pat down, it was a breeze. At MSP I have a 6 hour layover (so we pay the price to live in isolated Montana) and decided to get outside for a fag (ciggy) and was forced to go through security to re-enter. The difference is amazing. Here it took an hour, I had to strip down, the woman looking at my passport and ticket actually took the time to browse then comment on my many visa stamps: "wow, you get around, don't you?" It was ridiculous. It doesn't have to be this slow and stupid here. What gives?

I may be wrong, but I do think that Congress is limited in their ability to compel someone from another branch of government to appear before a committee. -- Steve S at November 30, 2012 2:45 PM

Congress has the ability to issue subpoenas. If the person does not comply they can be held in contempt of Congress with both civil and criminal charges that can be applied.

The problem is that the criminal charges are handled by the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia -- an Obama/Holder appointee.

If the contempt charges are civil -- they have to be processed through the federal court system. There are still cases in the federal court system that are from the Clinton presidency, if not older. By the time civil charges make it to the court Obama will be lounging on a beach in Key West and Pistole will be on an island in the Caribbean with millions of dollars.

Bout a year ago I posted that we should have an EZ Pass style program for flying. You vehemently disagreed. Yet you agree here. You do that a lot actually...disagree with commenters but will turn around and post an article by an expert who says the very same thing.

Not trying to be mean here, just that you say you value critical thinking, and, well, you've got a big ol blind spot here.

Remember...E would have equalled MC2 even if Hitler had said it.

[Radwaste:] And the public is no help. Even professionals, like Jeff here, have a twisted idea about how aircraft travel safety is to be provided.

Just to review the bidding, my twisted idea about providing safe air travel includes keeping bombs off airplanes. It is also worth mentioning that also happens to be ALPA's position.

[Amy:] It is an utter waste to screen the entire public or large swaths of it -- by any means.

I've said that before and I'll say that again.

Unfortunately, it doesn't get any more meaningful with repetition.

I completely agree that it is an utter waste to screen essentially everybody. Unfortunately, I have no idea how to get from "essentially" to everybody — and that's the problem.

[CTA testimony: ] [Charlie Leocha] described a future TSA that more closely resembled the pre-9/11 security system, … "The mass screening of passengers would be replaced for the great majority of passengers with a Trusted Traveler program that seamlessly checks passengers before they fly, while at the same time being respectful of their privacy," says Leocha. "Every passenger is already prescreened for every flight."

Sounds wonderful, really. (No, I'm not being the least sarcastic, but I'll bet there are some devils lying in the details. Particularly in that last, passive voice, sentence.)

I can't help but note the irony of replacing innocuous scanners with a program that must keep track of a whole bunch of your personal information.

Gotta go … airport security beckons.

Um, it also doesn't get less true because you are stuck in the idea that this is some development that enhances security IN ANY WAY.

Unfortunately, you are left with having to explain away reality.

There must be some reason U.S. domestic air travel hasn't been targeted, while there have been at least a half dozen attacks overseas (a couple of them quite successful).

Like I have suggested before, try sneaking a bomb mockup through checkpoint security.

Which, if you truly believed what you say, is precisely what you would do. After all, because U.S. checkpoint screening does nothing to enhance security, you would get it through with no problem.

Then you could widely display it at your destination (with just the right advance notice to media before landing at your destination).

It would be a perfect way to drive a stake through the rancid heart of the TSA.

But I'll bet you don't really believe everything you say.

The best way to do that is with focused intelligence ...

There are two problems here. First, and most ironic, is that you are advocating a massive increase in government surveillance to avoid the annoyance of checkpoint screening. After all, there is no way to know who to focus on without having learned a great deal about everyone.

Is that a good tradeoff? I don't know, but there is no denying it is there.

Second is the problem of numbers. My nightmare scenario is Iran mounting a false flag operation that results in several airliners getting bombed at the same time. The consequences would go well beyond 600 or so deaths.

There are at least 1.5 million unique screenings per day in the U.S. Finding three out of 1.5 million, even if you knew on what day the attack was going to occur, redefines needle and haystack.

Of course, the answer to is make that haystack smaller

Lot's of Iranians in particular, and Muslims in general, live in the U.S. Given the nature of the threat, they are the obvious place to start for focused intelligence, right?

Keeping in mind that many of them are U.S. citizens, just like you ...

... and the easiest way to avoid detection is via the USPS.

Why? That would be dumb. You just bribe a airport worker to get it into the cargo hold or hide it on the plane.

That leaps over way more than you know. First, airport workers go through security, too. Second, maintenance and aircrew inspect airplanes before flight.

Most importantly, you are still stuck with a reality problem. If it is so easy to do, why hasn't it happened?

And why bomb an airport or plane at all? A mall, a school, a stadium ...

For both simple, and slightly less so reasons.

First the simple: bang for the buck. In an airliner, a one pound bomb causes a billion dollars in damage (yes, $1B -- that's the going rate for a major aircraft accident) and kills 160 or more people. Then add on collateral damage and fatalities -- which the panty bomber was hoping for.

In a mall, etc, a one pound bomb will kill a half dozen people, maybe, and cause, at most a couple hundred thousand dollars damage.

Then there is the psychological aspect. As the last dozen years have shown, it is possible to recruit suicide bombers, but it is going to be a lot harder to get someone to become Achmed the dead suicide bomber for a low payoff, just as it would be harder to get people to take the risk of being involved.

When it comes to asymmetric warfare, there is no other target that comes even close to airliners.

Also, it's prissy and naive to believe that we can be "secure." Somebody's gonna get blowed up.

Rate matters. A lot.

And frankly, if I were al Qaeda, I'd be laughing my ass off. They don't have to do a thing to make us throw away our freedoms in the name of security.

Consider the possibility that you are coming at this the wrong way.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated ...

Which means the constitution has nothing to say about reasonable searches and seizures.

IMHO, it is reasonable to prohibit bombs on airplanes, just as it is reasonable to prohibit drunk or drugged pilots at the controls.

Now what?

In the latter case, it is completely constitutional to make pilots submit to no-notice drug testing. We don't like it when we get the message, but no one thinks it an unreasonable search. (BTW, what is your stand on drug testing welfare recipients?)

Just so with airport screening. You have reached the conclusion without making the argument. Either the goal is unreasonable -- good luck making that argument -- the threat doesn't exist (again, good luck) or the means to attain the goal are unreasonable.

Which they would be if they didn't work; unfortunately, the facts are not in your favor.

They also would be if the means were unreasonable compared to the ends. Unfortunately for your argument, the demands of walking through a scanner are not onerous. The pat downs you get are purely a personal choice. Yelling about them when a far easier alternative is readily available seems disingenuous.

Claiming that airport screening impinges on our constitutional rights requires some lifting I haven't yet seen you do.

In case you haven't realized it, yes, the terrorists have not only won, they're fucking the homecoming queen with the al Qaeda frat paddle.

You just blew up my irony meter -- and it was one of those expensive unobtanium models.

From an article on the constitutionality of mandatory drug testing.

However, philosophers are not especially equipped to determine when the criteria are satisfied, although they may be adept at specifying what would count as evidence. Thus, I cannot state unequivocally that the criteria are satisfied. Nonetheless, it is plausible to believe they are satisfied in at least some instances. Both anecdotal and scientific evidence suggests that use of certain drugs will seriously hamper performance of some tasks in ways which would be extremely dangerous to others. Consider, for example, a pilot for a commercial airline. Pilot error could have immediate, disastrous, and irreversible consequences for all passengers (criterion 1). Second it appears that the presence of certain drugs in the blood stream (including alcohol) will substantially increase the possibility of an accident. Perhaps, too, previous experimentation with certain drugs (like LSD), even if not currently in the blood stream, might increase the likelihood of such accidents (criterion 2).

Moreover, by all accounts, there is no feasible way of detecting use of some drugs except by testing (criterion 3) and testing appears to be a reliable means of identifying drug use (criterion 4).3 Finally, it appears standard procedures for administering tests -- procedures like those established by the DOT -- are not unduly intrusive (criterion 5).

If these suppositions are plausible, and if there is reason to believe people in said profession are susceptible to drug use,4 then testing is a reasonable way to prevent harm and is therefore permissible.

The argument might be wrong, and I'm just not clever enough to figure out how.

Or it might not apply to airport screening.

But it it isn't, and it does, then your claim we have given up our constitutional rights is simply wrong.

But it it isn't, and it does, then your claim we have given up our constitutional rights is simply wrong. -- Jeff Guinn at December 2, 2012 10:12 PM

You are right that the Constitution do privacy and the right to travel were not written out explicitly. But the Ninth amendment leads to the Privacy assessment. The Articles of Confederation had the right of travel listed.

Quite frankly Jeff you are a quisling.

Pick any of these terms and justify how the TSA actually works and say that you aren't a Judas, back-stabber, betrayer, collaborator, colluder, defector, deserter, double-crosser, double-dealer, snake in the grass, sympathizer, turncoat, two-timer.

You can't see that supporting the TSA does not work. If they had actually stopped even one terrorist attack, I might be able to agree with you. They have stolen tons in property and have as yet to show a single success.

I'm going to post my usual rant. I haven't seen you come up with a single argument against it. Please do it. Otherwise STFU.

For all you regular readers of the Goddess' blog you can skip past this post. I'm going to post my regular rant about not needing the TSA. For all you new readers, please read it carefully and refute any statement or misstatement. ;-)

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The TSA was not needed one hour and one minute after Tower II was hit!

The paradigm, the norm, the expected, what everyone was taught to do was to sit down, shut up and wait for the plane to land and the negotiations happen. That was the model from Entebbe onward.

The passengers on board did not really know what was about to happen on September 11, 2001 at 8:46:30 when Flight 11 struck Tower I.

Even the passengers on Flight 175 probably didn't realize what was about to happen when they struck Tower II at 9:03:02.

The Pentagon crash of Flight 77 at 9:37:46 may have been still a matter of ignorance.

At 10:03:11 on September 11, 2001, United Airlines Flight 93 crashed after the brave souls counter-attacked and caused the hijackers to crash the plane.

The time difference is 60 minutes and 9 seconds from Tower II being struck to the crash of Flight 93. The shoe bomber and panty bomber were taken down by fellow passengers as well. Recently, JetBlue's Flight 191 pilot was taken down by the passengers once he was out of the cockpit. Additionally how many times have you heard of passengers' concerns and diverted flights?

The TSA is and has always been a joke, no make that a total stupidity, that has wasted our country's fortune going down a rabbit hole.

If you don't believe me look at the 9/11 timeline.

There will never be another 9/11 style attack unless the attackers can arrange planes full of geriatrics, and even then it would be doubtful.

Oh, and someone brought bombs being an issue. If bombs were effective and simple then the Lockerbie bombing would have been repeated multiple times between 21 December 1988 and 11 September 2001. That's 4647 days or 13 years. Where was the TSA in that time? There was one successful bombing that was done in Colombia and two unsuccessful attempts in that time. The bombing in Colombia was a drug dealer assassination and not a terrorist attack.
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Jeff Guinn -- please tell me where I am wrong?

Jim P:

Where are you wrong?

Where you are right, you are irrelevant, and where you are wrong, you are so wrong even your punctuation is suspect.

I am not, and haven't talked about 9/11 style attacks; in fact, I have explicitly stated that. So every word between "The TSA was not needed ... " and "... doubtful" is simply beside the point. I can't fathom why you wrote it the first time, and haven't gotten any less surprised since.

As for the last para, you oddly leave out the entire period since 9/11. That relieves you of a couple problems: what made 9/11 different (hint: suicide attackers); and the fact that since 1988 there have been 11 attempts, several quite successful, including two, by suicide bombers, on the same day in Russia.

So, where you are not irrelevant, you are wrong. And, along the way, you ignore the most significant change of all. As any security expert will tell you (even Schneier, who apparently doesn't know anything about explosives), suicide attacks are by far the hardest to defend against.

You are right that the Constitution do privacy and the right to travel were not written out explicitly. But the Ninth amendment leads to the Privacy assessment. The Articles of Confederation had the right of travel listed.

Quite frankly Jeff you are a quisling.

Wow, when you miss a point, you don't mess around, do you?

The relevant part of the Constitution is unreasonable searches and seizures.

So, in order for airline security checkpoints to be a fourth amendment violation, they must be unreasonable. Unfortunately for you, the case has already been made that they are reasonable.

The Articles of Condederation? Really? Are you kidding?

Pick any of these terms and justify how the TSA actually works and say that you aren't a Judas, back-stabber, betrayer, collaborator, colluder, defector, deserter, double-crosser, double-dealer, snake in the grass, sympathizer, turncoat, two-timer.

Wow. Lookout. Internet tough guy.

" First, airport workers go through security, too. Second, maintenance and aircrew inspect airplanes before flight."

Wow. Double down on that denial - I wish I had seen this.

It has been demonstrated that "airport workers" do no such thing, that freight manifests and package ID can be falsified, and that assorted airport workers can be and have been bribed to put things on airplanes. Apparently, you have not inspected every part of an airplane, even though you do preflights, in some time, because you haven't recognized - or are just determined to avoid this - that 100% of each aircraft cannot be examined for explosives every time it's pushed back. That's assuming the ground crew, caterers, etc., haven't been bribed.

The package that brings your plane down only has to be 2" x 4" x 4". Its case will be the same aluminum finish found in the wheelwell. How many of those surfaces have you identified?

One more time: patting down passengers does not save the USA from terror. It applies it.

Security is either being provided by agents who are not at the airport at all (after all, that's where the blame was laid for 9/11), or the "enemy" is not there.