The New York Times Editorial Board On The Pretend Security Of The TSA
They write:
The chance of dying in an airplane is vanishingly small. The chance of being killed by a terrorist in an airplane is smaller still. Mark Stewart, a civil engineer who studies probabilistic risk, has put the odds at one in 90 million a year. Looking at these figures dispassionately, one might wonder if the Transportation Security Administration has found the right balance between safety and convenience with its notoriously burdensome airport screening procedures.The T.S.A. seems to understand that the status quo is barely tolerable for many travelers and is seeking to reduce the hassle.
Translation: Keep their jobs and the money flowing.
More:
The former head of the T.S.A., Kip Hawley, has argued that the agency should allow passengers to carry on all liquids, in any quantity. As a safeguard against explosives, passengers would simply have to put their liters of Evian in gray bins and pass them through scanners. Mr. Hawley sees reasons for keeping footwear checks, but those, too, are of questionable value. Passengers do not remove their shoes in the European Union, or even in Israel, one of the world's most security-conscious countries, with a famously stringent screening process.It is time to stop pretending that annoying protocols like these are all that stand between us and devastation. The most effective security innovation post-9/11 was also the simplest: the reinforcement of cockpit doors, which has made it virtually impossible to hijack an aircraft.
As things stand, the T.S.A. asks its officers to enforce rules of questionable utility while giving them remarkably little discretion; they're more like hall monitors than intelligence personnel. That is a huge waste of human talent and a source of inefficiency. At Heathrow Airport in London, passengers need to remove their shoes only if asked to do so by security officers. Imagine that: a screening agent entrusted with the solemn power to wave through a teenager in flip-flops en route to Honolulu.
Hawley is a sleazebag. He waited until he was off the TSA teat and hawking a book to argue for a tiny bit of sanity in these "security" practices.
As many of us have pointed out and as I very recently blogged, any terrorist who wants to blow some people up has a bunch of sitting ducks at the ready in the TSA "security" line.
We have the best possibility of stopping terrorists by doing targeted intelligence, using trained intelligence officers (as opposed to repurposed hamburger clerks feeling up our sex parts), and rooting out plots long before anybody gets to their destination.
Do we really think some girl who thought feeling under your bangs for explosives was a great career option is a person who's going to figure out whether somebody has something nefarious planned?
This is a funny story about Kip Hawley. Clearly, Director of the TSA is a political position. If our betters thought the TSA was valuable, they would head it with a technical person.
The Brains of the TSA 12/21/08 - Econlog.Econlib.org by David Henderson
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When Charley and I tell a story of poor thinking, we almost never name the person, but here I'll make an exception. This high-level manager was Kip Hawley, head of the Transportation Security Administration.
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To see why, search for "I volunteered" at the link. Hawley did not see how to efficiently run a picnic grill.
Andrew_M_Garland at July 28, 2013 11:46 AM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2013/07/28/the_new_york_ti.html#comment-3822906">comment from Andrew_M_GarlandLoved that, Andrew.
Amy Alkon
at July 28, 2013 11:54 AM
It might be for the best if a terrorist were to blow up people waiting in line at the check point. Maybe the people would wake up.
Then again, maybe they would clamor even more vehemently to surrender their rights on the altar of illusionary safety
I wonder, given the way we ridicule people of 2000yr ago for sacrificing goats and chicken to the gods to guarantee safety, if 2000 years from now our descendants will ridicule the way we sacrificed our genitals and anal virginity to gods of Homeland Security and their messengers the TSA for same level of safety our ancestors got from their offerings
lujlp at July 28, 2013 2:50 PM
luj, I think the future history will read,
"No one in the USA, totally victorious in World War 2, suspected that that they had been infected by an engineered virus - one that caused a population to engage in hero worship to the point that in looking at themselves, they were obviously guilty of anything the Great Leader supposed. Almost immediately the changes came, and in seventy years the public was clamoring for a Great Leader to rise again - to rid them of their cares - to "free" them of the onerous task of self-control and governance. The fall of the nation was swift."
Radwaste at July 28, 2013 4:40 PM
I flew to California last week and I realized as I got into line that I'd forgotten to put my liquids in a quart-sized ziploc, and I didn't want to get hassled.
So I just left them in my bag. And nothing else happened.
Brian at July 28, 2013 4:50 PM
I admit I was suckered initially by the TSA concept. But years before 9/11 I flew a puddle jumper from Abilene to DFW then into LAX. I had to go through security at DFW. I thought that was an unsecure way of doing it.
Then once the hysteria dropped and rational thought finally came back I realized that 9/11 used the expected in an unexpected way. It will never happen again. By then it was too late.
So now we have to vainly fight those who don't think and just believe the leftist media.
Jim P. at July 28, 2013 6:43 PM
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