This doesn’t seem plausible. All bureaucracies come up with some sort of bullshit metric to pretend like they’re doing something in order to keep the money and power flowing. It’s fundamental to the system. The TSA probably points to all the contraband they pull in, for example.
Not that demonstrating efficacy is sufficient to put a dent into bureaucratic waste, but that’s another discussion.
By “abolish” do you mean eliminate everything it does, or hand its responsibilities to others? Someone needs to be inspecting and x-raying cargo.
This was being done before the formation of the TSA.
Abolish is perhaps too strong a word, but when faced with such monumentally stupid policy strong words come to mind. The low hanging apples of air security should be picked, which is more or less what was being done before the TSA existed.
Tim, demonstrating efficacy doesn’t (or shouldn’t, anyways) mean demonstrating that they’re doing something, it means demonstrating that the benefits of the program are sufficient to justify the costs, such as through much more sophisticated versions of the back of the envelope calculations I give above.
Your sentence structure implied there was some sort of congressional mandate for some/many/all other federal programs. Do any of them do that?
Or did you just mean that someone could readily perform the mental exercise for other programs, if asked.
I should expect that carriers would, at a bare minimum, check cargo to the best of their ability because it’s bad for your business and your bottom line when your plane explodes over the Atlantic. Planes aren’t cheap by themselves, and the PR would be nightmarish.
Sure, but they own it now. There’s other post-9/11 innovations you probably don’t want to get rid of either; not everything is junk-touching.
You’d be wrong.
Seriously? These companies have run the numbers and actually decided that it’s cheaper to replace an entire jet and reassure the idiot public that their planes totally won’t explode than to throw in for some simple screening systems to be installed at boarding and transfer points?
I guess I can’t put it past them, but that just boggles the hell out of me. X-Ray machines must be made out of solid gold and pope blood.
Really? Enlighten me. What wonderful innovations brought about by 9/11 would I miss?
I’m going from memory here, but as I recall companies didn’t respond to the 1980s bombings by x-raying their own stuff; the government had to force them to, and they fought it. Think of it it economically: any given airline is going to need to pay for all of its own screening stuff, but most of the benefits in terms of preventing an air-travel reducing explosion go to the rest of the industry. It’s an externality. And that’s assuming airlines are long-term rational enough to even want to protect themselves, rather than save money this quarter to goose earnings.
Beneficial changes: speed/accuracy of baggage screening, anti-explosive puffer machines.
Also, what the hell is with this “it’s the TSA’s fault” sentiment? They exist because politicians want them to. As long as executive branch appointees are encouraged to come up with this stupid shit and Congresscritters fund it you’re going to get it. Eliminating the agency implies a mindset change, but it wouldn’t stop the current state of security harassment for a second.
As to the cost/benefit analysis of the scanning, shit just got real:
Cancer Surges In Body Scanner Operators; TSA Launches Cover-Up
http://www.infowars.com/cancer-surges-in-body-scanner-operators-tsa-launches-cover-up/
Don’t assign too much credibility to that report at this point. What’s happening there is that EPIC says they “have” documents that indicate “cancer surges,” without indicating how they identify such a surge, how they would even hope to correlate it to the scanners, and what the data source actually is so that independent analysts can run through the information and determine whether or not they’re full of crap. At this point, we’ve basically got nothing more than we had in the first place, unless and until EPIC decides to make whatever documents they have public for verification.
Wouldn’t an abnormal amount of cancer cases among TSA workers indicate a cancer surge?
It’s probably from all that smoking they do in front of the no smoking signs.
Huh? They have a reported 70% failure at detecting things (mentioned up thread) and lines at security are longer and take longer than ever
anti-explosive puffer machines.
Pretty sure that was a pilot program that was killed because it didn’t work. I’ll see if I can find the article. At the very least, they randomly swab your hands now for explosives. Edit: Oh it’s listed in the fricking wiki article: Puffer machine - Wikipedia
At their peak, about 95 machines were installed in 34 airports…TSA had planned on installing 434 machines; however, due to maintenance problems, they have halted installation and “have no plans to acquire more.”
What was the accuracy rate before the TSA handoff and extra resources? What are the sources of those longer lines?
No idea Jason, why don’t you provide some sources that the TSA has improved detection or wait times instead of asserting they have.
Edit: for what it’s worth, even if they improved detection from 10% to 30%, I’d still get rid of them. Only detecting 30% of the weapons that get on board a plane is about as good as detecting 0% of them.
Two can play this context-free number game!
Fuck if I know, I’m going off memories of news stories. Go ahead and eliminate the agency entirely in a rage for doing what your elected politicians told it to do. I’m sure nothing bad will happen when baggage is no longer x-rayed.