If you’re worried about false positives, ElAl isn’t really a great role model.
You mean opposed to the average of 17 per worker per year in the TSA?
(Stats from - http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/04/tsa_behavioral.html )
Oh! It’s been a good while for this thread!
An internal investigation of the Transportation Security Administration revealed security failures at dozens of the nation’s busiest airports, where undercover investigators were able to smuggle mock explosives or banned weapons through checkpoints in 95 percent of trials.
Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson was apparently so frustrated by the findings he sought a detailed briefing on them last week at TSA headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, according to sources. U.S. officials insisted changes have already been made at airports to address vulnerabilities identified by the latest tests.
“Upon learning the initial findings of the Office of Inspector General’s report, Secretary Johnson immediately directed TSA to implement a series of actions, several of which are now in place, to address the issues raised in the report,” the DHS said in a written statement to ABC News.
Homeland security officials insist that security at the nation’s airports is strong – that there are layers of security including bomb sniffing dogs and other technologies seen and unseen. But the officials that ABC News spoke to admit these were disappointing results.
I’m sure that they are disappointed to have fallen short of their benchmark of 90% failure.
But we can be confident and take comfort in the fact that they are monitoring our microexpressions.
Checkpoint body scans? We’re totally not going to save those. We promise.
The Transportation Security Administration claimed last summer, for instance, that “scanned images cannot be stored or recorded.”
Now it turns out that some police agencies are storing the controversial images after all. The U.S. Marshals Service admitted this week that it had surreptitiously saved tens of thousands of images recorded with a millimeter wave system at the security checkpoint of a single Florida courthouse.
This follows an earlier disclosure by the TSA that it requires all airport body scanners it purchases to be able to store and transmit images for “testing, training, and evaluation purposes.”
Oh look, they lied, surprising no one.
-Todd
Say what you will about Florida, and you will. Orlando International will soon be voting on removing the TSA and hiring a private company. A previous vote kept them but it seems like they will be out this time.
I have zero faith that will end well. I can imagine the same level of security, but with people that are not bidden to any kind of government conduct (however loose that may be.)
Orlando has a lot of incoming international passengers, so I’m not sure how that will work either.
What’s the current talk about this down there, Rich?
It’s almost impossible to be worse than the TSA.
Recall, prior to 2001, this stuff was all handled privately by airports.
A private company can be sued. The airport will have to pay an enormous insurance bill to cover the firm’s litigation costs.
How does that even work? Who is voting, and is there not a law or FAA policy that requires TSA checks?
Until I saw it on the news tonight I was unaware of it. The Executive Director seems to think that the TSA is more trouble than it’s worth. He seems to believe they will be voted out by the executive board.
Seeing as how there was already a vote, I’m going to say it’s allowed. My understanding is that the executive board of the airport will vote.
I think we were trying to abolish that.
Airports can go through hoops to use other security vendors. San Francisco International has been TSA-free for over a decade. I bet many of you have flown through there at least once and didn’t notice. (The private security uses virtually identical uniforms.)
IIRC, that’s the company that got caught multiple times cheating on their undercover screening tests and somehow keeps getting the contract with SFO.
I’m sure there’s no kickbacks involved.
Yep. I theory, privatizing opens up competition which then makes the performance better, plus it localizes accountability. Sounds great. In practice? Well, I think it may need some more practice.
The nice thing about bureaucracy is you never have to cheat. Poor performance is tolerated. Heck, here’s a funding increase to go with it!
Customers/passengers aren’t the ones directly putting money in their hands, so of course that’s not who they really serve.