6 ms·

Head of T.S.A. Out After Tests Reveal Flaws

90 points by matsur 11y ago

bbarn 11y ago
In the investigation, undercover agents were able to get prohibited items through security checkpoints in 67 of 70 instances. I don't understand this. As the majority of the intelligent people I talk to seem to understand that the TSA is essentially theatre, why seek to prove that fact to the rest of the population? Are these organizations actually buying what they're selling? I guess I just figured all these agents knew they didn't really serve any practical purpose other than keeping people feeling "better".
- GauntletWizard 11y ago
  To justify bigger budgets and further invasion of the right to privacy, of course. This is a power game, and always has been. Making people more afraid to travel is just one aspect of it.
  - hashmymustache 11y ago
    Ironically becoming its own form of terrorism.
- PakG1 11y ago
  I'm not sure what's worse. Assuming that people knowingly and deliberately work dead-end jobs with no purpose, or assuming that people are too stupid to not know anything. I remember standing in line to go through baggage checking. A lady in front of me chatted it up with the TSA worker. She said thank you for the work, can't imagine how frustrating it must be sometimes. He replied thank you for appreciating it. Hanlon's Razor is useful here. I believe most people out there are just trying to do their job as well as they can and make a living. They aren't thinking about the bigger picture, and it's easy for many of them to think their jobs have meaning. In fact, I think that's a requirement for not getting depressed. No need to demean anyone. Most of the intelligent people I know don't even know what security theatre is when I discuss it with them. I think people who have concerns about security theatre are in the minority, judging from my own sampling. I haven't seen any official studies on the question as to how many people even understand or have heard of the term security theatre. I would love to review them if the studies exist.
  - jedberg 11y ago
    > She said thank you for the work, can't imagine how frustrating it must be sometimes. He replied thank you for appreciating it. To be fair, I'm 100% sure of the fact that it is theater, but I still chat up the agent and thank them for their hard work. It makes my time in line go faster as I'm asking for an opt-out.
  - vinhboy 11y ago
    I agree with you that for the people hired to carry out these policies, they are just regular folks who take great pride in doing/having a job. However, after watching those PBS Frotline documentaries "Top Secret America" and seeing that Lindsay Graham speech this morning, it's clear to me that many of the people who head these agencies are paranoid and delusional. I don't know how they keep amassing so much power and influence.
    - kordless 11y ago
      Because the paranoid and delusional desire power?
    - anigbrowl 11y ago
      Because a substantial fraction of the population is paranoid and delusional and actively supports such policies.
- sremani 11y ago
  While they are rearranging the chairs on the deck of titanic, they will ask for a huge check for improved training and better equipment and increased staff in the DC to monitor, evaluate and rectify the short-comings. The result for the passengers would be more invasive practices and more hoops to jump as well as big lines. Failing upwards is an Art, DC has perfected.
- ars 11y ago
  Just because it is theater doesn't mean they want it to be theater. So presumably they feel they should at least be able to detect the threats tested against.
- bitJericho 11y ago
  Never suspect malice when it could easily be explained with incompetence.
- gcb0 11y ago
  it is all politics "i had the last word" now. the laws that Obama and the majority whip called to be passed, weren't. Now they will have to dismantle several parts of TSA and NSA. This is just to say "I didn't even want it anyway"
- Manishearth 11y ago
  I thought this too. Not exactly that it's theatre, but it will deter smaller groups / less motivated individuals from doing anything. A coordinated group could bypass almost anything they put up anyway, just that they don't.
- higherpurpose 11y ago
  I think there was a "do you trust the TSA to keep you safe?" study about a year ago, and I think something like 55% said "yes". Most people must believe that it "feels safer" when the TSA is seemingly "checking everything". And would probably be "worried" if tomorrow the TSA didn't exist anymore, even if that fear is irrational in this context considering the facts that the TSA is already useless.
- Shivetya 11y ago
  because if TSA leadership is like that of any other failing institution they truly don't think they are doing it wrong. No one in a position of authority is allowed to question them and they simply laugh at all the "conspiracy" and such on the internet. Sadly this is pretty much how all government works, they think they are the smartest people they know and everyone else just needs to shut up and do what they are told. When presented contrary evidence the rebuttal will be "you don't know the big picture" and when irrefutable evidence is provided a sacrificial lamb or two is trotted out under the idea "it was really just one person" and they continue doing what they do
rdtsc 11y ago
The sane reponse should probably be: "TSA doesn't work. It has never stopped a single red handed bomber in all these years. It has to be reduced and defunded." Sadly, the response will probably be an increase in funding, longer lines, doubling down on groping and more naked pictures. Over all this time, it has found and took away snow globes, nail clippers, water bottles, delayed lots of people, xrayed them and so on. Sure it also provided employment for many, who might have a hard time finding any. All those things it is has done. But it hasn't done its main job. FBI might have. Maybe CIA. Passengers, pilots and flight attendants sure did.
- blowski 11y ago
  > It has never stopped a single red handed bomber in all these years. I doubt that is true, although I haven't seen any evidence either way. I guess it stops people indirectly, as any would-be terrorist has to be more creative, and in so doing probably alerts security authorities in other ways. We all hate airport security, but without hard facts, it's very difficult to work out what you would use instead of TSA-style security.
  - cwp 11y ago
    Well, they don't have to be that creative, if 67 out of 70 attempts succeeded.
    - daeken 11y ago
      We don't know what the attempts were, so we can't know if it requires real creativity and ingenuity or not.
      - beagle3 11y ago
        There were previous reports that included very detailed descriptions, e.g. [0] from 2008. Some will probably be published this year too. [0] http://edition.cnn.com/2008/US/01/28/tsa.bombtest/ http://edition.cnn.com/2008/US/01/28/tsa.bombtest/
    - 11y ago
george2023 11y ago
The idea from start was not whether TSA is capable or not to produce good results. The idea was to climatize the Americans to the notion of someone spraying you with harmful x-ray radiation or gropping your private area and then accept it as normal. America, a nation of idiots, letting the police state take over their lives on false terrorism stints. That's what at stake here.
geuis 11y ago
Can I just point out that we have definitive proof here of a giant organization that has never worked, AND NOTHING BAD HAS HAPPENED. So now they're going into CYA mode and all it will do is make traveling in the U.S. an even worse experience than it has been for 14 years.
ethana 11y ago
And they will still confiscate your toothpaste and Listerine because...terrorism.
FlaceBook 11y ago
"We're horrible at our job, but if you give us a few billion more dollars and let us force people to remove their underwear at checkpoints, we promise to do better!"
danieltillett 11y ago
Mr. Johnson said that numbers like the security failure rate in the new report “never look good out of context,” What possible context could make a failure rate of over 95% look good?
qq66 11y ago
The king is dead, long live the king. I used to fly twice a week, and one time one of the screeners shoved a lighter in my shoe as it was going onto the belt. I started yelling at him and he turned to me with the "shush" gesture, and whispered that he was testing the screener to see if he'd catch it. As a dark-skinned man I did not want to participate in this exercise so I started loudly shouting "He put a lighter in my shoe, does everyone see this?" The other passengers in the line murmured their agreement, the "tester" seemed miffed, and I kept loudly pronouncing the fact that I was not responsible for the lighter in my shoe. Sitting six feet away from my loud rant, the screener still missed it.
MarkPNeyer 11y ago
remember, folks: - all of the FBI forensic hair matches of the past two decades were faked - none of the NSA programs they claim keep us safe have been shown to stop a single terrorist attack - no executives from the large banks that laundered billions money for mexican drug lords or conspired to rig LIBOR and exchange rates, and plead guilty, went to jail or faced criminal charges - you are more likely to drown in your bathtub than be killed by a terrorist please stop taking the federal government seriously until they stop with all this nonsense
Homunculiheaded 11y ago
I worked briefly for the federal government and realized that the bureaucratic system has two primary functions: 1. accumulate power 2. diffuse responsibility Regarding the latter, occasionally the system build up too much responsibility which needs to be released to maintain stability. This is solved by picking an individual of power equal to the build up responsibility that needs to be released and punishing that individual by removal of all their individual power. Thus the overall system is restored to balance and only the individual, easily replaced, suffers. It happened here, and I've seen it happen from the lowest to the highest levels of power in the government.
louwrentius 11y ago
You might argue that the existence of TSA is basically a partial victory of the terrorists. Although no people are killed, the financial damage done and the suffering inflicted on our population is gigantic.
swagmeister 11y ago
Several times, I have accidentally left prohibited items in my bag. I was only stopped once, and that was in the Cleveland airport where they proudly display every interesting weapon they have confiscated on the wall next to the checkpoint. They stole an expensive knife from me after a short interrogation (I guess to determine the degree of intent) and let me through the checkpoint. I think Peter Thiel had a bit about the TSA where he explained it as "security theater" that makes people feel safe, while any sophisticated actor could easily get through the checkpoints. I have to agree given my own experience with forgetting that lighters and knives are in my bag
- furyg3 11y ago
  I also never really understood the 'throw it away' (or stealing) mentality. If you forget to pull your laptop or iPad out of your bag, they lecture you and run it through again. If you leave a small pocketknife on your keyring, or you forget to put your cologne in the plastic bag, the seize it and throw it away. It seems to me like the proper thing to do is delay you slightly (to encourage you to comply to the instructions next time - just like they do with laptops) but allow you to put your cologne in a bag, finish your orange juice, or pay a small fee to mail your restricted item back home. It would be incredibly easy to have some flat-rate boxes and charge 2x what the post office charges. Given how many items they confiscate it's probably a decent revenue source!
  - cowsandmilk 11y ago
    > pay a small fee to mail your restricted item back home. At least 22 airports have this (including Cleveland). http://www.airportmailers.com/airportlist.php http://www.airportmailers.com/airportlist.php
- donavanm 11y ago
  Its all anecdotal but Ive personally flown with: folding knives, box cutters, propane cylinders, lighters, tent stakes, fireworks, and ammunition in my carry on baggage. Id hazard 6-8 lapses out of ~50 flights in the past few years. The best was an international flight where I put all my dangerous/camping stuff in a checked bag and clothes/book/etc in a carry on. Then I accidentally checked the wrong bag and didnt notice until I was through security.
ck2 11y ago
Good luck flying the holiday season this year if they ramp things up in response to this.
DanielBMarkham 11y ago
Missed items 95% of the time. Wow. How much money, time, and heartache have we all gone through? How much of a smudge on our national reputation as a free country? And all for a 95% false negative rate? Political systems of people exist for political reasons. So, of course, if the entire effort looks useless, it can't be that the effort itself is idiotic. Nope. The real crime here is that somebody made us look bad. In a political system, this is the ultimate crime. So we fire the head honcho and bring in a new one. Cue up lots of speeches about how seriously we take all of this and how some new regime will make a huge difference over the last one. The TSA needs to be abolished. Immediately. There are viable and reasonable replacement options. Even if you don't care about the money and prestige we've lost, we can't keep sinking money down a hole on security theater when the hole is endless.
- thaumasiotes 11y ago
  > Even if you don't care about the money and prestige we've lost, we can't keep sinking money down a hole on security theater when the hole is endless. Sure we can. It's a terrible idea, but our capacity to produce more value to sink into the hole is also endless.
nfriedly 11y ago
A couple years back, TSA found a multitool that I had forgotten about. The funny part is that I was on the second leg of my flight - they completely missed it the first time and only found it at all because I was switching airlines and had to go through security a second time.
Plosaurus 11y ago
Example of how different countries are: A plane was hijacked in local flight in New Zealand a couple of years ago. Somebody called for tighter airport security and the prime minister said something along the lines of "if you wanted to kill a couple of dozen people you could hijack a bus, so no, there's no need to increase security"
cgearhart 11y ago
So...we fire the guy who's been on the job for 6 months? He just started in January. http://www.tsa.gov/about-tsa/melvin-carraway http://www.tsa.gov/about-tsa/melvin-carraway His predecessor left in October 2014 after serving in the post since 2010. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/17/us/tsa-director-who-tightened-airport-security-is-stepping-down.html http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/17/us/tsa-director-who-tighte... I guess someone had to take the fall here, but it makes the whole thing seem even more farcical to fire this guy.
mark_l_watson 11y ago
I liked the airport security in India. Everyone was searched quickly and efficiently and your luggage did not get on the airplane until you identified it as you got on the plane. Would it cost too much to do this in the USA? I always find the TSA employees to be polite and I don't blame the shortcomings of TSA on the people working at the airports. They just need better procedures, and that is a TSA Corporation issue.

90 points by matsur 11y ago

bbarn 11y ago

In the investigation, undercover agents were able to get prohibited items through security checkpoints in 67 of 70 instances. I don't understand this. As the majority of the intelligent people I talk to seem to understand that the TSA is essentially theatre, why seek to prove that fact to the rest of the population? Are these organizations actually buying what they're selling? I guess I just figured all these agents knew they didn't really serve any practical purpose other than keeping people feeling "better".

GauntletWizard 11y ago
To justify bigger budgets and further invasion of the right to privacy, of course. This is a power game, and always has been. Making people more afraid to travel is just one aspect of it.
- hashmymustache 11y ago
  Ironically becoming its own form of terrorism.
PakG1 11y ago
I'm not sure what's worse. Assuming that people knowingly and deliberately work dead-end jobs with no purpose, or assuming that people are too stupid to not know anything. I remember standing in line to go through baggage checking. A lady in front of me chatted it up with the TSA worker. She said thank you for the work, can't imagine how frustrating it must be sometimes. He replied thank you for appreciating it. Hanlon's Razor is useful here. I believe most people out there are just trying to do their job as well as they can and make a living. They aren't thinking about the bigger picture, and it's easy for many of them to think their jobs have meaning. In fact, I think that's a requirement for not getting depressed. No need to demean anyone. Most of the intelligent people I know don't even know what security theatre is when I discuss it with them. I think people who have concerns about security theatre are in the minority, judging from my own sampling. I haven't seen any official studies on the question as to how many people even understand or have heard of the term security theatre. I would love to review them if the studies exist.
- jedberg 11y ago
  > She said thank you for the work, can't imagine how frustrating it must be sometimes. He replied thank you for appreciating it. To be fair, I'm 100% sure of the fact that it is theater, but I still chat up the agent and thank them for their hard work. It makes my time in line go faster as I'm asking for an opt-out.
- vinhboy 11y ago
  I agree with you that for the people hired to carry out these policies, they are just regular folks who take great pride in doing/having a job. However, after watching those PBS Frotline documentaries "Top Secret America" and seeing that Lindsay Graham speech this morning, it's clear to me that many of the people who head these agencies are paranoid and delusional. I don't know how they keep amassing so much power and influence.
  - kordless 11y ago
    Because the paranoid and delusional desire power?
  - anigbrowl 11y ago
    Because a substantial fraction of the population is paranoid and delusional and actively supports such policies.
sremani 11y ago
While they are rearranging the chairs on the deck of titanic, they will ask for a huge check for improved training and better equipment and increased staff in the DC to monitor, evaluate and rectify the short-comings. The result for the passengers would be more invasive practices and more hoops to jump as well as big lines. Failing upwards is an Art, DC has perfected.
ars 11y ago
Just because it is theater doesn't mean they want it to be theater. So presumably they feel they should at least be able to detect the threats tested against.
bitJericho 11y ago
Never suspect malice when it could easily be explained with incompetence.
gcb0 11y ago
it is all politics "i had the last word" now. the laws that Obama and the majority whip called to be passed, weren't. Now they will have to dismantle several parts of TSA and NSA. This is just to say "I didn't even want it anyway"
Manishearth 11y ago
I thought this too. Not exactly that it's theatre, but it will deter smaller groups / less motivated individuals from doing anything. A coordinated group could bypass almost anything they put up anyway, just that they don't.
higherpurpose 11y ago
I think there was a "do you trust the TSA to keep you safe?" study about a year ago, and I think something like 55% said "yes". Most people must believe that it "feels safer" when the TSA is seemingly "checking everything". And would probably be "worried" if tomorrow the TSA didn't exist anymore, even if that fear is irrational in this context considering the facts that the TSA is already useless.
Shivetya 11y ago
because if TSA leadership is like that of any other failing institution they truly don't think they are doing it wrong. No one in a position of authority is allowed to question them and they simply laugh at all the "conspiracy" and such on the internet. Sadly this is pretty much how all government works, they think they are the smartest people they know and everyone else just needs to shut up and do what they are told. When presented contrary evidence the rebuttal will be "you don't know the big picture" and when irrefutable evidence is provided a sacrificial lamb or two is trotted out under the idea "it was really just one person" and they continue doing what they do

rdtsc 11y ago

The sane reponse should probably be: "TSA doesn't work. It has never stopped a single red handed bomber in all these years. It has to be reduced and defunded." Sadly, the response will probably be an increase in funding, longer lines, doubling down on groping and more naked pictures. Over all this time, it has found and took away snow globes, nail clippers, water bottles, delayed lots of people, xrayed them and so on. Sure it also provided employment for many, who might have a hard time finding any. All those things it is has done. But it hasn't done its main job. FBI might have. Maybe CIA. Passengers, pilots and flight attendants sure did.

blowski 11y ago
> It has never stopped a single red handed bomber in all these years. I doubt that is true, although I haven't seen any evidence either way. I guess it stops people indirectly, as any would-be terrorist has to be more creative, and in so doing probably alerts security authorities in other ways. We all hate airport security, but without hard facts, it's very difficult to work out what you would use instead of TSA-style security.
- cwp 11y ago
  Well, they don't have to be that creative, if 67 out of 70 attempts succeeded.
  - daeken 11y ago
    We don't know what the attempts were, so we can't know if it requires real creativity and ingenuity or not.
    - beagle3 11y ago
      There were previous reports that included very detailed descriptions, e.g. [0] from 2008. Some will probably be published this year too. [0] http://edition.cnn.com/2008/US/01/28/tsa.bombtest/ http://edition.cnn.com/2008/US/01/28/tsa.bombtest/
  - 11y ago

george2023 11y ago

The idea from start was not whether TSA is capable or not to produce good results. The idea was to climatize the Americans to the notion of someone spraying you with harmful x-ray radiation or gropping your private area and then accept it as normal. America, a nation of idiots, letting the police state take over their lives on false terrorism stints. That's what at stake here.

geuis 11y ago

Can I just point out that we have definitive proof here of a giant organization that has never worked, AND NOTHING BAD HAS HAPPENED. So now they're going into CYA mode and all it will do is make traveling in the U.S. an even worse experience than it has been for 14 years.

ethana 11y ago

And they will still confiscate your toothpaste and Listerine because...terrorism.

FlaceBook 11y ago

"We're horrible at our job, but if you give us a few billion more dollars and let us force people to remove their underwear at checkpoints, we promise to do better!"

danieltillett 11y ago

Mr. Johnson said that numbers like the security failure rate in the new report “never look good out of context,” What possible context could make a failure rate of over 95% look good?

qq66 11y ago

The king is dead, long live the king. I used to fly twice a week, and one time one of the screeners shoved a lighter in my shoe as it was going onto the belt. I started yelling at him and he turned to me with the "shush" gesture, and whispered that he was testing the screener to see if he'd catch it. As a dark-skinned man I did not want to participate in this exercise so I started loudly shouting "He put a lighter in my shoe, does everyone see this?" The other passengers in the line murmured their agreement, the "tester" seemed miffed, and I kept loudly pronouncing the fact that I was not responsible for the lighter in my shoe. Sitting six feet away from my loud rant, the screener still missed it.

MarkPNeyer 11y ago

remember, folks: - all of the FBI forensic hair matches of the past two decades were faked - none of the NSA programs they claim keep us safe have been shown to stop a single terrorist attack - no executives from the large banks that laundered billions money for mexican drug lords or conspired to rig LIBOR and exchange rates, and plead guilty, went to jail or faced criminal charges - you are more likely to drown in your bathtub than be killed by a terrorist please stop taking the federal government seriously until they stop with all this nonsense

Homunculiheaded 11y ago

I worked briefly for the federal government and realized that the bureaucratic system has two primary functions: 1. accumulate power 2. diffuse responsibility Regarding the latter, occasionally the system build up too much responsibility which needs to be released to maintain stability. This is solved by picking an individual of power equal to the build up responsibility that needs to be released and punishing that individual by removal of all their individual power. Thus the overall system is restored to balance and only the individual, easily replaced, suffers. It happened here, and I've seen it happen from the lowest to the highest levels of power in the government.

louwrentius 11y ago

You might argue that the existence of TSA is basically a partial victory of the terrorists. Although no people are killed, the financial damage done and the suffering inflicted on our population is gigantic.

swagmeister 11y ago

Several times, I have accidentally left prohibited items in my bag. I was only stopped once, and that was in the Cleveland airport where they proudly display every interesting weapon they have confiscated on the wall next to the checkpoint. They stole an expensive knife from me after a short interrogation (I guess to determine the degree of intent) and let me through the checkpoint. I think Peter Thiel had a bit about the TSA where he explained it as "security theater" that makes people feel safe, while any sophisticated actor could easily get through the checkpoints. I have to agree given my own experience with forgetting that lighters and knives are in my bag

furyg3 11y ago
I also never really understood the 'throw it away' (or stealing) mentality. If you forget to pull your laptop or iPad out of your bag, they lecture you and run it through again. If you leave a small pocketknife on your keyring, or you forget to put your cologne in the plastic bag, the seize it and throw it away. It seems to me like the proper thing to do is delay you slightly (to encourage you to comply to the instructions next time - just like they do with laptops) but allow you to put your cologne in a bag, finish your orange juice, or pay a small fee to mail your restricted item back home. It would be incredibly easy to have some flat-rate boxes and charge 2x what the post office charges. Given how many items they confiscate it's probably a decent revenue source!
- cowsandmilk 11y ago
  > pay a small fee to mail your restricted item back home. At least 22 airports have this (including Cleveland). http://www.airportmailers.com/airportlist.php http://www.airportmailers.com/airportlist.php
donavanm 11y ago
Its all anecdotal but Ive personally flown with: folding knives, box cutters, propane cylinders, lighters, tent stakes, fireworks, and ammunition in my carry on baggage. Id hazard 6-8 lapses out of ~50 flights in the past few years. The best was an international flight where I put all my dangerous/camping stuff in a checked bag and clothes/book/etc in a carry on. Then I accidentally checked the wrong bag and didnt notice until I was through security.

ck2 11y ago

Good luck flying the holiday season this year if they ramp things up in response to this.

DanielBMarkham 11y ago

Missed items 95% of the time. Wow. How much money, time, and heartache have we all gone through? How much of a smudge on our national reputation as a free country? And all for a 95% false negative rate? Political systems of people exist for political reasons. So, of course, if the entire effort looks useless, it can't be that the effort itself is idiotic. Nope. The real crime here is that somebody made us look bad. In a political system, this is the ultimate crime. So we fire the head honcho and bring in a new one. Cue up lots of speeches about how seriously we take all of this and how some new regime will make a huge difference over the last one. The TSA needs to be abolished. Immediately. There are viable and reasonable replacement options. Even if you don't care about the money and prestige we've lost, we can't keep sinking money down a hole on security theater when the hole is endless.

thaumasiotes 11y ago
> Even if you don't care about the money and prestige we've lost, we can't keep sinking money down a hole on security theater when the hole is endless. Sure we can. It's a terrible idea, but our capacity to produce more value to sink into the hole is also endless.

nfriedly 11y ago

A couple years back, TSA found a multitool that I had forgotten about. The funny part is that I was on the second leg of my flight - they completely missed it the first time and only found it at all because I was switching airlines and had to go through security a second time.

Plosaurus 11y ago

Example of how different countries are: A plane was hijacked in local flight in New Zealand a couple of years ago. Somebody called for tighter airport security and the prime minister said something along the lines of "if you wanted to kill a couple of dozen people you could hijack a bus, so no, there's no need to increase security"

cgearhart 11y ago

So...we fire the guy who's been on the job for 6 months? He just started in January. http://www.tsa.gov/about-tsa/melvin-carraway http://www.tsa.gov/about-tsa/melvin-carraway His predecessor left in October 2014 after serving in the post since 2010. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/17/us/tsa-director-who-tightened-airport-security-is-stepping-down.html http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/17/us/tsa-director-who-tighte... I guess someone had to take the fall here, but it makes the whole thing seem even more farcical to fire this guy.

mark_l_watson 11y ago

I liked the airport security in India. Everyone was searched quickly and efficiently and your luggage did not get on the airplane until you identified it as you got on the plane. Would it cost too much to do this in the USA? I always find the TSA employees to be polite and I don't blame the shortcomings of TSA on the people working at the airports. They just need better procedures, and that is a TSA Corporation issue.