No I haven’t. It’s been the subject of news reports and they’ve walked the viewer through the process. It starts well before the terminal which as has been pointed out is a much better target. Given that people around the underwear bomber thought he was acting suspiciously before boarding I think the Israelis would have prevented his boarding.
For me personally, TSA has:
[ul]
[li]Damaged one laptop computer beyond repair[/li][li]Destroyed the zipper on one bag when they couldn’t figure out how to open it[/li][li]Caused me to miss a flight, twice, due to detecting “explosive residue” on work boots even after I explained that I had just come from a facility which manufactures nitrate-based propellants and presented identification[/li][li]Stolen several items out of locked checked luggage [/li][li]Forced me to pay $8 for a liter of water at LAX the brand of which costs <$2 in any grocery store[/li][li]Created a gigantic new bureaucracy of corrupt, belligerent, mostly unskilled sops on the Federal payroll that will likely never be disbanded or materially reduced in size.[/li][/ul]
What TSA has failed to do is stop or even deter any significant terrorist activity. Even if we assume that TSA is actually effective at screening or deterring terrorists, there are plenty of other readily available targets that are not on aircraft and are virtually impossible to secure, as demonstrated by the loons in Boston. The fact that we have not seen another significant attack by Al Qaeda in the United States in twelve years isn’t because the TSA, the CIA, the FBI, or the SCA have been so effective at identifying, intercepting, and deterring terrorists, but because the “organized global networks of terror” shot their wad in sending nineteen disaffected and angry young men onto aircraft with (what were at the time) perfectly legal box cutters to exploit a gaping security hole in an act so obvious it was drawn straight from the plot of a Tom Clancy novel.
You live with more inherent risk driving in an automobile every day than the chance that you will be the victim of a terrorist attack, and yet, there are few people demanding that the government spend extra tens of billions of dollars to implement even practicable safety solutions. But because we see the threat of terrorism all out of proportion with the actual hazard it presents–which is actually exactly what terrorists want–we have become willing to pay for the privilege of being probed, violated, and what were previously considered basic rights and privileges of polite society taken away; all for an illusion of greater security.
The TSA has been subject to essentially the same criticisms from the moment it was created to the present day, over ten years later and after multiple directors and promises of reform. If the TSA can’t improve its management and police its own agents in that period, how can we expect that this will improve in the future?
Stranger
I’ve got as little patience with the TSA as anyone but I’m tired of this trope. If you think that the airline security needs of Israel, the size of New Jersey with three international and nine domestic airports all of which combined serve fewer people than the tenth busiest US airport have any similarity to those of the US you’re not paying attention. Can we just agree to forget about how Israel does it? It’s like you’re going to the Rustler Steakhouse and complaining they don’t do it like Peter Luger.
Those are certainly bad things that happened to you, and I understand where you’re coming from. Do you think security was better before 9/11 though? I’m no fan of huge government agencies by any stretch, but what was in place prior obviously wasn’t working either.
Last time I flew on “business” an employee had made all my arrangements. My middle name (Stephen) was misspelled (Steven). I almost missed my flight. When, at one point I sighed, I was told, “we don’t have to let you fly, ya know”.
Fuckers.
I flew a lot when I was a kid and there was nothing I loved more than stepping off of the plane to see my grandmother waiting for me. The first time I went to the monstrosity that is DIA I had a football coach waiting for me when I stepped off of the plane to help show me through that maze. Now when I have friends come I have to give them directions over the phone and stand around while they fumble through the mess and I missed the last person I went to pick up and we played hide and go seek for 15 min.
I don’t feel any safer now when I fly because I know that since the change I smuggled a baggie, accidentally, of knives on a air plane. I had about 10 of them in a gallon baggie that I threw into a pair of boots in my carry-on and forgot about until I unpacked them in my destination. TSA did nothing to prevent me from taking over the plane but they sure have made my life much more inconvenient.
I think the same money we spend for the scanner and the moron with the black light to check my ID we could get a lot more bomb sniffing dogs to patrol the airport and we could go back to a quick metal detector and x-ray of bags. 99% of the stupid would be caught just like before and everyone would be happier at airports.
IMO I think TSA has infringed on our freedoms. Having good security at airports is the goal. The key here is good security. TSA is no such thing. I find them, for the most part, petulant and hating their jobs. Taking off your shoes is a waste of time and not done anywhere else, that I’ve been, including Europe, the Middle East and Asia Pacific. We have gone along with it , if you complain then…
That is not the right question to ask. The right question is “Do you think security was as good or better before 9/11*, and if not, is the TSA responsible for this improvement?*” Merely being as good as in the past is no justification for the TSA’s continued existence, and neither are unrelated improvements like people learning not to let hijackers get their own way.
Ditto.
And these scanners are causing some serious airport delays…last time I flew there was an hours long line for each of the 2 scanners in the terminal. And because the line was literally hours long, they had to pull people out of line and send them to the front when their take-off times grew near, making the wait even longer for those who got to the airport really early.
IMHO, there are two things that could be done to REALLY increase security with minimal inconvenience to passengers.
-
Employ trained law enforcement professionals as security screeners ala Israel. This would be expensive, though.
-
SERIOUSLY limit the amount of carry-on baggage…make people check everything that won’t fit under their seat. Of course this would be REALLY expensive as it would probably put the kibosh on some of the ridiculous checked baggage charges…not to mention that it is WAY cheaper for the airline if the passengers handle their own bags… which is why they are so freaking relaxed about the carry-on limits and consistently allow people to stack 4 bags on top of a rollerboard suitcase and call it one bag.
Of course the last one might not be too popular with travelers other than me, as I hate dragging bags through the airport and I always check everything except my purse and computer case.
Flying home from New Orleans recently the plane was full and the airline was asking/begging people to voluntarily check carry-ons. I (and many others) ignored the requests and talked about how we woulda preferred to check bags if not for the fee.
This!
Are you suggesting we privatize airport security, like pre-9/11? In other words, move us further away from the Israeli ideal?
I don’t think you grasp the distinction. We react after-the-fact with each breach of security and throw money at new ways to detect the objects we missed. The Israelis look for PEOPLE.
Israel values its security, and pays for it. According to an analysis by Bloomberg News, Israel spends around 10 times more per passenger than the United States does. “[An analyst] estimated El Al’s security bill at $100 million a year, which amounts to $76.92 per trip by its 1.3 million passengers. Half is paid by the Israeli government,” Peter Robison wrote. The United States, in comparison, spent in 2008 $5.74 billion to monitor and protect 735,297,000 enplanements, or around $7.80 a passenger.
10 times as much per passenger, to prevent what exactly? You notice all the airplanes that aren’t being hijacked?
none of the expensive new equipment used by the TSA is to prevent hijacking. They’re looking for bombs. and they’ve missed it every time just as they’ve missed guns going through.
And going to Israeli-style security could be as much as ten times more expensive than what we’re paying for all the fancy new equipment we have. Are you saying that we should be spending $40 billion or more (compared to $7 billion or so today) for airline security? Is that what you want?
They don’t need to prevent hijacking. Hardened cockpit doors prevent hijacking. The rest of the stuff is security theater to make the travelling public feel safe. I’d go without it to save $15 on a round trip, but if it increases the liklihood that other people will fly, it may reduce my plane fare by spreading the fixed costs over more passengers. I must have missed all the planes blowing up, just how many bombs have gotten through?
3 real ones that I can think of plus the fake test ones that got past.
If it’s all theater than we can dispense with the groping and use the same TSA people to screen using Israeli techniques. It doesn’t cost money to ask questions so I don’t know why you think it would cost so much more.
Well, for starters he may not like going through an interrogation by several different people about his religious and political views as well as even more person questions every time he gets on an airline.
Moreover, he’s probably not a fan of racial profiling.
Finally, he probably doesn’t like seeing a bunch of Puerto Ricans getting murdered because the new Israeli-trained scanners thought the idea of a bunch of nerdy Japanese violinists being terrorists was idiotic.
As someone who is not a fan of the excessive amount of security theatre demonstrated by the TSA and also as someone who consistently opts out of going through the scanner, I can say with 100% certainty that the TSA employees in that video neither groped either passenger or touched their vaginas. Having submitted to pat-downs multiple times in multiple airports, it’s my not-so-humble opinion that those TSA employees conducted themselves professionally and with supreme patience. It’s a good thing that woman filmed her experience, so that I could personally call bullshit on her claims.
The TSA professional explained what she would be doing, the woman acknowledged that she understood and consented to the procedure, and she got exactly what she was told would happen. Her dramatic response was clearly for the camera. The TSA should give that agent a bonus for putting up with such utterly immature behavior. It’s too bad the agent can’t sue and recover monetary damages for defamation. Personally, I’d be royally pissed if someone uploaded a video of me doing my job and accusing me of being some kind of pervert.
Can’t we all just agree that this video in no way demonstrates what’s *actually *wrong with the TSA and it’s overblown “security” measures?