Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

TSA's Head of Security 'Removed' from Office

npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 167 posts

Re: TSA's Head of Security 'Removed' from Office

#131

Post by cynoclast »

btilly wrote: post #92

Can we just get rid of the TSA? Current estimates are that hundreds of people die each year in car accidents because they chose to drive rather than deal with TSA lines. This means that every few years the TSA manages to inflict more casualties than 9/11 did. In addition to inconvenience, economic inefficiency, and a demonstrably ineffective screening process that weapons can easily get through. (As many have shown.)…

Let's not forget that every single warrantless search is a violation of the 4th amendment. Every. Single. One.

Yet we let them do this, because they're holding our ability to move freely about the country hostage.

Re: TSA's Head of Security 'Removed' from Office

#132

Post by cheald »

btilly wrote: post #92

Can we just get rid of the TSA? Current estimates are that hundreds of people die each year in car accidents because they chose to drive rather than deal with TSA lines. This means that every few years the TSA manages to inflict more casualties than 9/11 did. In addition to inconvenience, economic inefficiency, and a demonstrably ineffective screening process that weapons can easily get through. (As many have shown.)…

> Current estimates are that hundreds of people die each year in car accidents because they chose to drive rather than deal with TSA lines. This means that every few years the TSA manages to inflict more casualties than 9/11 did.

I don't have a link, but at one point, someone did the math on the backscatter machines (the ones that emitted ionizing radiation, which have since been replaced) and the number of people going through them and concluded that statistically, the TSA will kill more people through scanner-induced cancer than the hijackers did on 9/11.

Re: TSA's Head of Security 'Removed' from Office

#133

Post by DanBC »

ceejayoz wrote: post #48
DanBC wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They stop about 10 handguns a week. They don't say, and it's hard to know, how many guns they don't stop. I think none of those gun owners had plans to use the gun at an airport or on a flight. There's small amounts of evidence that "terrorists" moved to different approaches - the Inkjet cargo bombs, for example.

> They don't say, and it's hard to know, how many guns they don't stop. 95%. http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/investigation-breaches-u...

For fucks sake, that link talks only about internal testing, which tells you nothing about the actual failure rate of real world people smuggling guns onto aircraft.

Re: TSA's Head of Security 'Removed' from Office

#134

Post by dimino »

PeCaN wrote: post #122
dimino wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've lost when you start saying words like "sheeple" and "Orwell" in these conversations, you realize that right?

I took zentiggr's comment to be sarcastic with a hint of truth. I don't think his choice to use "sheeple"¹ or bring up Orwell detracts from his point. ¹ And let's be realistic, anyone who thinks the TSA actually improves security is basically just listening to what the TSA itself says. As mentioned in this thread, the TSA 1) hasn't stopped known terrorist attacks and 2) isn't hard to sneak weapons past. Blindly liste…

How is calling me "sheeplish" helpful for this conversation?

The goal of the TSA is to create security theater, and that goal is effective at preventing terrorists from even attempting to attack airports. It's difficult to prove this, of course, because how does one measure a terror cell's internal and secretive planning?

You don't get to collect data on the targets terrorists don't attack, because they... well, they don't attack them! It's intellectually dishonest to claim 1), because of this.

As for 2), this is absolutely true, but why do you think the TSA's goal is to be functionally effective? It'd be nice, obviously, but like I said in my original comment, there is value in security theater.

The head of the FBI once said that there's simply no stopping a terrorist once he has his weapon on premises. The point of the TSA is to provide a false front line for terrorists to misidentify as the significant hurdle in executing an attack, and they do that successfully. The reality is, the world's police catch terrorists before they act, the vast majority of the time.

It'd be great if the TSA were effective, and it's via shitty management that they're not, this is unmistakable. But the mere presence of the TSA at US airports is an effective misdirection, because it provides what people call "security theater", and while most folks consider security theater useless, they're wrong. It has value.

Re: TSA's Head of Security 'Removed' from Office

#135

Post by vitd »

chrisper wrote: post #68
KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #38

I've been to the DMV yesterday. You wait in line for 40 minutes in the sun just to get a number and then wait some more. Once you get a number, you're counted in the official wait time statistics published on their website, so the extra 40 minutes are shaved off for free. Who ever though it was going to be different when the TSA was created?

In CA you can make an appointment. I made one and was in and out in 20 minutes.

This is stupid. The last time I was at the CA DMV, I made an appointment ahead of time, only to have to take a number when I got there. What was the point of making the appointment if I still have to take a number? WTF? I sat there waiting for 20 minutes, despite having a set appointment time. That's not helpful.

Re: TSA's Head of Security 'Removed' from Office

#136

Post by sehutson »

btilly wrote: post #92

Can we just get rid of the TSA? Current estimates are that hundreds of people die each year in car accidents because they chose to drive rather than deal with TSA lines. This means that every few years the TSA manages to inflict more casualties than 9/11 did. In addition to inconvenience, economic inefficiency, and a demonstrably ineffective screening process that weapons can easily get through. (As many have shown.)…

No tally should forget the effective lives and productivity lost because people now have to get to the airport so early, either. Millions of people surrendering millions of extra hours every day = entire lifespans wasted because you have to get there so early to make sure the TSA doesn't cause you to miss your flight.

Re: TSA's Head of Security 'Removed' from Office

#137

Post by drdeca »

basseq wrote: post #115
marze wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is naive. Why would you assume the same number of successful attacks on air travel would occur without the security? You can't argue that the current system hasn't done well, it has performed fantastically, based on the number of successful attacks within the US. That said, they need a lot more screeners, and to be much more polite. And get rid of incompetent management.

How many attacks were stopped by the TSA? Directly: 0. Hell, they're 0/2 on known attempts (the Shoe Bomber in 2001 and Northwest Airlines Flight 253 in 2009), both thwarted instead by passengers and crew. Indirectly? (E.g., how many attacks weren't planned because of the TSA that would have been planned and executed otherwise?) Very hard to say. Have law enforcement officials seen an uptick in other terror channels…

Shifting attacks from one method to another is not necessarily useless. If what would have been the most effective method is reduced in its effectiveness, and as a result, another less effective method becomes the most effective one, and the used one, that reduces the effectiveness of attacks.

That wording was convoluted.

What I mean is,

if they would have done plane attacks because of plane attacks working best for them, then making plane attacks not work as well, and therefore making them shift to something else, means that whatever they are doing for attacks wouldn't work as well for attacks as the plane attacks would have, which is a benefit.

That's not to say that the TSA is beneficial, or that it does really reduce the effectiveness of adversaries.

I'm just saying that, assuming that it is true that adversaries shift their attacks from air travel to other methods as a result of the TSA , that would suggest that adversaries are restricted by the TSA , and made somewhat less effective (assuming that adversaries weren't overestimating the effectiveness of air travel attacks originally).

Re: TSA's Head of Security 'Removed' from Office

#138

Post by astine »

MrMullen wrote: post #121
jtuente wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't the Tea Party movement started because of their disgust with neo-cons?

No, it was started because a Black Guy got into the White House. Don't fool yourself, the Tea Party is simply a racist reaction to non-White person being in the White House. Budget wise, Bush was much worse than Obama and there was no Tea Party telling him not to invade Iraq and blow 2 trillion dollars on pointless wars. The Tea Party only came about when Obama took office.

Ex post hoc ergo propter hoc.

Re: TSA's Head of Security 'Removed' from Office

#139

Post by drdeca »

DanBC wrote: post #133
ceejayoz wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They don't say, and it's hard to know, how many guns they don't stop. 95%. http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/investigation-breaches-u...

For fucks sake, that link talks only about internal testing, which tells you nothing about the actual failure rate of real world people smuggling guns onto aircraft.

I would think that it would be something one could take into account when coming up with an estimate.

Re: TSA's Head of Security 'Removed' from Office

#140

Post by TDL »

MrMullen wrote: post #121
jtuente wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't the Tea Party movement started because of their disgust with neo-cons?

No, it was started because a Black Guy got into the White House. Don't fool yourself, the Tea Party is simply a racist reaction to non-White person being in the White House. Budget wise, Bush was much worse than Obama and there was no Tea Party telling him not to invade Iraq and blow 2 trillion dollars on pointless wars. The Tea Party only came about when Obama took office.

This is absolutely false. The Tea Party coalesced after the bank bailouts.
Post reply on HN