TSA: Out to photograph and grope your ass while covering their own.
The TSA's True Focus Isn't Safety - It's Self-Preservation
71–80 of 120 posts
Re: The TSA's True Focus Isn't Safety - It's Self-Preservation
#72Re: The TSA's True Focus Isn't Safety - It's Self-Preservation
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think when most people ask for "private companies" they mean cheaper, less intrusive security theater, in the pre-2001 vein.
The pre-2001 screening was perfectly fine, and would still work today (maybe excepting the improvements to detecting plastic explosives, although I imagine that screening would have picked up the detonators just fine). The other major improvement to security was locking, reinforced cockpit doors, which should have been the standard on all commercial aircraft from the start. What went wrong during 9/11 was that passen…
> only an idiot would try that again; there are targets with far higher value (and probably much more exploitable security flaws) if someone wanted to send a message again.
Specifically, the large gatherings of tightly-clustered people waiting at a security checkpoint are much more vulnerable than any plane full of passengers.
Re: The TSA's True Focus Isn't Safety - It's Self-Preservation
#74This is not unique to the TSA, or bureaucracies in general, but more the universe. Every dynamic system feels the desire to grow and preserve itself.
Re: The TSA's True Focus Isn't Safety - It's Self-Preservation
#75Why do people accept this reality when talking about the TSA, but not other government agencies? All government agencies are like this, especially the Federal ones.
The TSA is a pet issue of the upper-middle class because they annoy and harass them frequently and they are an easy and relatively safe way to push back against a police style authority. They're a figurehead of what was lost after 9/11. The TSA is also an obvious waste. They aren't that much different before hand although, their function were covered by a hodgepodge of regulations usually dictated by the FAA and priv…
I wish you didn't use that sneering tone. Class warfare by the upper class is a real thing, but trivializing every item as "pet issue" of this or that class doesn't help anybody and makes you look like a loony.
Airport security in the US is now significantly worse than anywhere else, and it has nothing to do with class.
Re: The TSA's True Focus Isn't Safety - It's Self-Preservation
#76See Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Pournelle#Iron_Law_of_Bur... In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control and those dedicated to the goals the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely.
This is why these hit pieces are completely unfair to the TSA. Just about every organization becomes self-preserving as its primary function. Government and non-profit are the most obvious but the bureaucracy of for-profit companies and even individual divisions inside of those companies follow the same rules. I was just looking over the recent Android handsets via tmobile and was shocked at the nightmare of tacked-o…
> Just about every organization becomes self-preserving as its primary function.
But when they prioritize self-preservation over their intended goal, that's bad.
Re: The TSA's True Focus Isn't Safety - It's Self-Preservation
#77Why do people accept this reality when talking about the TSA, but not other government agencies? All government agencies are like this, especially the Federal ones.
Bureaucracy is the technology of scaling people in large organizations. Any endeavor of scale is going to show inefficiencies - government or private.
Re: The TSA's True Focus Isn't Safety - It's Self-Preservation
#78HN has quite an anti-TSA bias. The TSA has problems, but so does every large organization. I suspect HN'ers glare at the TSA because they travel frequently, and it would benefit them disproportionately to cut down on travel time and inconvenience. This is like the trucking lobby arguing for fewer restrictions on driver safety--the perspective is not exactly objective.
The problem with your argument is the TSA has been proven beyond a doubt to be highly ineffective.
Re: The TSA's True Focus Isn't Safety - It's Self-Preservation
#79Now why isn't this sort of thing talked about during campaigns?
The TSA is consistently on the Republican agenda and the Democrats have a hard time laying people off.
Re: The TSA's True Focus Isn't Safety - It's Self-Preservation
#80this reminds me of another article written a little while ago http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-11-18/how-airport-...
which discussed how it is incredibly less safe to drive than to fly (even with terrorist attacks) and that the increased security of the TSA is making more people drive instead, which has caused a lot more accidents and deaths because of it. both interesting.