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TSA's Head of Security 'Removed' from Office

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

#141

Post by marze »

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…

Zero successful attacks. Bottom line.

No one here is familiar with the concept of "deterrence", apparently.

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

#142

Post by blisterpeanuts »

ivraatiems wrote: post #125
blisterpeanuts wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't "like" the fact that Israel's airport security works? And is the best in the world? Sucks to be you. I'd rather live in a safe world, than in a politically correct one. And guess what. I'll bet 3,000 people who died on 9/11 would agree with me. Those guys were tagged by Mossad and German intelligence, yet the U.S. agencies all but ignored them. Maybe they were concerned about singling out Arabs, maybe they…

Seriously? Invoking 9/11? As though Israeli airport security has anything at all to do with American intelligence failures? Don't cheapen people's deaths by using them for your political points. I don't like that we live in a world where it saves lives to do something that involves judging people by the color of their skin or their religion. I can not like that, and also accept that it happens and works. The world is…

All I'm saying is, if the U.S. employed a competent system such as Israel's, maybe just maybe the 9/11 attacks would not have succeed because those guys would have generated some suspicion. Al Qaeda was already active prior to 9/11 and had attacked several U.S. targets e.g. the U.S.S. Cole, the embassy in Africa, etc.

Furthermore, the U.S. had even received warnings from Israeli intelligence and, as I recall, German as well, about a possible plane-based terror attack in the works. Mossad is said to have been tracking some of the 9/11 hijackers in the U.S. For a more recent example of ignoring the evidence, see the Boston Marathon bombing, in which the Russians actually phoned to warn us about the Chechnyan brothers.

The intel was there, but our system was--and is--so broken as to be useless.

Close your mind, or open it; it's your choice. The Israelis have survived this long by being pragmatic. The Americans, not so much; we muddle through despite ourselves, not because of any particularly brilliant management of our borders and transport systems.

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

#143

Post by ceejayoz »

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'd be very interested to know why you think that makes a difference. These tests were run during normal checkpoint operation, with normal screeners.

Even if they used some internal knowledge, everyone here should know the adages about security through obscurity. TSA checkpoints are clearly enormously vulnerable if they can get through 95% of the time.

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

#144

Post by CaptSpify »

cheald wrote: post #132
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 go…

Do we actually have numbers on this? Last I heard, the scanners were never externally audited, so we have no idea how much radiation they are using

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

#145

Post by jessaustin »

ryan606 wrote: post #112

Security has been privatized at a few airports, like San Francisco and Kansas City. How does security screening effectiveness, efficiency, and cost compare at those two airports relative to all other TSA-operated US airport security? I haven't seen any side by side comparisons -- does anyone know if any reputable journalists or researchers have tried to compare?

Comparisons with the Kansas City airport will probably mislead. It has a very different architecture than most other airports: it's aggressively anti-hub. That is to say, although it nominally has three terminals, each of those effectively has four or five separate secured areas.

This actually works fairly well for trips starting or ending in Kansas City, not least because it means that no security wait will reach the ridiculous lengths you see in many other airports. It also means that screening personnel have to operate 15 different security lines rather than two or three. That may be why TSA left?

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

#146

Post by basseq »

drdeca wrote: post #137
basseq wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Fair point.

I think we're both struggling with how to quantify the value of deterrence, and how to model (mentally or otherwise) things like "effectiveness shifting". It's hard! But I think we're notoriously bad as human being and a populace at having real conversations about cost-benefit analysis.

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

#147

Post by leesalminen »

rocky1138 wrote: post #40

The danger of the TSA is that the employees truly believe they are doing good and important work. The brainwashing is so strong that it almost reaches a religious level.

A TSA employee was whining about a lack of pay increases to me recently. I smiled, then turned to my friend and started discussing how naive they are and the negligible amount of value these people provide to society. She turned beet red and didn't say another word.

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

#148

Post by chrisper »

vitd wrote: post #135
chrisper wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They have a separate number/letter for appointments. For example, if you are there for DL issues without an appointment you get letter G and have to wait hours. If you have an appointment then you get letter B and you wait 20 minutes. How is waiting 20 minutes bad?

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

#149

Post by dang »

ck2 wrote: post #33

Can't believe I am saying this but whatever Israel does in their airports, do it here and problem solved. In fact whatever company does it in Israel should be hired to do it here, if it is a government thing, borrow their people to train ours, we give them enough for that loan.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11760549 and marked it off-topic.

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

#150

Post by dang »

blisterpeanuts wrote: post #142
ivraatiems wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously? Invoking 9/11? As though Israeli airport security has anything at all to do with American intelligence failures? Don't cheapen people's deaths by using them for your political points. I don't like that we live in a world where it saves lives to do something that involves judging people by the color of their skin or their religion. I can not like that, and also accept that it happens and works. The world is…

All I'm saying is, if the U.S. employed a competent system such as Israel's, maybe just maybe the 9/11 attacks would not have succeed because those guys would have generated some suspicion. Al Qaeda was already active prior to 9/11 and had attacked several U.S. targets e.g. the U.S.S. Cole, the embassy in Africa, etc. Furthermore, the U.S. had even received warnings from Israeli intelligence and, as I recall, German…

Please edit personal swipes such as "Sucks to be you" and "Close your mind, or open it" in comments here. They add no information, degrade the quality of discussion, and provoke worse.
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