Things the TSA doesn't want you to see
elliott.org
elliott.org
FTA: “The experience to date is 50,000 false positives and 16 known terrorists not flagged,” says Thomson. “No known terrorists have ever been flagged.”
That's some pretty obvious and epic fail on the part of the Agency. Why hasn't it been eliminated or reformed by now?
Government's inability to allow its ideas to fail, or at very least its inability to pivot toward success is so disheartening. This has really been on my mind a lot today. I watched "Waiting for Superman" last night and I can't get the images of the poor kids just looking for a decent public education out of my mind. The crimes against humanity perpetrated upon us with our own tax dollars should really be prosecuted with all vigor.
My guess is the TSA's long-term purpose is not to prevent terrorism, but to provide the federal government with a means of visibly asserting authority over the travel of citizens (and the opportunity to intervene in the travel of dissidents). Otherwise it makes little sense.
Because Americans are so terrified of "terrorism", they don't even have to prove efficacy of their methods in order to continue existing.
It's a whole lot of easy money for a bunch of pigs with their snouts in the trough.
The first is the domain of the structuralists in Anthropology. The second is the domain of the politicians.
Does the TSA assist with customs now?
And the TSA will call the police if they find drugs while they're scanning for explosives. Apparently people think that cannabis can be hidden inside jars of peanut butter, but the TSA say that peanut butter looks like some forms of explosive when scanned, so they normally check it, especially if it has some inconsistency.
There are links on the TSA blog, but I can't post URLs with this new account.
I personally assign blame straight on the general public. The general public is a bunch of scared nitwits who can't stand any possibility of any risk when flying on an airliner, even though they literally stand a higher chance of dying on their trip to the airport than on their flight. This irrationally frightened public demands that their elected officials protect them from the imaginary monsters under their figurative beds. Government simply complies with their wishes.
In fact, the only place I've heard of the "general public" proclaiming "something must be done" is in the media. But the media isn't the actual general public.
http://www.wmctv.com/Global/story.asp?S=13392236
http://www.sharonlbegley.com/the-latest-trouble-with-racial-...
http://www.ummah.com/forum/showthread.php?291386-Nun-forcibl...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jalees-rehman/catholic-nun-for...
People don't seem to like the TSA in general, but they like it more than not having it.
The TSA is about establishing the infrastructure for real restriction of movement, using terrorism as a mere pretext.
Because the TSA has many other purposes that are beneficial to politicians:
- Now, there is someone to blame when the next terrorist attack happens (i.e. one poor TSA agent failed to detect something)
- TSA is a jobs program.
- Politicians can say show that something is being done to prevent airline attacks. It doesn't matter if it's effective.
The crimes against humanity perpetrated upon us with our own tax dollars should really be prosecuted with all vigor.
The problem with this is that may of the victims of these crimes are too stupid (EDIT: under-educated / let down by the schooling system) to vote for the right person (or at all) during elections.
They are not necessarily stupid, see rational ignorance: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_ignorance
Even assuming there was a 'right person' to vote for, your individual vote only has an infinitesimal chance of affecting the outcome of the election, while the upfront investment in informing yourself about all kinds of topics and how they match the platforms of each candidate requires considerable effort. (And that ignores how candidates often then go and do something else once elected.)
Because of the way large bureaucracies work. For one, a clearly defined role of prevention means that false positives are essentially not a concern. Second, rigid promotion and pay rules limit rewards and thus incentives: the old "work only so hard not to be fired" ham.
Still, people want to try. But it seems risky to do something different, and if I'm different and it goes bad, then it's obviously my fault. So we'll just keep installing more anti-virus programs and x-ray scanners. At least then we have something to count, and quantifiable bullet points always look good on annual reviews.
This being said, I don't think we can assume the best here. I think it's easier rather than harder to get prohibited items onto airplanes than it was pre-9/11 and that's the real metric of success. Use of shiny new machines without a thorough review of weak spots and clear efforts to compensate is a recipe for bad security.
I don't think it's just a matter of government refusing to allow its ideas to fail. It's also a product of two more major antipatterns here, which is "Never use the tried and true when you could be using the new and shiny instead" and "security is a product, not a process."
Well, I didn't cry, per se. I think a bug did fly into my eye right around the time that poor little Daisy didn't get a lottery spot. Total coincidence timing-wise, though. I swear.
The shoe bomber got through airport security in Paris.
When people say that the TSA has stopped no terrorist plots, that's the literal truth. All that money spent. All of the loss of our ability to fly conveniently. All of the loss of our liberties. Not a single foiled terrorist plot to show for any of it.
Not one.
(Sorry, couldn't resist... or access.)
Deleted comment
Edit: Or, maybe they're pissed enough that they want to do away with it altogether, but that doesn't mean there'd be no one else doing airport security.
They'd bribe the screeners and tell them the bomb was drugs.
No TSA would place security with the FAA which would be world's better. FAA is already doing a great job handling air traffic control and airline safety so they would do a far better job than the criminals, perverts and pedophiles that work at TSA.
Also my experience is there is a huge difference in per-airport culture just as there is with customs and immigration.
If I was trying to to smuggle a bomb onto a plane, I'd take a more direct approach. I'd apply for a job as a TSO before making any other concrete plans.
No offense but what you said was grossly insulting to the good people who do work at the TSA. There are bad characters in ANY organisation. I fail to see why the TSA would be magically exempt.
I agree with this statement: any organization in this position is vulnerable to attack.
However, it should be noted--as was the grandparent comment's intent, I believe--that the TSA, rather than providing additional security, appears to be introducing an additional vulnerability.
You will never be able to stop these things from happening. You can just contain and minimize the risk.
Which of course doesn't mean that he's wrong.
Indeed even if we have
A → B, A ⊢ B and can show that the initial premise is false (which reduces then to the above) we still can't say that the assertion of B [being true] is incorrect only that the logic is unsound.
In traditional style:
All men are Greek, Aristotle is a man ∴ Aristotle is Greek
Despite the premise being provably false (under ordinary interpretation), thus the argument being unsound, the truth of the conclusion is nonetheless still possible and indeed in this case there has been an Aristotle that is/was Greek.
Bringing it back to the current question the ancestor comment claimed something along the lines of (hard to check because it's deleted and in any case I'm paraphrasing):
Terrorists are deterred by airport security checks, TSA provide such security checks ∴ terrorists were deterred
Despite the premise being unclear and thus the logic lacking in rigour nonetheless it is still possible that indeed terrorists were deterred by the TSA.
That's not to say that making a claim of fallacy isn't an indirect attack on the conclusion, especially when the only arguments supporting that conclusion are fallacious...
Wrong is the wrong word :)
What you're looking for is "invalid". An argument is valid if and only if the conclusion follows from the premises. In other words, if the premises are true then it cannot be the case that the conclusion is false. Since a logical fallacy adds nothing to an argument, the conclusion does not follow from the premise. Since the conclusion can therefore be false, even if the logical fallacy is true, the argument is labeled invalid.
Just for completeness... A more strict standard is soundness. An argument is sound if and only if the argument is valid and the premises are true. If an argument is sound, then the conclusion is necessarily true. Obviously, the argument invoking a logical fallacy as its premise is unsound because it is invalid.
It is also perfectly possible for the conclusion to be true even though the argument itself is invalid and unsound.
If you still would like to apply the label "wrong" to it, then I'd say, "The argument is wrong, even though your conclusion happens to be true."
(Note: I can't see the post that started all of this off as it has been deleted, so I'm not making any comment on the truthiness of his/her conclusion)
[Edit: I mean to say "travelling" rather than "flying." However I do think there are due process issues there, just not as severe.
The big one is that there has to be a reasonable way to challenge one's inclusion on such a list. This is particularly important where first amendment issues like speech and religion may be considerations.
I don't know that a court will hear that anytime soon. I think to prevail someone would have to go through the administration, not prevail, sue the agency in federal court under the Administrative Procedures Act, and fail under that act, before you could get to the question of what process was due.]
It's still not "right" how some people are on the infamous do-not-fly list, but it is essentially "no shirt, no shoes, no service". Flying isn't a right given by God or the Government, it's a capability (not really even a privilege), that anyone with enough money to buy a ticket can do until someone else says no. American Citizens are given the right to speak out about the government and own firearms, but we aren't given the right to travel to New York from Los Angeles in 5 and a half hours.
Being held for questioning (detained) at security when flying is a whole other matter.
There may not be a right to take a particular mode of travel but the overall right to travel has been recognized by the Supreme Court as a fundamental part of the system of federalism in the United States (this is why it's a 10th Amendment matter).
Edit: I don't know if one could argue that denying flying to/from Hawaii or Alaska is the same as denying travel to/from those states though. That might be an interesting argument. I am not aware if any case that addresses whether that would be constructive denial of that vested right in the same way that denying passports to suspected communists is....
Also it occurs to me... due process does apply to all sorts of administrative detentions, and I would be surprised if it wouldn't apply to things like no-fly lists.