The TSA's True Focus Isn't Safety - It's Self-Preservation
techdirt.com
techdirt.com
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.
'Once a system is set up to solve some problem, the system itself is new entity which engenders new problems relating the development, operations, and maintenance of that system'
I was just looking over the recent Android handsets via tmobile and was shocked at the nightmare of tacked-on apps and other carrier garbage on them. All these divisions in t-mobile are trying to justify their existence by dropping various apps on the handsets like music managers, music stores, t-mobile tv, AV, security, etc etc. No one wants or needs these and the few that do will find them in the play store.
Look at well run companies like Apple or Google. The iphone and the Nexus have none of this junk. I imagine their corporate culture is a lot less bureaucratic than that of a carrier like tmobile.
>in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: those who work to further the actual goals of the organization, and those who work for the organization itself.
I like to think Apple and Google are the former and carriers in the latter.
But when they prioritize self-preservation over their intended goal, that's bad.
The supposed goal of the TSA is to efficiently and effectively protect travelers and the country from criminal and terrorist actions. In theory, if the TSA is doing its job well, it's actually reducing budgetary needs and slashing fat in favor of efficiency. The TSA should be trying to become clever and nimble, moreso than massive and overhead-burdened.
But the self-preservation mandate suggests the opposite. Self-preservation, for a government agency, means making sure you preserve or grow your budget year over year -- because you're fighting other agencies for it. Every dollar you get is up for grabs by other agencies next fiscal, and vice versa. Accordingly, becoming expensive and inefficient works in favor of self-preservation. As any seasoned bureaucrat knows, not achieving results means asking for more money to throw at the problem. If the TSA demonstrated that it was achieving its goals at current budget levels, it wouldn't receive the same budget next year. Or even face a budgetary reduction.
(1) they serve some reasonably obvious positive purpose
(2) the negative effects of what they do aren't too noxious, in particular when compared with (1)
The TSA, it would seem basically fails on both points. Despite the good intentions with which it was formed, it's pretty clear that they don't improve safety in any significant manner (you might find people some disagree about this, because they believe the security theater, but I think the number is dropping). The negative effects of their existence, of course, are legion, (I suspect it's quite hard to find anybody that disagrees on this point!).
So I'd suggest the public probably on average doesn't support the TSA to the same degree they might other bureaucracies, even those that they find annoying.
Unfortunately, of course, the public's opinion on the matter is of little importance once the system is in place...
Name another bureaucracy that slid its hand up my leg until it encountered The Resistance, or a bureaucracy that prevents me from bringing my favorite deodorant when I travel, or one that can arbitrarily say that I am not allowed to fly across the country.
I realize almost all bureaucracies waste money to some extent, but the TSA is a waste to the tune of $8bn USD per year with no measurable benefits and no evidence that it was ever needed.
Imagine if that money were redirected into social programs, NASA, and educational programs! We could have a major, tangible positive effect in spite of bureaucracy, instead of pissing $8bn into an organization that behaves like an organized crime syndicate.
Now, if this bothers you, you should probably pay attention to the fact that the market for these toys is expanding. Rapidly.
http://www.propublica.org/article/drive-by-scanning-official...
You know when you're about to step through one of these scanners at an airport, but now one can drive right past you in your car without your knowledge! Despite their lack of concrete results in airports, the back-scatter X-Ray machine market is exploding into new form-factors, and it's all thanks to U.S. taxpayer dollars.
The horrible punch-line to this is that these back-scatter vans face an almost impossible task. It's hard enough to tell bombs from batteries in the controlled setting of a an airport security check-stop. Imagine trying to distinguish bombs from the random things people keep in their cars! The crews operating these vans must generate so many false-positives that, in order to reach the point where they can actually provide some real measure of security, they would need to be supremely competent, supremely dedicated, and entrusted with extraordinary powers to search suspicious vehicles. All of the above are improbable. I will eat my shorts the first time one of these back-scatter vans actually finds a real car-bomb.
Why do we have to learn the lesson over and over again that x-ray radiation causes cancer? I hate the arguments that it only hurts us a little bit each time.
As for the questions where you can sign up - I'm sure there are fine establishments around which for a modest sum of money can fulfill some of your fantasies. I can't help you with that though, as my expertise with such matters is limited to rumors and hearsay.
The problem is we've somehow managed to create organizations that continue to exist even when they completely fail to accomplish the intended tasks. Once your method of self-preservation shifts from "functioning" to "lobbying", the whole thing needs to be dismantled.
The TSA is fortunate in that they have other people lobbying on their behalf, but that doesn't change the fact that they exist due to legislation rather than effectiveness.
Tell you what. Post an article that sings the praises of the TSA and I'll upvote it. Then we can have a discussion about bias.
It's not a report on TSA efficacy, but I didn't look for one; such a report is would not be worth much due to the difficulty of proving a negative: the TSA's objective is not to find 100% of contraband, but to prevent terrorist attacks. There have been no terrorist attacks (excepting the shoe bomber, but there have been no shoe attacks since shoes started to be inspected), but does that prove the TSA is effective? Hard to say.
EDIT: I submitted two more articles: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4944165 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4944163
Still no upvotes, though.
No, really, it's not. Of prevented terror attacks since 9/11, TSA has prevented exactly 0% of them. The shoe bomber was on the plane with the bomb when he was subdued by fellow passengers. The underwear bomber also made it onto the flight.
Only for 2011, but you can bet the TSA wouldn't let you forget if they actually caught a terrorist: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/01/the_tsa_proves...
Well, let me know if you actually get around to making the argument. In the meantime, consider the basic economics of an attack as laid out by someone else: If the other passengers on the flight realise that you're up to something, every single one of them has a clear motive to take you on in the fight to the death. Hi-jacking a plane has gotten orders of magnitude more difficult after 9/11.
> For example, how many plane bombings have their been since Lockerbie? None. Does that mean that we should stop inspecting luggage? Probably not.
Good thing, then, that the suggestion on the table is a return to pre-9/11 security, not abolishing it.
EDIT: pre-9/11 security, plus the few things we've realised actually makes sense - such as reinforced, locking cockpit doors.
EDIT: Witness new body cavity scanners on the horizon: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/01/crack-new-scanner-fi...
Yes. It's important to remember that pre-9/11, the standard expectation was that in a hijacking, passengers would be hostages, not victims. As such, people were specifically instructed not to intervene. That's clearly out the window now.
I think "terrorists" of the "trying to kill us all" variety are trying to bring forward some kind of message or dispense some kind of "justice" under their belief system. To achieve any of that with violence requires there to be an intense, sustained effect on the public and a way to link it back to their concept of justice. The 9/11 attacks accomplished that, but the shoe bomber and underwear bombers wouldn't have if they had succeeded. Their explosive charges were too small and too incompetently assembled to cause the kind of mass panic that "terrorists" are after.
Instead, we have a different breed of terrorists: the "keeping you scared because it benefits them directly" terrorists. The TSA and Homeland Security. The true terrorists in this plot. Keeping people afraid of some vague, non-specific threat because it profits them and those they support.
In any case, that doesn't change the fact that it's incorrect to blame TSA for incidents on flights that TSA wasn't responsible for screening. The relevant factoid for the point the person upthread was trying to make would be how many such incidents have occurred on flights originating from a US airport.
>>> There have been no terrorist attacks (excepting the shoe bomber, but there have been no shoe attacks since shoes started to be inspected), but does that prove the TSA is effective? Hard to say.
It's not hard to say. The answer is "no, it does not prove that". Just as the fact that you weren't eaten by a magic dragon does not prove I have protected you from it all these years. Proofs don't work this way - if something didn't happen, you can not just tell "it's because at the same time something else was happening".
Now, on to bias. Having an opinion is not bias. An honest examination of the facts can lead to a conclusion that isn't neutral with respect to a given issue. Do you think the HN community is disregarding important facts in coming to it's anti-TSA position?
Also, yes, it's self-serving to want less waste of government money, and less hassle in flying, but only insofar as HN members are also members of the public. I don't think anyone here holds the position that we should reduce security for their personal convenience, on the theory that a successful terrorist attack would probably kill someone else.
So, by all means, post information that might challenge the opinion of the community. We might learn something. But also, let's keep forming opinions and defending them. That's the point of all this discussion, right?
This all makes the TSA pretty uncool, even for people like myself, who barely ever take the opportunity to fly.
Is that evidence good enough to say that the TSA is effective? Not really; terrorist attacks could have declined for other reasons.
The only way to be sure of the effectiveness of the TSA would be to keep relaxing TSA restrictions until a terrorist successfully attacks a plane, and then ratchet them back up to the minimum point necessary to prevent it again. Will they do that? No. So, the only alternative is to over-protect to some degree.
For example, should we still screen checked baggage for bombs? There have been no luggage bombings since Lockerbie, so maybe they're not necessary anymore. These checks are certainly expensive. I think the answer is obviously yes, because such an attack is "too damn easy."
However, it's terribly difficult to draw the line when things get less obvious, because the odds of an attack increase as the difficulty of such an attack decreases. How many plane bombings would there be if all you had to do was click on a link in a web browser? A hundred thousand (or the population of Gaza). Now what if it required an hour of work to be successful? Tens of thousands. A week? Hundreds. A month? Tens. When will it drop to zero? Hard to say.
"the only alternative is to over-protect to some degree"
You are still assuming that the TSA's airport checkpoint program is protecting us at all, which I would say is a dubious claim at best. Locking the cockpit doors on an airplane is a good measure. Putting an armed guard on certain high-value target flights is a reasonable measure, although I would be a bit concerned about a clever terrorist's ability to identify the guard and take his weapon. Screening luggage for bombs is reasonable, although I think an airport is just as good of a target for bombing as an airplane would be, so I am not sure how much good it does.
The checkpoints, however, are next to useless for security. There is an endless supply of things that can be turned into weapons on the other side of a security checkpoint, and you don't have to be an evil mastermind to find them. They even let you bring dangerous items through the checkpoint, like the 9-cell lithium-ion battery in my laptop (would you want to be on an airplane where someone punctured or ignited such a battery?) -- for that matter, the laptop itself, which has lots of sharp aluminum inside and which could be disassembled fair easily.
What the checkpoints do is to remind people that they are not in charge and that their rights mean nothing at the airport. I had this experience myself, twice. First, I was told that I could had to wait over 10 minutes to receive a pat-down after refusing to walk into a scanner, and that I would not be allowed to use the metal detector that just opened -- all the while, my luggage was left on the other side for anyone to steal. The second time, my teammate who traveled with me tried to take a video recording of the pat-down procedure, and the guard stopped (but did not allow me to put my arms down), claiming that it was necessary for security to not let a video be taken (but when I pointed out that there were literally dozens of people watching from the waiting area ten feet away, his eyes glazed over -- he was just reciting the line some superior had told him to recite). These are not measures that enhance security, but they certainly are a psychological attack; I doubt they are carefully planned attacks, but rather they are an intended consequence of giving people who have absolutely no training in security or threat mitigation the power to make decisions at a security checkpoint.
After a single bear wandering into town has drawn an over-reaction from the residents of Springfield, Homer stands outside his house and muses, “Not a bear in sight. The Bear Patrol is working like a charm!” Lisa sees through his reasoning: “That’s specious reasoning, dad.” Homer, misunderstanding the word “specious”, thanks her for the compliment. Optimistically, she tries to explain the error in his argument: “By your logic, I could claim that this rock keeps tigers away.” Homer is confused: “Hmm; how does it work?” Lisa: “It doesn’t work; it’s just a stupid rock!” Homer: “Uh-huh.” Lisa: “… but I don’t see any tigers around, do you?” Homer, after a moment’s thought: “Lisa, I want to buy your rock…”
It's because we believe they fundamentally undermine the 4th amendment, and they are a market distortion forced upon us that results in a subpar consumer experience.
There's nothing wrong with being biased towards our inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Extreme example, yes, but change is brought about by passion, not waiting for some grey blob of objectivity to decide you're right, and passion is rarely objective.
http://www.economist.com/debate/overview/225
I'm not sure if this is bias as simply, for those educated on the matter, the evidence is pretty decisive.
Side note: it's appreciated (expected?) to provide sources when throwing out stats.
I think the headcount of the bureaucracy, relative to the size of the country being managed, is a very relevant metric of the efficiency of the system. I mean after all, in a private company it would be pretty impressive if the company nearly doubled in size without adding substantially to the number of managers.
The point isn't that the federal government isn't large, it's that it's a complete mispreception to assert that the TSA is a good microcosm of the federal government. The TSA is a traditional bloated bureaucracy, with tons of government employees doing not much of anything. That's not what most of the federal government looks like. I've worked in a federal agency and in the private sector, and if anything the federal agency was better run and more leanly staffed.
In reality, 95% of federal expenditures are just checks to other people. Checks to farmers to subsidize agriculture, checks to states to subsidize highway construction, Social Security checks, Medicare reimbursement checks, etc.
The fact is that people rant up and down about how bloated the federal government is, but nobody can ever point to non-trivial ways to reduce spending. And the reason is that it's not a matter of simply firing a bunch of bureaucrats that sit on their ass doing nothing--there just aren't very many of those people. Rather, it's all about not writing those checks. Writing a $20 billion check to subsidize suburban commuters instead of $40 billion, cutting grandma's social security check by 20%, etc. That's where all the money goes.
Of course, there are many anemic private companies that are kept alive for various reasons long beyond their reasonable lifetime, but generally this holds. Private companies come and go much faster than public sector ones.
That said, I'm not sure airport security is necessarily a good fit for a private company.
I was referring to making security a private concern in the same way operating an airline is a private concern - that I struggle to see how would work: How do you align the long-term interest that a terror attack doesn't occur with the short-term horizon of an industry that bankrupts itself every decade?
On the other hand, FAA seems to be mostly sane and evidence-driven, so they might take on the task of creating and maintaining the regulatory framework that private airport security would operate under.
The rifle cartridge is obviously on their contraband list, so it should have been caught. Someone probably brought it through accidentally. .22 LR?
Rather, this seems like a perfect example of the self-perpetuation suggested in the article. It takes a while, so there's a line, it look very meticulous and the victim isn't going to complain, or he might risk finding himself on a do-not-fly or do-harass list.
What went wrong during 9/11 was that passengers assumed that a hijacking was a financially-motivated detour, rather than a political/religious attack on our ways of life (and prior to that day, there was no reason to assume otherwise). As such, there was very little resistance to the hijackers as people didn't want to get cut by a relatively small knife. Had they had even the faintest idea that failure to resist could have resulted in what happened, you can say with 100% confidence that things would have gone down differently.
Basically, that trick was good once and once only, regardless of the change in security policy that it brought about. And let's face it - 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.
Given the odds of actually needing them vs. the continued inconvenience of travel, I'll go with the convenience every time.
Besides that as the poster above you mentioned, Blackwater is what happens when you trust the worst sorts of persons to protect the nation.
Also, since when is "profit" a bad word? Using the means of free trade to improve one's situation is the foundation of civilization. People act as if the quest for profit turns you into some sort of Scrooge McDuck figure who counts dollars and stashes money away never to be seen again.
Doesn't bode well for our chances of fighting a real intelligent AI when it finally creeps up on us.
The same analysis explains why very few important issues are discussed, and why even then, they are spoken of in a series of talking points previously gauged to insure a net positive result.
And many other agencies aren't _actively_ working against things we care about -- that is, obstruction per se isn't generally their goal. But they're still obstructive just the same.
How many people do you know that have complained that the CIA was spying on them, vs. how many people do you know who have complained that they got government-groped?
Unsurprising, really; there are entire political parties based on the premise of not caring about those things, and in many countries. ;)
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 private airport security employed at airports US wide.
The upper-middle class tends to set the agenda for the media in general. They're also the archetype of what are depicted in TV shows and so on. Why the recent school shooting became a national outrage is probably because they were a middle class school. The death toll also added to it.
Airport security in the US is now significantly worse than anywhere else, and it has nothing to do with class.
We don't talk about stop and frisk over and over again on HN because most of us don't live in areas where we are subjected to that police behavior every time we go out for a walk.
It's really true that the media uses the upper-middle class as the focus group. The upper class, the %0.1, is too alien, too small, too smart, too international and thus too unrelatable for most Americans, so the upper-middle sets the tone instead.
You also have to separate UCSIS, the scary border organization with teeth and a horrible attitude, and the TSA, the organization that takes your water bottles away.
Also, you need to have money to fly a lot, and that starts around upper-middle class.
The systems set up to serve the poor are significantly worse than the TSA in every way, and I say this as someone who hates the TSA with a white hot passion. But the blogosphere isn't filled with tirades about how stupid, ineffective, wasteful and absurd the process is for obtaining food stamps, for example. Or getting a menial job, or getting adequate legal representation, or fighting slumlords, or getting police protection, or any number of things.
We hear about the TSA much more often because it overwhelmingly affects the wealthy.
I'm not saying it's not true that some topics get more attention because they affect a certain class, but that if the problems are real (and we agree the TSA is a problem) and do not depend on class divide (and the TSA does not, at this point, depend on that), in strategic terms there is no point in bringing up the topic.