Congress Wishes Happy 10th Birthday to 'Bloated' and 'Lost' TSA

November 18, 2011 at 2:31 PM | by Omri | Comment (1)

Tomorrow will be TSA's 10th birthday, the agency having been formally signed into law by President Bush on Nov. 19, 2001. Just in time for the celebrations, Congress has issued a report calling the airline security agency "bloated," with chairman of the House Transportation Committee John Mica adding that TSA "has lost its way." When a member of the United States Congress looks at you, shakes his or her head, and tsk tsks about bureaucratic bloat and inefficiency - you really have to ask yourself, maybe there's a problem. Maybe you need help. Maybe it's time for an intervention.

You'll remember that it was just over a year ago when the Europeans complained about TSA's habit of demanding redundant security policies. Between online security checks, physical security checks, airport screenings, laptop screenings, shoe screenings, and so on, the Europeans complained that TSA had a culture of randomly inventing new things for security officials to do. And now there's a Congressional report outlining how there's just no way that TSA needs all of its 65,000 workers, which include nearly 4,000 personelle at headquarters and 9,656 administrators in the field.

In what some might describe as not a coincidence, TSA has been vowing to continue expanding their wave of new experiments. We've tracked most of these in recent months, including new ID scanners and chat-downs and pre-checks (being expanded "as broadly as possible") and gingerbread man scanners and even VIPR programs at bus stops and on highways.

Some of these new measures are badly needed corrections to earlier screwups. The ID scanners plug a security hole we've known about for half a decade. The gingerbread man scanners are a response to the oh-so-shocking realization that Americans don't like the notion of being photographed naked. Points to the agency for noticing.

Other new measures, in contrast, seem like exactly the kind of bureaucratic bloat that Congress is complaining about. The chat-downs have drawn particular skepticism, since it seems highly unlikely that a few days of training and a few seconds of talking will enable TSA agents to read flyers' body language. If TSA is going to look for ways to burn employee time, they should at least make their programs credible.

[Photo: evawisten / Flickr]

Comment (1)

Return to » Congress Wishes Happy 10th Birthday to 'Bloated' and 'Lost' TSA

Meanwhile, Americans who travel from one part of America to another by plane are subjected to degrading pat downs and electronic surveillance that by no means has been proven medically safe.

Because some bad men attacked us ten years ago, we created a nanny security state in which poorly trained bottom rung employees of a vast security apparatus are given god-like powers over those poor schlubs who find themselves in need of a plane ride.

Nothing degrades this nation more than the cowardly ways in which we responded to a one-day flurry of terror. Out of fear of terrorism, we opened the doors wide to fascism, and I for one have not boarded an airplane since.

DHS is nothing more than a conduit through which Congress shovels money to security contractors and the military-industrial complex.

Jaunted

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