Thread: The TSA Debacle

November 17, 2010

The TSA Debacle

J.R. Dunn
50 Comments

Anyone with doubts concerning the Transportation Security Authority's ability to handle airport security needs to take a look at the way they're dealing with the public-relations debacle surrounding the launch of their new "security procedures".

The nature of these "procedures" -- an intrusive passenger scanner system along with gang-rape style pat-down searches -- required at the very least a delicate touch during their introduction. The TSA's touch has been as delicate as Godzilla crushing a police car. In only the past week:

* On Tuesday, the TSA announced it had decided to investigate John Tyner, http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010 ... -resistor/ a passenger who publicly protested the violation of his 4th Amendment rights during a TSA search. He objected to the scanning, defied manhandling by TSA agents, and then left the airport. The TSA claims he can be fined $11,000 for leaving before the "security process" was concluded, an insane contention based on an even crazier law. TSA bureaucrats are just begging for a New Media onslaught if they pursue this. But what's even worse is the fact that Tyner looks like he walked out of a Rockwell painting titled "Johnny Goes to the Airport". My first reaction on seeing his picture was, "My God -- they busted Jimmy Stewart." This little fracas is over. All that Tyner has to do is step in front of the cameras, say "aw shucks" once or twice, and that's it. The TSA had better drop this before they start filming "Mr. Tyner Goes to Washington".

* On selecting a celebrity to badger, who did the TSA pick? Not Pee Wee Herman or Lindsay Lohan. No, it had to be Anderson Cooper. http://www.mediaite.com/tv/anderson-coo ... ent-214787 The modernized version of "never pick a fight with a man who buys his ink by the barrel" is "never pick a fight with a man with a prime-time news commentary show". Beyond that, thanks to... certain aspects of Cooper's personality, the incident was guaranteed to trigger a tsunami of jokes across the Internet, which has in fact occurred. Note to TSA: instruct your people to stop neither Arnold Schwarzenegger nor Michael Moore. Got that?

* It appears that Texas got an early dose of the new "procedures", several months before the rest of the country, in fact. As a result, a number of women were taken from waiting lines and intimately pawed at without explanation beginning last summer (at least one by a female agent). So who does the TSA select as a spokesman to answer the charges? A guy named "Casanova" naturally enough. What, they couldn't find somebody named Bundy or Manson? (Though in truth it's in no way surprising -- this agency tasked with preventing weapons from being brought aboard aircraft is headed by a man named "Pistole.") http://www.newswest9.com/Global/story.asp?S=13508581

I admit I have a personal interest in this matter. Looking as I do like Michael Ironsides' even more satanic younger brother, I am not only stopped every time I come within ten miles of an airport, they call in the National Guard while they're at it. But the fact remains that this latest PR fiasco reveals that the TSA has achieved the final state of a government bureaucracy -- total ineptitude combined with maximum waste of resources -- in record time. What required such outfits as the FAA, EPA, and Department of Education decades to accomplish has been achieved by the TSA in less than ten years. There is no returning from across that particular wasteland. Byron York reveals that the law allows airports to opt out from utilizing the TSA. Let it be done. The TSA has to go. http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/polit ... 59869.html

J.R. Dunn is consulting editor of American Thinker and will edit the forthcomoing Military Thinker.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/201 ... bacle.html

November 17, 2010

TSA 'groping' procedure a result of administration blindness to terror threat

David Paulin
49 Comments

At long last, a newspaper editorial hits the nail on the head regarding the TSA's new groping polices: Stop humiliating innocent airline passengers and do what Israel's security-conscious El Al does -- profiling.

The Washington Times makes this point in an editorial aptly titled "Obama's Hand in Your Crotch." http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/201 ... ur-crotch/

The Transportation Security Administration's demeaning new "enhanced pat-down" procedures are a direct result of the Obama administration's willful blindness to the threat from Islamic radicals. While better tools are available to keep air travelers safe, they would involve recognizing the threat for what it is, which is something the White House will never do.

El Al, Israel's national airline, employs a smarter approach. Any airline representing the state of Israel is a natural - some might say preeminent - target for terrorist attacks. Yet El Al has one of the best security records in the world and doesn't resort to wide-scale use of methods that would under other circumstances constitute sexual assault. The Israelis have achieved this track record of safety by employing sophisticated intelligence analysis which allows them to predict which travelers constitute a possible threat and which do not. Resources are then focused on the more probable threats with minimal intrusion on those who are likely not to be terrorists.

Interestingly, growing public outrage over the TSA's excesses and political correctness may end up benefiting the GOP. Writing in the Washington Examiner, political correspondent Byron York notes that Rep. John Mica, a Florida Republican, is zeroing in on the TSA. The agency, Mica contends, has become a "a huge, unwieldy bureaucracy" -- its security checks all but useless against would-be terrorists. Mica will soon be chairman of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, notes the Examiner's piece, "Amid airport anger, GOP takes aim at screening." http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/polit ... 59869.html

York, based on an interview with Mica, writes that the "TSA has become dangerously ineffective. Its specialty is what (its) critics call "security theater" -- that is, a show of what appear to be stringent security measures designed to make passengers feel more secure without providing real security. "That's exactly what it is," Mica tells him. "It's a big Kabuki dance."

Interestingly, the TSA has in fact created security checks in some airports inspired by El Al-style profiling, writes York. They're part of a system called SPOT: "Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques." "The problem is, they're doing it all wrong," writes York, citing a recent study from the Government Accountability Office.

"It's not an Israeli model, it's a TSA, screwed-up model," he quotes Mica as saying.

Indeed, York explains:


In a May 2010 letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, Mica noted that the GAO "discovered that since the program's inception, at least 17 known terrorists...have flown on 24 different occasions, passing through security at eight SPOT airports." One of those known terrorists was Faisal Shahzad, who made it past SPOT monitors onto a Dubai-bound plane at New York's JFK International Airport not long after trying to set off a car bomb in Times Square. Federal agents nabbed him just before departure.


Ultimately, it probably won't be TSA agents who stop the next would-be terrorist from blowing up an airliner. It will be passengers themselves. After all, it was passengers who thwarted shoe-bomber Richard Reid and underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. In other cases, passengers were the first to alert flight attendants to the presence of fellow passengers (young men of Middle Eastern origin) who were acting suspiciously -- roaming about the cabin and changing seats for no apparent reason.

Among other things, Rep. Mica says private contractors working under federal supervision may do a better job than the TSA. One thing is certain: The Congressman has much work to do.

The Alex Jones Show - Fri 11.05.2010 part-1

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TSA talked about

Navy Seals brings explosives into the country

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