Photo reblogged from texts from the tardis with 142 notes
Submitted by post-myxomatosis.
Remember Rule #3: Don’t stick it in the crazy.
Photo reblogged from texts from the tardis with 350 notes
Submitted by stillbeats.
Submitted w/o comment
John Pistole: Your logic is flawed.
In the CBS.com interview (read it here) John Pistole is quoted as saying: “We are on the last line of defense of the U.S. government, I hope (these screening techniques) are a deterrence.”
John, the TSA isn’t there to defend the U.S. Government. It is there to safeguard the transportation infrastructure.
And as far as the new screening techniques go, they violate a bullet point in his own 2010 Equal Employment Opportunity and Diversity Policy Statement dated 30 July 2010. Specifically: “Review and analyze, with the public’s civil rights and civil liberties considered, how our policies and operations impact the programs and services we provide.”
Is it just me or, dose the it seem like the TSA is becoming institutionally schizophrenic?
Revise the TSA
I travel a lot, and have had a lot of experiance with the TSA. I traveled for a month in October of 2001 on nothing but one-way tickets, and got real good at being searched. I was travelling with my wife, and to quote her, “[she] had the safest make-up case in America.” It was searched at baggage check, the security checkpoint, and at the gate, every day for 28 days. Alright, not every day, but 26 of the 28 days. She had automatic weapons pointed at her, due to her having a camera, and wanting to document our trip as we went through security. We may have freaked out some of our fellow travelers, when we started coordinating our responses to possible situations while waiting outside an airport during a bomb scare. I was making daily calls to the FAA at breakfast each day we flew, to make sure that I knew what the current restrictions were.
But then the TSA was created and managed to screw it all up.
The limitation on liquids was brought about due to a _failed_ plot.
Needing to remove your shoes was brought about due to a _failed_ plot.
The AIT/millimeter wave scanners were bought because of insider connections.
The new “enhanced pat down” is being brought about because people are not wanting to be subjected to high doses of radiation, or trust to the professionalism of TSA agents or US Marshall’s running the “porno scanners” look up recent news/blog articles about this.
Then I had a thought.
How about we revise the TSA, using technology that is already in existence.
Lets take some of the $7 Billion budget and actually have something useful.
How about a Federal ID database that links (read only) State DMV databases & the State Department’s Passport database (a la CSI). Put in terminals at the security check point with a swipe machine. You swipe your ID, the terminal looks you up, and displays the photo on file for the security agent to compare against your smiling mug.
Lets take it one step further, and link in the airlines. Once you check in and get your boarding pass, you are logged into another database. One that is of current travelers. With the same swipe, your ID is checked against checked in passengers. Not checked in? not getting through security. Add a local database of Airport / Airline employees and non-flying airport workers can be passed through as well. And if you are worried about the “gubmnet” tracking your travel patterns, this database can purge your record once it is 48 hours old. (Why 48 hours? To allow for those long Trans-Pacific flights and early, print-at-home boarding passes.)
I think we could get a system like this in place for a heck of a lot less than a bunch of dangerous x-ray machines.
Would this stop contraband from getting through? No, but the current measures are not able to consistently stop contraband from getting through. what this will do is have positive identification of all the travelers on planes or in airports.
I’m pretty sure that the terrorists are not going to be travelling on their own IDs…
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