Abolish the TSA

Bipartisan support should be immediate.  For fiscal conservatives, it’s hard to come up with a more wasteful agency than the TSA.  For privacy advocates, eliminating an organization that requires you to choose between a nude body scan or genital groping in order to board a plane should be a no-brainer.

But won’t that compromise safety?  I doubt it.  The airlines have enormous sums of money riding on passenger safety, and the notion that a government bureaucracy has better incentives to provide safe travels than airlines with billions of dollars worth of capital and goodwill on the line strains credibility.  This might be beside the point: in 2003, William Anderson incisively argued that some of the steps that airlines (and passengers) would have needed to take to prevent the 9/11 disaster probably would have been illegal. - forbes.com

And the question is being asked — is all this dissuading people from flying? Of course it is. I know people who have said “Never again!” A co-worker of mine nearly passed up free accommodations on St. Maarten just because he was afraid he couldn’t tolerate the security scan/grope.

Vote here.

(Brad)

Update on November 15, 2010 by Frank@OBOW

And why does OBOW so often focus on “travel insecurity” news? Because our readers are likely to be frequent, serious travelers who make a great deal of effort to travel efficiently - just the type to be most affected and vexed by security theater. Avoiding checked luggage used to be the ticket to travel bliss. The checkpoint hassle has greatly offset this. Knowledge (about the security protocols) should equal power. Alas, all are powerless before the big blue monster. 

Update on November 15, 2010 by Frank@OBOW

Skivvie-il disobedience (no nudity, only the scanner operators get to see that)

Update on November 15, 2010 by Frank@OBOW

And behind every fetid, corrupt, stupid, Washington-hatched fiasco you’ll find — surprise, surprise — a bi-partisan cabal of lobbyists. 

Comments

[sanjay]

I am not a TSA fan by any means, but it seems to me that only sheer incompetence has kept these fanatics(jihadists) from succeeding. It would only take one time I suppose to justify all of our "intrusions". It is easy to bash TSA but do we dare to find out what would occur should we go back to the old system. I say we go for it...let the pieces, literally, fall where they may. At least then there will be less of this incessant whining.

The Constitution protects your right to interstate travel but flying on the other hand is a privilege since there are other forms of travel available should we choose them.

Is there a better way?

[Frank II]

Before 9/11, security was up to the individual airports following guidelines set by the government (Like they do it in most of the rest of the world today.) They were run by outside firms who could lose their contracts if they did a bad job. They didn't. On 9/11, the guidelines set by the government were followed. The 9/11 terrorists used box cutters to take control of the airplanes. Box cutters were allowed on board.

I remember those days. The security people were professional and friendly. It's only when the government starts to do things that they get out of hand and deteriorate.

I'm not against having security. I'm against having that security run by an incompetent government agency.

Regarding Germany, less than a year ago, the German government said they believed the Nude-O-Scope was an invasion of privacy. Now they're being deployed. I willing to bet they caved in to pressure from TSA.

[Till]

Yes, they did cave in to pressure from the US government. I just flew out of Berlin. I went through the WTMD that didn't beep and then got padded down (much less invasive than the American enhanced pat down). I asked why I'd get padded if it didn't beep. He said "we only have to do that on flights to the US".

I think the video is great. I actually thought that someone should do that. They'd then get arrested for indecent exposure in the US. How hypocritical!

[K-eM]

I believe we need good security when traveling. I also believe in that flying is a privilege along with a lot of other things that we as Americans seem to take for granted these days. I have lived in countries where the government exercises military style control and you can be regularly stopped, questioned, and detained for long lengths of time determined by them.

However, I don't believe we should allow our transportation security here to deteriorate to the level of those countries I described. We are doing so and it's what our country calls "government corruption" when referring to others. So when are we going to own up to our own lack of ability to handle security appropriately?

Starting this week, my husband and I have decided that we will not be traveling by air unless we are given no choice. We will not be traveling to visit family for the holidays and when we travel in the spring we will be using either our car or the train.

[Dan]

A better alternative would be biometric identification;
with retina scan or fingerprinting.
This suggestion was brought up by Flyersrights.com
on a radio talk show today.This option may be worth
persuing.

[Frank II]

Those would be good alternatives...except......your rights would again come into question. To use any of those three items suggested, the government would have to have them on file. There would be a lot of people who would see it similar to a national identity card and wouldn't trust the government with that information. The government could then, theoretically, track our movements when we are supposed to be able to travel freely within the U.S.

Two of the items you mentioned are used by Global Entry. I wouldn't mind seeing a similar plan for TSA. But TSA hasn't liked any that have been tried.