Before there were full-body scanners, there were puffers. The Transportation Security Administration spent about $30 million on devices that puffed air on travelers to “sniff” them out for explosives residue. Those machines ended up in warehouses, removed from airports, abandoned as impractical.
The massive push to fix airport security in the United States after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, led to a gold rush in technology contracts for an industry that mushroomed almost overnight. Since it was founded in 2001, the TSA has spent roughly $14 billion in more than 20,900 transactions with dozens of contractors.
In addition to beefing up the fleets of X-ray machines and traditional security systems at airports nationwide, about $8 billion also paid for ambitious new technologies. The agency has spent about $800 million on devices to screen bags and passenger items, including shoes, bottled liquids, casts and prostheses. For next year, it wants more than $1.3 billion for airport screening technologies.
But lawmakers, auditors and national security experts question whether the government is too quick to embrace technology as a solution for basic security problems and whether the TSA has been too eager to write checks for unproven products.
Time for a collective ‘Duh!”
You see this all the time: confusing input efforts that show dedication/attention/activity with output results that show lack of analysis/corruption/failure.
You see this everywhere you look as well: most wars, Congress, Obama Admin.
And so it goes.
Congress just realized that Big Sis and her buddies were raking in big bucks in kick-backs and they weren’t getting their share…
As soon as members of congress start getting a bigger piece of the action the scamming and stilling will continue as before…
Uh, uncle dave…
I think the error in your premise is that Congress could be ‘wise’ about anything.
Profligate spending of other people’s money to achieve colossal waste is the default mode of any Federal institution.
It’s how gub’mint grows.
They have shit for brains.
TSA is SPENDING AS FAST AS THE PENTAGON !!! Mo’ Money for Better TITTY SQUEEZING AND GONAD GROPING AND SOON, RECTUM REAMING !!! We should all feel so “Secure” !!!
The current airline security system has a horribly flawed strategy. They screen millions of passengers to find one or two potential threats. Virtually 100% of the effort is wasted on people who are very unlikely to be a threat.
What is needed is a system where you have a better idea of whom your passengers are. The vast majority of people could be easily eliminated as a potential threat with simple systems like checking that the bank card account used to buy the ticket has a one year or more record of legitimate use. Or issuing regular flyers with good, hard to fake ID after they pass a background check. Or airlines checking passenger names with voter registration records. There must be many more easy to check, sources of info that would let an airline know that a particular passenger is a law abiding citizen with a long record of responsible behavior and therefore a very low risk.
Treating every passenger as a potential terrorist spreads your detection system to thin to be useful and wastes most of your efforts. A 70 year old grandmother with a fifty year voting record and who purchased her ticket with a credit card account she has used for ten years is very unlikely to be planning to bring down an airliner. You are wasting your money, your time and her time subjecting her to an intensive screening procedure.
If you have a coin that comes up heads 99.9999% of the time, you are wasting money betting on tails. We need a smarter system than the random looking for a needle in a haystack strategy that our Federal government has devised.
#6, I recall a discussion about that type of system, with cards that frequent business travelers could use to skip past certain parts of security. I’m guessing the people who sell this sniffing/x-ray hardware convinced DHS to abandon the cards.
The technology exists to do this, cheaply.
Blind – I often wonder why, when I finish a contract with the US Government in, say, Afghanistan, I am suddenly suspected of terrorism.
Anyway, much of what you say is right on. We can only hope that the new crew in DC Town will remember the desire of their constituents and stop funding some of this crap.
We need some real security consultants to help TSA set up a good program – not ex-DHS staffers who are now selling them high priced gear!
Betcha it don’t happen.
Animby #8 said
Betcha it don’t happen.
I can’t argue with that. It never fails to amaze me how we keep doing the same dysfunctional things over and over without stepping back and asking “Is what I’m doing really working?”
Just say it. Profiling is the only system that works.
GREAT article from last week concerning what Israel does and will do to protect their airports. Make you shake your head at the feebleness of the United States (follow the money).
Your airports were safe before the TSA existed. They are as safe now. Merry Christmas.
Blind Stevie #6 said “A 70 year old grandmother with a fifty year voting record and who purchased her ticket with a credit card account she has used for ten years is very unlikely to be planning to bring down an airliner.”
Until they realized that she’d been getting fucked in the wallet for decades and maybe she’d just had enough.
Up against the wall granny and spread ’em!
I think that the ATF, the FDA and the AMA should be licensing the workers of the TSA.
I mean if you’re standing there in the buff in an x-ray machine, might as well get a check-up, (height, weight, blood-pressure, blood tests, [diabetes test, AIDS test,] bone-density test, tit-squeezing breast exam, ball-squeezing testicle exam, proctological exam, hearing exam, eye exam and reading comprehension test [we have to make sure you’re not so stupid to think you can fly without a plane.])
I believe it is safe to conclude that none of above posters think the Fed. Gov. is either reasonable, prudent, or doing a good job addressing this issue.
A bunch of incompetent, Political Correct, nincompoops who waste tax dollars like the supply was unlimited might cover it.
When I check into a flight (which is rare these days) I wait in line to check in with the airline. Then I go and stand in another line so somebody from TSA can check my boarding pass (information which was already gathered by the airline) so I can go stand in another line to take my shoes off before I stand in another line to go through screening.
Screening should happen at the airline check-in desk. Why do two different people need to look at my boarding pass? The passenger and the luggage should be screened at check-in, then the passenger would go into the “secure” area. One line, one check of documents not the four line system with redundant data gathering we have now.
Have you ever seen the lines before the screening machines? A long un-secured line of passengers waiting for the system to work. What a perfect target for a terrorist. A suicide bomber can walk right up to the line and set himself off because the current system bottlenecks a large group of unscreened people in an unsecured area.
If I were to develop a system for airline security, creating a large target of helpless passengers waiting in line wouldn’t be part of my solution. The current dysfunctional system actually creates an incredibily attractive target for a would be terrorist. It is sheer dumb luck that no one has taken advantage of the opportune target that TSA creates with the current poorly thought out, inefficient system of herding passengers into large groups in an unsecured area.
I said it before, I’ll say it again. We need a smarter system. Is anyone satisfied with the current system?
FOr a tech site, the people here are surprisingly anti-tech. Bunch of Luddites, who would turn back the clock to the 20th century.
I think Bruce Schneier skewered these tech solutions to very unusual threats by positing the absolute best case, and then showing how that ends up being useless.
His example goes like this:
There is a new facial recognition machine out that is 99.9% able to instantaneously spot a terrorist from an entirely complete and accurate database of face images. People don’t even need to break stride, just walk through in a group wearing hats, masks, or whatever they want. It is as close to perfection as any machine of the type is ever going to get.
Should it be bought and installed?
Answer:
Absolutely not. It makes an error only one in 1000 uses, which seems good. Since over a million people fly per day that means at least 1000 errors per day. At a busy airport that is going to be several errors per shift of machine operators, and it will happen every day.
Because there are exceedingly few terrorists the machine is going to only error false-positive in practice. The target population is so small that it is unlikely that the machine will ever generate a false-negative, and only occasionally will it catch an actual terrorist.
Operators will quickly disregard the warnings the machine issues, because these warnings always tend to be bogus. Training the guy watching people come through the security point is a better deal.
My commentary: I bet the big defense contractors crapped themselves after reading that. Not that it ended up mattering.
Unfortunately, none of these hyper-expensive, taxpayer funded, high-tech toys have the capability of spotting a male between 18 and 35 with a swarthy complexion who is easily offended by cartoons and prays for 72 virgins 5 times every day.
My system for preventing air travel terrorism.
Fortified cockpit doors.
Profiling.
Metal detectors and bomb dogs.
A walk-thru and a sniff for all passengers.
Liquids, small pen knives, and most recently banned “common” items – allowed.
In the event of an on-board “incident”, kick some ass. Part of having freedoms is personal responsibility.
Limited violation of personal freedoms, common-sense, cost effective and flexible enough to nullify 99.9% of terrorist attempts.
#17, I don’t think X-rays putting people out of work is the issue here.
Wasted money? Good grief, no. The war against terrorism proceeds …
“Toledo Express Airport in Ohio is the newest recipient of some fancy holiday largess: This week it was announced that the regional airport, boasting five departing flights per day, will receive a full-body scanner.”
http://wtol.com/Global/story.asp?S=13685331
Useless technology, these backscatter devices. More theater. “Even if exposure were to be increased significantly, normal anatomy would make a dangerous amount of plastic explosive with tapered edges difficult if not impossible to detect.” (Journal of Transportation Security
DOI: 10.1007/s12198-010-0059-7)
http://springerlink.com/content/g6620thk08679160/
How long before we stop throwing money at the problem and do what needs to be done: profiling. Profiling is a normal part of everyday life. We may not like it but we do it. In some cases, it’s important. If I see a patient who has nicotine stains on his fingers, reeks of tobacco smoke and has a pack of Chesterfields in his shirt sleeve,then I start to think of tobacco-related syndromes. Doesn’t mean I forget everything else, but it saves time and is so often right.
Scan my carryon for a handgun. OK. Walk me through a metal detector and see if I’m carrying a hunting knife. OK. It won’t help. If I’m determined, the gun will be dismantled into pieces that don’t look like a gun. My knife will be ceramic. And now my PETN will have tapered edges.
Good grief. Look in my eyes, talk to me for 30 seconds, look at my travel patterns. PROFILE ME!!!
#23
Don’t worry, I’m sure someone is now.
Profiling is the only method that works, but if the TSA switched to profiling, everyone on here would be bitching about it, whether it be because of one little discretion occurring ages ago in their lives that causes a problem, or the fact they look a little too much on the ethnically suspicious side, or for whatever reason. And don’t forget the ACLU is just waiting to pounce with thousands of lawsuits if profiling is ever used as airport security. That alone will assure that profiling is never used in this country, despite its success everywhere else.
Start a scare about the X-Ray machines and testicular cancer. That should slow the line down.
Were not Luddites, we’re anti-waste; this system is a waste.
Scrap it and start with a sensible one; crowd source it to get as much input, some of which is bound to be good, and stop hiring people who should be wearing ‘Do Rags’ and putting them in a position where they do damage to the traveling public and the airlines.
#26 – How about two lines – profile and no profile?
I’d bet the profile line moves faster and the body scan line will continue to not find anything.
I think the TSA is just shy.
They don’t find it comfortable to just speak with travelers to ascertain their threat or not.
Of course, now with free genital feel-ups, maybe the TSA can hire some extroverts.
I heard the TSA is now training turd tasters in preparation for the next level of checks.
Unfortunately nothing will change though. Big business will still sell the stuff to the Government and then use “Terrorism” as a reason for funding.
Yes, Terrorists do exist but the word is used far too often these days. And especially when someone wants funding for something.