Word: tsa
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...thank the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) for much of this new shoeless security circus. With unseemly haste, the government created the TSA by nationalizing airport security after 9/11, as politicians tripped over each other in a mad dash to ‘do something!’ But this grand experiment in U.S.S.R.-style central planning has failed: The TSA has proved itself an incompetent, abusive, and unnecessary substitute for private airport security providers...
Unsurprisingly, the TSA produced an inefficient hodgepodge of rules and regulations that provide little security at great cost. Despite a raft of new restrictions, systematic infringement on civil liberties, and oodles of investment (over $17 million per day), both the General Accounting Office (GAO) and the Department of Homeland Security have found that the TSA is no more effective than the private security providers it replaced. In fact, in comparison with the five airports that are still privately run (Republicans insisted on exempting them from the nationalization), the GAO found that TSA screening was actually worse...
...underlying reasons for the TSA’s failure are simple: Firstly, it is a central planning agency that attempts to divine universal solutions to diverse problems. Airports in Alaska and Florida have wildly different requirements, and they need to be able to customize their solutions. Secondly, the TSA lacks market feedback. As a government agency, the TSA responds to political incentives, but politicians don’t pay the costs of the TSA’s senseless security procedures—they only face criticism if something goes wrong. As a result, the TSA spends money recklessly and imposes...
...airport x-raymachines going to detect more than just concealed weapons? Yes, says the American Civil Liberties Union, which likens the new backscatter technology to a digital strip search. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) will launch the device this month at Phoenix's Sky Harbor Airport as part of an antiterrorism test program. Backscatter penetrates clothes but not skin, exposing the outline of the body along with any objects being carried. The TSA's version is filtered to make faces and intimate parts indistinguishable (see photo above). Initially, it will be used only if travelers fail a primary screening...
...Created in a post-9/11 panic—quick, someone do something!—it took less than a year for the TSA to be branded a “monster” by the chairman of the House Aviation Subcommittee, John Mica (R-Fla.). But until voters and politicians treat the threat of terrorism rationally, accepting certain risks and recognizing that some preventative measures are too costly, the TSA will neither guard our security nor our liberty...