25,000 security breaches? What, is that the estimate of the number of travelers who managed to keep their pot?

Just remember boys and girls
Bush created the cluster fark
and Obama continues it!

Makh: Alright Kif, let's show these freaks what a bloated, runaway military budget can do!

*Sigh*

Nadie_AZ: But Mica's report recommended:

Elevating the TSA administrator's authority.
Revising the luggage screening program with private competition.
Reducing the number of TSA staffers.

So .. give em more power and outsource it?

F*CK YOU ASSHOLE

POSSIBLE RESPONSE:

YES/NO; OR WHAT?; GO AWAY; PLEASE COME BACK LATER; F*CK YOU, ASSHOLE; F*CK YOU

A U.S. Travel Association survey released Wednesday found that two-thirds of the 604 respondents were "somewhat" or "very" satisfied with TSA's overall performance for security, while only one in eight were dissatisfied. But nearly nine out of 10 thought it still takes too long to get through security.

2/3s of 604 respondents out of how many daily travelers in the nation exactly?

The magic pixie dust of privatization wouldn't work here at all. You would end up with a screening system that employed the least possible people and spent the least possible money on improvements in an attempt to make its owners more profitable. That doesn't strike me as an intelligent thing to do.

thefireandpassion: A U.S. Travel Association survey released Wednesday found that two-thirds of the 604 respondents were "somewhat" or "very" satisfied with TSA's overall performance for security, while only one in eight were dissatisfied. But nearly nine out of 10 thought it still takes too long to get through security.

2/3s of 604 respondents out of how many daily travelers in the nation exactly?

It's called a survey sample. If chosen correctly, 600 is a reasonable sample size to represent hundreds of thousands of people.

balloot: The magic pixie dust of privatization wouldn't work here at all. You would end up with a screening system that employed the least possible people and spent the least possible money on improvements in an attempt to make its owners more profitable. That doesn't strike me as an intelligent thing to do.

sure it would...just not the way you described

Give every passenger a knife and give the pilots a gun (some already carry them under the flight deck duty officer program).

The obvious course of action that will be taken, which is against all reason and logic, is that the government will increase the TSA's budget. Money can fix everything - now give me some so I can be fixed...

Game recognize Game

gwydion56: Grand_Moff_Joseph: Nadie_AZ: But Mica's report recommended:

Elevating the TSA administrator's authority.
Revising the luggage screening program with private competition.
Reducing the number of TSA staffers.

So .. give em more power and outsource it?

F*CK YOU ASSHOLE

And I'm sure that Mica doesn't have any investments in those private companies either....


I don't know. Check his luggage for stock certificates.

No good. All we found was this dildo. I SAID WE FOUND A DILDO! A BIG, VEINY DILDO!

TSA gives a job to 44,000 people who otherwise would never be employed. This year TSA picked a union, AFGE, to represent them. This makes Republicans very angry.

Delay: TSA gives a job to 44,000 people who otherwise would never be employed.

yup...says a lot about their hiring standards doesn't it? :-)

mr lawson: Just remember boys and girls
Bush created the cluster fark
and Obama continues it!

Repeat x 100. Vote libertarian, vote green, just anything but authoritarian "R" or "D."

Abolishing of the TSA is the primary issue for all my voting.

The x-ray scanners - and the Z Backscatter Vans now roaming our "free" streets - do cause cancer. This is physics of ionizing radiation, and not open for debate. What is up for debate is will 1 in 2 or 1 in a trillion or somwhere in between get cancer. Many experts peg it at 5-100 people per year getting fatal cancer from them (just the airport scanners, not the ZBV's). The "Red Team" members have had as high as 100% success rate getting guns through the x-ray scanners, something metal detectors easily find. Oh, and the EU just this week banned the use of x-ray scanners on people. Germany quit using them in testing shortly before because the false positive rate was as high as 70%. An Israeli security chief didn't understand why people even bought them because he knew how to get "enough explosive to bring down a plane" past them.

I could write pages, but just that example alone is indicative of the deep problems in not only the TSA, but the entire DHS.

balloot: The magic pixie dust of privatization wouldn't work here at all. You would end up with a screening system that employed the least possible people and spent the least possible money on improvements in an attempt to make its owners more profitable. That doesn't strike me as an intelligent thing to do.

When the TSA started, which pool of possible candidates do you think the TSA hired from? They hired from the ranks of those private screeners. Yeah, they weeded out the people who are ESL, but still have the same amount of ineffectiveness.

So, on the one hand, you have a bloated, ineffective, overpriced agency, and on the other, you have a deficit problem.

Okay, Representative Mica, this isn't hard to figure out.

Delay: TSA gives a job to 44,000 people who otherwise would never be employed. This year TSA picked a union, AFGE, to represent them. This makes Republicans very angry.

These jobs not only make America less safe (see above example of x-rays killing and injuring passengers), it's put 1/2 trillion dollars into our already large defecit.

These jobs don't create jobs either. Let an entrepreneur make a business, he hires others, creating jobs. The TSA on the other hand is destroying tourism and business travel, costing jobs in airlines, airports, shops, tourist destinations, lost business opportunities...

Why would we want to privatize things without competition anyways? Sure, they will be profit driven, but never driven to lower the costs to the taxpayer, just the leaking of money from their accounts to things like employee salaries, quality goods, etc.

Disgusting.

mr lawson: balloot: The magic pixie dust of privatization wouldn't work here at all. You would end up with a screening system that employed the least possible people and spent the least possible money on improvements in an attempt to make its owners more profitable. That doesn't strike me as an intelligent thing to do.

sure it would...just not the way you described

Feel free to explain how you think privatizing an inherently monopolistic business like airport security would be helpful.

My claim is that once a company gets a contract for an airport, its ideal plan for making the most profit would be to have the least possible attendants working the cheapest possible machines. Or in other terms, it would keep the pain on passengers and the danger of a security breach at the maximum point that it could without getting booted from the contract, which would be an exceedingly rare event given the difficulty in both finding a new company that would do this job and implementing a new security company in an airport.

Feel free to explain to me why I'm wrong.

I've been flying inside the US a lot in the past week. It has been surprising how efficient the TSA has become, as onerous as that may be to the average traveler. They have turned search and seizure into an automated procedure, and a lot of the complaints against it (that it was too slow, or that it wasn't random enough) have become moot as the speed and thorough screening of passengers has increased.

Which is why the peripheral arguments of speed, health, safety, and convenience have been detrimental to the overall cause of eliminating the ridiculous rules that the TSA has slowly but steadily created and enforced. By dragging the argument to the periphery, the main opposition to the agency is minimized, and as answers to the peripheral issues are provided, the actions of the agency become written in stone.

It has always been about the violation of the 4th Amendment. If the Supreme Court refuses to see this, then we must elect Presidents who will appoint judges who believe in individual rights and limited government. We must elect representatives who are willing to stand up to the brays of those who would have us cower in fear of another attack.

But we don't. We vote in nincompoops who would rather increase government power than decrease it. We pretend like our votes don't matter, but don't do anything to test that. This is, above all, a problem with the citizenry who is just as happy to lift up their failing President as they are to shout down their opponents' successful one. Meanwhile, the 4th Amendment rolls over in its grave.

balloot: It's called a survey sample. If chosen correctly, 600 is a reasonable sample size to represent hundreds of thousands of people.

The point is that a random sample isn't really a good measure in this case. The significant way of measuring what people think of the TSA is on a per-trip basis, not a per-capita basis. Someone who has to deal with the TSA once a year on their family vacation is going to be less likely to see the TSA's warts than a business traveler who has to deal with them several times a week. People who are subjected to TSA BS on a day-in, day-out basis are going to have a far more accurate view of them.

LessO2: balloot: The magic pixie dust of privatization wouldn't work here at all. You would end up with a screening system that employed the least possible people and spent the least possible money on improvements in an attempt to make its owners more profitable. That doesn't strike me as an intelligent thing to do.

When the TSA started, which pool of possible candidates do you think the TSA hired from? They hired from the ranks of those private screeners. Yeah, they weeded out the people who are ESL, but still have the same amount of ineffectiveness.

Actually, the grunts were a)high school graduates and b) willing to accept a base pay of 23,000/yr.

A friend of mine was an HR contractor for the hiring project.

balloot: mr lawson: balloot: The magic pixie dust of privatization wouldn't work here at all. You would end up with a screening system that employed the least possible people and spent the least possible money on improvements in an attempt to make its owners more profitable. That doesn't strike me as an intelligent thing to do.

sure it would...just not the way you described

Feel free to explain how you think privatizing an inherently monopolistic business like airport security would be helpful.

My claim is that once a company gets a contract for an airport, its ideal plan for making the most profit would be to have the least possible attendants working the cheapest possible machines. Or in other terms, it would keep the pain on passengers and the danger of a security breach at the maximum point that it could without getting booted from the contract, which would be an exceedingly rare event given the difficulty in both finding a new company that would do this job and implementing a new security company in an airport.

Feel free to explain to me why I'm wrong.

The government already foot the bill for airport screening, so your point is useless and retarded. The gov't is not going to give private screen companies more money once the contract has been awarded, and you can be damn sure the gov't is going to mandate quite a bit in their employment contract. The TSA Union will see to it.

Don't make me defend Congress, subby. TSA may literally be the one thing in this country more bloated and ineffective than that august body. At least Congress has accomplished something at some point in American history. I defy you to prove the same about TSA.

And no, a handful of airport security arrests in the past decade don't count, because we already had folks who would have a word with you if you tried to roll onto a plane with bombs in your underpants, even pre-9/11.

Nadie_AZ: But Mica's report recommended:

Elevating the TSA administrator's authority.
Revising the luggage screening program with private competition.
Reducing the number of TSA staffers.

So .. give em more power and outsource it?

F*CK YOU ASSHOLE

Actually, the airports have had the option to opt out and hire their own private screeners. Have for years. There was only a mandate to use TSA for a certain time period, and it's long since expired.

Why won't airports hire their own screeners? Because it's a SHIATSTORM OF EPIC PROPORTIONS. They'd have to do the SAME invasive groping and irradiating people, and sooner or later one is gonna tell grandma she has to take her adult diaper off for inspection.

The only difference is, now it's all the airport's fault. And they can't possibly survive being downrange of that kind of aggro. If it's the TSA, the airport has "totally uninvolved" status, and the TSA has a degree of Sovereign Immunity when they pull atrocious bullshiat on people which protects them against most civil actions and virtually all criminal charges.

balloot: thefireandpassion: A U.S. Travel Association survey released Wednesday found that two-thirds of the 604 respondents were "somewhat" or "very" satisfied with TSA's overall performance for security, while only one in eight were dissatisfied. But nearly nine out of 10 thought it still takes too long to get through security.

2/3s of 604 respondents out of how many daily travelers in the nation exactly?

It's called a survey sample. If chosen correctly, 600 is a reasonable sample size to represent hundreds of thousands of people.

No that's not really a reasonable sample size to represent hundreds of thousands of people. Using that sample to say TSA is doing their job and people are happy with it isn't a standard people should be accepting.

redmid17: balloot: mr lawson: balloot: The magic pixie dust of privatization wouldn't work here at all. You would end up with a screening system that employed the least possible people and spent the least possible money on improvements in an attempt to make its owners more profitable. That doesn't strike me as an intelligent thing to do.

sure it would...just not the way you described

Feel free to explain how you think privatizing an inherently monopolistic business like airport security would be helpful.

My claim is that once a company gets a contract for an airport, its ideal plan for making the most profit would be to have the least possible attendants working the cheapest possible machines. Or in other terms, it would keep the pain on passengers and the danger of a security breach at the maximum point that it could without getting booted from the contract, which would be an exceedingly rare event given the difficulty in both finding a new company that would do this job and implementing a new security company in an airport.

Feel free to explain to me why I'm wrong.

The government already foot the bill for airport screening, so your point is useless and retarded. The gov't is not going to give private screen companies more money once the contract has been awarded, and you can be damn sure the gov't is going to mandate quite a bit in their employment contract. The TSA Union will see to it.

Could you make any less sense?

I had a hotel guest this morning who asked for shaving cream, because the TSA had confiscated his. I asked if he also needed a razor, but no, he still had his.

Does that make any sense?

thefireandpassion: balloot: thefireandpassion: A U.S. Travel Association survey released Wednesday found that two-thirds of the 604 respondents were "somewhat" or "very" satisfied with TSA's overall performance for security, while only one in eight were dissatisfied. But nearly nine out of 10 thought it still takes too long to get through security.

2/3s of 604 respondents out of how many daily travelers in the nation exactly?

It's called a survey sample. If chosen correctly, 600 is a reasonable sample size to represent hundreds of thousands of people.

No that's not really a reasonable sample size to represent hundreds of thousands of people. Using that sample to say TSA is doing their job and people are happy with it isn't a standard people should be accepting.

Learn some basic statistics before you pretend like you know what you're talking about. Pretty much any poll or survey takes a sample size of 500-1000 people. This goes for surveys that measure things as broad as voter preference in the entire country.

balloot: redmid17: balloot: mr lawson: balloot: The magic pixie dust of privatization wouldn't work here at all. You would end up with a screening system that employed the least possible people and spent the least possible money on improvements in an attempt to make its owners more profitable. That doesn't strike me as an intelligent thing to do.

sure it would...just not the way you described

Feel free to explain how you think privatizing an inherently monopolistic business like airport security would be helpful.

My claim is that once a company gets a contract for an airport, its ideal plan for making the most profit would be to have the least possible attendants working the cheapest possible machines. Or in other terms, it would keep the pain on passengers and the danger of a security breach at the maximum point that it could without getting booted from the contract, which would be an exceedingly rare event given the difficulty in both finding a new company that would do this job and implementing a new security company in an airport.

Feel free to explain to me why I'm wrong.

The government already foot the bill for airport screening, so your point is useless and retarded. The gov't is not going to give private screen companies more money once the contract has been awarded, and you can be damn sure the gov't is going to mandate quite a bit in their employment contract. The TSA Union will see to it.

Could you make any less sense?

Not to the illiterate or mentally stunted. I'll leave you to think about which you belong to.

Oznog: Nadie_AZ: But Mica's report recommended:

Elevating the TSA administrator's authority.
Revising the luggage screening program with private competition.
Reducing the number of TSA staffers.

So .. give em more power and outsource it?

F*CK YOU ASSHOLE

Actually, the airports have had the option to opt out and hire their own private screeners. Have for years. There was only a mandate to use TSA for a certain time period, and it's long since expired.

Why won't airports hire their own screeners? Because it's a SHIATSTORM OF EPIC PROPORTIONS. They'd have to do the SAME invasive groping and irradiating people, and sooner or later one is gonna tell grandma she has to take her adult diaper off for inspection.

The only difference is, now it's all the airport's fault. And they can't possibly survive being downrange of that kind of aggro. If it's the TSA, the airport has "totally uninvolved" status, and the TSA has a degree of Sovereign Immunity when they pull atrocious bullshiat on people which protects them against most civil actions and virtually all criminal charges.

Wrong. This is from January:

"Washington (CNN) -- A program that allows airports to replace government screeners with private screeners is being brought to a standstill, just a month after the Transportation Security Administration said it was "neutral" on the program."

Link (new window)

Oznog: The only difference is, now it's all the airport's fault. And they can't possibly survive being downrange of that kind of aggro. If it's the TSA, the airport has "totally uninvolved" status, and the TSA has a degree of Sovereign Immunity when they pull atrocious bullshiat on people which protects them against most civil actions and virtually all criminal charges.

Getting rid of the TSA, or privatizing it, is meaningless unless you also get rid of the asinine policies they enforce. It's the policies themselves that are the real problem. One benefit of privatization is that the goons (and their bosses) would lose sovereign immunity for their actions. Having to face the prospect of going to jail or being personally sued for their fark-ups would quickly cause a change in policy. With any luck this would cause them to abandon the security theatre approach and adopt policies that are a) constitutional and b) been proven effective elsewhere

balloot: thefireandpassion: balloot: thefireandpassion: A U.S. Travel Association survey released Wednesday found that two-thirds of the 604 respondents were "somewhat" or "very" satisfied with TSA's overall performance for security, while only one in eight were dissatisfied. But nearly nine out of 10 thought it still takes too long to get through security.

2/3s of 604 respondents out of how many daily travelers in the nation exactly?

It's called a survey sample. If chosen correctly, 600 is a reasonable sample size to represent hundreds of thousands of people.

No that's not really a reasonable sample size to represent hundreds of thousands of people. Using that sample to say TSA is doing their job and people are happy with it isn't a standard people should be accepting.

Learn some basic statistics before you pretend like you know what you're talking about. Pretty much any poll or survey takes a sample size of 500-1000 people. This goes for surveys that measure things as broad as voter preference in the entire country.

CIA Factbook says as of 2010 there are 15,079 airports in the United States. (pops yo) Lets suppose there's a flat 450 airports (in reality there may be more there may be less) that have regularly scheduled flights. 604 divided by 450 of the airports that have regularly scheduled flights results in telling you that only 1.342222222222 repeating(I don't feel like doing the fractional conversion here) of people surveyed at the airports. So you're telling me a single and just a bit over a third of a person at each just regularly used airport is a good representation for statistical analysis?



Basic math should tell you that's a shiatty representation for anything.

Oznog: Actually, the airports have had the option to opt out and hire their own private screeners. Have for years. There was only a mandate to use TSA for a certain time period, and it's long since expired.

Why won't airports hire their own screeners? Because it's a SHIATSTORM OF EPIC PROPORTIONS. They'd have to do the SAME invasive groping and irradiating people, and sooner or later one is gonna tell grandma she has to take her adult diaper off for inspection.

The only difference is, now it's all the airport's fault. And they can't possibly survive being downrange of that kind of aggro. If it's the TSA, the airport has "totally uninvolved" status, and the TSA has a degree of Sovereign Immunity when they pull atrocious bullshiat on people which protects them against most civil actions and virtually all criminal charges.

Airports aren't hiring private screeners because they need a waiver from TSA to do so, and TSA stopped granting waivers once too many airports started requesting them.

Linky

thefireandpassion: balloot: thefireandpassion: balloot: thefireandpassion: A U.S. Travel Association survey released Wednesday found that two-thirds of the 604 respondents were "somewhat" or "very" satisfied with TSA's overall performance for security, while only one in eight were dissatisfied. But nearly nine out of 10 thought it still takes too long to get through security.

2/3s of 604 respondents out of how many daily travelers in the nation exactly?

It's called a survey sample. If chosen correctly, 600 is a reasonable sample size to represent hundreds of thousands of people.

No that's not really a reasonable sample size to represent hundreds of thousands of people. Using that sample to say TSA is doing their job and people are happy with it isn't a standard people should be accepting.

Learn some basic statistics before you pretend like you know what you're talking about. Pretty much any poll or survey takes a sample size of 500-1000 people. This goes for surveys that measure things as broad as voter preference in the entire country.

CIA Factbook says as of 2010 there are 15,079 airports in the United States. (pops yo) Lets suppose there's a flat 450 airports (in reality there may be more there may be less) that have regularly scheduled flights. 604 divided by 450 of the airports that have regularly scheduled flights results in telling you that only 1.342222222222 repeating(I don't feel like doing the fractional conversion here) of people surveyed at the airports. So you're telling me a single and just a bit over a third of a person at each just regularly used airport is a good representation for statistical analysis?

[profile.ak.fbcdn.net image 200x204]

Basic math should tell you that's a shiatty representation for anything.

Actually, basic math tells you otherwise. The sample size needed to get a proper estimation over a population is part of Statistics 101. You can come up with all kinds of "common sense" justification as to why a small sample size doesn't work, but it has and will over and over again, and can be mathematically justified.

PPP poll of all voters in California: 500 people
St Herbert poll of all voters in Wisconsin: 482 people
Survey USA poll of all voters in the US: 1000 people

What's fun is watching America collapse internally. America is dieing internally and every one of you is watching.

Just make the airplanes out of rubber. Then, if a terrorist flew one into a building, all it would do is bounce off with a comical "boe-ING!" sound. Or, if the terrorist detonated a bomb in it, the plane would briefly inflate to an absurd and highly amusing size, before returning to normal, with only a burp and a puff of smoke to show anything had happened.

The end result is that airplanes become useless for acts of terrorism, the TSA and other airport security can be disbanded, and flying becomes significantly easier and more entertaining. It's a win for everyone!

just_a_typical_guy: Delay: TSA gives a job to 44,000 people who otherwise would never be employed. This year TSA picked a union, AFGE, to represent them. This makes Republicans very angry.

These jobs not only make America less safe (see above example of x-rays killing and injuring passengers), it's put 1/2 trillion dollars into our already large defecit.

These jobs don't create jobs either. Let an entrepreneur make a business, he hires others, creating jobs. The TSA on the other hand is destroying tourism and business travel, costing jobs in airlines, airports, shops, tourist destinations, lost business opportunities...

TSA doesn't cost any jobs or destroy travel. TSA seems like expensive theater to me. There are something like 20,00 managers whose main task is putting together Power Point presentations. Then there are 44,000 folks who wear plastic gloves. Frankly, it's a public works work program. Maybe I'm too cynical, but I could think of worse.

balloot: The magic pixie dust of privatization wouldn't work here at all. You would end up with a screening system that employed the least possible people and spent the least possible money on improvements in an attempt to make its owners more profitable. That doesn't strike me as an intelligent thing to do.

As opposed the government system of hiring as many morons as possible who sit around doing as little or nothing for way too much money and benefits with the added bonus of their attitude towards you of "fark you I'm the government."

Not sure which system I should prefer.

Privatization? Hey I'm sure Blackwater would be down for the job.

clyph: Oznog: The only difference is, now it's all the airport's fault. And they can't possibly survive being downrange of that kind of aggro. If it's the TSA, the airport has "totally uninvolved" status, and the TSA has a degree of Sovereign Immunity when they pull atrocious bullshiat on people which protects them against most civil actions and virtually all criminal charges.

Getting rid of the TSA, or privatizing it, is meaningless unless you also get rid of the asinine policies they enforce. It's the policies themselves that are the real problem. One benefit of privatization is that the goons (and their bosses) would lose sovereign immunity for their actions. Having to face the prospect of going to jail or being personally sued for their fark-ups would quickly cause a change in policy. With any luck this would cause them to abandon the security theatre approach and adopt policies that are a) constitutional and b) been proven effective elsewhere

I'm sure Congress would slip immunity for them into the law.