"Ah the TSA. Another big government project the bots conveniently 'forget' that I created."
Posted on 04/14/2012 8:13:36 AM PDT by re_tail20
Airport security in America is broken. I should know. For 3½ years—from my confirmation in July 2005 to President Barack Obama's inauguration in January 2009—I served as the head of the Transportation Security Administration.
You know the TSA. We're the ones who make you take off your shoes before padding through a metal detector in your socks (hopefully without holes in them). We're the ones who make you throw out your water bottles. We're the ones who end up on the evening news when someone's grandma gets patted down or a child's toy gets confiscated as a security risk. If you're a frequent traveler, you probably hate us.
More than a decade after 9/11, it is a national embarrassment that our airport security system remains so hopelessly bureaucratic and disconnected from the people whom it is meant to protect. Preventing terrorist attacks on air travel demands flexibility and the constant reassessment of threats. It also demands strong public support, which the current system has plainly failed to achieve.
The crux of the problem, as I learned in my years at the helm, is our wrongheaded approach to risk. In attempting to eliminate all risk from flying, we have made air travel an unending nightmare for U.S. passengers and visitors from overseas, while at the same time creating a security system that is brittle where it needs to be supple.
Any effort to rebuild TSA and get airport security right in the U.S. has to start with two basic principles:
First, the TSA's mission is to prevent a catastrophic attack on the transportation system, not to ensure that every single passenger can avoid harm while traveling. Much of the friction in the system today results from rules that are direct responses to how we were attacked on 9/11...
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Air travel would be safer if we allowed knives, lighters and liquids and focused on disrupting new terror plots. A former head of the Transportation Security Administration, Kip Hawley, on embracing risk.
Let people pay for their own security. The free market will work.
The TSA is run like a typical government bureaucracy and cannot adapt quickly to changes in threats and must bow constantly to political correctness. For example, the TSA changes its procedures long after a threat is found and long after the terrorists have abandoned that technique for something else. There has never been an actual terrorist threat stopped by the TSA. The US has put its airport security in the hands of a bumbling Inspector Clouseau agency.
If TSA implemented his 5 ideas, I’d probably start flying again rather than driving. Then again, driving isn’t so bad, I like to drive. On a recent road trip I got 39 mpg. The airlines may have lost me permanently...
Allow knives back on? Naaahhh,not a good idea.
1) Eliminate the TSA.
2) Indemnify every airline from lawsuits or action for refusing service.
The TSA has not prevented a single attack. Nor could they prevent a single attack. Two core reasons why the 9/11 attacks worked were a) the mistaken belief that airlines can’t refuse service, and b) the mantra from ‘those who know’ in that passengers should simply be compliant with a hijacking and everything will be alright.
Had security personnel gone with their gut, a planeload of passengers wouldn’t have died that day. Nor would that plane have become a missile fired at the Pentagon.
Security is never about rules and regulations, it is a combination of training and instinct that leads to the best results. Will they get things wrong? Of course. What of it? Some crowing report about how someone was refused service because he was ‘flying while brown’? Then start up an airline and welcome them aboard. But announce it, and be aware you’ll be responsible for what happens with your plane, passengers and what your plane does to others.
I’ve got no interest in flying and even less interest in paying for the security of those who do.
On a recent flight from Phoenix to Sacramento the TSA took my toothpaste but didn’t blink twice at some “things” I carry in my computer case that in the hands of a trained martial artist are far more deadly than a knife. I know many such people who carry the same “things” on airplanes.
Oh and BTW ... any knife pulled on me would be my knife in less than a second ... VERY easy to train a flight crew member the technique
Besides the seat cushion flotation device I would like to see every airline seat equipped with a Taurus Judge Public Defender loaded with .410 shot shells. A Bond Arms two shot derringer with the same shot shells would be a suitable substitute. These would be in sealed containers that could only be opened by breaking the cover of the container. If a group of radical islamists decided to try and take over the plane, every passenger would have a potential say so about their fate. Everyone knows that terrorists are stupid cowardly slime that would never stand up to a fair fight.
Provide a gun with rubber bullets (or a tazor) in every seat - right next to the barf bag and the laminated card that shows how to work a seat belt. As an alternative they are issued to all adult flyers by the flight crew. Prior to take off, between the “how to use a seat belt” demo and the “in case of water landing” as you fly over Iowa could be a “how to shoot a terrorist demo”. The flight attendants as they point to the exits could point to the young angry Muslim men on the flight and if thy have a one way ticket or not. The weapons of course should be in a container to protect unintended discharge and unruly children from access. If the container is breached a report must be filled and the adult with custody has some explaining to do. Also protect the cockpit with pork products and lots of weapons.
“Any effort to rebuild TSA and get airport security right in the U.S. has to start with two basic principles”
No there should be no TSA. The airlines and the airports should be providing their own security.
"Ah the TSA. Another big government project the bots conveniently 'forget' that I created."
Interesting that the word PROFILE did not even come up in that apologistic run-on piece. Profiling is the primary means of Israeli security and we cannot even discuss it.
Yours is the best post of this thread.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.