Posted on 12/23/2010 7:15:55 PM PST by Mad Dawgg
An airline pilot is being disciplined by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) for posting video on YouTube pointing out what he believes are serious flaws in airport security.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.tv ...
Godwin’s Law again! Comes up a lot these days.
There is a case currently in the Northeast where some kid, 15 or 16, got on the runway and hid in a wheel well, which then dropped his body on some Massachusetts town.
Everybody is SO surprised that a kid could get access to a plane like that especially with TSA going nuts at the time.
He could easily have had an explosive with him!
Airports are pretty porous in some places, even to an apparently untrained kid. Imagine what a pro could do! Scary.
I can see someone else has already gone here. About what I would say as well, but with the following addition... You actually believed a manager about this?!!! Most managers I have worked for have absolutely no clue about the real work - only how to delegate responsibility to someone who does know the ins and outs of a certain work station’s function or area of expertise. I have yet to see a manager be able to accomplish the work of their delegated employee, let alone explain it properly in all my 26 years of working in several industries.
“You actually believed a manager about this?”
No, I did not. He said there were security issues that I was not aware of (I was a commercial customer, showing up with the stuff to be irradiated). Why should I believe someone whose job depended on the security of his company?
Don’t miss the point.
The gaps in security prove TSA is a joke.
How many hundreds of millions do we give to fund this joke? And how much real security is lost because time is wasted with the TSA?
Terrorism will not be stopped by the TSA—it will happen because of the TSA if they don’t get their act together. To save our country we need to replace this joke with old fashioned military intelligence and law enforcement. Intelligent law enforcement—the kind that profiles.
I know a lot of them talk about being on the side of right, but it isn’t going to happen that way.
We’ve seen it before. It’ll be thousands of little acts of despotism. It won’t be obvious who’s right or it will be so swift and so political that it won’t matter what anyone in law enforcement or the military believe about the Constitution.
Look at all the stories exposing the TSA as a sham security operation, yet people get quoted all the time saying, “It’s for my own good. It makes me safe. Let them scan and grope me.”
Our military and security services are simply a reflection of our society as a whole. Government schooling’s dumbed us down so much we don’t know what liberty is anymore.
We’ve got half a country as the equivalent of adults in diapers. As long as they get a fresh pair they’ll happily stay children and go along with the Nanny State. Remember Obama got elected with a majority.
We’ve got enemies domestic and foreign who don’t believe in America. Soros wouldn’t get anywhere without his willing dupes, who are the children of willing dupes. It’ll take a generation of Congressional control by people who believe in the Constitution, but the goodies are just too valuable to let slip away. It’ll be a fight every step.
the whole administration is a joke. Nevertheless you don’t expose security flaws to your enemies.
YES!!!
Kill that messenger!!!!
The Sicilian Vespers began when some French thug in uniform grope a Sicilian wife in front of her husband during the Vespers service before Easter.
Over the next few weeks eight thousand French thugs and non-thugs both were killed in Sicily, and after months of further rebellion the despotic sovereign and his thugs were finally kicked out of Sicily.
I heard that too. I heard some were found in the seatback pockets at my airline.
I was at the Newark airport 2 years ago, heading to the food court and saw a middle eastern man hiding a video camera under his trenchcoat. He opened the coat and holding the camera close to his body, he filmed the concourse in a quick scanning motion and closed his coat back over it. It was obvious he was trying to hide what he was doing. I reported it to some jackass cop nearby and he looked at me with disgust and told me many people took pictures of the airport. He then walked away, looking at me over his shoulder like I was an idiot.
That has already happened. It was usair and a guy had his employee friend take a gun through the unsecured door. A passenger witnessed the handoff and reported it. The bag was searched and a gun was found. The link below also references the PSA flight where a loaded gun somehow bypassed security. Both pilots were presumed to have been shot and the plane crashed, killing everyone on board.
http://www.airlinepilotforums.com/major/40750-us-airways-employee-gives-bag-w-gun-pass-3.html
This pilot is a hero and should be hired as a consultant to the TSA/Homeland Security. But I'm making too much sense, because in the real world, he had the audacity to reveal the stupidity and incompetence of the TSA and Homeland Security, so he is harassed and abused by a ridiculously stupid Federal Government on steroids.
I really have no respect left for these fools.
I understand the point. I was exploring the concept of, when is it OK to make security gaps public, possibly ones terrorists might use. The consensus answer here seems to be, anytime, with no consequences, because it helps things. That discussion led to two instances of Godwin’s Law being invoked.
When the person is an insider the leak concerns me more since may will assume that a pilot is aware of all of the levels of security and how it all fits together, which is not the case but lends credence and authority to the leak. Having someone else do your site survey for you is one less step in taking action.
And, I know what I’d do if I had a trusted employee casing my company and publishing exploitable vulnerabilities! Over all of his protests that he’s actually helping me, I’d make sure that his access to any more information was cut off immediately! That’s been my experience in industry, like the electronic game industry, to aerospace contractors, and the irradiation facility I mentioned above.
TSA comes up with specific responses to specific threats (real, theoretical, or imagined), overlaid with some good-intention might-be-a-good-idea general screening/security, then gets that run through Congress and the airlines association and all the unions. The result is a Charlie Foxtrot mishmash of stuff implemented and performed by people that are really good at following scripts and who are given almost no flexibility to change the script. It sucks, but it is the best we can cobble together until we can get some real reform and some “leaders” in Washington that actually like the USA and the citizens who live in it. Mapping blueprints of the holes and gaps certainly won’t help because, as I mentioned above, even if TSA tried to fix things, the bad guys can respond much quicker than TSA can ever dream of.
I think Congress should get out of the loop except to provide money to airports and airlines to hire private security firms whose metric is security and safety, not earmarks and CYA and counting how many people in your department.
I agree, the TSA pretend-security is theater at best.
My concern is publicizing vulnerabilities that may be exploitable. The worst case scenario would be someone using that data as site surveillance for some action. Why buy a ticket and send someone into the TSA “Sanitized Zone” to do surveillance when this guy did it for free?
I always chuckle when I’m in a Sanitized Zone, it sounds so Star Trek.
As I mentioned in a recent post, TSA responds to very specific threats with very specific “rules” and procedures. It’s like the little scenarios they used to use to sell GI Joe dolls, the TV ad would show Joe being winched up a cliff with the new Battle Action Harness and Jeep with Real Tactical Winch Action, and once you buy the stuff, that’s pretty much all you can do with it.
So the Fruit of the Boom guy goes to the head two hours before landing and has a blanket in his lap, so for a while NOBODY WHO FLEW could go to the head or have a blanket for the last two hours of flight, to stop an exact repeat of what FotB tried to do! That ruling lasted about six hours before Janet was overruled, I think. Seven or eight people talking in a foreign language in a group in the aisle frightened someone, so now on an eight hour flight, I can’t stand up for 30 minutes every couple of hours because I might frighten someone too, especially if there are FOUR of us down by the rear kitchen. Lots of the idiocy comes from single, specific incidents, rather than trying to see the type of person who would do the act.
Did they also figure he wouldn't do that again? Just curious...
Great observations. That more-ornate regulations and procedures firstmost and always reaction to ANYTHING new was also a hallmark of the FAA which begat the TSA.
Still, the pilot was right. It’s not the fear of these new regulations that the idiot bastards will quickly put in force in blindly vile reaction to this incident that must drive us, the sane, it is rather a whole intolerance for such bureaucratic reactionism, the culture and the bureaucracy that create, suckle and fester it. As such we must celebrate and support the pilot in this case.
What would create public confidence in the TSA is evidence that it is frank and honest in admitting its weaknesses when they are exposed, and diligent in effecting the necessary remedies.
That is not the consensus answer.
Scenario (1)...There is one unmarked door that leads to a critical security area at one airport. Its alarm contacts are broken, and there is a three week wait for spare parts, which are on order. Only four members of the security staff know this fact. Clearly in this case it would be reprehensible to publish the information.
Scenario (2)...There are unalarmed doors left open at airports all over the country. Thousands of people are seen to walk through those doors every day. Despite this fact being known throughout the security staff, no one seems to be able to get management to lock the doors. Equally clearly, in this case, public whistleblowing is appropriate.
“TSA comes up with specific responses to specific threats”
I must disagree: TSA (run bureaucrats who, by the inherent nature of their job, almost immediately lose focus on substance) comes up with generalized responses to specific threats. This might be the problem in a nutshell.
Failure to profile is failure to get specific.
This failure is so big, so pervasive that the risk from a pilot exposing it is less than miniscule in comparison and might bring enough attention to regain a little focus on specific responses to the substance of the threat.
Step away from that bong!
Calm thyself!
Now - ask your very little mind if there might possibly be awareness of those aircraft service persons amongst the Moslims wanting to kill Americans? They also go to the airport, just like real human beings, remember?
What the pilot put on the Internet is common knowledge - not arcane, Top Secret stuff.
That the Gummament Goons could search his home, take his CCW and Flight Deck Officer weapons permits is right out of the Third Reich.
That’s “Third Reich” - for your enlightenment, I suggest you Google it.
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