TSA: Overstaffed, Overpriced and Notoriously Ineffective

The TSA provides fodder for outrage on an almost-daily basis. Da Tool Guy says that the agency is “over staffed, over priced and notorious for the kind of petty officiousness that is all the worst in bureaucracy.” He’s just getting warmed up in today’s Conservatism 101.

CIVICS FOR THE MASSES

Imagine if you will, you’re a young woman, mid-20s, you’re on your way to a vacation in Ireland. You have packed a couple of items that are rather — personal — in nature in your bags.

You get to Ireland, you open your bags to a note written on a TSA inspection form which is rather suggestive in nature.
Sound like the plot of a bad novel?

Nope, actually happened to one Jill Filipovic of Philladelphia.

The TSA, of course, denies everything, saying “There’s no reason to believe the note was written by a TSA Agent.”
Really? No evidence? You mean like the fact it was written on a TSA inspection form?

Of course this is the same group that gives you a choice between being groped in an inspection that’s just this side of sexual assault or a full body scan in which very little is left to the imagination of the people performing the scan.

Everyone from elderly grandfathers accompanying their grandchildren home, to little children have been subjected to delays, embarrassment and overall stupidity while guys like Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the convicted underwear bomber, who was on a no fly list, manage to get on flights. If his pants hadn’t caught on fire instead of exploding we could have had hundreds dead.

Look, we’re going about this the wrong way.

We’re busy looking for stuff which could be used to hijack a plane or blow one up. Seems logical except that we were looking for “stuff” prior to 9/11 and it never occurred to anyone you could hijack a plane with a box cutter.

We were still looking for “stuff” when Richard Reid lit a fuse sticking out of his shoe.

We were looking for “stuff” when Abdulmutallab’s crotch started smoking.

You can look for “stuff” all day long. As the IRA pointed out after they narrowly missed getting the Royal Family back in the 1980s, we have to be lucky every time, they only have to be lucky once.

Compound this with the stupidity of groping 6-year old girls because we’ve decided we can’t profile and sooner or later someone is going to succeed.

That eventual success is probably inevitable no matter what we do. And therein lies the problem.

We assume that since Osama bin Laden has assumed room temperature terrorism is no longer a real problem. And it is true we have done a very good job of rendering Al Qaeda impotent. That does not mean we will not face more attacks. Most likely from lone actors like Major Nidal Hassan, the alleged Fort Hood shooter.

But given that near certainty, doesn’t it make sense to first, not inconvenience people who obviously do not fit the profile of a terrorist, and second to actually look for the people who do?

Worse, the TSA is a joke of an agency, over staffed, over priced and notorious for the kind of petty officiousness that is all the worst in bureaucracy.

If we must have security in airports, and I don’t dispute some security is needed, doesn’t it make more sense to hire private firms who specialize in security to do the work with federal oversight rather than hire anyone off the street, give them a week’s training and put them to work?

Heck some of the TSA screeners have turned out to be illegal aliens!

In what universe does any of this make sense? Worse the TSA is under Homeland Security, that abortion of a bloated agency established under the Bush administration. Homeland Security has way too many responsibilities, spread across way too many employees and agencies.

I say it again: Our government is too large and the proliferation of alphabet soup agencies like the TSA and DHS does nothing to make us safer, it merely provides more opportunities for graft and corruption and actually creates new vulnerabilities we have yet to see, but which professionals will figure out how to exploit.

by DaToolGuy
images: dbkp file; hubpages

DaToolGuy is a small town journalist with big time dreams. He’s spent his entire adult life laboring in the obscurity he actually deserves. But he’ll take the opportunity to show off when it comes.

DaToolGuy writes regularly at View from Flyover Country.

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