[Infowarrior] - OpEd: It's Time To Fire the TSA

[Richard Forno]

President Obama, It's Time To Fire the TSA
http://gizmodo.com/5435675/president-obama-its-time-to-fire-the-tsa

Today, DHS's Napolitano's response to the crotchbomber: "We're looking  
to make sure that this sort of incident cannot recur." But the TSA's  
response to Abdulmutalib's attempt makes one thing clear: We must stop  
pretending the TSA is making us safer.

Security expert Bruce Schneier nails the core incompetency: "For years  
I've been saying 'Only two things have made flying safer [since 9/11]:  
the reinforcement of cockpit doors, and the fact that passengers know  
now to resist hijackers.'"

So what has the TSA done in response to the attempted attack? They've  
told airlines to make passengers stay in their seats during the last  
hour of flight. They've made it verboten for passengers to hold  
anything in their laps, again only during the last hour of flight.  
Perhaps most hilariously telling, they've forbidden pilots from  
announcing when a plane is flying over certain cities and landmarks.

There is no other way to interpret it: The TSA is saying clearly that  
they can't prevent terrorists from getting explosives on airplanes,  
but by god, they'll make sure those planes only explode when the TSA  
says it's okay.

I want our government to prevent terrorism and to make flights safer.  
But we are spending billions of dollars and man-hours to fight a  
threat that is less likely to kill a traveler than being struck by  
lightning. In the last decade, according to statistician Nate Silver,  
there has been "one terrorist incident per 11,569,297,667 miles flown  
[the] equivalent to 1,459,664 trips around the diameter of the Earth,  
24,218 round trips to the Moon, or two round trips to  
Neptune." (Sadly, this does mean that in the future we can expect one  
out of every two round-trip flights to Neptune to be hijacked.)

The TSA isn't saving lives. We, the passengers, are saving our own.  
Since its inception, the TSA has been structured in such a way as to  
prevent specific terror scenarios, attempting to disrupt a handful of  
insanely specific tactics, while continuing to disenfranchise and  
demoralize the citizens who are actually doing the work that a billion- 
dollar government agency—an agency that received an additional $128  
million just this year for new checkpoint explosive screening  
technology—has failed to do.

We just had the first legitimate attempted attack in years, and the  
TSA changes the threat level from orange...to orange.

This goes far beyond simple customer satisfaction issues like "Take  
Back Takeoff." (Although they are of a kind.) It has to do with wildly  
irrationally response of a government agency in the face of failure.  
An agency whose leader, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet  
Napolitano, said at first blush that the attempted attack showed that— 
here comes the Katrina-class foot-in-mouth—"the system worked." (She  
shoveled ---- in her mouth this morning, while still talking up the  
asinine new measures that the TSA will be taking to respond to this  
isolated threat.)

I don't want to die on an airplane. I don't want to die in my home  
while eating an organic bagel infested with parasites that lay eggs on  
my liver. I don't want to die from starvation or bad water or a  
thousand other things that I pay our government to monitor and regulate.

But I also don't expect the government to protect from the literally  
endless possibilities and threats that could occur at any point to end  
my life or the life of the few I love. It's been nearly a decade since  
terrorists used airplanes to attack our country, and last week's  
attempt makes it clear that the lack of terrorist attacks have nothing  
to do with the increasing gauntlet of whirring machines, friskings,  
and arbitrary bureaucratic provisions, but simply that for the most  
part, there just aren't that many terrorists trying to blow up planes.  
Because god knows if there were, the TSA isn't capable of stopping  
them. We're just one bad burrito away from the TSA forcing passengers  
to choke back an Imodium and a Xanax before being hogtied to our seats.

President Obama, don't let this attack—this one attack that was  
thankfully stopped by smart, fearless passengers and airline staff— 
take us further in the wrong direction. I don't think I'm alone in  
feeling this way. Americans of all stripes and affiliation standing up  
to say, "This isn't working. We gave you our money. You're not making  
us safer." We appreciate the attempt to make us safer and acknowledge  
that it came from an honest attempt to protect American (and the rest  
of the world's) lives.

But it's a failure. It's wrongheaded. It's a farce. Tear it down. Put  
the money towards the sort of actions at which our government excels,  
like intelligence. The failure of the TSA leaves us no choice, but  
it's okay. The American people are ready to take back the  
responsibility for our own safety. Really, we already have.


Send an email to Joel Johnson, the author of this post, at joel at gizmodo.com

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