The TSA just seems like a social works program to me. Unfortunately they did not find a productive task for all these people to do all day.
The TSA has never been anything more than a paper tiger, designed so those at the top can say that they were doing everything they can to prevent the next tragedy. Billions invested in the pornoscanners, which were immediately proven to be almost worthless, and the air-puff scanners that turned in so many false positives that many TSA agents just turned them off. It was a bad idea, rushed through to push a political agenda, and it can’t even get past its own tests. If the proper time and money had been spent, it could have been made into an effective tool, but instead it was hijacked by the defense contracting and procurement lobby to make a lot of money for those at the top, who will never be held accountable.
Anti-social, really.
The TSA has always just been about CYA.
TSA is a clusterfuck, huge waste of money. I’d say fire them all, but the economy is already shit.
“[Testers] know exactly what our protocols are. They can create and devise and conceal items that … not even the best terrorists would be able to do,” Pistole told lawmakers at a House hearing."
Oh FFS. It seems like if this elite Red Team knows so much, they ought to share with the rest of the %^#$@%^#s working the line.
BS in, BS out, from top to bottom.
I know it’s in the original article this way, but 67/70 rounds to 96% in any sensible scheme.
LA LA LA LA l CAN’T HEAR YOU!!!
(hah I win.)
THEY ARE IF YOU KNOW WHAT YOU"RE DOING.
<tada!>
Cory’s point about vigilance is an important one, and setting aside the many problematic issues with TSA, isn’t image recognition something that computers should be proficient at? Not to say it’s an easy problem, but recent work has pushed the field far beyond recognizing the x-ray outline of a few thousand common pistol types.
The positive side: Apparently, not many people have the desire to exercise armed force in airplanes.
Egg-fucking-zactly! Whatever money and time they waste, the sky is clearly not as dangerous as they’d have us believe.
TSA is staffed by clods and jobsworths. I take offense to this I fly a lot and have gotten to know some of the TSA agents and not all of them meet that criteria. It’s the equivalent of someone saying all bloggers are idiots and pseudo journalists because a few get stories wrong. I know for a fact that some of the agents at my airport are working towards a bachelor and masters in the field of law. Others are using it as a springboard to go to cbp or other higher law enforcement. A lot of them are just as frustrated with the crap that headquarters pushes through as we are. How do I know this? I actually hold conversations with them and have gotten to know them so well we know each other by name.
The TSA is so useless. And they have the gall to whine about how oh, the testers know the protocols so they can hide stuff too well? FFS.
A heads-up: The linked article had a really sketchy ad-wall. When I clicked, the article was blacked out and there was a button that said “Answer a quick question to read this article.” The “quick question” was “What is your credit score?” Luckily I spotted the tiny “Skip survey” option at the bottom, so I could read the article without being pumped for personal financial information.
Image recognition doesn’t work when the scanners don’t pick up anything illicit in the first place, since all you have to do is position the pistol in a fairly easy and simple way against the side of the hip, and it won’t contrast from the background at all.
That’s all well and good. But doesn’t have any bearing on whether the job these fine people are doing is totally worthless and actually harmful to our liberty as Americans.
Seriously?
https://addons.mozilla.org/En-us/firefox/addon/self-destructing-cookies/
Internet equivalent of vaccination and condoms.
Flying from London Heathrow a couple of weeks ago, I “forgot” to put my tiny bottle of saline solution and travel size toothpaste in a plastic bag separate from my carryon full of dirty laundry. Sure enough, they caught it, highlighted those two things on a screen capture, and found them in a secondary screening. They have been through TSA checkpoints countless times… I was rather amazed at the capabilities of well trained personnel to actually detect such things. If TSA is going to bother with the Theater, they should really work on getting better actors.
The TSA may be terrible in every way but at least they’re doing some kind of vulnerability testing.
Another choice quote:
In addition, the review determined that despite spending $540 million for checked baggage screening equipment and another $11 million for training since a previous review in 2009, the TSA failed to make any noticeable improvements in that time.
congratulations on finding exceptions to the proposed generality and " rule ’ of thumb ’ " !! 
and , in your estimation of your experience , about what percentage of the overall number of tsa agents that you have met or seen working do fall into these " some " and " others " categories ?? the extreme ends of any bell curve may be counter examples to the peaks ~
