TSA's brags about not catching any terrorists, proves its own irrelevance

Bruce Schneier looks at the TSA's brag sheet, documenting the "Top 10 Good Catches of 2011" and finds "mostly forgetful, and entirely innocent, people. Note that they fail to point out that the firearms and knives would have been just as easily caught by pre-9/11 screening procedures."

That's right; not a single terrorist on the list. Mostly forgetful, and entirely innocent, people. Note that they fail to point out that the firearms and knives would have been just as easily caught by pre-9/11 screening procedures. And that the C4 -- their #1 "good catch" -- was on the return flight; they missed it the first time. So only 1 for 2 on that one.
And the TSA decided not to mention its stupidest confiscations:
TSA confiscates a butter knife from an airline pilot. TSA confiscates a teenage girl's purse with an embroidered handgun design. TSA confiscates a 4-inch plastic rifle from a GI Joe action doll on the grounds that it’s a "replica weapon." TSA confiscates a liquid-filled baby rattle from airline pilot’s infant daughter. TSA confiscates a plastic "Star Wars" lightsaber from a toddler.

Meanwhile, the TSA literally cites preventing snakes on a plane is one of its top-ten catches.

The TSA Proves its Own Irrelevance (via Beth Pratt)

(Image: Knilly and his Snakes on a Plane T-Shirt - Good Friday - The Angel on St. Giles High Street, a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (2.0) image from charliebrewer's photostream)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE: authoritarianism • aviation • boondoggle • human rights • privacy • security theater • tsa

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Thebes42

The TSA isn’t irrelevant.
It is a vital part of our government’s core mission to continually expand it’s own powers.
Hubris Sonic

Eliminate the Lieberman Boondoggle… End the TSA.
Brood-X

Corey: And the TSA decided not to mention its stupidest confiscations: TSA confiscates a butter knife from an airline pilot. TSA confiscates a teenage girl’s purse with an embroidered handgun design. TSA confiscates a 4-inch plastic rifle from a GI Joe action doll on the grounds that it’s a “replica weapon.”

Now Corey is beginning to understand why Conservatives are against Big Government. What we have in the TSA are legions of workers who cannot be trusted to make decisions on their own. Thus there exists a rule making agency who employs a staff of bureaucrats to write standard operating procedures for them to follow. Probably named the Replica Guns Rule of the TSA Airport Security Field Manual.

If airport security were run by private companies a kid would be able to take his G.I. Joe action figure on a plane armed to the teeth. And here is what the real benefit is: you and your fellow travelers wouldn’t have to spend hours wending your way through security.

As for the main point of the article, that the TSA proves its own irrelevance, yet another argument in favor of small government.
- parrotboy
  
  My favourite part of your post is the section where you forget that pretty much every conservative in power everywhere has done his/her utmost to expand state powers. Have you forgotten the first ten years of this century already?
  
  But you must mean ‘ideal’ conservatives, who as far as I can tell are as realistic as ‘ideal’ socialists.
  - Tynam
    
    What parrotboy said. You’re clearly a small-c conservative. The problem is the 100% total absence of conservatives in modern politics; all you have to choose from are more-government-overreach Republicans and more-government-overreach Democrats.
    
    (And you’ve bought into their logic. “If airport security were run by private companies…” still assumes expensive and needless security, it doesn’t get better just because you pay for it directly. It’s really not automatic that private security = better treatment of citizens.)
  - Brood-X
    
    Why stoop to framing this as a partisan issue. Regardless of your party affiliation its obvious that government is wasteful. There is no profit motive. Indeed there is an incentive for politicians to waste. You give an honest man a profit motive and he will do anything legal to increase his profits. This would including seeking to maximize the income on his assets, i.e. eliminate waste. It’s simple cause and effect. How sad many of my fellow Happy Mutants seem not to really understand this point. Sigh, I thought I was among kindred spirits. :-(
- http://angrychad.blogspot.com/ AngryChad
  
  What liberal hippies have ever been in favor of authoritarianism? So called conservatives are directly responsible for this mess.
- http://about.me/roxanne.weber Roxanne
  
  If the TSA were run by private companies we’d end up with another Wall Street – only this time the cost would be lives and not dollars.
- abstract_reg
  
  Who is Corey?
- http://twitter.com/JKOffenhartz John Offenhartz
  
  Pre- 9/11, screening passengers used to be the responsibility of the airlines. At most airports the airlines contracted with a private company to read magnetometers and check luggage.
  
  Guess the private sector didn’t do such a great job either.
jeligula

I wonder if any of us would make it through if we wore that t-shirt. Has to be worth a try.
- Damnation Shirts
  
  Seriously, I wear that shirt every time I fly. No comments on it so far, but then again, it’s advanced math.
  - http://aqfl.net Ant
    
    Where can we buy it?
Steven Barrett

I feel safer already!
Treeswing

TSA Blog: Every top-ten gets a joke!

TSA Checkpoint: Jokes get you detained!

Gotta wonder what the back room jokes are about the top-ten Woman/Child/Troublesome-Passenger Groping Sessions.
Eddie Perkins

I read though the comments and, good lord, the three part comment titled “The Peoples’ Top 24 Good Catches of 2011″ is pretty epic, if true.
http://www.kmoser.com kmoser

EVERY air marshal is armed. Presumably thousands of air marshals fly yearly. All it takes is one rogue air marshal to bring down a plane. Why hasn’t the TSA stopped even ONE air marshal so far?

EVERY plane gets loaded with highly flammable jet fuel and containers of oxygen. Who is loading these planes with such dangerous substances and why hasn’t the TSA stopped them?

TSA employees are not licensed health care practitioners, and yet they operate x-ray machines on a daily basis. Isn’t it illegal to practice medicine without a license?
- elix
  
  TSA employees are not licensed health care practitioners, and yet they operate x-ray machines on a daily basis. Isn’t it illegal to practice medicine without a license?
  
  My snark/Poe’s Law meter is going off pretty strong here, but I don’t know if it counts as medical practice if you’re not actually diagnosing anything wrong with the patient. It’s just irradiation practice, as in, “let’s practice our irradiation techniques on innocent citizens who just want to travel freely according to their supposed rights!”
  
  They get lots of practice.
  - abstract_reg
    
    New rule: When in doubt about Poe’s law: don’t say anything.
    - elix
      
      I still wanted to get in my material about irradiation practice. I could’ve just left that first clause and the ‘but’ off, I guess.
D Wyatt

STOP THE INSANITY!!!
END THE FED.
END THE TSA.
END THE INTRUSIVE BODY SCANNING
END THE PHYSICAL SEARCH OF INNOCENT CITIZENS
END THE MARIJUANA PROHIBITION
END THE LIES AND NON-TRANSPARENCY
END THE CORRUPTION
END THE RAMPANT SPENDING
END THE WAR
END THE MEDIA MONOPOLIES
END THE CONGRESSIONAL LAZINESS AND BRIBES
END THE REVENUE GENERATING MOST STATES HAVE STOOPED TO
END THE CONROLLING, THE MANIPULATING, THE SCHEMES
END THE POLICE ABUSE, TRULY INVESTIGATE AND CHARGE IT WHEN FOUND.
END THE PRIVATE OWNERSHIP OF PRISONS, FREEDOM IS GREATER THAN PROFIT
END THE LAWS AGAINST THE VERY BASIS OF FREEDOM
END THE FEAR-MONGERING, THE WAR-MONGERING-THE SECURITY HYPE

the end is now.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  END THE TYRANNY OF THE CAPS LOCK
- IronEdithKidd
  
  End the shouting.
  
  Srsly, I didn’t read any of that.
- Baldhead
  
  didn’t read it either. tend to ignore thing written in caps lock, as it’s usually not worth the time it takes.
error27

Some of these are clearly just included for their joke value but it’s hard to tell which ones.

For example, you obviously can’t travel with fish! Ha ha ha ha ha ha! What a moroon! The containers are full of liquid and could blow up the plane. No you can’t put them in checked luggage! Ha ha ha ha ha. What a idiot you are! But you can mail them in cargo. That’s safe.

“One might say the passenger was “schooled” on how to properly fly with fish.” Ha ha. Because fish swim in schools, get it?

http://blog.tsa.gov/2011/09/lax-tsa-officers-go-fishing.html
Fred B. Mullett

The TSA is not an expansion of government power. It is an expansion of government money (tax dollars) funneled into to the private sector (sub-contracting, scanners, profit through fear mongering, etc.) by elected and appointed officials that see business as the business of government.
- gibbon1
  
  This. One of the best comments I’ve heard is that you have three types of government spending.
  
  Transfer payments, like Social Security, etc.
  Investments, schools, roads, etc.
  Security State expenditures
  
  Transfer payments are opposed because people think someones getting something they don’t deserve. Welfare Queens and other non-boot strappy people.
  
  Investments are judged on profit and loss. Problem is a lot of government investment have long timelines or long tail beneficiaries which makes the accounting problematic.
  
  Security State expenditures aren’t judged the same as the first two. Who cares about the profit and loss if you’re dead? Right! The result is it’s vastly easier to justify Security State expenditures then anything else. And so it becomes the main conduit for pork.
  - Fred B. Mullett
    
    For the most part, I concur. Nice points. Would the NIH or CDC fall under Investments? Can we look to these through the P&L filter?
    
    It must also be nuanced that transfer payments can be a done as a positive or a decreased negative: cash subsidies or reduction in tax obligation. Quasi-free market advocates seldom talk about these.
ahecht

I can’t believe that they’re BRAGGING about shutting down an entire terminal because of a student’s science fair project that consisted of electronics in an Altoids tin.
Drag0nflamez

Don’t forget that story of a soldier (a couple of years ago) who was told to throw away his bottle of water while he was carrying a gun which could do a lot more damage…

(i think)
- Baldhead
  
  I’d heard the story as being a nail clipper.
Cathryn C.

I have to laungh ..ironically ..but laugh. My husband sat next to a Pilot who was deadheading to his next flight leg. The pilot was shaking his head as TSA had tried to confiscate a key from him (special shaped) that they claimed to be usuable to open a cockpit door. The pilot told my husband he pointed to his ID and Uniform and said “you do know what I do and that the airline EXPECTS me to open that door don’t you?” Needless to say he got to keep the key.
csforstall

Did you actually read the whole list Cory? You can say lots of things about these items but calling them “irrelevant” is a gross misrepresentation.

Here’s the list of, “irrelevant” items. That is unless you are cool with a brick of c4 and GOP, Tories, and Tea Party types packing heat on your plane.

(1) Small chunks of C4 explosives
(2) A loaded .380 pistol was found strapped to passenger’s ankle with the body scanner
(3) Over 1,200 firearms
(4) Two throwing knives concealed in hollowed out book
(5) A flare gun with seven flares was found in a passenger’s carry-on
(6) A stun gun disguised as a smart phone
(7) Inert landmines
(8) An artfully concealed non-metallic martial arts weapon called a “Tactical Spike” was found in the sock
- BombBlastLightingWaltz
  
  Total terrorists apprehended by TSA = 0.0
  
  That’s the main point. TSA was introduced to catch terrorists. Instead they have apprehended 1000000 breasts and crotches.
  - csforstall
    
    There’s no need to strawman, the TSA wasn’t “introduced to catch terrorists”, if you read their mission statement it is actually,
    
    The Transportation Security Administration protects the Nation’s transportation systems to ensure freedom of movement for people and commerce.
    
    You aren’t being very sensible when you insist that the TSA shouldn’t confiscate c4 or firearms. Cory’s and by extension your argument is extreme, it is not so much Anti-TSA as it is Anti-government.
    
    You are implying a world that lacks any oversight that might prevent hazardous materials making it into hazardous situations. Even more incredulous, your justification for the removal of this oversight is that it impinges your notion of an individual ”freedom” for someone to place other people’s lives in peril.
    
    By argueing that all security is “irrelevant” you are in fact placing your needs above the safety of those around you.