Posted by D. Cupples | When we ordinary folk fly, airport security staffers make us wait in lines, take off our shoes, and throw out our tweezers.
Somehow, investigators from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) managed to get past airport security carrying ingredients that could be used to make explosives....
The investigators went undercover, posing as passengers, specifically to test Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) security procedures at 19 airports. The GAO concluded:
"Our tests clearly demonstrate that a terrorist group, using publicly available information and few resources, could cause severe damage to an airplane and threaten the safety of passengers by bringing prohibited IED and IID components through security checkpoints. Given our degree of success, we are confident that our investigators would have been able to evade transportation security officers at additional airports had we decided to test them." (see GAO Report)
The TSA was established six years ago, after the 9/11 attacks, and has received $20+ billion in funding (search White House for budget info). Some TSA duties are carried out by private contractors, though the GAO did not find contractors' performance better or worse than that of government employees.
Every time I see this story mentioned, I just get angrier. I've recently written about this. America has become a paranoid nation, jumping at our own shadows, standing shoeless in airport security lines, waiting to be inspected by inept airport security officers who will rob you of your chapstick and throw the saltwater taffy you bought in the gift shop into the bomb sniffing machine but remain clueless to any real danger. Why? Because it's all for show? It's to make us feel both unrealistically afraid and falsely safe at the same time.
Posted by: J. Lynne | November 15, 2007 at 03:15 PM