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Being Thankful I'm Canadian - TSA Edition
Nov. 25th, 2010 04:14 pmYeah, it's not bad enough that TSA agents are soaking people with medical shunts with their own urine, forcing the removal of prosthetics and letting photos of people in the scanner pass through to the internet. Now, thanks to the rise of protests against such treatment, the call has once again gone out loud and clear for the TSA to employ passenger profiling techniques in order to conduct searches.
*sigh* The level of stupid just fucking hurts some days.
You have barely trained, near minimum wage workers who are now going to somehow be competent to effectively profile the tens of thousands passing through an airport daily in order to provide an effective additional level of security? Or, does it seem more likely that anyone with a dark beard and a brownish hue is going to get strip searched by the agents while the McVeigh types get a blithe pass through because everyone on the internet knows that only Arab males between the ages of 18-44 are terrorists.
Wait, there's a trump card waiting at the end of the argument. Israel does it.
Now, ignoring a vast and deep level of discussion on the merits of copying Israeli policies over to the United States, there's a very basic level where this breaks down; Israeli security at El Al is handled by highly trained professionals who are career security officers. Their passenger profiling (which can be on the wrong side of draconian at times) is the result of hundreds of man hours of training in conjunction with military and law enforcement officers. They also operate at much higher levels of funding in a much smaller aiport than US travel hubs. Israel's security procedures are extremely effective for Israel. It's a different environment, a different modal, and does not automatically scale up, especially considering the costs involved.
The problem with the TSA is not the black/white idea of more security versus less security. The problem is that the approach to airport security is more based on optics and political mollification than it is about taking airport security seriously. The guy rubbing his finger under your balls is not providing the slightest iota of additional security in a real sense. The most you can hope for from the approach is that you'll corral the odd extra dingbat trying to smuggle dope in his shorts or with a box cutter shoved down the back of his pants.
Proper airport security is going to require a massive infusion of funding on the level of the TSA and by individual airport to professionalize the security personnel. Mall rent-a-cop and warehouse worker levels of training and competence creates a massive porous structure in which even the most sophisticated technological aid you can find is destined to fail due to a lack of a stable, competent staffing model to support it. The blind and near dogmatic adherence to regulation in the face of common sense is the hallmark of poorly trained and managed personnel, who are unwilling and unable to assess a situation properly out of fear of being immediately removed from their jobs (considering a total lack of job security, independent grievance system, and advocacy).
To take this beyond a joke, you desperately need a professional level of supervisors and management; people well trained not just in security processes but also conflict management and resolution. You need a human face that has the training, experience and authority to apply solutions that involve bending the rules when needed. In the same way that police are supposed to learn the deference between 'breaking the law' and 'criminal actions', the TSA needs the operational experience and ability to identify and resolve situations where security starts and the rules stop.
*sigh* The level of stupid just fucking hurts some days.
You have barely trained, near minimum wage workers who are now going to somehow be competent to effectively profile the tens of thousands passing through an airport daily in order to provide an effective additional level of security? Or, does it seem more likely that anyone with a dark beard and a brownish hue is going to get strip searched by the agents while the McVeigh types get a blithe pass through because everyone on the internet knows that only Arab males between the ages of 18-44 are terrorists.
Wait, there's a trump card waiting at the end of the argument. Israel does it.
Now, ignoring a vast and deep level of discussion on the merits of copying Israeli policies over to the United States, there's a very basic level where this breaks down; Israeli security at El Al is handled by highly trained professionals who are career security officers. Their passenger profiling (which can be on the wrong side of draconian at times) is the result of hundreds of man hours of training in conjunction with military and law enforcement officers. They also operate at much higher levels of funding in a much smaller aiport than US travel hubs. Israel's security procedures are extremely effective for Israel. It's a different environment, a different modal, and does not automatically scale up, especially considering the costs involved.
The problem with the TSA is not the black/white idea of more security versus less security. The problem is that the approach to airport security is more based on optics and political mollification than it is about taking airport security seriously. The guy rubbing his finger under your balls is not providing the slightest iota of additional security in a real sense. The most you can hope for from the approach is that you'll corral the odd extra dingbat trying to smuggle dope in his shorts or with a box cutter shoved down the back of his pants.
Proper airport security is going to require a massive infusion of funding on the level of the TSA and by individual airport to professionalize the security personnel. Mall rent-a-cop and warehouse worker levels of training and competence creates a massive porous structure in which even the most sophisticated technological aid you can find is destined to fail due to a lack of a stable, competent staffing model to support it. The blind and near dogmatic adherence to regulation in the face of common sense is the hallmark of poorly trained and managed personnel, who are unwilling and unable to assess a situation properly out of fear of being immediately removed from their jobs (considering a total lack of job security, independent grievance system, and advocacy).
To take this beyond a joke, you desperately need a professional level of supervisors and management; people well trained not just in security processes but also conflict management and resolution. You need a human face that has the training, experience and authority to apply solutions that involve bending the rules when needed. In the same way that police are supposed to learn the deference between 'breaking the law' and 'criminal actions', the TSA needs the operational experience and ability to identify and resolve situations where security starts and the rules stop.
