Ok that’s not their headline. But to them this news is so breaking they used their fancy infographic at 8AM CT and haven’t even posted the story to their website yet.
The gist of it is this: the GAO is going to report today that the TSA has largely been a waste of money that never bothered to validate any of its methods or actually prevent anything. This of course is only news the GAO, about 70% of congress and CNN. The rest of the country already knew that nudie scans wasn’t doing anything but providing material for the TSA agents spank bank. Although, once they did find some loose change that I had lost in my back pocket, so you know, saved me 52 cents.
Here’s the deal Bruce Schneier has been making this point for nearly a decade. Others have joined suite over the years. Yet no one seems to listen. Meanwhile we throw BILLIONS of dollars (if not a trillion by now) down the drain on security theater.
How bad is TSA? Bad enough that they’re invasive and unprofessional, thieving, and rude. I once remarked that I thought the TSA project was really just an attempt to recreate the famous Stanford prison experiments on a grand scale. I’m not sure I was wrong.
How inept is TSA? Well, quite honestly I have no security training, no friends in the criminal element or any access to special equipment or inside knowledge, and if tomorrow congress offered me a chance to try to beat the TSA 2 out of 3 times, I’d take that bet. (Even the TSA might get lucky here and there.) In fact, I’d welcome that chance congress. Give me a little starter money, some immunity (since crimes will by necessity have to be committed) and let me keep what I don’t spend and I’ll show that even an average joe can beat the TSA. (OK maybe not entirely average but still.)
The solution of course is to disband the TSA. Go back to closer to the way things were. I’m told some people have other suggestions:
In light of TSA's being found to be useless, Sen. McCaskill and Gillibrand introduce bill to turn over control to University Administrators.
— tsrblke (@tsrblke) November 3, 2015
[Note I wrote this post at 9AM CT, but see that CBD put up something recently, so CNN may have actually updated their website by now, and the GAO brief may have happened already.)
