US Congress Tries To Cut Body Scanner Funding 241
OverTheGeicoE writes "The Electronic Privacy Information Center reports that the US House of Representatives is trying to cut funding for new airport body scanners from next year's budget. This would prevent the TSA from installing 275 new scanners in airports in FY 2012, at a cost of $76 million."
Excellent (Score:5, Insightful)
Prevent the TSA? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why don't they do the RIGHT thing and DISMANTLE the god damn TSA?
The Wallet (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Prevent the TSA? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why don't they do the RIGHT thing and DISMANTLE the god damn TSA?
I'm not saying that it is, but it could be the beginning. Cutting funding is a way of stopping something when you have to save face for the people who support it. Then you can say "it was a good idea, but too expensive" and they can say "it was a good idea, but they were too cheap" and everybody walks away with their precious egos mostly intact.
Re:Hrm... (Score:4, Insightful)
Behavior profiling is not racial profiling, nor does it even require racial profiling. The simple solution to not getting labeled racist is don't be a fucking racist. Don't racially profile. Starting with race, yeah, that makes you a racist, and it's completely irrelevant to the job.
People want to blame this whole fiasco on the oppressive, all-powerful, "political correctness" but that's a bullshit strawman. Liberals had now power when the TSA was enacted, it was an entirely Republican invention, created at the height of Bush's popularity, and Democrats cheered it along with nary a complaint. The TSA doesn't want to hire well-trained employees and would rather have McGuards in front of expensive scanners bought through cozy no-bid contracts with companies that are paying off the TSA chiefs.
Re:Excellent (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Doing it for the wrong reasons (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes? Do you have a point that everyone doesn't know already? We also know that the scanners are useless. Being expensive and useless, is it wrong to try to save money?
Reason - Finally! (Score:5, Insightful)
It's about time that Congress started overseeing this program. After standing in line for 50 minutes today at DFW going through security I can attest
at what a failure this whole program has been. Huge lines, angry passengers, inappropriate touching and civil rights violations all in the vain attempt to make people feel safe.
After I finally got past the ID/Boarding Pass Check what did they do? They deferred me through the Metal Detector instead of the Backscatter device. There were already three people in line for the Backscatter screening.
I'm sorry, this is one program that
a) It hasn't been proven safe. Scientists have called for an independent study and one hasn't been done. We're taking huge risks with people's health here by not doing the proper checks and analysis.
b) It hasn't been proven to stop anything. The TSA is always looking for "the last attack." Like taking off your shoes. Humm, after Richard Reid, has anybody tried attacking us with shoes except that incident with George W. Bush in Iraq a few years ago?
c) It delays people traveling through airports. You may as well stop everybody in line and ask them 20 questions ala the "Bridge Keeper" "What is your name? What is your Quest..."
d) Give up already, if all you want to do is give me a weekly proctology and rectal exam, fine just make sure you check the oil at the same time and I have these corns on my feet from standing in TSA lines I'd like you to look at as well. Just do the pat downs on everybody. That way everybody gets the sensation of the back of a hand in a rubber glove.
e) Stop with the gizmo widget fantasies. I'm sorry Secy. Napolitano was out of line for ordering these things to begin with and shame on congress for giving them the money, or were they funded out the the ARRA $787Billion?
I travel through airports every week and the lamest thing of all? Your Congressmen and Senators don't go through any of that. They have private entrances, they get VIP treatment. They need to go through the same hassles, stand in the same lines and deal with the same rubber gloves all without their special VIP identification. I'm sure if Al Franken or Kay Bailey Hutchinson had to go through this shit there would be some changes!
I saw people freak out today because they missed their flights, I saw airline counter agents have to work and rebook people and re-route them all in the name of making them safe when they fly. Bullshit! There's probably a higher probability that a Canadian Goose will down my plane than a terrorist.
Congress needs to step up and do the right thing here and step in where these retards at DHS have clearly overstepped their bounds.
Re:Excellent (Score:5, Insightful)
Or send it with a crooked employee who doesn't have to go through those scans, or toss it over the fence into the sterile area where it can be picked up by an employee who does have to go through those scans, or pack the fun bits inside the metal tubes of a piece of luggage, inside a bunch of film containers, inside a prosthetic metal leg, inside the metal tube of a cane or a pair of crutches, or in any of the other top 100 places to smuggle explosives onto a plane.
I mean, I think it's absolutely hilarious that we spent all these billions of dollars on something that only protects one relatively tiny attack surface, does so relatively poorly, invades people's civil liberties in a truly horrific way, and in spite of that, is still provably orders of magnitude less effective than bomb sniffing dogs. If you ever needed proof of why government cannot be trusted to protect its citizens, there you go. Just follow the trail of money from the manufacturers back to the crooked politicians who support this absurdity. It can't be all that hard to prove that bribes were involved. Unless, of course, they're really that dumb, in which case we're in bigger trouble than I thought.