ABC News is reporting details about the breach of security involving the release of its 90-plus page operations manual that some Transportation Security Administration officials believe could serve as a road map to bad guys looking to circumvent airport security.
Included in the document that was surreptitiously released is information about how diplomats, CIA and law enforcement officials are handled in the screening process and details about how much baggage is actually examined by hand.
Now, there’s significant debate out there about how important the security procedures we’ve enacted in this country post 9/11 really are. Many (including myself) believe a lot of it is to give the illusion of security, but at the end of the day, we’d rather have the security teams there then not have them there and risk trouble.
That being said, if the TSA had solid security practices in practice in the first place, then the revelation of what they do shouldn’t hurt anything.
The skeptic in me wonders if TSA administrators arranged for this information to be released so they can come up with more ways to make air travel more inconvenient for us.
It’ll be interesting to see how this story develops and what TSA does as a result, and what changes they make.
The TSA does a fantastic job. They’re approach seems aggressive, but flexible, which is why I think it is effective.
The reason that we haven’t had another serious terrorist attack on an American aircraft is not the TSA. It’s because American travelers are now onto the terrorist schtick. What worked before can’t work for them again.
In the old days, travelers had come to believe that terroristic threats on aircraft were designed to get ransom money or to achieve a particular political result. Then the hostages would go free. So travelers were predisposed to believe that acting passive and subservient in the face of such threats would provide the most likely chance of survival.
Travelers today are more aware that their lives are at stake in the face of terrorist threats on aircraft, so they are predisposed to believe that fighting back will most likely ensure survival. No amount of intrusive personal searches or taking shoes off is likely to produce as much safety as this broad knowledge.
These guys have an interesting, but out loud, pro privacy slanted angle:
http://papersplease.org/wp/2009/12/10/tsa-discloses-discriminatory-and-improperly-withheld-procedures/#more-1063
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