Originally Posted by chumbawumba
That's your problem: you look for bombs, not for bombers.
You can not solve everything by technique and with rules.
I'd rather let TSA look for the bombs and trained professional LEOs look for the bombers. TSA isn't even effective at looking for bombs.
Originally Posted by cestmoi123
This doesn't seem like a controversial statement - of course their job is to prevent a terrorist attack. We can argue about how well they do that job, and what collateral damage they create while doing it, but that's their job.
True ... to a point. However, TSA paints itself as on the front lines of the War on Terra. That's not the case. While they're a cog in the wheel, they tend to overstate their importance and they're using it to justify mission creep into other areas to prevent terrorism. They have a narrowly defined mandate and they're exceeding it greatly.
Our Officers work in an environment in which 99.9 percent of the people they see every day are not a threat
So, she's implying that 1 in 1000 passengers is a threat? If that's the case, and given that there are about 770MM emplanements each year, then 770k passengers are a threat, which means that (with 10MM annual departures), 7% of flights have a terrorist on board. Either that, or TSA is turning away 770k/year and keeping them from flying. Neither seems remotely plausible.
I agree. If they know that, why do they treat everyone by default as a terrorist until proven otherwise rather than a normal person until proven otherwise? The mindset change alone would do wonders.
Also, on the issue for which she was testifying (performance-based pay) I tend to agree with them - it's a good thing.
It ignores the other half of the equation though. If you're going to pay for performance, you need to hold people accountable for not performing. TSA isn't doing that. We see many bad apples and stories in the news that show that the bad apples continue to work and aren't held accountable.
Additionally, we have the
PERFORMANCE part of the equation. TSA isn't performing. So why should we pay them more when they have a very low failing grade?