Originally Posted by
skylady
What is the alternative to no TSA? back to private, or careless at best? Do you think independent would be better, or worse? Neither one will prohibit the next attempt, but would it make it that much easier for you to travel ?
What it all boils down to is accountability.
The Government carefully crafted the TSA to do everything that private screeners did, but did a great job at stripping away accountability.
Seriously....thank about it. At the checkpoints right now, what is done differently that private screeners couldn't do? TSA is using the same magnetometers and the same x-ray machines the privates used. The additional equipment being used at checkpoints are longer tables leading up to the mouth of the x-ray machine and the additional hand-held magnetometers. What's the difference?
It was even caught on tape, some of the 9/11 bad guys were given a secondary. None of them broke any rules in place on that day.
The difference right now is procedure when people go through the WTMD and the appearance of the screeners, those nice white shirts TSAers wear. And the prohibited items list was updated.
The only consistent, tangible, mechanical item consistently added into the mix of screening is the CTX machine. And I sincerely doubt private screeners could not operate that.
As I said at the beginning, it all boils down to accountability. That is meant in two-fold.
First, the TSA's lack of it.
And secondly, once the suits figure out how to disperse accountability and liability (the airports don't want to go private for fear of legal action upon them if a plane goes down), the TSA as we know it would reduce in size dramatically. That is Kip Hawley's greatest fear, because if that ever happened, the privatization floodgates would burst open.
That said, the TSA will never go away entirely, because as once Government gets power, it does not let go very easily. But the TSA would clearly be restructured.