It would depend on their contract with their service provider. Bandwidth and dedicated lines are not cheap.

Many 'business' service providers and data center hosting services charge their clients based on the amount of data passed between their network/website and the internet.

If they're being charged based on traffic (and lots of people are accessing the video), it can add up.

End user (consumer) ISP's here in the US have generally ended the practice of charging based on the amount of data transferred during a month.

FWIW, in other parts of the world I still know of end user (consumer) ISP's that charge their users based on the amount of data xfered each month. Some will give you xxx megs/month and then charge a fixed rate per megabyte for anything above that cap. If you want, you can compare it to a cell phone plan where you get 500 minutes a month for $50; once you go over the 500 minutes, it is 35 cents/minute.

With some of these ISPs, every megabyte downloaded in excess of your monthly limit will incurr a fee. View too many videos, do too much surfing, or download one too many files, and you'll end up with a nasty bill at the end of the month.

But depending on their agreement and how hard their equipment is getting hit, resources may have to be temporarily reallocated which will have a cost too.

Probably didn't hire a new contractor, but used an existing one. Government outsources this crap all the time ... my friend is a contract web developer. And when these guys work, the government is getting billed for that time. I'm in this business. We bill for additional hours all the time because they ask us to do more than the contract originally stated, and there's a provision for that. I'd be very surprised if their web contractor didn't have that as well.

I think you also underestimate the work being done too. That would be like me saying that a paralegal does all a lawyer's work and only calls them on the golf course when they have a question.

Super

Not sure I agree...the public seems more conditioned to images of elite, mystical G-men and women flashing their credentials and getting deferential treatment from anyone in a uniform. Also it is stock response to soften up whenever one sees woman with a stroller and diaper bag, even if she is in fact a nasty vixen nursing a satan child. Furthermore, much the public is not conditioned to understand authentic law enforcement operations, and will instead likely regard them as harassing and unduly harsh.

In doing PR, you don't want the public to be left to make judgements on their own, but you do want them to come to the conclusion you set up for them, but make it seem that they came up with it on their own. It would have been better if TSA never posted the videos, and let the battle happen in less synchronous media (where TSA could have been seen as duly authoritarian, but still trying to iron out a system that is only a few years old -- that is manageable and doesn't collide with common notions)...trying to do your own PR on the web is a slippery slope, and is best done by people with nothing to lose and everything to gain.

That accurately describes how a good deal of legal work gets done.

Not sure how you could draw this conclusion.

The cup itself hasn't been called into question as a dangerous item; but its contents were, thus contaminating it or some such nonsense.

I agree that she seemed to spill the cup intentionally.

The problem I have is a lot of time elapsed between the spill and the clean-up and none of the agents were concerned about the other passengers tripping and falling.

Also, why did the agent have to escort her to the end of the checkpoint. This I feel could be seen as provoking her. He culd have simple said you have to exit and then stay at a distance from her and make sure she exited before being rescreened.

After the spill, the TSA should have let her go and then gotten a clean-up crew. That to me was a form of public humiliation....

Kindly speak for yourself.

so, say a situation arose where you pulled over a fellow LEO from your department, are you going to treat him/her the same as any other person? or are you going to offer them professional courtesy? .. i honestly don't know how it works between police officers. i know from a few friends that are city LEO's that say they do indeed get off anytime they want because they speed, but wasn't sure if that was customary.

i agree that you should treat everyone the same, just curious whether it extends to your 'brothers.' anyhow, im pretty upset at LAX Airport PD because they cited me for speeding at 0145 AM when I was going with the flow of traffic. They treated the stop like a felony stop (bunch of squad cars for backup, lots of flashlights, "put your hands where I can see them" deal..). and it was all while I exited the employee lot, in my TSA uniform. I was polite and never asked for any 'favors' or anything, just pretended I was out of uniform. it was the LEO that made remarked that I was a TSA'er and was getting off work .. bleh, i believe i received 'preferential' treatment as a TSO that day, but life goes on. 30minutes later, lots of waiting and a ticket i'm going to contest.

Just to set the record straight for you: TSA was not involved in those incidents. While the breast milk episode did receive media attention, the pond water story has many variations, so who knows what, if anything, did happen. The breast milk episode also has different variations to it, but it probably happened.....just didn't happen at a TSA checkpoint. If you're so interested in the facts, then why not stick to them? But if you insist on distorting these things just because it allows another dig against TSA, then I'll let you continue with these anti-TSA myths, because that's what they are. My point was that TSA did receive negative publicity over these myths, even though they didn't involve TSOs or TSA checkpoints, and that's probably why TSA policy prohibits allowing passengers drinking the liquids as opposed to exiting the checkpoint and disposing/consuming them.

Don't you ever stick to the topic at hand?

I think this thread is way OT....

The issue should be "why not let kids or adults take a drink of their liquid and then let them through security".

Let's not bad mouth the TSA for enforcing a rule. If that agent did not ask her to dispose of the water, he or she could have been fired. They were just doing their job.

Now the poor choice of words is another story and that can be handled offline.

Let's hope that the "only good that comes out of this incident" could be lightening up the rules a bit.

In closing, let's thank the TSA for just plain doing their job!

Why thank someone for doing a job you don't agree with?

Was just watching something on CNBC like this....and in response to a web poll, 67% of people felt the TSA was in the right

Has it been stated anywhere just how the sippy cub came to be in the secure area ? Did she carry it throught the WTMD ? Did it go through the x-ray ? Neither sounds much like "doing their job!"

In my best John Cleese (Basil Fawlty) voice: "you started it".