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Many of the above-mentioned items to report are voluntary disclosures. Yes, one is supposed to report traffic violations, bad credit, etc, but it doesn't always get done. In some cases an honest mistake and in others a true failure to report. It happens in the DoD... I had a contractor report to me two years ago who had no drivers license; it was not reported nor disclose d until after his hire date, accidentally.
Personnel slip through the cracks. Proof? USAF Captain Craig Button. The Walkers. snowden. (Ptui!). The system can only perform at certain level, and while 100% is the target, in reality it's maybe 99.95%...
This typed as I sit across from a TSA checkpoint at LAW waiting for a flight...
Nothing is perfect. I know I didn't say that background checks are. Background checks are better than NO background checks. They continually try to improve the process. What more can they do? They ask a lot of the people who they do background checks on, depending on the kind of clearance they are trying to get.
airport security is an illusion. we have about 10M flights per year in this country, with ,lets say, 100 passengers per flight and 2 pieces of luggage per passenger. thats 2G pieces of luggage that has to be screened, if you accept one bombing per year ,that means airport ssecurity has to be right 99.9999999511% of the time and TSA managed only 5%.
airport security is an illusion. we have about 10M flights per year in this country, with ,lets say, 100 passengers per flight and 2 pieces of luggage per passenger. thats 2G pieces of luggage that has to be screened, if you accept one bombing per year ,that means airport ssecurity has to be right 99.9999999511% of the time and TSA managed only 5%.
How do you figure TSA manages only 5%? TSA checks all commercial air passengers and all of their luggage. Why is that only 5% to you?
Heightened security has nothing to do with safety, only the perception of it.
The REAL purposes of elevated levels of fortressing the airports is A) to exert control over the public for the sake of control, B) to employ certain groups of people as a political favor, and C) to enrich other politically connected entities through the design and implementation of certain machinery.
This country spends a lot of money on commercial airline security but in my opinion it had little value.
The facts are that anyone that would want to bring a bomb aboard could easily do it by concealing it in their rectum which would be extremely hard to detect without cavity search like they do in jails.
I doubt very many people would submit to such a search to fly somewhere and it would most likely ruin the airlines if it was proposed and went into effect.
Many explosives today are very small for the power they have. I worked in the industry for a short time after I got out of the Army for a manufacturer.
The bombs could be detonated by remote via a cell phone almost any blue tooth device very easily.
I quit flying many years ago because I think that the security used is a joke and just meant to make those that don't know feel better.
Of course, you can't just cobble together some homemade bomb and have it properly fit and remain, even temporarily, in a rectum. That's a specialized device. Is it possible. Sure. So? What does that have to do with security that prevents easier methods of smuggling bombs aboard an aircraft?
You seem to have hit upon that glaringly obvious fact that nothing is fool-proof. Well... no kidding. That's reality. We have seat-belts and airbags and vehicle frames designed to protect their occupants. And sometimes people still die in car wrecks - but they die at an ever-decreasing rate. And that's the point of safety measures: to make things safer, not to achieve the elusive pink unicorn of 100% success. So it is with airliners. They are still attacked, just as they still crash from mechanical defects, weather, pilot error, and so forth. But the rate at which they crash from all of the above is decreasing, due to corrective measures, one of which is increasingly-effective security. Again, that - and not perfection - is the point.
100% success is a good goal for which to strive, with the understanding that it will not be achieved but that getting ever closer to it is a worthy objective. Current security measures are part of that package.
Your post is a perfect example of the proverb Perfect is the enemy of good.
Heightened security has nothing to do with safety, only the perception of it.
The REAL purposes of elevated levels of fortressing the airports is A) to exert control over the public for the sake of control, B) to employ certain groups of people as a political favor, and C) to enrich other politically connected entities through the design and implementation of certain machinery.
Lol, conspiracy theories.
TSA exists because the airlines want them there, and because air traffic is vital to the economy of The United States. If people are afraid to fly or ship things on a plane, then our economy will take a nose dive.
Ask yourself: Would you allow your loved ones to board a plane full of passengers that had received absolutely no screening at all? Where anyone on the plane could have weapons or bombs and nobody would know until you're 30,000 feet in the air?
Yeah, that's why the TSA still exists. Some security is better than no security.
A: PLEASE, if you know a way to do it, DON'T POST IT on a public forum! Don't give the enemy suggestions.
B: The concept of "If someone was really determined, they could.....," is probably true. The thing about security is to catch those who are not so determined or to catch those who in being so determined, slip up somewhere along the way. Ie to the latter, "if someone was determined and got everything right" and people generally don't get everything right.
to be honest with you, if these guys thought of it, then a terrorist has already thought of it as well.
TSA exists because the airlines want them there, and because air traffic is vital to the economy of The United States. If people are afraid to fly or ship things on a plane, then our economy will take a nose dive.
Ask yourself: Would you allow your loved ones to board a plane full of passengers that had received absolutely no screening at all? Where anyone on the plane could have weapons or bombs and nobody would know until you're 30,000 feet in the air?
Yeah, that's why the TSA still exists. Some security is better than no security.
It's obvious then you missed the point of my post. No one is suggesting that we have no screening. The problem is the TSA and the mindset behind it, which was set up in haste as a knee jerk reaction to a single event, which happened not as an airport security failure. But as an FBI/CIA/ etc one. Big difference. 9/11 happened in spite of security, not because of it.
Asking people to show up three hours ahead of time, waving machine guns in their face, and cavity strip searching 90 year old ladies in wheelchairs while confiscating a two ounce tube of toothpaste, again, is something that may make SOME people "feel" secure. And it definitely enriches both the egos of law enforcement as well as whoever is selling those X-ray machines. Nevertheless, these measures are purely superficial if not pointless and irrational. Whether or not we are ACTUALLY safer I think is highly debatable.
I don't think we are any more and not one bit less safe than we were on 9/10/01.
Indeed, re: the economic side, how many people do you suppose are NOT flying because they just don't want to deal with the TSA rigmarole? I know I'm one of them. Surely there must be others. It would be interesting to see economic analysis done both ways. And see where the economic advantage REALLY lies.
Remember that just because planes are fuller today doesn't necessarily mean that more people are flying. After all, thousands upon thousands of airliners were removed from service over the last decade with the purpose of reducing capacity and driving up fares. And in many instances, a 150 seat jetliner was "replaced" with a seventy-five seater one.
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