Tag Archives: Security Theater

Small Government Republicans My Ass

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So the wonderfully up on popular sentiment republicans have decided to compound the mistake that is the TSA and expand who gets caught in it’s web of incompetence.

a House bill would expand TSA’s intel sharing to local mass transit systems as well.

What the hell is wrong with the republicans?

Oh yes, the damned bill is being sponsored by a democrat, but hey, it’s a republican controlled House. Nothing passes out of committee that a republican in charge doesn’t allow.

Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.), the bill’s sponsor, said the legislation is a “common sense approach” to fighting terrorism. The House passed the bill May 30 and the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs is now considering the bill.

My ass is it common sense. The very fact that you are allowing the TSA to do anything more than what they screw up shows how stupid this idea is. Don’t believe me about the incompetence of the TSA? Take a look at the following story.

a JFK Airport terminal had to be evacuated and hundreds of passengers marched back through security screening all because one dimwitted agent failed to realize his metal detector had been unplugged

And what did this incompetence result in?

The stunning error led to hours of delays, two planes called back from the runway and infinite frustration for furious passengers.

And here is our genius government worker, union and all, showing off how proud you all should be of these fine idiots saving us.

The chaos at Terminal 7 was caused by screener Alija Abdul Majed, who had manned Lane No. 1 during the morning shift with no idea his metal detector had no juice, sources said.

Amazingly, he failed to realize that alert lights never flashed once as streams of passengers filed through the dead detector, the sources said.

Majed was so clueless that he couldn’t even tell police how long the machine had been shut off or how it happened, the sources said.

And yet the genius from California wants to extend such incompetence to subways? Is she serious? It’s obvious that she doesn’t have to go through security or use public transportation.

“We have put in place through TSA a very elaborate system [in airports]. (ed. which doesn’t work) We all go through those metal detectors and those secondary searches (ed which doesn’t work). And we’ve put a lot of focus on the airlines for good reason (ed with poor results). But we have neglected the mass transit components, generally speaking (ed thankfully not screwing up subways.),” she said.

But don’t you worry, you shouldn’t see any stupidity and incompetence for at least an election cycle.

Transit riders probably won’t see more TSA agents in subways or bus stops, though, Speier said. The expanded TSA role falls more on analysts, she said.

Analysis? You guys can’t do your primary job of, you know, making sure your tools actually work. But now you want to expand that role? Are you freakin’ kidding me?

And this is a shining example of small government? How the hell is the House allowing this sort of crap out of conference? Is there anyone sane left in DC?

What Else Has The Legacy Media Airbrushed?

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You may or may not have heard about the vanishing Obama daughter vacationing in Mexico. First the story was on the innerwebs, then it wasn’t. Heck, even Drudge mentioned it. But then a curious thing happened.

But on Monday night, the story had been removed from those sites. The AFP page for the story now links to a story titled “Senegal music star Youssou Ndour hits campaign trail,” as does the Yahoo page. The Huffington Post page now links directly back to The Huffington Post homepage. The Daily Mail, Telegraph, and Australian stories now lead to 404 error pages, reading “page not found.” The International Business Times story also links to the IBT homepage, though a version of the original story still exists online.

Well, that’s a serious white wash. That’s almost as good as Stalin used to do.

Then it went and got all weird.

Then, this morning, the post was updated with comment from the White House confirming that it was involved with efforts to remove the story — but the Politico post itself was now missing information about the trip.

The now updated story neglected to mention which dangerous third world country our very own State Dept warned against traveling in because it’s so dangerous. And yet the president allowed his minor child to travel there? What parent allows their minor child to go to spring break to a dangerous foreign country? Is it because she’s got 25 secret service agents armed to the teeth? Probably, but really, it shows an incredible lack of judgement to think this was a smart move.

Regardless, my point with this post isn’t the presidents lack of judgement, it’s the willingness of the legacy media to utterly roll over and allow their bellies to be scratched. They were told to jump and they all begged to ask how high.

Yes I know, they claim it’s a security issue. If it’s that dangerous to let someone know the president’s daughter is somewhere in a country, then that country is obviously not safe enough for travel and said minor child should be whisked away immediately.

Then they claim the president wants privacy for his daughters. Except of course when he’s trying to score political points using his daughters, ala calling the professional agitator in the Rush Limbaugh affair. So I guess it was more than fine for the president to repeatedly mention his daughters but then the press is just supposed to go, oh, stay off bounds. When the president uses his kids as political props, he’s made the decision that it is ok to talk about them. He made that choice, no one else.

Why did the media bend over?

No seriously. They not only removed the stories, they then screwed it up by returning 404 pages and quickly stuffing unrelated stories but not changing the permalinks. It made the entire issue more than it needed to be. And it’s all because of the compliant legacy media. It makes me wonder, if they’ll just bend over backwards here, what else have they done? They certainly don’t get any benefit of the doubt any more.

So legacy media. What else have you covered up on behalf of the president?

Bueller? Bueller?

Glad The TSA Is On The Job

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No really, if it wasn’t for the careful work of the TSA, this sort of thing would be more common.

Flight 2401 left Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport bound for Los Angeles. Passenger Lori Barber said about 15 minutes into the flight a man charged past her, demanding to see the pilot.

Barber told NewsRadio 1080 KRLD the man was hard to miss.

“Well he was wearing two pairs of glasses, one with a red beam coming out of the lens, and he had three or four ‘man purses’ on and he had Superman socks on,” she recalled.

Oh noes, not the Superman socks!

But don’t you worry, the TSA was on the case, dammit.

Barber said the man was acting strangely before boarding the plane and that flight attendants witnessed it. She feels he should not have been allowed to get onboard.

This blog post brought to you by sarcasm.

Guess They’re Not Too Scared

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The other day I mentioned about a story that says some in DC are afraid of Silicon Valley companies because of SOPA. I guess we all should have seen this coming.

Here’s the headline.

White House tries cyber scare demonstration to spur Senate

And here’s the lead paragraph.

The White House orchestrated a simulated cyberattack on New York City’s power supply during a summer heat wave late Wednesday to illustrate not only potential human and economic casualties, but to tee up support for Senate passage of a sweeping cybersecurity bill.

Ah yes. Let’s scare the crap out of congress so we can make them do our bidding. Nice touch by the current administration. Remember, these guys claim they’re the most open administration, evah.

Honestly, these bozo’s on Capitol Hill know nothing about computers nor do they know anything about security. You want it done right? Let Bruce Schneier write the damned thing. They would never let him because there wouldn’t be any opportunity for graft and corruption. Er, election donations, I mean.

This sort of thing reinforces the lack of seriousness of this administration. Instead of doing something, they’d rather “scare” congress into doing their bidding. A complete joke and yet again proving all they care about is pretending they’re doing something instead of actually doing something about the problem. Vote ‘em all out.

Can We Just Abolish The TSA?

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I’ve gone on about how the TSA is doing nothing more than security theater and we’re not making flying safe. One person has now proven that you can do something simple and be able to smuggle all sorts of things on to a plane that you shouldn’t and the TSA is none the wiser.

Or more maliciously, they knew about this weakness and chose to do nothing about it because it was better for them to pretend their doing something than actually do something.

As a scientist, engineer, and frequent traveler, as well as the first person to sue the TSA when they rolled out the scanners as primary in Nov. 2010, I studied and learned about both kinds of scanners currently in use by the TSA. Here are several images produced by TSA nude body scanners. You’ll see that the search victim is drawn with light colors and placed on a black background in both images. In these samples, the individuals are concealing metallic objects that you can see as a black shape on their light figure. Again that’s light figure, black background, and BLACK threat items. Yes that’s right, if you have a metallic object on your side, it will be the same color as the background and therefore completely invisible to both visual and automated inspection.

It can’t possibly be that easy to beat the TSA’s billion dollar fleet of nude body scanners, right? The TSA can’t be that stupid, can they?

Unfortunately, they can, and they are. To put it to the test, I bought a sewing kit from the dollar store, broke out my 8th grade home ec skills, and sewed a pocket directly on the side of a shirt. Then I took a random metallic object, in this case a heavy metal carrying case that would easily alarm any of the “old” metal detectors, and walked through a backscatter x-ray at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport. On video, of course. While I’m not about to win any videography awards for my hidden camera footage, you can watch as I walk through the security line with the metal object in my new side pocket. My camera gets placed on the conveyer belt and goes through its own x-ray, and when it comes out, I’m through, and the object never left my pocket.

The gentleman does have the video linked on his website. But, Google, in their infinite wisdom of sucking up to the US govt had Youtube flag the video forcing you to login so they know exactly who is watching the video.

Can We Just Abolish The TSA?

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It’s bad enough they do their job poorly. Now we find they’re not even doing their job at all.

The security breach happened Saturday when a walk-through metal detector was left unattended for less than a minute, officials said.

Well hey, it was only a minute. What could happen? Hey, it’s only the state capital. Who needs to worry about security, right?

Oh and don’t you worry, these miscreants will be dealt with harshly.

As a result of the incident, officials said, two TSA officers have been removed from screening duties and are to undergo additional training.

And they weren’t fired because?

It was only dereliction of duty. That’s no big deal, right?