

Abolish the Department of Homeland Security - nextparadigms
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/01/abolish_the_dep.html

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carbocation
DHS is too inconsistent to be credible. The only flight I've ever missed (I
was running late to a wedding), I missed because I had a tube of toothpaste in
my carry-on. It was found to be small enough to be acceptable, but not until
it had gone through a second round of X-ray.

On another occasion, I was equally late to a connection flight (this time, not
my fault), and I got through security despite having a bottle of water, a
toiletry kit (including 5" blades), etc.

Why? Well, I don't know and I don't really care. The fact of the matter is
that they will give me an aluminum can on the flight anyway, so who cares how
long of a blade I bring onboard in the first place? It's security theater no
matter how you slice it.

~~~
dguaraglia
Look up the term "security theater". That's exactly what they are doing.

Well, that and buying extremely expensive machinery from a company partially
owned by the very man, Michael Chertoff, who co-wrote the PATRIOT act and
jump-started this whole stupid thing. Talk about revolving-door politics and
corruption. _That_ bothers me more than any pat-downs.

~~~
waffle_ss
Is there a list somewhere of all of these corrupt politicians / traitors? If
not, I'm going to start a wiki. Who knows, maybe it will be useful if the
winds of change ever blow through this country.

~~~
Peaker
That would be a great website -- though perhaps somewhat dangerous to run.

~~~
slowpoke
You could ask the Wikileaks folks and community around them for help. I'm sure
they wouldn't be adverse to such a project.

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DanBC
> _TSA was created two months after the September 11 terrorist attacks, when
> Congress passed the Aviation and Transportation Security Act (ATSA) [.pdf]
> to keep the millions of Americans who travel each day safe and secure across
> numerous modes of transportation._

The rise in death rates after 9/11 from people switching from safe air
transport to dangerous road transport is well known by now.

So it's surprising to see TSA still saying they're spending money to keep
transport safe. That is blatantly not true. One man tries to set fire to
plastic explosive stored in his shoe - now everyone has to take off their
shoes. Meanwhile, thousands die in road traffic every year.

I've travelled on California[1] roads. God almighty; for a nation obsessed
with doing everything by car some parts of the US have an appalling road
system. (I never knew why Americans were happy to drive cars with awful gas
milage. Cheap gas doesn't quite answer that question. Cheap gas and bloody
terrible road surfaces which need a big comfy car does.)

You can kind of forgive Joe Sixpack for being bad at risk assessment and
management. But a government department, spending millions and billions of
public money? It's a disgusting waste.

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Flow
I'm not a native english speaker, the word "homeland" just seems like a weird
choice to me. It feels too patriotic and even a bit fascistic. I can't recall
any public discussion about the name when they were created, but then I'm not
from the US so I might have missed those.

Also, I'm associating the word with "fatherland", from the post-WW2-nazis-won-
movie with Rutger Hauer :-/

~~~
wavephorm
It's a euphemism.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euphemism>

The US government uses typical propaganda tactics like this, grease up the
names of their authoritarian bills to make them sound nice, when in fact they
are usually quite sinister. For example, the Patriot Act includes provisions
for torturing and spying on Americans.

~~~
mmariani
That is happening almost in every country in the world. Privacy, freedom of
speech, you name it. Blood was spilled to assure we have rights. Even though,
most people are consistently waiving them and they seem not to care about it.
How is it even possible? I'm perplexed by this.

~~~
NegativeOne
That's something that really bothers me. I try to talk to people about this
stuff and they honestly don't care, because it doesn't effect them yet.

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adamrights
Have you seen this: NY Times has an article. Good friend did the research and
filed the FOIA: <http://epic.org/2012/01/epic---foia-documents-reveal-h.html>
<\---EPIC - FOIA Documents Reveal Homeland Security is Monitoring Political
Dissent

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andrew_k
Google Cache
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:pxxPIla...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:pxxPIla6u9sJ:www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/01/abolish_the_dep.html+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

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ck2
Before the decade is out they will just rename it to do an end-run around
public relations. Nothing will change and it's never going away because
there's major money being made from it's fake foolishness already.

You really think they are going to give up the "visual response teams" for
searching people at bus and train stations (and even in traffic)? That's the
gold topping of security theater.

ZERO terrorists caught for all that money and other than the box cutters the
original 9/11 would have still made it on the planes for all the rights
violated and money spent.

The should have just secured all airplane cockpit doors and called it a day
but first rule of government, why spend just a million when you can
potentially spend a billion and get lots of wartime powers.

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DanielBMarkham
I was reading along, nodding my head, then I got to this:

 _Hard to argue with most of that, although abolishing the TSA isn't a good
idea. Airport security should be rolled back to pre-9/11 levels, but someone
is going to have to be in charge of it. Putting the airlines in charge of it
doesn't make sense; their incentives are going to be passenger service rather
than security._

What? How many passengers can you service if the airport is unsafe? Is the
author unaware of the hundreds of different types of businesses that operate
in hostile environments yet manage to keep their customers safe as part of
their service? Has he never walked into a fast-food restaurant on a weekend
night and seen the security guards? Hell, that's _McDonalds_ , for
chirstsakes, they sell you 2-dollar burgers. Don't you think the airlines
would do a bit better?

The TSA is the one department we _should_ abolish. They have too broad of a
mandate -- they think they are responsible for controlling, er, protecting
_all_ transportation, not just airline travel. They have too many powers --
the ability to virtually strip-search passengers, prevent innocent people from
traveling, and interfere with international commerce. And, worst of all,
they've combined the military-industrial complex with a paramilitary quasi-
police force. This is like an endless cold war where the people themselves are
the enemy.

The TSA is a terrible mess. That's the one thing we have to get rid of. The
facts are that we went 70 years without the TSA just fine. The threat has not
increased so much to warrant this kind of intervention. So we have tens of
thousands of "officers" harassing normal business travelers daily as part of
this ongoing shoddy security theater. It's a witch hunt without any witches,
but with lots of government dollars, security contractors, and union jobs.
They'll just keep tightening the screws until they do find something alarming.
Then they'll congratulate themselves and ask for more money (and authority.)
You don't need to be a genius to see where all of this is heading.

The TSA is a monster and a menace to freedom. I doubt we'll ever get rid of
it, but that's no reason to give up. Speaking out against it at every
opportunity, to me, is a civic duty. I freely admit to being over-the-top in
my language here, but you have to remember that the entire _idea_ of the type
of security state we now live in was the wildest fantasy just thirty years
ago. I'm just trying to write something that will still be relevant in another
20 years or so. Using that standard, I'm not sure I've been over the top
_enough_.

~~~
wisty
I don't think a free market solution would work - airports will cut costs
until there's a disaster. But airports could do it the way they handle general
aviation safety. You don't have a TSA minder next to the pilot, giving
instructions on how to lower the landing gear - there's a system in place
which seems to work pretty well.

You could argue that no solution (an honor system?) is better than the TSA. Or
that it would be better putting the police in charge (and giving them the
funds to put a couple of officers in each airport gate). If that's a waste of
valuable police time, they could reduce their presence.

~~~
ChrisNorstrom
I agree, "free market solutions" sounds nice until you notice that capitalism
has no soul. It was only a few years ago that airlines bribed the FAA to skip
inspections on their planes. Watch the frontline documentary on how airlines
treat their pilots, barely giving them enough sleep, paying them terribly low
wages, and putting non experienced pilots in senior positions, all to make a
profit. Not to mention this:
<http://www.defraudingamerica.com/faa_corruption.html> and lets not forget
that every few years a major airline files for bankruptcy.

"Oh but the airlines will want to protect their planes because in the long
term it will affect their customers"

We the passengers look into the long term and assume that airlines do too.
History has shown that corporate greed plans for nothing beyond the next
fiscal quarter. I wouldn't trust them one bit.

I don't like the TSA either but leaving it up to the airlines... We can't go
"back" to the way things were, times change, society changes, new threats
emerge.

AND at the end of the day we're all just a bunch of speculators sitting in
front a computer reading one sided stories off of some guy's blog. We don't
have a fraction of enough real data and information to make a call that would
affect millions of people.

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smokeyj
> I agree, "free market solutions" sounds nice until you notice that
> capitalism has no soul.

I've got news for you. Economic models are inanimate. Sorry Che.

> I don't like the TSA either but leaving it up to the airlines...

It _is_ up to the airlines. All the mechanical components on that capitalist
plane were made by free enterprise. Now, why you trust a private corporation
to manufacture jet engines and brakes, and _not_ checking for bombs is pretty
irrational. And besides, when you have _choice_ which, free markets afford
you, you can take a greyhound bus if you're that afraid of the "terrorists".

~~~
ChrisNorstrom
> why you trust a private corporation to manufacture jet engines and brakes,
> and not checking for bombs is pretty irrational.

Naa, Irrational is when you trust airline companies that don't give their
pilots 8 full hours of sleep and bribe officials into giving them passing
safety inspections simply because you've been conditioned from a young age to
assume that the free market would never do anything to jeopardize human lives
in the name of profit. Now that is irrational.

I don't like the TSA either, I'm not trying to protect their wasteful security
theatre, I'm just saying, leaving it up to airlines to somehow collaborate
together to work on increasing safety isn't going to happen on its own.

~~~
smokeyj
Why trust McDonalds to cook a burger? Because money. Crashing planes costs
money. What, now you don't believe in profit motive? You admit it's a security
theater, why defend it? Is TSA presence welcome only at airports, or how about
in your home?

~~~
ChrisNorstrom
<whisper>Pssst. Read my previous comment. No, actually READ it. </whisper>

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sehugg
DHS is the poster child for mission creep. The White House suggested last year
that they could help track down "circumvention devices" such as game console
mod chips. From the Office of White House's "Copyright Czar":

 _“[It] is illegal to import or traffic in devices that can be used to
circumvent technological measures that control access to copyrighted works,”
they wrote. “When DHS discovers the importation of a potential circumvention
device, current law does not authorize DHS to share a sample with a
rightholder to aid CBP in determining whether it is, in fact, a circumvention
device. Allowing DHS to provide a sample would aid enforcement efforts.”_

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adamrights
They also hired contractors to monitor social networks:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3463850>

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Revisor
So the argument is that DHS is ineffective and wasteful? I thought the article
would talk about how DHS is dangerous because it systematically dismantles
your freedom in exchange for omnipresent surveillance and faux security.

Then again, I'm only watching it from the outside.

~~~
chc
The security wouldn't be "faux" if the department were efficient and
effective.

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click170
Link seems down, anyone have a mirror?

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littleidea
the link isn't just down, the domain is not resolving for me now

~~~
InclinedPlane
Non-authoritative answer: Name: schneier.com Address: 204.11.246.48

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swiecki
Guidelines ask why is this posted. :(
<http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

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shingen
I'm always fascinated when writers use the phrase "defeat terrorism." It would
be equally stupid to say: defeat murder. It's the kind of jingoistic bull that
led to the Patriot Act and Homeland Security.

If someone told you the price for living in the most free society possible, is
that 5,000 of your fellow citizens would die annually by terrorism, would that
not be worth it? I would willingly risk my life, given the threat ratio, for
that exchange. Particularly given the counter-terrorism efforts are already
killing that many now.

If someone wants to blow their self up, or randomly stab you in the throat
with a knife, the odds favor they're going to do it. You can try to prevent
it, you can deal with the outcome, sometimes you'll succeed, sometimes you'll
fail - what ultimately matters is that you don't fail big (nukes). That's it.
You battle and deal with terrorism, you don't defeat it. You can't argue with
irrationality or insanity, and someone somewhere is always going to be willing
to commit terrorism.

~~~
meric
>> If someone told you the price for living in the most free society possible,
is that 5,000 of your fellow citizens would die annually by terrorism, would
that not be worth it?

It depends how many people are in that society. If everyone else is too scared
to join you, you might just be the only one and be 1 of the 5000 next year, if
you're lucky this year.

