I laud your efforts against the TSA on the issue of body scanners. It was a huge waste, and they aren't effective.
But I think you'll be more effective against the body scanners if you drop the right-wing crankery at the end. The fear-mongering about terrorists isn't helpful. If they want to pull something off, they will, whatever kind of detector we're using. "Placing us all in danger" is Fox News rhetoric.
The fact that these scanners were a mistake doesn't imply that we should necessarily privatize the TSA. It needs a huge amount of reform. But there's no evidence that privatization wouldn't lead to the same kind of risk-taking and incentive problems that we've seen come to such spectacular fruition in the financial sector.
As things stand now, we have a clumsy system and there hasn't been a major attack since 9/11. Focus on the ineffectiveness, and the invasion of privacy, not on making people scared or promoting bankrupt ideas about replacing the government with free enterprise.
This is a bit off topic, but the reason the TSA exists was out of the need to address the liability issue for airlines, not to make anyone safer. It would have been easy enough to just pass a law defining what level of security was needed (there are lots of very secure, private prisons, etc.) and then forcing the private firms to pass frequent breach attempts, etc. The problem with this is that it would result in far more secure (and time consuming) security screening procedures.
Around the same time as the TSA was created, the government became the insurer of last resort for terrorism related claims over $1B. This was to avoid the inevitable consequence -- in order to be able to buy insurance against terrorism, airlines would have had to prove to the insurance company that they had reasonable security measures. This would mean a 15-20 minute screening for each passenger, etc. In other words, air travel as we know it would have ended.
The simple alternative? Let the government hire the workers and "outsource" the security duty from the private airports and airlines. Nobody is going to successfully sue the government for allowing an attack to occur, and now that it's outside the scope of responsibility of the airlines, the insurance companies are willing to insure against the remaining risk. The $1B ceiling was basically a handout to the insurance industry offered in exchange for bearing a lot of extra risk for free while the government got its act together post 9/11.
If airport screeners were private firms, then even if the insurance industry didn't force quality screening to occur, there would be public demand for it once reports of weapons being successfully brought through. In today's world, it's a crime to even try to bring a fake/harmless weapon through, so the public is essentially forbidden from independently auditing the screeners.
The blogger is playing it safe by using a metal case, but that only tests the metal/object detection capabilities and doesn't test for successful detection of any of the other potentially dangerous items (which are also likely to be easy to smuggle through).
But people, including reporters, conduct such audits all the time. I'm not sure I see the connection between private security and an increased outcry; people who don't like the current level of security wouldn't be necessarily be more vocal if it was a business instead of a government agency. In fact, I'd bet a lot of people who get extremely exercised about privacy are generally not the biggest fans of the government (understandably).
If a private firm failed to keep passengers safe, the motive for doing so would be perceived as capitalist greed. The CEO of such a firm would be paid extremely well, and failures at the airport would be viewed as the result of cost cutting measures, poor working conditions for employees, cronyism, etc.
The privacy issue is interesting, but I don't think it has much to do with the initial creation of the TSA. The main goal at the time the TSA was created was to create the appearance that leaders had things under control and to prevent disruptions caused by knee-jerk reactions (spiking market prices, etc.). In reality these would not likely have lasted long w/o government intervention, but they are the kinds of things that planners fear most.
@dissident: He doesn't sound like he's joking when he talks about this situation placing us in danger. If he's kidding, the presentation is quite poor and he needs to make that clearer. If this video is essentially a persuasive argument that he clearly hopes will turn the tide against these scanners, preposterously subtle sarcasm is one tool he can leave in the toolbox.
But I think you'll be more effective against the body scanners if you drop the right-wing crankery at the end. The fear-mongering about terrorists isn't helpful. If they want to pull something off, they will, whatever kind of detector we're using. "Placing us all in danger" is Fox News rhetoric.
The fact that these scanners were a mistake doesn't imply that we should necessarily privatize the TSA. It needs a huge amount of reform. But there's no evidence that privatization wouldn't lead to the same kind of risk-taking and incentive problems that we've seen come to such spectacular fruition in the financial sector.
As things stand now, we have a clumsy system and there hasn't been a major attack since 9/11. Focus on the ineffectiveness, and the invasion of privacy, not on making people scared or promoting bankrupt ideas about replacing the government with free enterprise.