Airport Security – A Mess
Thank you Mr. Norman Mineta for creating a bureaucracy which would emulate the days, thirty years ago, of how Idi Amin ran his banana republic, Uganda. The TSA, the money that has been thrown at it, the people it employs and its practices is exactly what you would expect if you lived in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe.
I think it is about time the silent majority started speaking up at how ridiculous and time wasting most of these measures are that we are forced to adhere to, and for what? I could not believe President Bush when he rejected Israel’s post 9/11 offer of helping us establish a model based upon their decades of experience in counter-terrorism procedures. There was one stumbling block for America, the appointment of Mineta as Transportation Secretary. This fool of a man hell bent on promoting political correctness to the point of lunacy, would not accept the precedent that profiling and looking for the bombers instead of the bombs is the only sensible base from which to operate an effective security program.
We have allowed $billions upon $billions to be wasted on in the main non-performing, poorly paid and thinly educated individuals seeking the glamour of a job in uniform where their presence places unbelievable stress upon most ordinary citizens. It doesn’t matter whether it is the officer assigned to make a surprise visit upon a forwarder or that “jerk” who barks the order, “Remove your computer from its carrying case.” It is all about attitude and in my opinion, I have yet to meet a nastier bunch of people.
That being said, I actually truly question the value of the TSA in its present form. We are about to be forced to have every piece of freight expensively x-rayed. What good will that do? Here we have experienced in the last week some airport employee bundling illegals into a service lift and to “freedom” at LAX airport. How many illegals made it into the country before some were caught? What is to say that could not happen in reverse? A bomber given access to move freely within the tightly controlled security zones of cargo and passenger terminals. CCTV is an effective tool in surveillance. That is what we need. It is a fact we have to also watch the people who are assigned to watch us! In this instance, Security cameras everywhere would have acted as an effective deterrent before some scab of an airport employee even took the chance.
In the seven years the air cargo industry has been in high security mode, not one bomb or terrorist device has been discovered that would have led to a plane blowing up on the ground or in the air. Over the past fifteen years expensive sensitive equipment and machines to make products that in the hands of the wrong people pose a true threat to America’s security have been allowed to be freely and legally exported to rogue nations, especially China. Hey Mr Bush and your successor, focus on stopping that and you would be giving America’s security a huge boost.
What makes a cargo only aircraft so special to be able to move unknown shipper freight? A cargo plane blowing up after takeoff could wreak more havoc than any passenger aircraft. Someone with a pair of nail scissors or a 4 oz bottle of aftershave in his briefcase is not a possible terrorist. An eighty year old American grandmother from Boise, Idaho flying to visit family in New York should receive a total green light to even bi-pass security altogether rather than the possibility of being subjected to the nonsense of TSA officers choosing her as the random person to be strip searched. It is plain insanity.
If we were able to profile exporters just as El Al does, our cargo security would improve immeasurably. Right now it is pure humbug the processes forwarders have to go through to and comply with that convinces me this bureaucracy has gone absolutely bonkers. Thanks Mineta. Yes, I know you did a runner a couple of years back to rest your weary geriatric bones (and too old to travel) in a lazyboy recliner in Northern California, but your legacy is ruining our lives.
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Pamela
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Pamela
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