TSA’s security theater is back in the news! Hurrah!
Price for TSA’s failed body scanners: $160 million
The cost breakdown, which the TSA recently turned over to some members of Congress, provides the latest look at the agency’s investment in body imaging technology since it decided to make the scanners the centerpiece of the checkpoint screening process. The price tag averages more than $150,000 per unit since the agency bought the first batch of 45 devices in 2008.
And for that money, lawmakers privy to classified reports say, the TSA has gotten a woeful failure rate. Senate Homeland Security Chairman Ron Johnson has such low confidence in the scanners’ ability to catch explosives and weapons that he says the agency should make fliers walk through metal detectors after passing through the body imaging machines.
Why stop at half-measures, Senator? A scanner, then a metal detector, then have them strip down for their cavity search. Afterward you can knock them out with drugs and stack them in containers; I guarandamntee the airlines would be all over that, they’re always up for a way to pack more sardines into the can.
Then within a week you VIPs who waltz right past security will have the planes to yourselves, as the rubes stop going along with the joke. Sometimes I think that’s actually your plan.
Am I the only one who has noticed that the blue nitrile glove has become the new symbol of governmental authority?
Two by two hands of blue.