Friday, February 12, 2010

Ruh roh...TSA employees to get "secret" clearance?

According to a report in USA Today, 10,000 TSA employees will be getting clearances to "secret" national intelligence over the next few years. Now, while they're all higher-level employees (20% total of all TSA), it's still troubling to think that 10,000 people will have access to secret intelligence, and here's why: we already know from the TSA's own blog that some of their employees have engaged in theft of travelers' properties including laptops, all other sorts of expensive electronic goods as well as jewelry not just in check-in luggage. You think that's just in Miami, Newark and JFK? Think again; Los Angeles leads the nation in stolen goods. Even those items that were confiscated at the security check points were stolen and sold on places like eBay (these are kept by the TSA and sold via bidding on eBay where proceeds return to the government, or thrown away).

But wait, consider that, by 2008, over 50% of TSA employees had either quit or were fired in the 6 years since the TSA was created.

Bad idea, I say. This is definitely not going to end well.

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