TSA Monkeys Will Go Back to Paying for Their Porn

by Eileen | 10:30 pm, January 18, 2013 | Comments Off

…and, presumably, watching it on their own time.  I don’t know for certain; it’s anyone’s guess what goes on the those break rooms.  At any rate, our blue-gloved faux-security force is now able to devote more of its time to robbing passengers, having lost their x-ray scanners.

The line from on high is that Rapiscan, the unfortunately but accurately named vendor responsible for backscatter scanners, couldn’t meet a Congressionally imposed deadline of June 2013 to produce software that provided generic humanoid outlines as opposed to the freakish nudie-pics.  So, Rapiscan has lost its contract and L-3, maker of the competing millimeter wave machines, wins.

Let’s speculate on what really went on.  Rapiscan was taking beaucoup bad press, most recently over credible reports that it falsified reports about the machine’s safety and efficacy.  It wasn’t helping that Bush-era surveillance goon Michael Chertoff was the pulsing black heart of Rapiscan’s lobbying effort to land the contract in the first place.  Simply, Rapiscan probably lost too many friends in the Beltway or L-3 out-lobbied them.    I just don’t see Congress as having handed down a deadline without already knowing whether or not it would be met…not here, anyway.  Favored projects get deadlines so far away that half the responsible Congress will be retired, if not dead, before the bill comes due.  Conversely, giving people workloads and deadlines they’ll never meet on amphetamines and willpower is a time honored way to get rid of the disfavored without really admitting to it.

If I’m right, Rapiscan fell out of favor a while back, as the TSA announced a ‘phase out’ of the machines back in 2011.  Right around the time they decided for us that there’s nothing Unconstitutional about peeping at teenagers en route to spring break.  Truthfully, Rapiscan probably made a bet that they’d never have to worry about the lack of privacy technology on their machines and they lost.

What else? Radiation.  Despite promising the machines were safe, the TSA wouldn’t produce documentation.  Big name researchers and labs named as having signed off on the safe emission levels of the machine were, to put it mildly, angry.  Which you would be, too, if the U.S. Government used your good name to lend credibility to a shady project when you hadn’t so much as laid eyes on the data.  After a while, TSOs were instructed to wear radiation alarms, while the machines themselves remained unmonitored.  Now, the TSA has got itself out of mounting pressure to prove the machine are as safe.  It’s also suddenly something of a moot point to ask if this was a latter-day version of the Tuskegee Airmen.  Were passengers at American airports being exposed to dangerous radiation?  Who cares! The scanners are gone.

Either radiation testing was never done or the results were horrifying.  Without real transparency, we can’t say.  But something was screwy.  Now, on top of getting some privacy back and forcing the TSA to listen to its betters, the taxpayers will not be paying for the care of a bunch of irradiated TSOs down the road.

Ah, and the privacy.  No one ever believed stories about all the measures taken to ensure that images weren’t saved and that TSO’s viewing images has no direct interaction with passengers.  Stories, from ex-TSOs, among others, pointed to a culture of laughing at images and deliberately sending some passengers through scanners several times.

Then there was the TSA’s utter inability to point to a single thwarted terrorist plot or even the apprehension of anyone for a ‘crime’ more serious than being caught with a pocket knife.  And the snaking, endless lines that the agency was clearly incapable of managing.  And all the people whose valuables walked away while they were held up in that magic machine that turns human dignity into carcinogenic particles.  And so on.

But, yippee, backscatter scanners will be, we are told, gone by June.  A timetable still too long for Homeland Security to salvage any credibility, but they have always excelled in the fine art of governing without wielding moral authority.

OK, this is fun.  Let’s keep mocking the TSA.  Switching over from metal detectors to body scanners was a $90 million boondoggle.  At $180,000 each, the 250 Rapiscan machines that have been delivered, half the initial contract, represent a $4.5 million waste.  This is hardly the first time the TSA has wasted a fortune by ordering things they don’t need and haven’t tested.  They may recoup some of that by selling the backscatter machines to other government agencies, not a penny of which will make it back to the taxpayers, but at least we all still have the opportunity to provide a cheap thrill to some tubby chump before contracting cancer.  Watch out for jury duty and the DMV, say I.

But, you know, even if TSA’s reasons for finally yanking the plug on this utter failure are likely dirty, we won.  And they’re stuck with the night shift, cranky passengers, itchy polyester uniforms, and now, no dirty pictures.  My heart weeps for them.

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