The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has been around for over a decade now and it has a yearly operating budget in the billions of dollars. You would hope that they would have the funding to be able to efficiently carry out the duty of screening passengers for planes, but it turns out that they aren't very effective at their job.

Not only do they frequently cost people time and money with having to reschedule flights, after they kept passengers waiting in lines for hours on end, but even airlines themselves are fed-up with the lack of efficiency that the TSA provide. On top of their failure to do their job in a timely manner, they also fail to screen properly so that they catch people who are bringing weapons through.

There have been a number of times when people were able to bring guns, knives, and a variety of weapons through screening, despite the efforts of the TSA.

A couple of years ago, in order to see how well they were doing against any threat, the Department of Homeland Security sent out 70 Red Agents in a number of airports across the country, with the mission to try and smuggle fake bombs or guns through the checkpoints.

67 out of 70 of them made it through.

Considering that billions of dollars is being funneled toward an agency that is tasked with this job and given that they've got a fail rate of about 95 percent, it looks like they might not be the best ones to carry out these duties.

Because of the continued failure of the TSA, a number of airports have looked elsewhere for help, to private screening options. And they've been seeing much better results.

TSA agents themselves have even been caught engaging in criminal behavior, by stealing from work, abusing their power, being involved with drugs, and more. There are billions of dollars of taxpayer funds going toward this security farce every year and those dollars don't seem justified.

Aside from those 67 federal agents who got through, there have been dozens of circumstances where individuals were either able to smuggle weapons through the $7 billion dollar security system, or were able to create weapons with materials they purchased after getting through airport security. Perhaps it's time to re-think the security theater.

Pics:
newsweek
pixabay

Source:
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/is-the-tsa-is-functionally-useless-004
http://dailysignal.com/2014/10/01/dropping-tsa-19th-airport-joins-efficient-private-screening-program/
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-27/how-airports-can-get-rid-of-tsa-screeners
http://www.thestar.com.my/opinion/letters/2017/02/27/airport-security-is-focus-of-concern-again/
http://www.popsci.com/some-airports-are-turning-to-private-industry-to-help-fix-airport-security
@tftproject/tsa-busted-in-massive-usd100-million-40-000-lb-cocaine-smuggling-conspiracy
https://www.aol.com/article/news/2016/07/26/man-seems-to-easily-bypass-tsa-security-checkpoint-in-alarming-s/21439297/
http://wfla.com/2015/11/16/tsa-failed-to-catch-man-with-loaded-gun-on-airplane/
http://abc13.com/archive/7848683/