TSA: Is Airport Security A Waste Of Time?

Airport Security (TSA) could be a waste of time, says Rick Steves, a travel media mogul.

Rick Steves has been through myriad airports as of late, and he says that people’s complaints about TSA just being a bottleneck situation ring of truth. Bloomberg Businessweek reported that almost $10 billion a year is spent on scanning machines. People get stuck because they don’t quite understand all the rules and didn’t pack carry-ons correctly, and the people that get those people stuck have to be paid for it. It’s also wasting time for travelers who just want to get somewhere they can’t or don’t want to drive to, according to ricksteves.com.

Of course TSA is going to cost something, but Rick Steves asks, doesn’t the government realize that some measures are a little extreme? The newsletter reports that in 2011, TSA didn’t spot a single terrorist trying to board an airplane. According to the Huffington Post, statistics have stated:

“In fact, extremist Islamic terrorism resulted in just 200 to 400 annual deaths worldwide, outside the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq — the same number…that occur in bathtubs in the US each year.”

Yes, 9/11 taught us that airport security could have been tighter, and since then people have been known to try sneaking unusual explosives on board, but now people are dying in traffic fatalities trying to avoid flying altogether. Cornell University researchers claim that more lives have been lost indirectly from the results of airport security after 9/11 than in the actual terrorist attacks.

Do you agree that airport security is a waste of time and human life?

The former head of the #TSA thinks airport security is a waste of time and effort – #USAHMArchiveusahitman.com/fhottaswt/

— USAHitman.com (@usahitman_com) September 15, 2012