TSA Creator Says Dismantle, Privatize the Agency

Increasingly it’s becoming easier to target the TSA for stupidity, thievery, and molestation. There’s been no shortage of ass-hattery and, even worse, broad incompetence:

In 2006, screeners at Los Angeles and Chicago O’Hare airports failed to find more than 60% of fake explosives during checkpoint security tests.

Yikes.

Audrey Hudson, talking with Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.), author of the legislation that established the Transportation Security Administration (TSA):

Asked whether the agency should be privatized, Mica answered with a qualified yes.

That alone should be enough said. The man who created the TSA has lost most of his faith in it and is suggesting considerable downsizing and re-focusing of strategy and efforts. Mica barely stops short of saying the TSA is a travesty.

But what really matters is this: the whole point of the TSA is to keep us secure and to do so proactively. Even Mica claims that “everything” the TSA have done has been reactive. But I can’t say we shouldn’t have seen this coming. Abuse of power is what happens when given to people un-checked; we’re just seeing it on a large, granular scale. Lord Acton:

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.