Tags
airport check in, airport screening, airport security, baggage, BDO, behavioral detection, checked bag, checkpoint, Connolly, DHS, disrobe, Farbstein, Federal Air Marshal, Fostenos, full body scan, Harris poll, holiday travel, metal detector, Mica, pat down, patdown, pistole, Poulos, Precheck, private areas, prosthetics, scanner, scanners, screening checkpoints, search, secondary screening, security, sensitive body area, SPOT, strip search, theft, Transportation Security Administration, travel, TSA, TSA News. TSA Blog, TSA Today, TSO, vacation, wheelchair, x-ray, x-ray belt
A recent Harris poll has concluded that less than 1 in 2 travelers think that TSA is effective in making air travel safer. In addition, nearly seven in ten people think that TSA’s extortion scheme, aka Precheck, makes air travel more dangerous. The full poll report can be found here.
Maybe it would be appropriate for Congress to cut TSA’s budget in half considering that they are only delivering half of the service that they are purporting to provide.
Poll: Only 50 percent believe TSA makes flying safer | TheHill – By Keith Laing – April 24, 2014
Only fifty percent of U.S. residents believe the Transportation Security Administration makes flying safer, according to a poll released on Thursday.
The results showed 50 percent of U.S. residents thought the TSA’s airport security procedures made airplane travel “a lot or somewhat more safe,” while 43 percent though the agency’s presence had little impact on airline travel safety.
The poll found that 48 percent of its respondents thought the TSA’s airport security procedures were an “effective deterrent to hijacking.” Thirty-six percent thought the TSA made no difference when it comes to stopping terrorism, while 15 percent thought it was an ineffective deterrent.
A majority of Americans in a new Harris Poll believe participants in the TSA’s PreCheck program should pass a criminal background check to qualify, and also think that the less-rigorous screening means some potential threats will be missed.
The online Harris Poll of 2,234 adults conducted March 12 to 17 found that 68% of respondents believe that the TSA PreCheck program, which enables qualifying passengers to proceed faster through separate security lanes without removing their shoves, and their laptops from bags during screenings will make it easier for potential threats to go undetected.
In fact, 71% of respondents who had taken no airline flights in the past year thought PreCheck would compromise security, but that number was 65% for people who took one to five flights, and 54% for travelers who flew more than five times.
Respondents among these same groups thought it is unfair to treat passengers differently from a security perspective (60% versus 50% and 40%, respectively).
Looking at security screening at U.S. airports overall, and not just TSA PreCheck, fewer than half (48%) of the respondents indicated that screenings are an effective deterrent to hijackings, and 50% believe that TSA screening makes air travel safer.