Report: TSA Is Spending $1 Billon On Bag Scanners That 'May Never Meet Operational Needs'

from the good-thing-it's-just-other-people's-money dept

Somehow, "TSA" stands for "The Terrorists Won." In exchange for endless inconveniences, inconsistently deployed security measures, and a steady stream of intrusive searches and rights violations, we've obtained a theatrical form of security that's more performative than useful.

Since screeners continue to miss nearly every piece of contraband traveling through security checkpoints, the TSA has opted to buy even more screening equipment. Apparently, it's hoping no one will say it's not doing anything about these failures. It is throwing money at the problem. That's something. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear to be solving it.

A new report [PDF] from the DHS Inspector General says the shiny new scanners the agency bought to "address capability gaps in carry-on bag screening" aren't doing that now, and perhaps never will. The TSA obtained 300 computed tomography (CT) scanners, which were supposed to detect a broader range of explosives and make flying slightly less inconvenient by allowing passengers to keep their fluids and their laptops in their respective bags. The ultimate goal is safer flying, less hassle at checkpoints, and faster throughput. It has achieved none of these goals, despite more than $1 billion being obligated towards the rollout of CT scanners nationwide.

Instead of meeting its own four-factor test for essential capabilities, the TSA's new toys fell short of every self-imposed metric.

TSA deployed 300 CT systems to airport passenger screening checkpoints that did not address all needed capabilities. These issues occurred because DHS did not provide adequate oversight of the acquisition. Specifically, DHS allowed TSA to use an acquisition approach not recognized by DHS’ acquisition guidance. In addition, DHS allowed TSA to deploy CT systems even though they did not meet all TSA key performance parameters. DHS also did not assess TSA’s detection upgrade before TSA incorporated it into the CT system. As a result, TSA risks spending over $700 million in future appropriated funding to purchase CT systems that may never fully meet operational mission needs.

The entire rollout is slated to cost around $1.28 over the next ten years. And that's if it stays on track and, unlike nearly every large government program, does not result in cost overruns. In exchange, passengers are theoretically gaining more security, but only if they're willing to wait in longer lines.

TSA’s February 2018 Operational Requirements Document identified the need for a CT system capable of screening, on average, 200 items per hour to successfully perform the mission. However, we determined TSA purchased 300 CT systems capable of screening an average of 170 items per hour — 15 percent less than the minimum requirement, and less than the AT X-ray system capability of approximately 354 items per hour.

And you can kiss the incremental security gains goodbye. If things get busy enough, most bags will still be handled the old fashioned way.

DHS determined TSA would have to either use the CT systems during periods of lower volume passenger traffic or use both the CT systems and AT X-ray systems to balance high demand and reduce the impact to checkpoint operations.

In addition, the CT scanners needed an upgrade less than 8 months after purchase, which would have to be rolled out live during "low volume travel periods." This upgrade was required to bring the machines in line with what the TSA promised they'd be able to do, like detect contraband and reduce the need to open carry-on bags.

The Inspector General says buying scanners that will incrementally improve until they meet the baseline metric used to justify their purchase is a terrible way to spend tax dollars. And it points the finger firmly in the direction of the department that directly oversees the TSA.

DHS does not recognize “incremental delivery” of capabilities as an approved acquisition approach.

And yet, it approved this acquisition anyway, which is slated to run north of a billion dollars within the next ten years. The DHS greased the wheels for yet another TSA failure.

Despite operational test and evaluation requirements, DHS allowed TSA to proceed to full rate production (“Produce” phase) even though the system did not meet its key performance parameter for throughput. DHS did not require TSA to develop a remediation plan or re-evaluate its performance requirement as required by DHS’ acquisition guidance. Instead, DHS approved TSA’s decision to accept the CT system in exchange for attaining the advanced detection capabilities it offered over the AT X-ray.

The IG offers three recommendations. Unfortunately, none of them are "grab your receipts and get your money back" or "dissolve the TSA." It strongly suggests DHS handle acquisitions better by following its own guidelines -- the ones ignored to allow the TSA to acquire scanners that slow down the screening process without offering any measurable gains in travel security.

Filed Under: scanners, security theater, tsa

TSA's Expensive Scanners Can't Figure Out Afros Or Turbans, So Guess Who's Getting Searched More Often

from the can't-solve-any-real-problems-so-let's-just-focus-on-making-people-angry dept

The TSA accidentally admitted years ago that its (annoying) presence at airports was extraneous. Summoned into existence by the 9/11 attacks, the TSA was nothing more than an obsolete government fixture a few years later. With terrorism being pretty much ground-based at this point in time, we're left to wonder why we still need to jump through all the TSA's hoops just to board a plane agents haven't made any safer with their elaborate security pantomime.

The TSA may not be able to find any bombs headed for planes, but it will leave no baby stroller/terminal disease sufferer unturned in its quest to justify its continued existence. It may not be able to stop terrorists, but it will not let an inert souvenir go uncrowed about on its blog or social media accounts.

Instead of doing anything useful, the TSA busies itself with the busywork of looking busy. To ensure maximum harassment of travelers, it's adding things like this to its list of annoying traits:

The futuristic full-body scanners that have become standard at airports across the United States are prone to false alarms for hairstyles popular among women of color.

[...]

Two officers interviewed by ProPublica said the machines’ alarms are frequently triggered by certain hairstyles.

“With black females, the scanner alarms more because they have thicker hair; many times they have braids or dreadlocks,” said a TSA officer who works at an airport in Texas and asked not to be named. “Maybe, down the line, they will be redesigning the technology, so it can tell apart what’s a real threat and what is not. But, for now, we officers have to do what the machine can’t.”

A government report in 2014 found that the machines also “had a higher false alarm rate when passengers wore turbans and wigs.”

We're spending an awful lot of money to increase the perception of racial bias by the TSA. Turbans, wigs, and "black hair:" that's 2/3rds of a Stormfront post being funded by tax dollars and inflicted on people whose heads have been deemed more "suspicious" by machines that answer to no one.

The more you read of this ProPublica report (written by Brenda Median and Thomas Frank), the more ridiculous it gets. The TSA's attempt to talk its way out of this mess is cringe-worthy and inadvertently hilarious. I don't know what this is, but it's one of the least credible things an anonymous official has ever said:

A senior TSA official said in an interview that hair pat-downs are not discriminatory and are done when a body scanner indicates that a passenger has an object in his or her hair. “I get a hair pat-down every time I travel. I’m a white woman,” said the official, who agreed to be interviewed on the condition that she not be named.

Do tell. Fill me in with the details while I notify @_DHOTYA. As a "senior TSA official," I doubt she's getting patted down on a regular basis, much less her hair... much less getting patted down AT ALL, really.

The TSA also believes its covered because it once said something about this on a website few travelers read.

The TSA advises passengers to remove all items from their hair before going through airport security and warns on its website that “wearing a hairpiece, extensions or a wig as well as a ponytail, a hair bun or braids” may trigger an alarm.

Dear TSA,

Just because you've posted your stupid warning about hair bombs to your website doesn't make this particular search any less stupid. How do I know? Well, I picked it up from something you said.

The TSA would not say if it had ever found a weapon in a passenger’s hair.

Yeah, that's a "no" in any other language. Trust me, if the TSA had ever found a weapon or bomb precursor or child porn or a bag of drugs in anyone's hair, it would have been covered by all major new outlets and we would all -- not just those of us with turbans or non-straight hair -- be subjected to the sort of head prodding we haven't seen since the heyday of phrenology.

So, for $150k/per, we're getting "state of the art" scanners that can't detect metal like our older, dumber metal detectors or spot actually suspicious objects encased in human hair. Whatever bias the expensive scanners can't provide, agents can create for themselves. As the TSA points out, hair searches are at agents' discretion. Hair styles and types agents find more suspicious than others can result in head patdowns, so long as they clear this ultra-low discretion bar:

...if “an individual’s hair looks like it could contain a prohibited item or is styled in a way an officer cannot visually clear it.

We're paying billions a year for this it's-funny-because-it's-oh-so-very-unfortunately-true comedy. We all need to line up for a refund.

Filed Under: discrimination, scanners, tsa

Art, AI & Infringement: A Copyright Conundrum

from the beep-boop-beep dept

I don't want to waste any space with a long introduction, other than to say it's always incredibly frustrating when artists come up with inventive new ways to produce artwork, only to have those efforts met with stupid intellectual property issues. Experimentation is key to the artistic world and we've begun to see how artists are incorporating technology into what they produce. This should be exciting, but all too often that excitement is plagued by legal issues.

A case in point of this would be Canadian artist Adam Basanta, who has come up with a bonkers and very cool method for both producing machine-generated art and then validating that art for human consumption by comparing it to real-world artwork made by us lowly apes. Let's start with his setup.

Broadly, Basanta’s machine has two stages: creation and validation.

Creation happens with a hardware setup that Basanta likens to a Rube Goldberg machine: two computer scanners tipped on their sides and pointed face to face, endlessly scanning each other, and the results – influenced by shifts in the room’s lighting, randomized settings and an automatically moving mouse – are interpreted by a computer and turned into colourful abstract pictures.

The second stage is validation. Another computer running a custom-built program automatically checks each image against an online database of real art made by human hands. If the machine-made image is similar to one that has been human-made, the computer dubs it a success and keeps it; if there is no match, the image is deleted forever.

If that doesn't get your heart beating a little faster, you simply don't care about art. This setup is, at the very least, incredibly interesting, and Basanta's method for validating whether the art produced by the machines is good enough for human consumption or not kicks the interest level into overdrive. His setup generates something like a thousand images a day, with a tiny fraction of that being deemed worthy of retention. The whole thing was good enough to warrant an art exhibit in Canada and Basanta has featured many of the images on his website as well.

And that's where the trouble started. Artist Amel Chamandy has alleged that Basanta violated her copyright on a piece she created called "A World Without Trees", as well as the trademark rights she has on her own name. Both claims stem from one of the pieces Basanta's machine setup used to validate its own artwork against and the naming convention it used to denote the new pieces it created.

In June, someone – it’s not clear if it was Chamandy herself or someone who works with her – did a Google search for her name and the name of a 2009 wall installation she made called Your World Without Paper.

The first result in the Google search, according to documents filed in court, was Chamandy’s website. But the second and third results pointed to Basanta’s website, because his machine had named one of its own pictures after one of hers. The offending image, some magenta lines on a field of indigo, is called: 85.81%_match: Amel Chamandy “Your World Without Paper”, 2009.

The trademark claim rests solely on the name of the file including Chamandy's full name. It's a silly argument for trademark infringement as the whole point of including the name is to weigh the new art piece against her specific work, which necessarily involves anyone viewing these pieces being informed that they are not the work of the original author. The whole purpose of the validation process is to show what differentiation remains between the new piece and the human-made example. That's not trademark infringement. It's not really even close.

As for the copyright portion of this, it's important that you not be fooled by the percentage the machine setup notes in the validation process. You might think that an 85% match would mean the two images are very similar and would share a ton of features that would link the two in the viewer's mind. That's not even close to being the case, as you can see just how different the two images are below.

If that looks like copyright infringement to you, you need your head examined. Indeed, the entire setup here is defined by the fact that this is a totally independent creation -- and the "validation" process only serves to highlight that there is no copying. Indeed, the idea that independent creation is a defense against copyright goes back ages, and this is quite obviously an independent creation. The only reason the other artwork is mentioned at all, because it's the literal coincidence that the computer judged these images similar that leads to the name being mentioned. Judge Learned Hand famously wrote:

... if by some magic a man who had never known it were to compose anew Keats's Ode on a Grecian Urn, he would be an "author," and, if he copyrighted it, others might not copy that poem, though they might of course copy Keats's...

This is a case where "some magic" took place, and one artist "composed anew" something that a computer (but no human eye) judged to have a decent level of similarity to another's work.

Were her name and the name of her work never mentioned on Basanta's site, she simply never would have noticed. Nor would anyone else. Ever. And, yet, because Basanta's entire project centers around pointing out the kind of quality his machine setup can produce in artwork by comparing it to real-world creations made by humans, suddenly Basanta is mired in intellectual property claims.

And that's what sucks more than anything. One artist suing another, on incredibly specious grounds, is a betrayal of how art is created in the first place. If anything, Basanta was crediting Chamandy and pointing people toward her wider works by doing things the way he did. And this is the thanks he gets, because copyright.

Filed Under: adam basanta, ai, atel chamandy, copyright, matching, scanners, trademark

Scanner Patent Troll Slapped On The Wrist By FTC; Told To Stop Misleading Behavior.

from the it's-something dept

For a few years now, the FTC has talked about taking on patent trolls. In 2011, 2012 and 2013, we heard stories about the FTC putting patent trolls "on notice" and getting ready to crack down on them for deceptive practices. Last year, it finally "launched an investigation" into certain patent trolls, starting with notoriously crazy patent troll MPHJ, famous for its rather aggressive form of trolling, using a questionable patent on "scan-to-email" technology, sending out thousands of demand letters from a range of shell companies, telling lots of small businesses that they had to pay between $900 to $1200 per employee if they had a scanner with the "scan-to-email" function (most modern scanners).

Sensing it was in trouble, MPHJ tried suing the FTC (along with each of the five commissioners personally), arguing that the investigation violated its constitutional rights. Yeah, right. A few weeks ago, the courts rejected that plan, and now the FTC has reached something of a "settlement" with both MPHJ and the law firm it used, Farney Daniels, P.C., which allowed MPHJ to send out its demand letters on its own stationary.

Unfortunately, the "settlement" seems fairly weak. There's no money being paid. There's no admission of guilt. There's just a promise that MPHJ won't use certain deceptive tactics, such as claiming that others had already paid thousands of dollars for licenses, or threaten lawsuits unless the company is actually going to sue. It seems like a pretty minor slap on the wrist, getting at some of the worst behavior by MPHJ, but hardly doing much to stop lots of other egregious trolling actions. It's something, but a very minor something.

Filed Under: ftc, jay mac rust, patent trolls, patents, scanners
Companies: farney daniels, mphj

Patent Troll Shell Companies Shake Down Small Businesses For $1k Per Employee For Using Network Scanner

from the shakedown dept

In the latest example of just how broken our patent system is, Joe Mullin has an excellent and detailed article unveiling one of the latest patent trolling scams: using some vague and highly questionable patents, combined with a series of shell companies, to send out tons of letters to small businesses, demanding approximately $1,000 per employee from any company that has a scanner connected to a network which has a "scan to email" function (as most new scanners do). The story is bizarre and complex, but that's part of the "game" that the trolls are playing to try to hide their trail.

Go read the long version, but the more compact version is that it appears that patent trolls are learning from some of the "innovations" of today's copyright trolling programs in which the focus is to broadly hit a ton of small possible "licensees" in the hopes that a reasonable percentage pays up. Traditionally, patent trolling mostly focused on larger companies with big bank accounts, thinking that most would rather just pay up than deal with the lawsuit. But this new generation is even more nefarious. The example in the article is a series of ridiculous patents originally granted to "Laurence Klein," which lawyers are now claiming cover using a scanner that's connected to the internet to email a scan. Here are the patents in question:

• US Patent 6,185,590: Process and architecture for use on stand-alone machine and in distributed computer architecture for client server and/or intranet and/or internet operation environments
• US Patent 6,771,381: Distributed computer architecture and process for virtual copying
• US Patent 7,477,410: Distributed computer architecture and process for virtual copying
• US Patent 7,986,426: Distributed computer architecture and process for document management

The article talks about how a company called Project Paperless LLC started sending around threat letters about those patents, telling companies that they had to pay $1,000 per employee if they had a scanner that was networked and had such a feature -- which scanners from HP, Brother, Xerox and Canon all do. But, rather than go after those companies, the patent troll in this case claims that any company using one of their scanners is liable and has to pay these outrageous sums. One of the companies who received the notice, BlueWave Computing, led by Steven Vicinanza, decided this was ridiculous and fought back, following the Drew Curtis / Fark "How to fight patent trolls" plan to a tee: he pointed out he didn't infringe, made it very, very clear he would fight this to the end and that he was going to make it as painful as possible for the troll. While Paperless Post sued BlueWave, it quickly backed down and dropped the lawsuit two weeks later, leading BlueWave to issue a press release (continuing with the Fark plan of publicizing the result).

While all this was happening, there was also an ongoing effort by some unnamed people to expose Project Paperless' effort and to show that the patents aren't valid.

Among the things they discovered was that it appeared that some of the partners in the law firm that "represented" Project Paperless, likely had an ownership interest in the patents. Hill, Kertscher, and Wharton, LLP is the firm, and research suggested that partners Steven Hill and Scott Wharton had holding companies, Bonita Sunrise and Wexford Holdings, that at least partially owned the patents. Given that exposure, plus the success of BlueWave in fighting loudly, what happened next was only too predictable: Project Paperless wrapped up its various lawsuits and... "sold" the patents to MPHJ Holdings, whose ownership is completely unclear. Soon after that, a whole series of companies popped up sending letters to companies demanding similar per-employee-payments for network-connected scanners. Among the companies Mullin uncovered doing this: AccNum, AllLed, AdzPro, CalNeb, ChaPac, FanPar, FasLan, FulNer, GosNel, and HunLos. Note a similarity in the style of all of those names?

Mullin includes a (redacted) threat letter from AllLed as an example. He also has the transcript of his phone call with the number listed on the letters (it's the same number on all the letters):

As for the phone number on the letters, 855-744-2360—I called it. The conversation was not enlightening.

"Thank you for calling the legal department," said a youngish-sounding man. "This is Kevin, how can I help you?"

I was calling about a letter I was holding from AllLed, I explained. Kevin asked for my letter's "file number," which was the one thing I couldn't give him—it would have revealed the source from whom I had received the letter. I told Kevin I was a writer who had been given the letter by someone else. All I wanted to do was contact AllLed, LLC directly—so how could I do that?

"We don't have any information on the entities that send the letter," he said. It was just an answering service. "We don't have their contact information."

"Well, who are you the 'legal department' for?" I asked.

"Hmmm," said Kevin. "Legal department."

"I don't get it—is 'Legal Department' a real company?" I persisted.

"Hmmm," said Kevin again. "We're just Legal Department."

"Well, you work for someone, right? What company do you work for?"

"This is Legal Department. That's all we can say."

As Mullin notes, this isn't a one-off case, either. There have been a growing number of similar attempts by patent trolls to go after large numbers of people or companies further down the supply chain, clearly following the traditional trolling strategy of just seeking lots of "settlements" from people who can't afford a lawsuit and don't understand the specifics.

No matter how you look at this, though, it's yet another example of how the patent system is completely broken. It hearkens back to the 19th century when scam artists roamed the countryside hitting up farmers for "licenses" for "patents" on common farm equipment. At that time, they were called patent sharks, and Congress actually changed the rules on what could be patented to fix the problem. Of course, today Congress isn't known for actually fixing problems.

Filed Under: networked scanning, patents, scanners, shell companies
Companies: accnum, adzpro, allled, bluewave, bonita sunrise, calneb, chapac, fanpar, faslan, fulner, gosnel, hill kertscher wharton, hunlos, paperless post, wexford holdings

Naked Scanner Maker Accused Of Manipulating Tests To Make Scans Look Less Invasive

from the well-that-was-useful dept

We'd heard a number of reports about how the TSA was already either retrofitting the various naked scanners or moving on to less privacy invasive versions, but there were two interesting points to come out some Congressional hearings on the devices yesterday. First, apparently there is some concern that the makers of the Rapiscan machine (and, yes, it still amazes me that anyone thought that was a good name), OSI Systems, may have "manipulated" tests in order to claim that the machines did not invade travelers' privacy:

The company “may have attempted to defraud the government by knowingly manipulating an operational test,” Representative Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Transportation Security Subcommittee, said in a letter to Transportation Security Administration chief John Pistole Nov. 13. Rogers said his committee received a tip about the faked tests.

OSI, of course, is denying it, but this is the same company that also apparently ran into problems last year when maintenance reports suggested radiation levels 10 times as high as promised.

The other bit of news? The TSA has admitted that it has simply put a bunch of these machines in storage -- 91 machines, worth $14 million -- because of related privacy concerns.

While it's a good thing that privacy violating machines aren't being used, it raises serious questions about why they were purchased and put into use in the first place -- and done so without ever taking comment from the public, as is required under law. Perhaps if they had actually done that, they would have avoided wasting so much taxpayer money on machines that violate everyone's privacy.

Filed Under: manipulation, naked scanners, privacy, rapiscan, scanners, tsa
Companies: osi systems

As Expected, Supreme Court Won't Hear Challenge On Naked Scanners

from the no-surprise dept

This will hardly come as a surprise, but Slashdot alerts us to the news that the Supreme Court has chosen not to hear John Corbett's quixotic appeal against the legality of the naked scanners now being commonly used in airports (though, via upgrades, there's now less nudity involved). The legal effort was a long shot from the beginning. Corbett has been on a crusade against the machines, which I appreciate -- but his efforts sometimes seem to go too far, and didn't do much to help his case.

Filed Under: john corbett, scanners, supreme court, tsa

TSA Insists That There's Been No Delay In Public Hearings Over Nudie Scanners; It Just Hasn't Held Them

from the got-that dept

A few weeks back, we noted that a court had ordered the TSA to explain why it had failed to obey the court's earlier order that, while the nudie scanners being used in airports were legal, the TSA was required to hold public hearings on the purchase and use of the machines. Yet no such hearings have happened. The TSA has now responded and essentially said that since there's no deadline on when the court told them to hold a hearing, there's no problem. Basically "we can hold a hearing whenever we get around to it."

It also blames the fact that there had been "significant personnel losses" in the group of folks responsible for obeying the order, but insisted that everyone else in that group was really (really!) focused on obeying the order, and they'd get around to it at some point. Really. They promise.

Petitioner offers no basis whatsoever for its assertion that TSA has delayed in implementing this Court’s mandate. On the contrary, as the Sammon Declaration demonstrates, TSA has been keenly aware of the importance of implementing the Court’s directive, and has given high priority to the AIT rulemaking. Despite “significant personnel losses” in the group of economists within TSA charged with completing the regulatory analysis... the agency began on the heels of the Court’s ruling the process of preparing the documents necessary for notice-andcomment rulemaking, and has devoted almost all of the staff available to conduct the required economic analysis to its expedited completion, even going so far as to hire contract consultants to accelerate its completion despite unforeseen personnel losses

Later, it claims:

In sum, there has been no "waiting" and no "delay."

Other than the fact that we're still waiting, you mean?

Filed Under: delay, public hearings, scanners, tsa

Appeals Court Wants To Know Why TSA Is Ignoring Court Order Over Public Hearings On Naked Scanners

from the we're-the-gov't,-we-can-ignore-stuff dept

About a year ago, we wrote about a court ruling that the TSA's naked scanners were legal (they didn't violate the 4th Amendment's restriction on "unreasonable" searches), but that the TSA failed to hold the proper public hearings before buying and deploying them. The TSA appears to have only paid attention to the first part. After a bunch of folks asked why the TSA was ignoring the order for public hearings, now an appeals court has officially weighed in and demanded to know why the TSA has failed to hold public hearings more than a year after that court ruling. The order is pretty straightforward:

ORDERED that the Department of Homeland Security, et al., respond to the petition on or before August 30, 2012.

The TSA has said that it would hold hearings "next year" (or two years after it was ordered to do so). You would think that it wouldn't take the TSA two years to set up basic hearings -- especially while it has continued to roll out a variety of new scanning machines...

Filed Under: court order, privacy, public hearings, scanners, tsa

Congress: The TSA Is Wasting Hundreds Of Millions In Taxpayer Dollars

from the oversight-indeed dept

The House Oversight Committee has come out with a report slamming the TSA for tremendous amounts of waste, specifically in the "deployment and storage" of its scanning equipment. Basically, it sounds like the TSA likes to go on giant spending sprees, buying up security equipment and then never, ever using it. A few data points

• As of February 15, 2012, the total value of TSA’s equipment in storage was, according to TSA officials, estimated at $184 million. However, when questioned by Committee staff, TSA’s warehouse staff and procurement officials were unable to provide the total value of equipment in storage.
• Committee staff discovered that 85% of the approximately 5,700 major transportation security equipment currently warehoused at the TLC had been stored for longer than six months; 35% of the equipment had been stored for more than one year. One piece of equipment had been in storage more than six years – 60% of its useful life.
• As of February 2012, Committee staff discovered that TSA had 472 Advanced Technology 2 (AT2) carry-on baggage screening machines at the TLC and that more than 99% have remained in storage for more than nine months; 34% of AT2s have been stored for longer than one year.
• TSA knowingly purchased more Explosive Trace Detectors (ETDs) than were necessary in order to receive a bulk discount under an incorrect and baseless assumption that demand would increase. TSA management stated: “[w]e purchased more than we needed in order to get a discount.”

Oh yeah, and it appears that the TSA isn't very good at tracking this stuff. When asked about the total cost of managing this equipment, the TSA was unable to provide an answer. And then it appeared to willfully mislead Congress about this:

• TSA intentionally delayed Congressional oversight of the Transportation Logistics Center and provided inaccurate, incomplete, and potentially misleading information to Congress in order to conceal the agency’s continued mismanagement of warehouse operations.
• TSA willfully delayed Congressional oversight of the agency’s Transportation Logistics Center twice in a failed attempt to hide the disposal of approximately 1,300 pieces of screening equipment from its warehouses in Dallas, Texas, prior to the arrival of Congressional staff.
• TSA potentially violated 18 U.S.C. Sec. 1001, by knowingly providing an inaccurate warehouse inventory report to Congressional staff that accounted for the disposal of equipment that was still in storage at the TLC during a site visit by Congressional staff.
• TSA provided Congressional staff with a list of disposed equipment that falsely identified disposal dates and directly contradicted the inventory of equipment in the Quarterly Warehouse Inventory Report provided to Committee staff on February 13, 2012.

One of the theories that was floated a few years ago when there was that big rush to rollout the nudie scanners, was that much of it was being driven by fear mongering from former government officials, like Michael Chertoff, who had economic relationships with the makers of the equipment. This report doesn't confirm any of that, but it sure seems to fit that narrative pretty perfectly. Fear monger away, have the TSA buy a ton of questionable equipment it doesn't actually need, and then have much of that equipment just sit in a warehouse. All on the taxpayers' dime.

Filed Under: congress, house oversight committee, michael chertoff, scanners, tsa, waste