(NaturalNews) Not that this Congress or president much care, but the
Transportation Security Administration is growing more and more out of hand by the month (hat tip to George W. Bush and a GOP House and Senate for giving America this monstrosity of an agency).
The latest outrage was revealed by an official of the dreaded agency during a grilling from members of a House panel Nov. 15 over information that one of the venders of the TSA's body scanners may have falsified tests on software that was supposed to eliminate naked images of passengers moving through the machines at airport checkpoints.
During the hearing, which was held by the House Homeland Security subcommittee on transportation and entitled, "TSA's Recent Scanner Shuffle: Real Strategy or Wasteful Smokescreen?" lawmakers raised the question of whether the company, Rapiscan, manipulated operational tests.
'Allegations of contractor malfeasance...'InfoWars.com reported earlier that Rapiscan "received a show-case letter" from the agency "demanding to know why the company was not complying" with TSA's terms "in failing to develop the privacy friendly software."
Reports said it's possible the discovery of the phony test results put into advanced motion moves by the TSA to remove some 90 or more body scanners from major airports, a decision that was announced by the agency towards the end of October, following months of complaints.
At first, the TSA claimed the revealing machines were being moved to smaller airports to do away with what the agency said were unacceptable delays at the larger airports. Now; however, it's been revealed that the machines, which are worth about $14 million all together, have actually been placed in storage at a warehouse in Texas.
In his opening statement, the chairman of the subcommittee, Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., made reference to the potential "malfeasance."
"At this time, I'd like to insert a letter for the hearing record that I sent to [TSA] Administrator [John] Pistole yesterday expressing concern about recent allegations of contractor malfeasance that may have led to the failed tests that put us in this situation," he said. "I hope we can get some answers today on this extremely disturbing situation."
After delivering his prepared opening statement, John Sanders, TSA's assistant administrator for security capabilities, said during follow-up questioning that he couldn't speak in detail about the case in question because it was currently being investigated by the agency.
"I wouldn't say, sir, that we believe...have any evidence that documents that they absolutely did," he said, in response to a question by Rogers, asking exactly when the
TSA found out about the vendor potentially faking test results on the machines.
"We have contacted the manufacturer to ask for additional information, so that we can look into the matter further," said Sanders.
The TSA security official went on to repeat what amounts to thoroughly debunked claims that the agency has had the machines independently tested in order to verify they are safe for public use, as well as effective.
More backscatter machines planned?As has been well-documented in the past, a number of prestigious institutions have indicated that the TSA's backscatter x-ray machines can statistically increase rates of cancer. Such institutions have included
Johns Hopkins,
Columbia University, the
University of California, and others.
Experts say to put that in perspective, "the probability of dying in a terrorist attack is the same as the probability of getting cancer when passing through the x-ray
scanner just one time,"
InfoWars.com reported.
Multiple other security experts have also gone on record saying that the scanners are ineffective.
So far, the federal government has sunk about $1 billion in borrowed money into some 800 scanners. Moreover, the agency has outline plans to buy and deploy a thousand more over the next two years.
Can you say, "Out of control?"
Sources:http://www.infowars.comhttp://www.naturalnews.comhttp://epic.org/privacy/body_scanners/EPIC-ScannerShuffle-Stmt-HSC.pdf
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