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VMI77 wrote: How come an airline employee has to catch a TSA thief? Where are the TSA supervisors?

To me, there is no more salient point to be made than this one. The inherent problem with every government group is that there is limited supervision. If you asked TSA, they would tell you that their supervisors do a great job but their internal security test failures and incidents like this one tell a different story. To be fair, any organization the size of TSA will have those who find a way to game the system. But yours in the important point. Again, it was someone outside who solved a TSA problem. Just as it was not TSA who stopped the shoe bomber or the underwear bomber, it was not TSA personnel who identified this thief. To me, if a group dedicated to detection cannot even detect its own problems, it is inherently flawed.

What TSA (and other programs) need is the equivalent of the police internal affairs. While those kinds of groups are not perfect either, they are a lot better than what TSA has in place today. Again, the fault of TSA is not in the individual agents, many of whom are dedicated and hardworking. What is rotten is the leadership - from the very top right on down.

The interesting thing about all of this is that US Customs already uses a form of behavior profiling. We drove our RV into Canada and on the return (into Michigan), the US agent questioned us about the most bizarre things (he asked my wife directly if she wanted to see me go over Niagara Falls). He was apparently trying to see if she showed any signs of nervousness. Those that failed his test got their vehicle searched. I've come through US Customs via airline and felt as though there was a similar approach there.

I fully understand the greater risk of allowing someone with a weapon or a bomb on board an airplane versus simply allowing someone into the country. My view is that ignoring behavior ends up creating a much greater risk than not doing it. Scanning is only as good as knowing exactly what to look for and being able to find it. TSA seems to be failing on both of those counts.

Hoi Polloi wrote:And thus we must submit to the under-the-clothes screeners, right?

Yep. They'll need to check everyone's appendix scars.

I cannot wait until the rumor comes that the terrorists are swallowing the bombs.