My TSA Diatribe

[blue]

IF all the scanning and groping is good enough for the public, and necessary for national security, then surely national treasures such as:

-White House
-Pentagon
-All congressional buildings
-Nation Monuments
-ALL FEDERAL BUILDINGS
-ETC.

Should have FULL scanning/groping and even stronger inspections. EACH AND EVERYONE, EVERYTIME ENTERED.

OF course those Fines/felonys should be stronger also, since it IS a federal goverment building.

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TSA = Mighty embarressing to America

[The Annoyed Man]

Al Qaeda Promises U.S. Death By A 'Thousand Cuts'
Terror Group Boasts That Printer Bomb Cost Only $4200, Meant To Bleed U.S. Economy
ABC News

Printer bombs planted on two cargo flights last month cost only a few thousand dollars and were intended to affect the American economy, according to a newly published Al Qaeda-affiliated magazine.

The attempt was called "Operation Hemorrhage," boasted the magazine, and the entire plot cost al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, only $4,200.

Yesterday, a special edition of Inspire magazine -- an English-language propaganda publication produced by AQAP -- gave a detailed description of how the attempted attack was conceived and produced.

"Two Nokia mobiles, $150 each, two HP printers, $300 each, plus shipping, transportation and other miscellaneous expenses add up to a total bill of $4,200," one article said. "That is all that Operation Hemorrhage cost us. In terms of time, it took us three months to plan and execute the operation from beginning to end."

I would submit that the national furor over intrusive airport security is one of those thousand cuts. The security is arguably necessary, but for a few thousand bucks, it can be defeated without even using a human to transport the bomb. In the face of this, what chance to scanners and invasive pat-downs have? I have taken it as an article of faith, going all the way back to 9/11, that eventually, sooner or later and despite our best efforts, terrorists will successfully bring down another airliner. How much personal freedom is to be the price of avoiding the unavoidable?

If we surrender our freedoms so that we can fly, then depending on the extent to which we have to do this, Al Qaeda gets to put one in the "Win" column if our security gets so tight that it no longer feels like America. The pendulum swing toward more security has probably reached the point that all pendulum swings reach, where they've swung too far and now they have to swing back to a more balanced center.

[tacticool]

Umm, it's a government job. One of questionable usefulness. How exactly is that different from "sucking off the government for sustenance"?
On further thought, I'm not sure that the previous statement doesn't apply to TSA Management, too.

Paying welfare recipients to assault people is not better than just paying them.

[Beiruty]

Also, one has to consider mechanical problems that are major safety concern. Even the latest Super Jumbo A-380 had almost catastropphic engine failure Who is wataching?

[Dave2]

So gripe, abuse, and threaten all you want, but all you are really doing is making it worse for yourselves, because the average screener pretty much agrees with the evaluation that TSA is reactive and pat downs are invasive, but thinks that you are being idiots by objecting to backscatter while getting ready to take a higher dose of radiation while flying on a plane

It's different types of radiation. From what I can tell the long-term effects of the radiation used in back-scatter x-rays are unknown.

[Excaliber]

The former head of security for Israeli airline El Al tells it like it is in this video.

The current TSA procedures are totally outside of constitutional and reasonable bounds. From a security standpoint they are also known to be ineffective against current jihadist bomb smuggling methods, as well as newer methods intelligence agencies have reported as in the works. The fact that these procedures are being pushed as critically essential by the Obama administration despite the intense public outcry leaves only two possible conclusions that I can come up with:

1. The Homeland Security leadership Obama has selected to protect this country have taken world class incompetence and stupidity to previously unscaled heights.

2. The real reason behind implementing these methods has nothing to do with air transport security, but it's a really important part of the "transformation" Obama has vowed to bring about in our nation.

In either case, unless Congress acts to defund this abomination, the solution lies in the voting booth in 2012.

[kahrfreak]

I don't know one TSA screener that enjoys patting down a few hundred people a day while being blamed for all of the ills of airline travel - we are there to do a job, a job dictated by YOUR politicians, not by us, and believe me, we know how ineffective pat downs can be.

Are you so sure about that? Seems to me that would be a prerequisite to the job, don't you think? Why would someone apply to the TSA, knowing full well they would not enjoy patting someone down? People have choices. No one forced anyone to become a TSA employee. Who's to say that the TSA employees who haven't moved on don't get some perverse enjoyment from their job?

Take the bus.

Yep, that's the right solution...bus, auto, whatever. Don't be part of the inexorable downward slide into a truly authoritarian state.

[jimlongley]

Jim, a thoughtful response, but you're presenting one side of the story, which perhaps was your intention. I don't know.

Exactly my intention, because so far all we have seen is the other side.

Here's my reaction. MOST of the TSA security checkin folks are probably like most cops — just trying to their jobs to the best of their understanding of the law, and the best of their training proficiency.

The problem being that the screeners are NOT using any understanding of the law, they are essentially forced to do what they do, the way they do it, by layers of management that interpret the law and dictate their performance for them.

Are there bad apples? Yes, including the screener at love field who took out, and waved around, a combat shotgun - eventually he was fired. I could tell you tales of the abuses behind the scenes, but they happen everywhere, including IDPA matches.

And like any bureaucracy the longer people last in those jobs, the harder it is to fire them.

A few years ago you could have seen me "browbeating" someone, but unless you were there for the whole ten minute episode, you would only think that I was nasty, not that I was reacting to extreme provocation. But whatever, I'll still stick by my contention that that was the exception rather than the rule as stated by others here. I believe I even said as much.

I believe all of this TSA bashing should be treated as a violation of forum rules.

And BTW, the airports that "opt out" are not opting out of screening, they are merely opting out of using TSA, and hiring REAL rent-a-cops, who WILL be minimum wage thugs, who will not be answerable even to the extent that TSA agents and supervisors are. Good luck with that folks, if I find out that an airport I expect to travel through is using one of those outfits, I am changing my routing.

[jimlongley]

I don't know one TSA screener that enjoys patting down a few hundred people a day while being blamed for all of the ills of airline travel - we are there to do a job, a job dictated by YOUR politicians, not by us, and believe me, we know how ineffective pat downs can be.

Are you so sure about that?

Yes, I was there at the start, and we were given to understand that conditions would be different.

Seems to me that would be a prerequisite to the job, don't you think?

NO

Why would someone apply to the TSA, knowing full well they would not enjoy patting someone down?

Covered above

People have choices.

Not always, it was a last resort job for me and many of the others I started with, going from a six figure job down to $12.00 per hour.

No one forced anyone to become a TSA employee.

Actually, economics did.

Who's to say that the TSA employees who haven't moved on don't get some perverse enjoyment from their job?{/qoute]

Obviously you think so, but that would be denying the many other motivations available.

So I will reiterate, especially since you seem prepared to think the worst of TSA employees:

Take the bus.

[Hoi Polloi]

A guy who was arrested for open carry of a handgun and successfully sued the city of San Diego because of it was just arrested again.

This time it was for recording the TSA checkpoint where he was singled out for the body scan, opted out, stripped to his underwear of his own accord, and when he argued that he clearly was not carrying anything and therefore did not need to be patted down, he was arrested for refusing to comply with the pat down and was marched through 2 or 3 different terminals in his underwear to be charged with 2 misdemeanors.

TSA airport screeners gone wild in San Diego- again

[Beiruty]

The $64K question, who is the first TSA screener resigning due to moral and ethical reasons, would simply throw the towel and says enough is enough?

[cbr600]

deleted

[Excaliber]

The problem being that the screeners are NOT using any understanding of the law, they are essentially forced to do what they do, the way they do it, by layers of management that interpret the law and dictate their performance for them.

I agree with Jim here.

My disgust with what's going on is focused on the people who put this monstrosity in place and refuse to change it. This would include the heads of Homeland Security and the TSA, and by extension, President Obama, who is ultimately responsible for everything that happens in the executive branch of our government, excuses notwithstanding.

The TSA agent at the checkpoint is not responsible for the selection of screening machines or for creating the policies around the use of those machines and the "enhanced patdown" procedures. Very few of those folks are in a position where they could take care of their families if they didn't have the salary and benefits from their work. Jim has accurately pointed out that in many cases the TSA has been an employer of last resort for people who have lost jobs and couldn't replace them with another in private industry due to the stagnation of our economy for the past couple of years.

In any group of employees as large as the TSA, it is a certainty that a small subset will misuse their authority, engage in bullying or demeaning practices just because they can, or derive personal satisfaction from things they see or from causing discomfort to others. It's also a fact of life that this is more common in unarmed security positions with relatively low qualification requirements than it is in law enforcement work with much more stringent standards. Yet even with those higher standards, some misconduct and abuses still occur.

On the other hand, it's equally true that the vast majority of these good folks are doing their dead level best to meet the requirements of their jobs and to do it as gently and smoothly as they can with maximum consideration for their fellow citizens. They deserve our personal respect while those of us who feel things have gone too far work vigorously to change what they have been ordered to do.

[jimlongley]

A guy who was arrested for open carry of a handgun and successfully sued the city of San Diego because of it was just arrested again.

This time it was for recording the TSA checkpoint where he was singled out for the body scan, opted out, stripped to his underwear of his own accord, and when he argued that he clearly was not carrying anything and therefore did not need to be patted down, he was arrested for refusing to comply with the pat down and was marched through 2 or 3 different terminals in his underwear to be charged with 2 misdemeanors.

TSA airport screeners gone wild in San Diego- again

It should be pointed out that he was arrested by the police, NOT TSA, and they were the ones who marched him around in his underwear.

TSA had little to do with it after he started his strip-tease, other than the supervisor asking him to dress and be patted down, which he refused to comply with.

The problem is that stripping down is not an option, there are procedures that are required to be followed, and this person decided not to cooperate and was arrested. Maybe he will be happy being a test case.

This is exactly what I was talking about before when I was saying that you could have interpreted my actions with one passenger as belligerent. If you were there only at the end, after he took off his shoes and threw them to the other side of the lane, and took off his socks and threw them at me, all you would have seen is this old guy sitting there while I got louder and louder trying to get him to pick up his own socks and put them back on. My supervisor finally came over and called a local LEO while the "gentleman" just sat there with his arms folded and his bare feet stinking out.

This was before the infamous shoe bomber, and before shoes were routinely removed. The "gentleman" in question set off the metal detector when he walked through, three times, which meant he got passed off to me to figure out where the metal was. The walk through had indicated down low, and I concentrated there, but when I tried to wand his feet, he kicked at the wand, so I requested he remove his shoes so I could run them through a separate x-ray, which was when he threw them across the checkpoint lane, and then took off his socks.

He missed his flight. His shoes had steel toes.

[Beiruty]

First test case, a wise judge will drop all charges! Otherwise, this case will go to the supreme court, I am pretty sure.