Down The Rabbit Hole

Oct. 25, 2011
As soon as I submit one of these columns, I begin to collect items of possible interest for the next one, due a scant 30 days away.

As soon as I submit one of these columns, I begin to collect items of possible interest for the next one, due a scant 30 days away. Some are several paragraphs extracted from extended news articles, some are links to IG and GAO reports about TSA and DHS program successes and failures, research studies on new technologies, and sometimes bizarre notions that will, we’re told, “revolutionize” passenger and baggage screening. As we speak, I have 27 pages of such security-related clips set aside, each clamoring for attention this month. It seems I could almost do a daily column with little risk of repeating myself. Lucky me, I suppose, but it also illustrates the notion that after ten years, they’re still not getting it.

So in an effort to clear my backlog of dreadful aviation screening and related stories, please follow me down Alice’s rabbit hole into a very strange world where…:

  • Ashley Yang, a transgender screener who lives life as a woman, was ordered by her TSA bosses to dress like a man, pin her long hair up, pat down only male passengers, and use the men’s restroom.
  • Screeners confiscated a diabetic pregnant woman’s insulin – not her bottles of nail polish, hair spray, cosmetics, or needles and syringes, just the insulin. She had the required doctor’s certification.
  • A screener pat-down managed to burst a passenger’s urostomy bag, soaking him in urine. Twice in two trips. Same guy.
  • We are just discovering that some of the most advanced passenger screening technology in the world is being set off by damp clothes and sweaty armpits. Who knew that passengers could sweat during the hottest summer on record.
  • TSA’s behavior detection officers who look for “anomalous behavior” in passengers now have two new criteria to add to their bag of tricks: They will also look for people who complain about TSA security, and for people who do not exhibit the expected normal behaviors. Yes, the absence of terrorist traits. And maybe folks who sweat.
  • More than 10 percent of the approximately 900,000 airport ID badges vetted under TSA’s strict regulatory requirements have errors that could compromise airport security, according to a new IG audit.

And yet with these (and many more such) abysmal events requiring serious and immediate DHS and TSA leadership attention, and probably some new machine algorithms and screener re-training and sensitivity programs to boot, we now learn that DHS will send a senior team to audit TSA management oversight of operations at the Honolulu airport. Beginning in the fall. For six months. Over the winter.

Can the Congressional Leadership Delegation be far behind? What? Oh.