Sometimes this security stuff makes my head hurt. We try to find serious and positive stories about the advancement of technology, new and improved policies, and look for good news in a serious business. But it seems lately that there’s a lot more chaff than wheat. Take a few deep breaths. In. Out. In. Out. Now, let us demonstrate our thesis:
- An alert TSA screener at Newark Airport spotted a sex toy in a passenger's luggage and offered the traveler some encouragement with a hand-written note to “Get your freak on girl”. It took TSA less than a single day to investigate, find and remove the offending screener for an admittedly stupid prank, yet the majority of thefts from that same checked luggage goes unresolved many months later. Somebody missed the memo on prioritization.
- TSA has set up a college credit program at 70 airports aimed at increasing TSA employees' understanding of terrorism. So far, 2,500 employees have participated. After 10 years of TSA existence and a mission statement specifically aimed at deterring terrorism, shouldn't they already know this stuff? What about the other roughly 58,000 employees?
- TSA has expanded its “chat-down” behavior detection experiment in which an officer interviews selected passengers to assess whether they might be involved in terrorist activities. Passengers who elect not to participate are deemed by that refusal to be “suspicious” and subjected to enhanced screening. Not a single suspected terrorist so far. I have written previously that in less than 2 minutes I came up with 21 common everyday reasons why a perfectly normal passenger might be angry, irritated, upset, or otherwise less than charitable at the checkpoint, not the least of which is a confrontation with a TSA officer.
- A recent survey by the Reason Foundation shows the public is divided over whether it believes the TSA would catch a terrorist trying to board an airplane at a U.S. airport. Forty nine percent have confidence in the TSA whereas 44 percent do not. The key point here: the idea of catching them at the airport, TSA’s primary screening function, which doesn’t address the so-called “risk-based” approach to apply some heavy-duty intelligence gathering processes long before arriving at the checkpoint.
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- The Federal Times has been denied a Freedom of Information Act request for the office telephone number of its official spokesman in the Public Affairs Office of the Department of Homeland Security, which appears nowhere on their web site. Let me repeat that: in the Office of Public Affairs. The DHS response: their release poses "a clearly unwarranted invasion" of employee privacy. What’s wrong with that picture?
- TV reporters and newspaper columnists may need to start lawyering up: according to language inserted into House Bill H.R. 3011, (page 61 for you non-believers) The Transportation Security Administration Authorization Act of 2011, introduced by the Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, mocking TSA personnel could become a crime.
I’m not sure if I should be worried or amused while mocking them… but you already know the answer, don’t you….
