And it keeps gettin' better: TSA to go union

[Teresa]

Actually....the Key stat is how many the passengers have apprehended. Let's see~~~~
The shoe bomber and the underware bomber come to mind off the top of my head.
That makes it TSA - 0      Citizens 2+.

I'm just wondering... I think airports can "opt out" of TSA... and contract with other security firms.
Smaller regional airports may have a hard time being able to afford it.. but I think larger ones might be able to ..
I wonder if that might start to happen................

[sixdogsmom]

Just a thought here, the shoe bombers' flight originated in Paris, and the underwear bombers' flight originated in Amsterdam. TSA must be doing something right no matter how distasteful it might be, it is a fact that there have been no domestic incidents since the implementation of the screening technics. Foriegn rules and regs may look attractive from Elk County Ks, small countries like Isreal do not have the number of passengers to deal with, not the destinations, or origins like the United States does. It is easy to become painted with a wide brush even though undeserving, an example would be a friend whom I often partnered with in continuing education classes. We were both shift supervisors, he worked for the newspaper in the production room. He was from Jamaica, born of East Indian parents. He told me how he was chased down the street during the Iran hostage situation. Raj was not Muslim or Iranian, but was profiled because of his appearance. Personally I would worry about the threat from the south more than the aircraft coming from over seas. I dislike going through a metal detector or having my purse inspected; but because of a few loonies we all must be inconvenienced in order to be safe.

[Varmit]

Amid airport anger, GOP takes aim at screening

Did you know that the nation's airports are not required to have Transportation Security Administration screeners checking passengers at security checkpoints? The 2001 law creating the TSA gave airports the right to opt out of the TSA program in favor of private screeners after a two-year period. Now, with the TSA engulfed in controversy and hated by millions of weary and sometimes humiliated travelers, Rep. John Mica, the Republican who will soon be chairman of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, is reminding airports that they have a choice.
Mica, one of the authors of the original TSA bill, has recently written to the heads of more than 150 airports nationwide suggesting they opt out of TSA screening. "When the TSA was established, it was never envisioned that it would become a huge, unwieldy bureaucracy which was soon to grow to 67,000 employees," Mica writes. "As TSA has grown larger, more impersonal, and administratively top-heavy, I believe it is important that airports across the country consider utilizing the opt-out provision provided by law."
In addition to being large, impersonal, and top-heavy, what really worries critics is that the TSA has become dangerously ineffective. Its specialty is what those critics call "security theater" -- that is, a show of what appear to be stringent security measures designed to make passengers feel more secure without providing real security. "That's exactly what it is," says Mica. "It's a big Kabuki dance."
Now, the dance has gotten completely out of hand. And like lots of fliers -- I spoke to him as he waited for a flight at the Orlando airport -- Mica sees TSA's new "naked scanner" machines and groping, grossly invasive passenger pat-downs as just part of a larger problem. TSA, he says, is relying more on passenger humiliation than on practices that are proven staples of airport security.

For example, many security experts have urged TSA to adopt techniques, used with great success by the Israeli airline El Al, in which passengers are observed, profiled, and most importantly, questioned before boarding planes. So TSA created a program known as SPOT -- Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques. It began hiring what it called behavior detection officers, who would be trained to notice passengers who acted suspiciously. TSA now employs about 3,000 behavior detection officers, stationed at about 160 airports across the country.
The problem is, they're doing it all wrong. A recent Government Accountability Office study found that TSA "deployed SPOT nationwide without first validating the scientific basis for identifying suspicious passengers in an airport environment." They haven't settled on the standards needed to stop bad actors.
"It's not an Israeli model, it's a TSA, screwed-up model," says Mica. "It should actually be the person who's looking at the ticket and talking to the individual. Instead, they've hired people to stand around and observe, which is a bastardization of what should be done."
In a May 2010 letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, Mica noted that the GAO "discovered that since the program's inception, at least 17 known terrorists ... have flown on 24 different occasions, passing through security at eight SPOT airports." One of those known terrorists was Faisal Shahzad, who made it past SPOT monitors onto a Dubai-bound plane at New York's JFK International Airport not long after trying to set off a car bomb in Times Square. Federal agents nabbed him just before departure.
Mica and other critics in Congress want to see quick and meaningful changes in the way TSA works. They go back to the days just after Sept. 11, when there was a hot debate about whether the new passenger-screening force would be federal employees, as most Democrats wanted, or private contractors, as most Republicans wanted. Democrats won and TSA has been growing ever since.
But the law did allow a test program in which five airports were allowed to use private contractors. A number of studies done since then have shown that contractors perform a bit better than federal screeners, and they're also more flexible and open to innovation. (The federal government pays the cost of screening whether performed by the TSA or by contractors, and contractors work under federal supervision.)
TSA critics know a federal-to-private change won't solve all of the problems with airport security. But it might create the conditions under which some of those problems could indeed be fixed. With passenger anger overflowing and new leadership in the House, something might finally get done.
Byron York, The Examiner's chief political correspondent, can be contacted at byork@washingtonexaminer.com. His column appears on Tuesday and Friday, and his stories and blogposts appear on ExaminerPolitics.com.

Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://washingtonexaminer.com/politics/2010/11/amid-airport-anger-gop-takes-aim-screening#ixzz15n4rXzI0

...Personally I would worry about the threat from the south more than the aircraft coming from over seas. I dislike going through a metal detector or having my purse inspected; but because of a few loonies we all must be inconvenienced in order to be safe.

Inconvenienced??...You call having your genitals and breasts groped inconvenienced??  Thats funny, because by law thats called Sexual Assault.

[Teresa]

Amid airport anger, GOP takes aim at screening




Inconvenienced??...You call having your genitals and breasts groped inconvenienced??  Thats funny, because by law thats called Sexual Assault.

Thanks for the information.. ....

and also... its not an inconvenience..
Inconvenience is having to take off my shoes, belt, jewelery , phone and unload and take out of all the cases, all of my filming and computer equipment..Then having the 8 or so boxes that it all is run through the ex ray shaft ... come out the other end stacking up with everyone else waiting to get through while I am trying to put everything back in that they so unceremoniously took out... exactly right  so it will not be damaged..
THAT is inconvenience
The rubbing on my breasts and vagina by someone who I don't know at all..( did it ever occur to you that just becasue it is a woman that she also might "LIKE" other women? ) kinda makes me a tad uncomfortable..
But it doesn't matter.. Strangers rubbing me down 4 times while everyone stands and watches is a total invasion of my personal rights!
But for those who don't fly.. I guess you can sit back and  tell those of us who do..to just deal with it cause we will be safer..
Safer my ass............
What a crock of BS!

[sixdogsmom]

And why would you ever need to have those areas checked? Hmmmm? 

[Varmit]

Thats a good question, espcially when you consider that all the "extra" security hasn't stopped even a single would-be terrorist.