Hello,

I have made one post, and thought about making others. But each time I hesitated because I wanted to make an introductory post first. Well here goes. I am not going to tell you which airport I work at because I want to be honest here. Part of my job is to represent the TSA in a positive light. I have First Amendment rights the same as anyone else, however I do not wish to make public criticism of the organization to undermine my effectiveness.

I am a Security Manager. I work at a large airport, but I have had experience at much smaller airports. I started with TSA six and half years ago as one of the contract employees who transferred into the federal system. I only worked for the private company for a few months after September 11. I was hired as a basic screener, and worked my way up to Security Manager.

I know that many of you have proposed that TSA be privatized. My personal experience with TSA has been uniformly better than working with the private company. The federal government does have its faults (and I am not afraid to speak about those faults), but I can tell you that every part of my experience of working with the private company was worse than compared to the federal government. The management was incompetent, my co-workers were of lower quality, as an organization we treated customers terribly, and we performed security inadequately.

TSA has been better. The people I am surrounded by are more literate, better teammates, and much more professional than the ones I worked with in the private sector. TSA has not been the perfect employer, and we have made some mistakes. I have had some opportunities to move on, one of the things that has kept me with TSA has been that we have done better each year.

My biggest concern is that the TSA hasn't quite decided upon the correct level of security that we will provide and how to provide it in an airport environment. Many of our policies seem to assume that the we are going to ensure zero risk of terrorist attacks against aviation. But we also want commercial aviation to thrive and to have as little public criticism as possible. Simultaneously we have developed a fear about releasing any information to the public because we have convinced ourselves that releasing any amount of information into the public sector creates a vulnerability.

My own view is that I agree that aviation is different than other forms of transportation, that it has been targeted by terrorists from the beginning. Another terrorist attack would devastate the country. But you can't create risk free systems that serve millions of people each year. Trying to do so creates an attitude among screeners that accepts short cuts and outright violations of policy. That becomes necessary because if screeners followed every policy each time then no one would get through the airport.

Some examples of what I mean. The SOP requires that shoes be placed sole down on the belt without anything inside of them in order to get the best X-Ray image. Many passengers like stuffing things inside their shoes or want to jam all of their belongings into one bin. At some airports, screeners will rigorously adhere to the TSA standard and separate passenger items so that the X-Ray operator gets the best image possible. However at any particular airport, many X-Ray operators or loaders ignore the requirement. And the reason is that at the largest airports or at the busiest times, TSA screeners could spend all of their time and energy just rearranging passenger bins. And the result would be that passenger throughput would slow to a crawl.

I could spend the rest of this post citing examples. For example, there is an 18 page checklist that the TSA uses to assess screeners on hand wanding. TSA employees often argue about policy because the word choice is convoluted and can be interpreted different ways. I was at a meeting of managers last year from different airports and in an informal gathering several of my peers argued at length about whether an X-Ray operator was required to call a bag check on liquids in containers less than 3.4 ounces that was identified inside of a bag. One of the policymakers who wrote the SOP section on this subject gave his opinion only to be overuled by someone else on the policy side. The organization spent millions of dollars to offer new "Engage!" training to officers which "empowered" them to make decisions only to fail to codify that training into official policy. As a result many officers feel that they have the authority to prohibit anything they individually think is dangerous and allow anything they think is not a threat. And many other screeners who read policy come to directly opposite conclusions.

Another criticism that I would make is that our personnel policies do not fulfill the organization's mission. Specifically the agency should make an effort to put it's best and brightest on the frontlines. We should design incentives around switching to the busiest areas. More of the organization's resources should be devoted to high traffic times and to busy airports. Not so much because busy areas should receive a higher level of security, but that it is harder to enforce a consistent level of security in areas or at times of higher traffic.

Instead those areas become ghettoes. At my airport, new officers are encouraged to do a good job so that they can move into more desirable locations. The organization has been obsessed with creating specialized teams that cherry pick the best screeners from the frontlines. Every few weeks my airport selects new officers to become BDOs or ADASP screeners. Inevitably they select my best screeners and leave checkpoint screeners who are poor performers or who have poor customer service skills.

The problem is nationwide. Smaller airports are much more desirable to work at, the work is much less intense. And many (not all) of these airports are located in areas that have a low cost of living. And there are much more of these airports than the larger airports that serve the most customers. And each of these small airports has an FSD who is lobbying for greater resources that compete with the larger airports.

In my opinion, the consequence of these problems is that the TSA provides an inconsistent level of security. The busier the area, the lower the standard of service and security that the agency provides.

Castro Benes