The Transportation Security Administration should publish a list of all rules and regulations that they will subject someone to if that person wishes to cross a U.S. Government checkpoint at an airport en route to the gate from which his domestic flight will depart, not including laws that the person is required to abide by outside of the airport checkpoint (i.e., just those rules and regulations that apply only at the checkpoint).

The Transportation Security Administration was created several years ago in an effort to improve transportation safety. To date, the vast majority of their focus has been on preventing terrorist acts from occurring on commercial airplane flights. Their costly counterterrorism efforts have placed a large burden on the traveling public. Some of those efforts, such as warrantless searches and subjecting people to secret rules and regulations, border on unconstitutionality.

We should not be subjected to rules and regulations that we are not allowed to read. How else can we ensure that we are in compliance? However, the Transportation Security Administration does just that. They refuse to publish the rules they require us to follow when we are stopped by agents of our government at TSA airport checkpoints.

Note that I'm not asking for tips for travelers, suggestions on how to pack our bags, hints, clues, guidelines, or press releases. I'm not asking to see TSA's super-secret procedures (those that thousands of lowest-level-of-TSA airport security guards who turn over at a rate of somewhere around 25% per year, are allowed to see), not a pointer to the TSA "guidelines for travelers" page, or to the entire TSA Web site (which is filled, as noted repeatedly by commenters on the TSA blog and acknowledged by TSA Bog staff, with inconsistencies and inaccuracies) -- just a list of the rules TSA imposes on travelers at a U.S. Government airport checkpoint.

TSA seem to feel that keeping bad people guessing will make it more difficult for them to do bad things. Unfortunately, this focus not on preventing bad things from happening but on letting bad people do bad things in order to catch them in the act leaves all the good people at risk of punishment for violation of rules we were never allowed to see.

Department of Homeland Security should discontinue the use of blacklists (e.g., the so-called "no-fly list" and "terrorist watch list") to restrict people's freedom of movement.

Blacklists are un-American. We should set a better example for the world and treat people as innocent until proven guilty.

DHS, via the Transportation Security Administration, presently require people who wish to travel via commercial airline to request and receive permission from our government before continuing about their business. Part of this process involves identifying the passenger and checking his or her name against several blacklists maintained by the Department of Homeland Security. This is done in the name of couterterrorism, but the vast majority of it involves not people who are known to have committed acts of terrorism, but people who have been accused or are suspected of having committed such acts, and even those who are suspected of having connections to people who may have committed acts of terrorism. We're not allowed to know who put someone's name on a list or why his or her name was placed on the list.

If we truly had a list of terrorists, we should go arrest and prosecute them, not wait for them to show up at an airport, then watch them closely or bar them from air travel.