Welcome to Flyertalk, Madashell.

Are you a collector of public employee badges and documents? Maybe you just think it's nice to be able to recognize a real federal I.D. card when presented with one? I think it's kind of interesting, though not as useful as other parts of the SOP manual, since this stuff can be found elsewhere.

That was the case prior to publication of this document. Nothing changed in this regard.

Interesting, huh? I would have guessed that the number is lower. In my experience at airports, it does not appear that one in five bags are searched by hand. That takes a lot of time compared to using an X-ray machine to perform the search, and unless the bag inspector is very thorough, it's easy for him or her to miss things that the X-ray would show.

I'm sorry, list of what?

It's nice, isn't it? Other people and I have been asking TSA for well over a year to publish all the rules we're required to follow in order to pass a TSA airport checkpoint, but TSA refuses to publish those rules. How can we be expected to follow the rules if we're not allowed to see them? Similarly, how can we tell if our public employees are doing their jobs properly if we can't read what they're supposed to do? This is particularly important with employees whose job involves interaction with the public.

Until we discovered that this manual was published, it was very difficult to tell if TSA staff, when searching us and our belongings, were performing the procedures we hired them to follow, or making it up as they go and lying to us about TSA policy.

Those are harsh words, but there are plenty of us who agree with you.

Thanks for joining the discussion. I look forward to your replies to my questions.