A comment another poster made on another thread made me think. The comment was about privatizing TSA, turning it over to Blackwater (Xe) or Halliburton.

I'm reluctant to sound like a conspiracy nut, but still...the scanners are ramping up. Mysteriously the underpants bomber makes it on the plane to the US - even though his father had alerted authorities multiple times and it has never been properly explained what went on in Amsterdam that enabled him to board the plane. However, the timing is great for ramping up public fear before the scanners get deployed.

Now here we are...at risk for almost a year for another underpants bomber attack. Suddenly we unveil not only the scanners but also an intrusive new frisk. That frisk could have been introduced almost a year ago, in conjunction with any WTMD alarm, but it wasn't. Presumably we were at a higher level of risk for almost a year, but TSA did nothing to ramp up security - until now, coincidentally the busiest travel period of the year. There's an outcry. Congress jumps on board (they can pontificate all they want, but how many of them are actually introducing legislation? And of the relatively few doing more than talk, how many will actually follow through?)

Pistole is not only taking a hard line, he's taking an antagonistically hard line - almost guaranteed to push people to consider the privatization of security. De-federalize the program and I would expect to see cost shifting - specifically, line workers getting lower pay and benefits while the private corporation that provides the service rakes in the money.

It also primes the public to start pushing for profiling, under the assumption, of course, that profiling is fine as long as you aren't a member of the group that gets profiled. Sort of like assuming that scanning is fine and opt-outs deserve what they get (even if many of those opt-outs are temporary or permanent involuntary medical opt-outs). I think Nappy's comments about possible accommodation for Muslim women did not mean she seriously considered such accommodation - I think her comments were designed to inflame sentiment and get people even more on board with the idea of profiling, as long as it's 'them' and not 'me' being profiled. (Really, we should include white guys of a certain profile, think of Tim McVeigh and Ted Kaczynski).

None of this has anything to do with genuine airline safety or preservation of rights. If we head in the direction I think we are being led, I think we see further erosion of rights. There is absolutely no reason to think that a private corporation (Blackwater/Xe or Halliburton) will be any more willing to address the issue of rogue or problem employees. There's no reason to think privatizing will result in more transparency or consistency, in fact, quite the opposite. It will give the government a level of plausible deniability, just like it did in Iraq when Blackwater ran amok.