Originally Posted by
RichardKenner
I don't agree with that. Like any workforce, I believe most TSOs do their job properly and my experience at checkpoints is consistent with that. Unfortunately, in a workforce as large as that of the TSA, even a minority acting improperly is enough to cause a very large problem.
This is fascinating. Two personal experiences, with two vastly different perceptions. How can we resolve the difference? By measurement?
What do we measure against -- Is "properly" related to the SOP that we are not allowed to see or know anything about, or is it related to our own comfort zone, or something else?
If "properly" is related to the SOP, we might gain insight by looking into OIG or GAO reports of the TSO's SOP implementation -- but no such audits are available to us.
All we have are anecdotes. From those anecdotes, I submit that it's simply not possible to say whether the majority or minority of TSOs are acting improperly.
So, we know from anecdotes that experiences vastly differ. That adds a great deal of uncertainty into any encounter with the TSA.
If we have a bad encounter, we know that we have no effective recourse -- no amount of complaining to TSA or anyone else will provide any level of justice. The cards are stacked against us.
All we can do is (1) work to change the rules, (2) seek to game any encounter with the TSA and (3) avoid TSA all we can.
In the above environment (high degree of uncertainty plus no recourse), we certainly can't trust the TSA.