Originally Posted by N642KM

Wow - I think most of the people posting to this forum have their tinfoil hats on too tight! I've been reading through the posts here on FT and they range from intentionally making TSOs late for work by blocking train doors to suggesting TSOs and their families should be killed. Are you people really that angry because you have to take your shoes off or might have to be subject to a pat-down? Seriously? I can understand not agreeing with TSA policies, but to single out a person just because he or she works for the TSA, particularly if that person has no role in the policy making, is ignorant. The discriminatory rantings of these misguided people make the few of you with legitimate concerns and ideas look bad, just as a few bad TSOs actions or attitudes seem to draw that kind of reaction upon all of TSA.

I love how you refer to security pat-downs as "groping" and the body scanners as "porno scanners," implying that there is some sexual element to it all. I know for some of you conspiracy theory dorks it's as close as you get to sex with another person, but it is NOT sex. I've seen the American traveling public, and the very idea that you believe TSOs are fighting over who gets to touch your pale, gelatinous bodies is laughable - you flatter yourselves way too much. They're doing a job - plain and simple. If you find a security pat-down "perverted" or "sexual," that says more about YOUR psyche and disposition than it does about the TSO's.

It suits your cause to portray TSO's as uneducated perverts, but It has been stated several times about the large number of prior military and law enforcement personnel who make up the TSO population - The same proud people you depend on to protect and defended the rights you claim are being violated - just because you have to take off your shoes. Not understanding the reasoning behind a security procedure that you encounter doesn't make the person doing the procedure the uneducated one.

Some of you suggest the TSA should profile and only screen people who look middle eastern - probably some of the same people complaining on other forums about DHS and Arizona's profiling Latinos for border security and legal alien status. Funny how racial profiling is suddenly a viable option, just because you are now being inconvenienced by global security measures that screen everyone. Security policies stem from actionable intelligence - what our enemies have done in the past and what we find they are planning to do. Ask anyone who has been in Iraq about how safe it is to let an old lady or woman carrying what looks like a baby close to a checkpoint, or how safe it is to drive a vehicle by a dead dog on the side of the road. These are the same people who are watching and looking for ways to exploit holes in our air security. If all the old ladies are let through with no screening that is a hole that can be exploited. Same for kids, nuns or fat white guys in business suits.

Thanks to all the levels of security - yes, even TSA, the horrors of what happened on 9-11 is far from our short memories because it has not happened again. We have put it out of our minds and forgot how we all felt that day - and how we felt on our first flight after. Nothing has changed. Our enemies are watching and waiting for us to drop our guard - and complaining about the inconveniences of security is the first step. I wonder what the passengers on the 3 downed flights on 9-11 would say about the inconveniences of security?