FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - 2012 Survey: How Effective is the Transportation Security Administration?

Aug 15, 2012, 11:55 am

#53

zombietooth

Join Date: Oct 2009

Programs: UA 1K, Hilton ♦ , Hyatt Carbonado, Wyndham ♦, Marriott PE, "Stinking Bum" elsewhere.

Posts: 4,998

Quote:

Originally Posted by T8191

So good he had to say it twice …

But but but … "This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. No cleanup reason has been specified. Please help improve this article if you can. (January 2009)". Not perhaps the greatest reference for the case.

There is little doubt in my mind that terrorism, in whatever form you choose to define it, has had a fiscal impact across the World. Nor will I deny that some of the dancing around at Airports and Borders that we are ALL subjected to has a questionable impact.

Nevertheless, I have no fear of flying: I know that "things are being done" here, there and everywhere. Whether TSA is a major contributor to that safe feeling, I am not qualified to quantify. Criticising TSA may, indeed, become an Olympic Sport in the future, given the fixation so many US Citizens seem to have with it … perhaps with Baseball, to appease the Media companies?

Personal Note: We flew UK>USA on 24 Sep 01. 9/24, if you must. The BA 744 to IAD was less than half-full, and for the next few weeks around DC people were amazed that we had risked flying to the US at all. How sad.

Suggestion: Grow balls: it's infinitely better than Blogging or writing to your Congressman. Then you just get on with life. It's not that difficult, even for this Senior Citizen. But then the UK doesn't have a written Constitution, giving me 38,284 things to complain about … I just get on with life, or at least what little remains to me.

I agree with you about growing balls. The risk of dying in a terrorist attack is so remotely low that surrendering freedoms for the infinitesimal increase in security achieved by these measures is incredibly foolish. I personally have been the victim of TSA malfeasance--primarily theft, but also including purposeful destruction of my property. On that occasion, I had gathered photographic evidence of damage, names and contact info of witnesses, details of the event, etc. and was ready to file a complaint when the station chief of US Air at the airport I was at approached me and took me aside to speak off the record. He told me that if I was a very frequent flyer, that my complaint would likely cause me more headache than it was worth because he had personal knowledge of flyers being "blacklisted" for filing legitimate complaints against the TSA. After carefully considering his words, I delayed my filing to sleep on what he had said. The next day, I consulted a friend of mine who was very well placed in ICE (Homeland Security) and asked him if he had heard about this happening. What he told me confirmed the fears of the US Air station chief that I had talked to. Since my livelihood is entirely dependent on my ability to travel freely, I wisely chose not to file my claim. In effect, I was "economically terrorized" by the TSA with no recourse.

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