For the love of ......

First of all the ONLY THING THE CBP GLOBAL ENTRY CARD gives you is the abilbilty to access the Nexus and Sentri driving lanes when returning from Canada or Mexico. Those are programs that are around 20 years old each and require the RFID card to activate them. They are NOT for the TSA precheck program and only serve as a reminder of what your Pass ID number is.

Next nobody seems to understand who CBP and TSA are and what their relationship is.

CBP stands for US Customs and Border Protection. Those are the people that wear guns and actually have the authority to make arrests on the border. They are the ones that perform inspections of returning passengers from other countries. They have nothing to do with airplane security.

The TSA, Transportation Security Administration, are the people that work the security checkpoints. The two are NOT the same agency. The TSA does not have nearly the same authority that CBP does. The TSA has no authority to make an arrest. That's why you always see an airport cop having to respond to a situation at one of the checkpoints, but they can detain you until someone else arrives. They also have no authority to carry a firearm either. Again why there is an airport cop.

Except for being in the same Department they have nothing else in common. It's like saying the Army is the same as the Air Force because they are all in the Department of Defense. The US Coast Guard is part of Homeland Security, do you think they are also TSA agents?

Now that we've hopefully finally gotten that cleared up let's try to move on.

Take a little time and effort to actually read the material. Go to the following:

www.globalentry.gov to learn about the US Customs program Global Entry which is for processing through immigration and customs procedures faster when returning to the United States from another country.

www.tsa.gov and click on the heading for precheck to learn about how to effectively use the TSA precheck program to get through airport security easier.

And if we read it we would notice the paragraph that said:

"TSA will always incorporate random and unpredictable security measures throughout the airport and no individual will be guaranteed expedited screening."

If someone was never on any agency's "radar" but had bad thoughts, made it through the background check and then was never stopped by TSA they would try to sneak something like a gun onto an airplane. But if you incorporate random checks and that person never knows when they are going to get stopped then they are less likely to try anything. Therefore you are safer. Stop thinking about just yourself and focus on the bigger picture, huh? Then maybe you would all actually understand things.

The website even has a video to show you how to do it and makes it all very clear.

And again, Global Entry is not the same as TSA Precheck. Global Entry is only to get you into the USA faster. You have to put your Pass ID into the reservation so that the TSA computer system can check you've had a background completed. Otherwise how would the TSA even know that you were investigated?