Originally Posted by
brandsberg
The Europeans are all laughing that we spend so much time and money on grandma and little kids instead of looking more closely at those who might be the real risks.
Who are the "those who might be the real risks"? The TSA has no more or less of a clue than their European equivalents. The difference is that the TSA has way more a dog and pony show than (most) European airports, even as the TSA is involved in some ways at some European airports.
At US airports, the chances of even those "scary" "foreign" "men" being "real risks" to my flights is just about the same as the Scandinavian grandmothers and Chilean toddler-age relatives being "real risks" to my flights.
Originally Posted by brandsberg
In Europe I barely get a glance but here at podunk airports they take apart all my luggage. We checked in at a small airport last summer and missed out flight even though we checked in the required hour ahead of time. The line was backed up all the way down the airport and they took apart ALL our bags even though my husband works in a job that requires a clearance.
As a result we missed our connecting flight overseas and had to pay a change fee.
Background checks and clearances are meaningless. We just had to can a NSC employee despite multiple background checks and very high level security clearances and the flexibility to take whatever national security careerist wonk job he wanted as a member of White House staff, at State or DOD. So much for those FBI and USIS checks and the clearances granted/retained after the checking.
The TSA doesn't know how to reliably interdict contraband WEIs despite its huge budget -- in large part that is because the TSA is way too obsessed with identity checks, boarding pass checks, background checks and "profiling" of passengers in the main.
The TSA should never have been allowed to try to do anything more than the bare minimum to reliably interdict contraband WEIs. Instead we have a TSA that is doing too much and unable to do anything very well beside maintaining a bloated budget.