Good lord, yet another "professional journalist" who simply doesn't get it - while TSA's search methodology is, IMHO, a blatant violaiton of the 4th and 5th Amendments, their staffing and budget are bloated beyond all reason and sanity, their hiring practices are straight out of Star Trek: Generations ("You and you, you've just become nurses!"), and their training is significantly inferior to that of your average street gang or meth distribution ring... NONE of that is why Paul Ciancia went on a murderous rampage at LAX.
Paul Ciancia went on a murderous rampage at LAX because he's mentally unbalanced. That's all, nothing else. Was Adam Lanza's murderous rampage caused by the implementation of the Core Curriculum? Nope, he was insane. Was Aaron Alexis' murderous rampage caused by failure of the VA to properly care for thousands of wounded or traumatized vets? Nope, he was insane.
One should never confuse a behavior's trigger with the behavior's underlying cause. When a room is filled with explosive vapors, any spark or flame can trigger an explosion, but the spark or flame is not the cause of the explosion - the vapors are. Likewise, when someone suffers from a mental illness that predisposes them to violence (either against others or against themselves), almost anything can trigger that violence, but the trigger is not the cause - the mental illness is the cause.
Each of these people chose a particular target for their violence, but their choice of targets should never be confused with the root cause of the violence, which was mental illness.
Many people have siezed upon Ciancia's rampage as a flag under which to rally: "See?! See what TSA drives people to?! It's all their fault!" But that's as disingenuous as TSA was when they said that the NoS units were "incapable" of storing or transmitting images.
The entire 65,000 person organization and its $8 billion pot-o-gold exists because of one thing - IRRATIONAL FEAR. We cannot fight such fear by displacing it onto something else; we must fight it by using reasoned, rational arguments, and by debunking the many myths, lies, and urban legends that feed the fear. Fear of a repeat of the LAX shooting should never be used as an argument against TSA policies, any more than fear of a repeat of 9/11 should be used as an argument in favor of those policies. Neither argument holds water, because they are both based on irrational fear of the repeat of a 1 in 7-billion event.
I prefer to base my arguments against TSA policies strictly on facts, law, and the basic rights and freedoms to which every human being is entitled from birth.