Originally Posted by Carl Johnson

"Pre-Check" has not "failed to keep its promise". It is the only thing the TSA has done that hasn't been a total disgrace. I was dubious from the beginning up until 8 or 9 months ago, because I saw it as just a way to create a class of Übermenschen and give them different experience than everybody else, thereby silencing a group most likely to speak up against the TSA's abuses. That might have been the motivation when it was introduced, but now they're opening it up to more and more people and that's great.

There never was any promise to create a special group and give them a 30-second screening experience by vastly overallocating government resources to them. The expressed rationale was to create a risk-based screening process. All passengers are low-risk, so naturally any truly risk-based aviation screening process is going to provide the "low-risk" experience to almost all passengers, with maybe a few random secondary checks.

There never was and cannot be any sort of promise to guarantee expedited screening to somebody. That creates a gaping hole in security. I got a random secondary going into Canada on NEXUS one time. If not for things like that, there would be a constant stream of cash in the northbound NEXUS lane and weed in the southbound NEXUS lane. The fact that TSA does nothing to provide aviation security is a separate issue from "Pre-check."

The complaint that it isn't at all airports isn't a violation of any promise, that's like complaining that there's not an In-N-Out near you. People who want to pay to sign up can look at the list first and don't sign up until their airport shows up on the list. And more and more airports are getting added.

The complaint that they are adding more and more people isn't a violation of any promise - by the time they started up the TSA-only program, that was well-known. People who are in NEXUS and GE don't stop getting NEXUS and GE; they just have to share their "special" lane that they got as an added extra benefit.

The complaint that newbs don't know what they're doing is no longer valid. The clerks have quit screaming about it, and are using their indoor voices to explain to people what to do, and everybody knows the drill by the time they get to the X-ray.

The TSA is a disgraceful agency, but adding more people to "Pre-check" isn't what makes it disgraceful. If they have "Pre-check" for everybody, stop the war on water, fire all the clerks who are not needed, and institute physical fitness standards for clerks, the screening process will be basically all right.

The article has a strong flavor of "Den Deutschen, Deutschland!"