Passengers complain about rude treatment, inflexible rules, long lines and seemingly illogical and inconsistent policies. One thing they don't tend to take issue with, however, is the uniforms. They don't say things like, "Please make the screeners look more like real police."But that is exactly what the TSA is doing, outfitting frontline employees with new gold badges and royal-blue shirts as part of a broader effort to improve their image and make people, to put it bluntly, hate them less.
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The move has some scientific evidence to back it. Psychologists who have researched the effects of official-looking uniforms and badges find that they do indeed tend to make people more compliant. "Our research shows that people respect individuals who wear uniforms, and do what they say," says Brad J. Bushman, a professor who studies aggression at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan.
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By the end of the year [2008], all 43,000 screeners should have the new uniforms, which cost a total of $12 million.
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So far, the biggest complaint about the new uniforms has come from real police officers, who fear that giving TSA screeners badges might confuse the public into thinking the airport personnel are police officers. A former Kansas City International Airport police officer remembers pulling over a TSA screener for speeding on airport property. The screener tried to talk his way out of the ticket by showing the officer a cloth TSA badge, which he kept in his wallet. "They'd start the whole brotherhood thing, thin blue line, and all of that. I'm like, 'You got two weeks of training. I went to 22 weeks of the police academy. Sign here.'"

Blackburn said TSA had spent more than $1 million in taxpayer money on badges alone since 2009. Worse, she said, evidence is mounting that TSA screeners often abuse the impression that they are officers with authority, and noted some cases of rape and other abuse of passengers that has led to dozens of arrests."These are reasons enough we need to take them out of their uniforms, disallow the uniforms and put them back to their job title of airport security screener," Blackburn said in Thursday debate.

She added that the American Alliance of Airport Police Officers favors her amendment and are "tired of the TSA's mission creep."

The Transportation Security Administration agreed on a deal last month [2013] worth as much as $50 million to buy new uniforms for rank-and-file agents, despite concerns that imminent budget cuts would result in furloughs and 90-minute flight delays.
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Blackburn also is taking issue with a union-negotiated deal in which TSA security officers get a higher uniform allowance than combat Marine lieutenants, who receive a one-time allowance of $400.