In response to the original question, Does the upper management of the DHS & TSA lurk on FT?, I doubt it. Top management doesn't really focus on customer impact. They do customer surveys, collect complaints, and track and report results to DHS, the White House, and Congress, but aren't about to make any real changes based on the results. Congress created TSA, and it's pretty much operating as intended. We may think that it's silly (and I do, especially compared to all of the other countries of the world, who somehow get by without forcing people to take their shoes off and computers out of the bag and who somehow allow metal butter knives to be used in meal service), but the way that TSA works is basically the result of our democratic system in the U.S.; the "market" demanded it after 09/11, and most people (maybe not the super-frequent travelers represented here) feel more secure with TSA there and gladly accept the way that it does business.

Plus, we may be a bit melodramatic and self-important here. I am as big a fan of FT as the next guy, but I am not sure that a handful of people posting sometimes interesting, often trite and overly florid rhetoric, anecdotes, and personal opinions would be of great value to the Secretary of DHS or Assistant Secretary in charge of TSA, who (presumably) have more important things they should be doing. I have seen some decent points here, but very little that is particularly novel or that these folks haven't heard a million times before. Let's not overestimate the poignance of the body of material on this site.