Originally Posted by
exerda
But we have people throughout the administration already trumpeting that same fact all the time, and from reactions to recent tragedies where so many people admit to first thinking an act of terrorism had occurred, I'd be pretty sure the airlines wouldn't be scaring off pax by saying they'd caught potential terrorists. I could be wrong, but that's my thought, anyway.
I can see both sides to this -- even within different branches of DHS itself -- if Kippie elaborated on his claim of:
We do not publicize how often the no-fly system stops people you would not want on your flight. Several times a week would low-ball it.
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The TSA has the toughest spin job. They have to balance maintaining a level of fear in the public (in order to do what bureaucracies do best -- perpetuate themselves) with keeping the airlines as solvent as possible. Maintenance of the fear level goes a long way to justifying their budget, tactics, and activities such as the FAMs. They don't ever have to admit they caught a real terrorist in order to keep the fear level up. "Close calls" or "A lot" are good enough. Announcing that you caught "bad guys" such as casual pot smokers, illegal immigrants, deadbeat dads helps in the "feel good" department and helps social engineer the public into compliance with your tactics. Leaving out the fact that the murderer the SPOT team caught had never been charged 10 years ago is the classic deception art of "ommission" -- leaving out key facts in order to tell a different story.
On the other hand, being more specific would lend credibility of the no-fly list, which is sorely in need of credibility. It would make sense that they would announce specifics to counter the Edward Kennedys, David Nelsons, and Cat Stevens -- assuming there are any.
In areas of DHS responsibility outside airports, they can be much more specific because there isn't a direct affect on a nationally-important industry. As a result, they fear level can be set higher than at airports. For example, we must have killed the "#2 in Al Qaeda" at least 7 or 8 times, and, we keep detecting all these "sleeper cells."