The TSA is looking for people smuggling cash IN ADDITION to terrorism. They're trying to become a revenue stream for Treasury to justify more powers, I guess.

This conflating of goals will make TSA a giant pain to travelers and ultimately ineffective in stopping any terrorism.

TSA should be purely 100% about safety, NOT "crime" and smuggling: that's customs and police.

Clearly we do.

I am NOT OK with this as a standard operating procedure and I would NOT be OK with this happening to any woman in my family.

Then you're obviously anxious to have it done to you when you are on the way to your job...right?

The number of postings in this thread over that last few days by one particular TSO/BDO is suggestive of his being extremely defensive about the subject of this thread and is indicative of his most likely feeling victimized.

Which tells me that they know they're in the wrong, but choose to continue anyway...

Correct.

Female screeners find having to grope passengers more distasteful than their male counterparts, and the TSA is now faced with the problem of hiring and retaining enough females to do same-sex patdowns. This brings us to situations where female PAX are told to submit to a grope by a male screener because "it would be a while" before a female was available.

I'm not debating that. Just asking you not to bring it up any more. We all get the picture that your particular airport is above average in respect for the traveler. Noted. It's received sufficient air-time. There's no evidence I know of to the contrary.

I'm suggesting we all just accept that and move on to talk about the thousands of other TSOs who don't have the benefit of working there, rather than falling back on the line "well, no one complained to me this week!"

The requirement for female screeners will only grow as it appears that the TSA thinks that the female dress and form will require closer scrutiny.

What do you mean "not as complete as it could have been"? Either the images show genitalia or they don't. There is no in between.

How many parents do you think would be perfectly okay with a government actor, a stranger or a teacher handing out scans that show genitals to preschoolers?

But even if Bob was not given the full set of images, we all now know his statement was false. So, why don't you direct me to his mea culpa and his admission that he was given incomplete information?

When the Negrin incident happened, all Bob did was write this blog post about how the TSA is opposed to workplace violence, as though they were taking some sort of courageous stand. (For the record, I am opposed to beating up little old ladies and snatching their purses!)

Speaking of Negrin, I never said that Negrin was not responsible for his actions. I mentioned the issue regarding that fateful day at MIA as proof positive that the claim the WBI scans were ready for the cover of Reader's Digest and to be handed out at preschools was garbage, so I am unsure why you felt the need to tell me about the procedures Negrin should have followed if he had concerns about being mistreated in the workplace.

We are talking apples and oranges Irish. Medical care is a completely different system than conducting security screening to find prohibited items. I will give you the ethical quandry and the fact that from a *security* point of view, it is not an optimum situation, but if you are doing what you are supposed to there should be no difference in screening a family member and a stranger.

Since I can't discuss SOP, I will refer you to a previous thread here for a discussion on patdowns for better information.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trave...tsa-agent.html

Ahh, the Nature article, please read my tagline.

Actually, I have no problem with my family members being screened according to SOP, because that is neither of your comments.

TSA does not actively seek cash, we have protocols in place if large amounts are discovered currently the following link is the best to explain it for the public:
Q. Will I be delayed during screening if I am carrying large amounts of cash?
A. TSA does not restrict passengers from carrying cash through our security checkpoints. However, when TSA discovers a passenger carrying a sum of cash that appears to be in excess of $10,000 and the passenger is traveling to a location outside of the United States, TSA may notify U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to ensure compliance with international currency-reporting requirements. Also, TSA may notify law enforcement officers if cash is discovered during the security screening process that appears to be related to criminal activity based on factors such as the quantity, packaging, circumstances of discovery, or the method by which it is carried.

Found here :http://www.tsa.gov/travelers/custome...rial_1029.shtm


Gotcha.

Erm..... Not sure what to make of this comment. :confused:

Wow, free psychoanalysis! Who knew you guys were setting up shop! :rolleyes:

I have also worked at PHX and LAX (admittedly not as long as here), and never saw anything like what is being described in many of the posts here. I did see yelling at the WTMD or by the Queue (near the front of the xray intake) position, but I can honestly say that was due to noise level (it was much louder there than at the smaller airports), that being said, it was followed with a thank you or please a majority of the time. I have also not seen the outright rudeness a lot of folks detail here - don't get me wrong, I am not saying that it hasn't happened or doesn't exist, just that I haven't seen it. I have also seen TSOs in the International terminal at LAX (Tom Bradley) go out of their way to help folks beyond the basics even with a ton of barriers (cultural, language, etc). There is another side to the majority of TSOs that doesn't get much airtime around here, that is one of the things I am posting here for as well as communication. For all the bad things you hear, there are tons of good things as well.

At least you acknowledge that things CAN happen as reported here by some; they DO in fact happen as reported here by some. The 'everybody lies' line is one reason why many readers here feel that there cannot be dialogue with TSA and their customers. If they cannot acknowledge that these problems exist, they cannot be resolved.

But I do still take exception with you putting the onus on the passenger to train and to educate the TSO through escalation. For many people that simply isn't possible, but more importantly, it should not be the role of the passenger to train TSOs in the TSA rules. It is the role of supervisors and managers to do that, and many of us here feel that is not done well at all. To turn it back to us and to say that we need to continue to complain and to speak up avoids the issue, which is the lack of oversight and the lack of leadership.

Hi GBoro TSO:

What's interesting is that Customs doesn't really have the pull to operate within the borders and for people flying OUT. The TSA does.

Think about it that way... also, when the TSA hammered Atlanta with the VIPR and Florida with the bus searches, it WAS for drugs and smuggled cash hordes. Atlanta is a major, major drug distribution hub.

And so, yes, there is a revenue/confiscatory component. This mission creep can make it hard to focus on the terrorism, especially when confiscation is SOO lucrative :)

Many of us would argue with the classification of "majority"... I've sampled almost 30 airports in the past few years, many of them 10+ times...

At least personally, I would classify the majority of TSOs as thoroughly ambivalent. It's rare to get any help on any significant level. More often I have to explain the screening process to infrequent travelers or wait while a TSO adjusts what's on the x-ray belt without taking 5 seconds to explain what the traveler did "wrong".

My most frequent reaction is to be surprised that someone who shows so little interest in his/her job can still catch anything on an x-ray display.

The next largest group would be TSOs doing nothing. Seems like most of the time I'm at the checkpoint, there's 2 or 3 employees off to the side chatting and laughing with each other.

Also fairly frequent are the inquisitive-bordering-on-nosy folks... I've noticed many non-BDO TSA employees who have no problem asking me why I'm traveling, what I was doing in their city, etc. If I had the sense I could trust anyone at TSA, I wouldn't mind the friendly conversation. I'm sure the TDC is a boring role. But these days I find myself giving short answers and moving along.

Wayyyyy down at the bottom are the rare times I see any TSO do anything helpful for a traveler. (Hard to even think of a specific example right now... One time I saw a supervisor handing out plastic baggies instead of yelling at travelers for not having them in advance. Does that count?)

One day I hope to be able to travel from GSO and see what it's supposed to be like.

Don your hip waders, all. The irony levels are rising again.