This is a brand new idea. So new that it is still in its testing stages at a few airports. All I know is that the principle is to focus the scrutiny on those who fall in a high risk or unknown category and lessen the scrutiny on those who pose a low risk. Good idea long overdue, if you ask me.

Your guess is as good as mine as far as the rest of it goes.

I didn't recall, but thanks for confirming. :)

While risk based makes sense, this is not how you do it. Can I register for the program that will get me listed so no cop thinks I am a drug dealer or a drunk driver, or maybe that I can handle speeds in excess of 100 while the speed limit is 55? The problem with the TSA process is that everyone is considered guilty until proven innocent - a violation of the founding principals of our society.

Just because my mode of transport is airplane does not mean I am trying to do damage. I should not be treated as such and need to prove it in advance. Any program like this will eventually have a case where the person that did the crime had been approved since they are not constantly updating the profile of the list of INNOCENT people. And again, I should not have to prove my innocents in the first place unless their is evidence I might be doing something.

Just wait till some screwball does attempt damage by those other modes. Then everybody will have to prove they are safe beforehand. It is the philosophy. It is the idea that safety depends upon knowing everyone's intentions. Odd that we're nearly at ten years since a bomb took a plane down in America, yet the "professionals" still claim the safety measures are not enough. I still think our doors are way too wide open to the world. And not just here. We've become very rigid in thinking the more travel the better. Where is the evidence that the vast increase in travel has led to more peace in the world? I watch Al Jazeera and Deutsche Welle every day, and it becomes tiresome how much of the world is a wildfire of human violence. People may like people, but peoples definitely do not like other peoples. Even coming to America has not made Islamists more peaceful. Look at that guy in Yemen who preens himself as he incites more killing?

Actually, this is so new and still being developed, why don't we wait until we know how it works. Right now all of us are guessing, including me ;) The only fact we really know is it is coming.

Well, that, and like everything else TSA implements it will be an unmitigated disaster of epic proportions. We do know that from previous experience with most all things TSA.

Oh, I have NO doubt that from the perspective of those here it will be a disaster. From the perspective of most here, everything TSA does will be a disaster. When many have taken the position that the only thing they want from TSA is for TSA to be disbanded, then they have positioned themselves into never admitting TSA is successful at doing anything.

As example, note how quickly the thread concerning the C4 explosive found in someones checked baggage quickly faded, how so few people commented in there, and those that did tried to dismiss it (despite the fact that this was a CLEAR success for TSA). Why, the argument shifted from "you are not trying to find terrorist (BDO program taking those hits) you are looking for WEI, to you ARE trying to find terrorist, so finding WEI is not good enough".

So, no, I am sure that no matter how many people sign up for the trusted Traveler program, and how the general public perceives the new screening to come out shortly, from those on this site it will be a failure. Comments of failure to be noted and ignored ;)

Which is, of course, TSA SOP.

Oh, brother. :rolleyes:

If you choose to ignore dissenting voice, then you really have no clue what's going on around you. That's too bad.

To date we have been foisted with whole body imaging scanners that, despite what TSA says, have a 100% failure rate at detecting guns, a 60% failure rate at detecting panty bombs, and are a likely source of increased cancer rates amongst TSA employees.

Yup, sounds like a resounding success to me!

Whether or not TSA is disbanded is irrelevant. If we're going to have security at airports, can we please, for the love of all that's holy, have security at airports?

SATTSO, if the program will not be transparent (e.g. risk will not be defined, the measurement of risk will not be disclosed, and the risk elements will not be disclosed), how will anyone, including you, know whether it works?

Your admonition to wait until the program is developed isn't worth much if knowledge of whether it works is not available for inspection. Moreover, refusing to make that information available will necessarily keep the TSA from effectively defending it, which could well lead to the failure of an otherwise worthy program.

TSA may well simply trumpet "it works", but TSA has shown themselves in the NoS fiasco to not be credible. I think that's the biggest problem TSA faces with this program, and I don't see TSA addressing it. If TSA doesn't address it well, I see no reason to follow your admonition.

Yeh, I thoroughly expect the top managers at TSA to label everything they implement as "success". But it is certainly not necessary to make that the final word. Things come out over time, and if they contradict the hierarchy's Pollyanna perspective, then that is what places like this are for, for a necessary reality check.

I don't agree. I think many of us sincerely hope it will be a success and that it works and is properly respectful of our Constitutional rights not to have our n*ts, butts, and b**bs fondled or be subject to strip searches. AND that the other changes will ALSO be successful FROM OUR (not TSA's) perspective.

What you are hearing is a legitimate FEAR, given TSA's track record, that TSA will do something that yields consequences as bad as those resulting from the procedures starting up in October 2010. .

If the TSA can use a reasonable replacement for WTMD that is not a strip search (perhaps ATR), yields RARE false positives (or if not rare, results in non-invasive procedures, not b*ll, butt, and b**b fonding like they do now) that would be a success, IMO.

The invasive procedures in the private hut need to stop immediately. These must only be done only from probable cause, possibly even from reasonable cause. The current high false positive rates for ATR reported out of Germany do not come close to even reasonable cause. An ETD swab that is nearly 100% false positives also does not constitute reasonable cause.

Probably very few of us give a rat's *ss about TSA one way or another. Someone has to do security. We do care A LOT that this agency seems bent on violating norms of human conduct, norms recognized by LAW and basic human decency: not strip searching, not performing degrading body searches and invasions of private and sexual areas with NO CAUSE to speak of.

TSA, change your D*MNED behavior, and we will change our opinion of you. It really is that simple. Don't grope my wife's genitals and then expect me to have any feelings toward you other than loathing and hatred. Act like an enemy to us, and you become an enemy to us. How else do you expect us to respond to your degradation of us?

Only thing that works for me is more results from vastly reduced expenditure of funds. One reason we have the debt crisis is the spendthrift way that the government responded to the attack. I seem to recall something about a "trifecta" which meant deficit spending without any caution or judgment. The SOP of TSA is firmly entrenched in that perspective. No need for accountability, no need to consider the burden on tax payers. Totally consistent with the whole mentality of the years since 2001. Now they want to gore the bystanders for those mistakes. That's why we can't stand by and let TSA go on with "business as usual". Business like that has been a bloodletting and weakening of the country.

This is not a brand new idea. This is an old idea being reincarnated.

All this implementation of that old idea will do is provide yet another opportunity of showing the same old, same old. From the TSA no less.

Maybe it is the skeptic in me but I find it hard to believe that TSA would spend all the money on WBI machines and the ATR software upgrades to try and send less people through them.

It seems they try and cram as many passengers through those as possible and will say/do anything they can to that end.

If the trusted traveler program guarantees that I won't be selected for WBI as a primary/random screening then I will hail it as a great success. However, I don't see the point in it if all I get to do is keep my shoes on as I am directed towards another WBI machine opt out freedom grope.