The sooner the program ends, the better.

TSA won't give it up voluntarily.

The only thing the TSA voluntarily gives up is responsibility. Not authority, whether real, usurped, or implied.

This is why they want to be allowed to wave their magic paper over your drinks, chatting you down, and rummaging through your carry-on at the gate while denying any responsibility whatsoever for watching the exit lanes.

You could start your own forum.

.....

The TSA has wasted $7.91 billion in 2013.

I'm not an American citizen but there are certainly aspects of the country that are broken-this just being one of them.

I'm sure they gave it a name like "enhanced interrogation."

Perhaps more importantly this is great program for the TSA - further enabling chats about Friday evening plans, ogling from behind glass panels at the elevated desks, quietly sauntering between security lanes looking concerned. It might just help them elevate their non productive work hours to paid hours ratio to amongst the top tier of government organizations. If they can aggressively expand this I suspect the anti-graft department in Zimbabwe will have to step up its game to retain top spot.

The fact is that the GAO works for Congress. They take direction from committees and conduct the audits that committees direct. The reports are delivered to the committee. All it takes is for Congress to agree with the findings and recommendations of the GAO SPOTNik audit and defund the program.

Of course, this will never happen. We and our elected representatives have become afraid of our own shadows and consider young brown men (or anyone who even looks like one) at or near an airport to be a bigger threat to the nation's survival than 5000+ Russian nuclear missiles controlled by a Communist regime during the Cold War.

Police agencies at all levels love the SPOTNik program because they can arrest and convict all sorts of people with evidence obtained from TSA interrogations and "administrative" searches that would be highly illegal for any real cop to perform without consent pretty much anywhere.

Shame on us for allowing it to happen.

This administration could care less about contempt of congress because they hold the congress in contempt. Good luck getting a better TSA.

Indisputable.

The question is, "Who does the TSA really work for?" since they do not take direction as an agency from Congress, the American people, or apparently even the Executive branch.

It's possible (probable) that the Executive branch's "real" orders are at odd with their public statements about "reining in" the TSA's overreaches.

CNN Article

Longer lines at airport checkpoints would result from eliminating a nearly $1 billion Behavior Detection Officers program, the head of the Transportation Security Administration told a congressional committee Thursday.

The Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques, or SPOT, program trains officers to identify terrorists before they act by looking for passengers showing signs of stress, fear or deception.

The Government Accountability Office investigated and said in a report this week there was no proof it works, and urged Congress to cut funding for it.

Transportation Security Administration administrator John Pistole defended the program as an essential component of a web of protections.

"If we remove one whole layer of security, that being BDOs, who again are the least invasive and are looking for intent rather than items then that gives us an exposure to potential terrorists that we don't currently have," he said.

What a surprise; that scumbag wants to keep the money coming in for "security" voodoo. What's even more surprising is that Pissant actually showed up for the hearing. Maybe a Congresscritter or two suggested he'd get a subpoena attached to his butt with a staplegun if he skipped this one?

Love the comments in this article too.

I was also surprised that he showed up (for a change) but not at all by what he said. Next thing he'll do is order 60,000 magic rocks that keep terrorists away. Gotta love those layers, ya know?

Bruce

Pistole's threat: