FLgrr

They are not lying. They are protecting us. If they keep changing the rules and knowledge to keep the bad guys from finding out the process and the loop holes. If the TSA employee does not know the rules and process, the bad guys cant figure it out either. Just remember, you are a criminal for wanting or needing to fly and dont ask questions. Logic is not part of the program!

n4zhg

1) FBI
2) Police
3) Sheriff Department
4) Customers and Immigration
5) Executive Security
...
97)Federal Protective Service
98)Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives
99) TSA

(Fixed it for ya)

WillCAD

I'm not missing that aspect.

Purporting to know something that you don't know is not the same thing as being under a mistaken impression. It's a lie.

He didn't know what a Nexus card is. If he didn't know what a Nexus card is, then by definition he also doesn't know whether it's an approved, or "valid" as he called it, ID. If he had known what it was, he would also have known that it's an approved ID.

If he doesn't know what an ID is, he's supposed to check it in the book to see if it's approved.

Nexus cards are IDs issued by the governments of the US and Canada, are they not? This makes them valid, government-issued IDs, and they are on the list of IDs acceptable at TSA checkpoints for domestic travel, so he couldn't reject it out of hand as he would reject a privately-issued ID such as those I have from my credit union or the private firm which employs me. So he wasn't under a mistaken impression that it couldn't be used because it's not a government-issued ID.

I can accept that he may not have known what a Nexus card was, though I think that any TSO who is manning the TDC podium SHOULD be trained better, to know a wider variety of IDs on sight, than those working the x-ray scanners or AIT scanners or performing rubdowns. A TDC not knowing what the Nexus card is constitutes another agency shotcoming, not a personal one by the TDC.

But he didn't say he didn't know, and he didn't check until confronted by Ink. He said, "This is not a valid ID," even though he didn't know whether it was valid or not. He purported to know that it was NOT on the approved list, even though he had obviously never seen one before.

That's a lie, plain and simple. Whether it's a lie to cover up laziness (because he didn't want to check the book), or a lie to bully pax into using the preferred ID (drivers license), or just a lie to make the pax Respect His Authoritah! is beside the point. He said it wasn't "valid" even though he didn't know that it was or wasn't valid without checking the book.

He lied.

Caradoc

If he were trained to do it, then he wouldn't be making up lies to cover his ignorance.

We're back to the fundamental problems with the TSA (assuming that their actual mission is to prevent WEI from getting onto a flight, and not to simply function as a Stasi-style police force answerable solely to their "superiors."):

1) The employees are incapable of being trained.
2) The trainers are incapable of training the employees.
3) There's no process to insure that the training "took."
4) Untrainable morons continue to receive "retraining" rather than "termination."

Dovster

How many times have things been posted on FT that were wrong? In fact, can any of us with more than a handful of posts say they never made a mistake here?

So if I am certain that LaGuardia is Rome's international airport, and I post that here, am I a liar?

Of course not!

(On the other hand, I have pieces of plastic which announce that I am elite with an airline, a car rental agency, and a major hotel chain so I must be treated with respect in all cases. If I were a low-level government employee, it would be peachy-keen to call me a "liar" and treat me like I am dirt.)

bdschobel

I generally agree with your basic thrust here. I define a "lie" as an untruth that is known to be an untruth, as distinct from a simple error. We seem to agree on that. But how should we define a situation like the one described by the OP? The LTSO certainly didn't speak the truth, we all know that, but did he "lie" or do something else? I'm reluctant to call what he did a simple error. It's a bit more egregious than that.

Bruce

Caradoc

The TSA's employees love to tell everyone how stressful their job is, because every time they touch a bag they're putting their life on the line as it might be a bomb.

They love to tell us that every passenger must be screened to insanely invasive standards because any passenger could be a terrorist with a bomb.

The TSA is horribly hypocritical when it comes to "mistakes." A mistake on the part of the passenger somehow warrants being ordered to a supply closet to be groped while wearing nothing but a paper drape, while a mistake on the part of the TSA results in claims that they didn't really miss a threat because the prohibited item that they missed isn't really a threat.

The TSA is filled with liars, thieves, rapists, child molesters, child porn purveyors, and other people I really don't want digging through my bag.

It's not just that the TSA's employees are liars - it's that the TSA's raison d'être is a lie in and of itself.

bdschobel

Well said.

Bruce

jkhuggins

And how do you know that you don't know? Most of us, by definition, are unaware of the limits of our knowledge.

There's a much more plausible explanation.

The TDC obviously has a memorized list of valid IDs in his head. Obviously, he memorized the list wrong. So, when a passenger presents an ID that isn't on his (wrong) list, he doesn't need to know anything about the ID itself. It's not on the (wrong) list, so it's not permitted. There's no intent to deceive here; rather, there's an act based on his faulty understanding of the rules regarding IDs.

Which makes him wrong for not following procedure, not a liar.

jkhuggins

The egregiousness comes, IMHO, from the LTSO's attitude, not his error.

WillCAD says (and I have no reason to doubt him) that SOP, when presented with an unfamiliar ID, requires checking the ID against "the book" to verify whether or not the ID is valid. The LTSO's move to arrogant declarations of authority before checking "the book", followed by the lack of apology when his error was discovered, made the situation worse.

The LTSO, starting with the same erroneous knowledge, could've handle the situation in an entirely different manner and turned this into a non-event. "Sir, I don't believe this is a valid ID, but I will double-check against our list." [...] "Sir, after consulting our list, it appears that this a valid ID. Thank you for bringing this to our attention. Have a nice day."

I'd still rather see an apology, but even without one, the courteous tone above would've probably satisfied the OP. An apology would've made it even better.

Loren Pechtel

No. Consider: If he believed that he knew the complete list of acceptable IDs and the item wasn't one of them then he would believe it was unacceptable. He would be mistaken but he wouldn't be lying.

chollie

If the scenario had gone that way, it also would have resulted in a bit of OTJ training for the TDC, meaning a more efficient experience for everyone next time a NEXUS card was presented.

4nsicdoc

It would, if you were a liar and deserved to be treated like you are dirt.

Dovster

And, of course, the determining factor if someone is a liar and deserves to be treated like dirt is whether he has a job which Frequent Flyers approve of or not.

WillCAD

The guy lied. He said the Nexus card wasn't a valid ID. But he did not know that it was not a valid ID, because he did not know what a Nexus card is. If he had known what a Nexus card is, he would have known that it is a valid form of ID.

Had he said, "I'm not familiar with this, could you produce some other ID?", that would be a mistake. But he didn't acknowledge his lack of familiarity with the Nexus card, instead he lied and said that a Nexus card is not a valid form of ID, even though he didn't know that.

He deliberately said, "That's not a valid ID," which implies that he knows what a Nexus card is, instead of saying, "I don't know what that is." That's a lie, because if he knew what a Nexus card is, he'd automatically know that it's a valid ID.

I suspect that he lied to A) avoid embarrassment at not knowing what a Nexus card is, and B) avoid the extra effort of looking the Nexus card up in the book to verify whether it's acceptable ID.

As to that whole "list in his head" thing:

There's a reason why bartenders have booklets behind the bar, JUST for the 100 or so US-issued licenses and ID cards. And there's a reason why TSA has a book of acceptable IDs for the TDCs to check. It's because nobody can memorize all of the potentially acceptable IDs.

It's because, there is no possible way that a TDC could memorize - or even THINK he's memorized - a complete list of acceptable IDs. There are hundreds:

50 US State-issued drivers licenses
50 US State-issued non-drivers IDs
10 Canadian provincial drivers licenses
NEXUS card
SENTRI card
FAST card
195 foreign-issued passports (actually, more, since foreign passports come in different flavors for diplomats and non-diplomats)
Several different varieties of US passport
US passport card
US active military ID
US inactive military ID
US dependent military ID
At least one US DOD civilian ID (and I believe these come in a wide variety of tasty flavors, too)
An unknown number of airline-issued IDs (at least one for each airline)
An unknown number of airport-issued IDs (at least one for each US state and probably more for states with multiple airport authorities)

The list goes on, but that's over 300 right there.

If he had even TRIED to memorize a list, he'd know what a Nexus card is, because it's on the list. It's #3 on the TSA web site, behind "US Passport" and "US Passport card".