Maybe it would help TSOs who perform this function to stay awake and on task if they were required to ask each exiting pax to say his/her name.

As for Sen. Lautenberg and his concerns about sterile area exits, perhaps he has stock or financial interests in a company that can install glass boxes to isolate exiting pax until the monitoring TSO hits a release button. For our safety, of course.

I wouldn't be surprised to see taxpayers funding over-priced one-person-wide exit lane restrictions in the future, to simplify the task of the monitoring TSO.

They exist, and probably cost less than one $screener-month$ to install . They aren't at all lanes at all airports probably because Chertoff doesn't lobby for those companies.

But the presence of the motion-enforcing sensors (SAN has some also) still has to be backstopped by a human security presence. Or is it the sensors backstop the human? Either way, if a SINGLE screener without motion sensors as backup can be so easily distracted, then that layer of security is as penetrable as cheesecloth and might as well not exist.

But shhhh, don't talk about it or else the bad guys might find out.

Guarded by the ancient invention of the TURNSTILE!

As is typical of govt job assignments, no particular skill set is matched to the person. It's just a title pulled out of a hat. Then money has to be spent to fix the problem. Let's not help them with any ideas.

I've seen such a device at SFO. I believe in Terminal 1 (?) there is a solitary TSA employee that stands there with a tensabarrier across the exit, similar to what makes up the queues leading to a ticket counter. When I've seen it in action, it will stand there until a group of people amasses, and then make a dramatic show of releasing people from the "sterile" area to the outside, unsafe world full of potential terrorists.

And I've already seen worse here.

At MEM they appear to be reconfiguring the main checkpoint (leading into Terminal B, for those who care). They have put up a solid, floor-to-ceiling wall for an exit lane that is approximately 4-foot wide, probably enough for 2 people side-by-side to exit. There are generally 2 TSA employees standing on each end of this new hamster tunnel, for a total of 4, to control entrance and egress through the exit lane. It's effing insane.

I'm sure she was just chit-chatting with another TSA employee, probably with a cup of hot, steaming coffee in her hand, ready to throw in the face of anyone who confronts her.

You wonder how many people walk past snoozing TSA workers each day and are not detected.

It's not so insane when you think of it as a program to insure jobs for the otherwise unemployable.

It's no less stupid, though.

I'm waiting for the day where we see a "Newark success thread."