Hear, hear!

Though I'll go one step further, PreCheck shouldn't just mean that a person "might" be able to go through security with the basic and accepted screening from pre 9/11, but that all persons are screened in this manner. Any further screening should only be required when there is "probable cause" to warrant such.

:D

They don't impress me any way in the US, having been through various ones over decades and seen what has been used to grant, clear or deny clearances to others.

It is in a totalitarian infrastructure-enabled state where background checks are less likely to be gamed by subjects.

There are somethings to be read in between, and concluded from, the above lines. ;)

DHS wants to outsource more of the background checking of travelers. The background checks will continue to use commercial consumer info databases along with some government database queries even under that approach. It won't be anywhere close to the level of checking that got Snowden into the CIA and NSA.

In that case, the background check just sounds like an excuse to levy a fee. Any terrorist organization would easily have plenty of members who could pass a simple background check, so this is a very poor method of assessing risk.

One wonders whether Dzhokhar Tsarnaev would have passed the PreCheck background check. He did become a citizen after all last summer.

Maybe future sporting events can have expedited screening for spectators who have also paid the government (or their favorite team) a fee in exchange for a speedier experience.

Don't forget too that all TSA employees have undergone background checks. And we know that no TSA employee has ever been charged with a crime while on-duty.

He passed the background check to be naturalized as a US citizen. His brother passed the background check to become a US LPR. They both passed multiple US background checks. The deceased brother even got cleared by the FBI after the Russians flagged him down and told the USG he was a problem. [Even after that, Russia cleared him (the deceased older brother) into Russia. What did Russia want, for him to go to extremes? ]

Yes, it is a very poor and disturbing system. It's also much more than just a way to levy a fee. For one, the TSA can say, look, we're working to treat more people better and not infringe on their rights as much, and this is open for everybody to apply. Second, they then have a huge database of personal, private and PII data voluntarily supplied to them.

The NSA must be drooling with the thought of charging every American a $85 fee to do checks on them with the NSA promising that those who volunteered may not be spied upon.

Don't you mean volunteer to be spied upon? Volunteer or not, there is the draft to be spied upon. :eek:

I guess I'm befuddled by the idea that an agency who can't successfully keep up with background checks on employees is going to handle the slew of applicants for this. I just think its going to be a snafu.

Going to be? TSA = SNAFU

Like everything with TSA/DHS, this probably comes down to the almighty dollar.

Wonder which group is contracted to do the backgrounds, or handle the fees?

The government ought to be consistent, then. They don't charge me a processing fee to save and analyze my phone call metadata, my e-mails, and my internet searches as part of making me "safer." ;)

Edit to add: Where are the data linking factors such as frequent flyer status to terrorist risk anyway? That question has been asked a lot but never answered.

TSA Expects > 80,000 to buy into the extortion now:
 

..and > 380,000 later

http://www.gsnmagazine.com/node/3093...ation_security

These are pretty precise numbers for an "estimate." If I add the numbers together and multiply by $85, the grand total is just over $40M of money extorted from the sheeple. These numbers and sheeple quantity must relate to some sort of justification TSA owes Congress.

The same one that investigated Snowden and does the background investigations on TSA hires:

USIS

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/0...n_3474454.html

So you agree that there is a non-zero security risk in the US for air travel.
If no one appears to have a problem with security screening in general, it seems all the issues revolve around how much and for whom and by whom.
Which leaves this - since the bad actor risk is non-zero and there is a relative risk that varies across individuals, is profiling/qualification for less or more security acceptable? If not, then all people should get the highest level of scrutiny as required to meet the minimum necessary – which all have agreed is greater than none.
And so we come full circle - if not all passengers are equal in terms of security risk, having a process to ensure/determine/document whether an individual falls into the low risk bucket or not will entail a cost and this cost needs to be paid by someone - in the current TSA proposal, its born by the beneficiary of the process not unlike the GE program.
Whether or not the risk register results from a process of exclusion or inclusion, whether it’s based on frequent flier status, age, ethnicity, citizenship, criminal record, or any of dozens of parameters is immaterial to the concept - we can (and I believe we should) match security to relative risk.
(re: LLL as default)
Without a doubt, implementation of ANY process is not "free" any more than the execution of security is – though in the case of execution, its bundled into ticket price. It all comes down to how the public will pay for it. And user fees are, IMO, the most equitable – user pays.
Got a problem with any of this?

No way.

All should get WTMD, ETP/ETD, x-ray of carryons. Nothing more without clear, probable cause.

NO ID checking, BP checking, Shoe Carnival, Liquid Restrictions, Chat-Up crap, or any other harassment.

The government should not be involved in the process at all, other than to protect passengers' civil rights.