off-shore

the 99% bad apples make the 1% nice guys look bad, they're not all crap... In my humble opinion, TSA control is a pointless exercise, as whoever is a terrorist with some brains will be able to avoid being scrutinized.

Knowing this, does not make me feel safer at all - but annoyed for the hold-ups. My customer experience with badly paid bullies is not all too good, and yes, I know "they are just doing their job". I'd rather have them do something different, that had a positive impact on society.

Sorry for the rant. Bruce Schneier has it in more detail: Not a single terrorist has been found with all the millions spent and man-years lost. Ever. Now they expand to greyhounds and railways. Because they are so amazingly successful?

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archive...sa_proves.html

off-shore

Oh, sorry. Not millions, make that 1.1 trillion US Dollars in spending for homeland security, including the cost for the TSA.
"Since 9/11, the U.S. has spent more than $1.1 trillion on homeland security" according to
http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/fe...nsanity-201112

jberckemeyer

Thanks for the survey - wish there would of been a section for comments. i am concerned that TSA screeners are aloud to carry there lunch bags and back packs through security without them being checked. Not a safe move TSA!

gunn

I wish the survey made a distinction between TSA and contract security.

Compared to flying out of SFO (which uses Covenant Security), flying out of OAK is downright pleasant even if I have to then fight traffic over the bridge coming come to SF.

Even with Southwest's A+ program, I regularly spend 15-20 in the "elite" line trying to clear security at SFO. They understaff the lines and it regularly backs up. I average <10min clearing security through OAK. Every complaint I've ever submitted has fallen on deaf ears... and outsourcing this security is supposed to "save" us money.

IMO, even the best TSA security is still more window dressing than actual security... esp when compared to flying out of Tel Aviv. If you want a model on how to make sure your airports are safe, that's where I'd look...

-mm

dinoscool3

YMMV, but I've had a lot of trouble with SFO security being very rude. I was surpsied to find out they were contract security a few years back because of how rude they had been.

chollie

True.

OTOH, I have yet to read about SFO (or any other private security) requiring an elderly pax to remove an adult diaper, requiring a breast cancer survivor to remove and display her prosthesis, rupturing a pax's ostomy bag and leaving him covered in his own urine, peering into the diaper of an infant, demanding that a vet remove his prosthetic leg and attempt to stand still for an NoS screening...I haven't even heard about an extraordinary number of groin chops and hands in pants.

SFO might have its problems, but the biggest theft and drug problems seem to be in TSA airports like EWR, HNL, MIA, LAX.

If the HNL screeners had been private, perhaps they wouldn't have been fired (BIG headlines) and then all hired back (small headlines). If EWR was private security, perhaps instead of giving them dozens of chances, they'd have been replaced with another firm or even with TSA. Oops....they are TSA, so they can just keep messing up and no one can do anything about it.

dinoscool3

I'm not arguing that the SFO security is worse than the TSA, but SFO security staff are not as good at their job, and as courteous as staff in Japan or Western Europe.

chollie

No disagreement there, you will see many on this forum who have asked why US security can't be as polite, professional and QUIET as security overseas.

With a lot fewer people and a lot shorter lines.

psusaver

But as they say "Don't let facts get in the way of a good argument" A lot of the comments that are outright against the tsa are people with strong selective bias.

But, that being said, TSA is not a well thought out organization and it is just a grand scheme to sell more and more security equipment and not much of focus on true threat removal based on statistical analysis.

Canarsie

That is where FlyerTalk comes in — here in this discussion is where you are free to post your comments.

StuckinITH

I don't hate the TSA as much as my wife does. But still have issues with it. Why do we have to pass through the cancer machines just because a certain person was the consultant for the company who got the contract? How difficult is to make sure that the TSA approved lock is closed after riffling through my clothes? Why do the TSA agent think it's their right to scream at passengers? What is the cost to productivity in all the time wasted in those lines?

Coming back from Europe and passing through the A security zone in PHL, there were no bins in our lane. After 10 minutes of no movement, I went to grab some bins from the next lane. At that moment, the TSA agent who had not done his job for those 10 minutes, rushed towards me screaming at top lung level and grabbed those bins from my hands in a violent manner. My wife said: "Welcome back to the USA!". Everybody else in our lane looked shocked. I'm in my fifties and cannot remember when was the last time I got screamed at like this. Most probably when I was a kid.


On the other hand it does provide for some entertainment. I was travelling at the end of May of this year. Line was delayed because a little Ivy League student tried to pass through security with big bottles of face products. Then the agent found a huge butcher knife in her roll-on luggage.

eMailman

If you have never lived in a free country, you don't know what you are missing.

The first flight I took was before metal detectors or any security at all. You walked to the gate, got your boarding pass, and walked into the plane - all in 5 minutes (longer walk to the gate in a big airport).

Got there alive, and made it back, too.

Tika1505

I have a philosophical reply as I live with my young (early 20's) daughter. They have been more conditioned to be sheeple than we who staged the sit-ins, and bra-burnings and other civil rights protests of the 60's and 70's. We learned civil disobedience as a way to make our collective voices heard in outrage over the undeclared Viet Nam "war" and "Separate but Equal" etc. It seems to me, that what we fought for and went to jail for and otherwise put ourselves at risk for has created this sense of "if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear."

The other side of this is that when people are afraid of the government, it's called tyranny, and when government fears the people it's called democracy. I got in a shouting match with my daughter and told her to quit drinking the Kool-aid. People who drank the Kool-aid died! (and then I referred her to Jim Jones and the tragedy in Guyana.) She was shocked. And I then referred her to the development of NAZI Germany, and I told her to be VERY afraid, because that's the same road we're going down.

I went on to tell you that if you drop a frog in hot water, it jumps out immediately, but if you put it in cool water, and heat it gradually, the frog will become boiled frog legs. Make the connection!

So with that said, is it any wonder that the under 30 group is favorable toward TSA?

My son, who is 20+ yrs older than my daughter, and I talked and his question is whether the revolt against this horriffic intrusion will be a bloody one or not. I look around me and I see so many people becoming very very nervous. Even the grocery store that I have been shopping at for years is now stocking "prepper" food reserves. TSA is just a symptom. Take a look at the Patriot Act and some of the other legislation that allows the government to look at your bank accounts and cell phone records etc without a warrant all in the name of "war on terrorism." Excuse me, but doesn't the Constitution say that Congress has the power to declare war? And isn't that term "war on terrorism" a little too vague to identify the battle fronts?

Be Afraid. Be VERY afraid!

sethb

Somebody who fondles your genitals for pay is a professional, by definition. You can observe that in many municipal courts.

sethb

Ignore the TSA's dollar cost. How many lives are wasted waiting in lines caused by the TSA?

There are somewhere around 800 million trips/year. At 30 minutes each wasted, that's 400 million person-hours, or over 45,000 person-years, or about 1,000 person-half-lives. So if the TSA isn't saving 1,000 lives each year, then it's costing more lifetime than it's saving. (And that's completely ignoring the hours "worked" by TSA employees which is also wasted semi-human time.)