Passmethesickbag

Are you really sure they were from the TSA, as opposed to BA security contractors? I highly doubt that even the TSA thinks they have jurisdiction hereabouts, and I doubt that even LHR security has sunk so low that they would want them here.

cleareddirectfluky

Yes I'm positive it was tsa and their blue shirts and badge. Couldn't believe it myself.

catocony

And you, I and everyone else never will, since there's zero reason for TSA to be anywhere between an arriving flight and the Immigration/Customs hall.

Passmethesickbag

Good lord, who let them into the country? Haven't they seen these?

ND Sol

According to the OP, they were at IAD, not LHR, which was the departure airport.

Passmethesickbag

Ahhh... well you're welcome to them, glad they haven't started to appear here!

Maxwell Smart

Good grief. There was NO failure of security on that day. The hijackers did not "sneak" or "smuggle" ANYTHING through security, everything they had was ALLOWED! Whether the checkpoints were manned by private contractors, TSA, or Cub Scouts or pink unicorns that day, nothing would have been different. It was the policies and procedures in place that day emphasizing compliance with hijackers on board that allowed things to happen. And those policies have now been changed.

By your logic, TSA should be blamed for Hurricane Katrina, after all, it happened "on their watch", right?

catocony

I repost this from time to time, this thread seems like a decent place:

"Osama bin Laden won. He's dead, but his two-bit attack was more successful than he ever dreamed. The US has been eating itself alive for almost 12 years, with no end in sight. Trillions of dollars down the drain, thousands of lives lost, 10s of thousands of lives destroyed. All for the cost of 20 plane tickets, some hours at flight school, and a trip to Home Depot to pick up box cutters.

No wild plan. No C4, no explosives. No machine guns smuggled on board. No freaking dolphins with freaking lasers on their freaking heads with Blofeld stroking his cat while sitting in his chair. A very simple, cheap attack that Americans seem unable to accept for what it truly was, reflect, and move on with life. Was panic acceptable in the days after the attack? Sure. Kneejerk reactions? Sure. 12 years later? No."

WillCAD

Guys, I have to admit, eyecue is absolutely right, for once.

Even if they were not engaged in any meaningful job-related, security-related, or even social, activity, they were not "doing nothing."

Presumably, they were converting oxygen into carbon dioxide.

If they had eaten within the last 4 hours (a good bet since the standard 8-hour work day includes an hour lunch break), they were converting foodstuffs to energy, fat, and waste.

Judging from the context of the original post, it sounds as if they were also engaging each other in conversation.

So they weren't really doing nothing, they simply weren't doing anything job-related or meaningful.

Yes, it is. If they're "deployed" in the sterile area, they must have a specific task or set of tasks to do while so "deployed." If they are not actively engaged in such a task, such as a gate check, then they are A) wasting taxpayer money by not producing anything on the job, and B) taking vital resources (time, money, manpower) away from the single most important activity with which TSA is tasked, i.e. checkpoint screening.


As one of the 300 million Americans who are robbed at gunpoint every year to pay for these people to perform specific duties, I am VERY concerned whenever I see or hear about one or more of them FAILING to perform these specific duties or performing them inadequately.

Mmmmm... layer cake.

Just don't bring layer cakes in jars. They're prohibited; because the frosting is "gel-like" and conforms to the shape of the container.

Yes, by all means, let's go back to security that WORKED.

Pre-9/11 security worked in almost every way; the only failures were that some of the policies - which were mandated by the government, not the airlines - were too permissive. Flight crews and passengers alike were told in no uncertain terms that their best chance for survival in a hijacking was to cooperate fully and completely with the hijackers. This failed to take into account the possibility that the hijackers were suicidal and intended to kill ALL pax anyway.

One area where I will fault the airlines is the fact that none of them ever asked for lockable, secure cockpit doors. With all of the hijackings in the 1960s and 1970s, one would think that someone would have the bright idea to make the cockpit secure against hijackers, which would prevent them from taking over the plane and diverting it. Certainly, the lives of individual pax would still be in danger, but the pilots would remain in control of the aircraft itself and there would be no danger of a diversion or a crash. And frankly, there are things a pilot can do to disable armed intruders on his plane - just jerk the controls a few times. A few parabolas or barrel rolls would batter the hijackers pretty badly and give the pax and cabin crew a chance to subdue them.

Today, we know better. Which is why we have no need for the excessive, abusive, costly, mostly inneffective, scope and grope and interrogate screening methodology in use today.

WTMD. HHMD. X-ray carry-ons. Sniffer dogs. Not much else needed.

bocastephen

Please let's stop calling them by that title - it is neither appropriate nor deserved, and since they have no arrest or detention powers, it's not even accurate.

Since I can refuse additional screening after arriving from an inbound flight where I am not connecting onwards and can demand to be escorted out, there is really nothing they can do to anyone arriving from any flight who is not continuing onwards - so whether or not they are doing 'nothing' or 'something', if they want to talk to me or do a search, I can refuse and there is nothing they can do about it.

WillCAD

I refuse to call them "officers" even though it IS part of their official job title: Transportation Security Officer. The closest I'll come is calling them "TSOs", since it's the official name, and often "screeners", since it's descriptive and not considered derrogatory, but sometimes I'll slip and call them clerks. I refuse to use any more derrogatory names than that, A) because such name-calling is prohibited on FT, and B) because I prefer to debate issues on their merits and not resort to childish name-calling.

But yes, in my mind, I sometimes use terms that are... harsher.