To the former question: do you really want the next presidential election potentially being decided by a lone assassin, as might have happened in 1968?

To the latter question: both TSA and the Secret Service are part of the same parent organization, DHS. This sort of "borrowing" from different branches of DHS has happened before --- for example, Super Bowls.

Somebody declares something a "national security special event" which rolls out the DHS and its components, including TSA clerks, SPOTNiks, VIPR, and everybody else who specializes in Constitution suspension.

TSA has acknowledged that the agency is so short of staff that TSA can't screen paying travelers in a reasonable amount of time and the recent political events are not government events but private events set up by the national committees. No federal dollars should be expended for these events. There are plenty of armed and unarmed security companies to turn too. Until TSA has no airport backups, is fully staffed, and can successfully pass red team test TSA should restrict itself to core duties.

I flew Monday evening. I screened at SDF, on approach to the checkpoint there was not a single passenger in any stage of the process. As I completed there were two others entering. Of course TSA was staffed to run three lines so in addition to random wanderers there were 10 or so camped at the first empty gate playing on phones. They have employees, they are just poorly scheduled.

I connected in MDW during Southwest's last bank, eyeballing checkpoint from the airside, they had maybe a 10 minute wait from past experiences.

Do we really think the TSA is capable of stopping that?

Hasn't there been an increase in US Secret Service management concerns and scandals hitting the press ever since it got moved from Treasury to DHS?

So how much of the TSA line slowdowns are due to TSA assigning people to protect election campaign events? If it's significant, it's long overdue for the TSA to get out of the campaign "security" business.

You do realize that election campaign events have been having security in place long before the TSA was created? Without the TSA putting on a show of force at election campaign events, things weren't all that bad.

And no cross checking of boarding passes against IDs either.

2800 screener positions are currently occupied by non-working BDOs.

Put those people back to work actually doing something productive.

Congress gave TSA $$ and TSA immediately wasted it on dog teams instead of staffing dedicated Pre lanes that have already been sold and paid for.

Closed Pre lanes contribute to the slowdowns (which is exactly why TSA closed them down consistently across the country during the work slowdown). Every Pre pax forced to wait in a regular lane, disrobe, unpack, and use the NoS contributes unnecessarily to the slowdowns.

The 9/11 fee is NOT behind inflation. Too much of the money collected is either immediately diverted to non-TSA purposes or is spent on new 'initiatives' and play toys that contribute nothing to security and everything to pax delays and corrupt officials' bank accounts.

What lines? BOS Terminal C at 5am and RDU Terminal 2 at 4pm were a breeze yesterday. I was PreCheck but the regular lines were fairly empty as well.

I just went through security at SEA and they had one of the HSS security folks in front of the WTMD at precheck. All she did was stand there and instruct people to empty their pockets.

I talked to the supervisor about this great value add and he stated he would tell people to do the same thing because they might randomly get selected for additional screening and would have to empty their pockets anyways at that time.

The long lines miraculously disappeared about a week before the Memorial Day holiday weekend, right after Congress shifted an additional $34 million to TSA for overtime and additional screener hires.

http://money.cnn.com/2016/05/12/pf/t...ecurity-lines/

According to the article, $26 million of that will go toward overtime for existing screeners. At an average of $21.63 per hour at a 1.5x overtime rate of $32.45, that equates to roughly 801,000 hours of overtime over the next year. Split among about 48,000 screeners, that's 16 hours of OT per screener per year, or an extra half hour of time on the job per week.

So, your average screener will be working an extra half hour per week to reduce these lines, earning an extra $16 for their valiant (or Valium, in some cases) efforts to keep us safe from water in bottles and cupcakes in jars.

And the lines have evaporated.

Of course, as cholie has pointed out, if 2800 BDOs were shifted back to regular screeners, that would equate to an additional 5,824,000 screener work hours over the next year, at no additional cost, with no overtime, no extra hires, and no additional benefits needed.

But of course, then planes would fall out of the sky, because BDOs have been stopping terror threats left and right over the last few years with their keen powers of observation and highly insightful checklist of suspicious human behaviors like nervousness and lack of nervousness.

But maybe I'm being too cynical...

The whole thing was a scam to get more $$ from Congress and more people to sign up for PreCheck.

Posts discussing the price of applying for TSA PreCheck have been moved to the relevant thread.

Bloomberg: Is the TSA�s $85 PreCheck Program Too Pricey?

TWA884
Co-moderator, Travel Safety/Security

In The Dallas Morning News:

I arrived about 3:45 pm for the 6:30 BA 216 to LHR. (Mrs. Flies, my driver, bought into the three-hour hype.) 5-minute bag check at BA. I started towards the west CP and the moat dragons were sending everyone to the east CP, claiming that it was very busy. The sign said a 2-min wait at the east CP and a 3-min wait at the west CP. I walked past the paid ExtortionCheck line and it didn't seem terribly long.

I went down the stairs to the east checkpoint. There were two ID checkers' desks at each end of the hall, a clerk walking Buster, the Showdog, and there were ~10 SPOTNiks standing around. I got to the belt and screening was ExtortionCheck for all. The NOSs were completely turned off. You could tell that they had been in this mode for quite a while because there were no bins to be found. The people who literally bought the extortion must have no idea this is going on (unless they read FT!)

From my own (admittedly limited) sample size it looks like TSA has quietly started implementing pre-check level screening for all or most as a way to speed up the lines. It looks like TSA is adopting a common sense approach to solving a problem. I'm having a hard time understanding how this can be so.