Passing is a given requirement. Why take a test if the results arent worth anything? I can guess where you scored. While it was probably high it was a little to the radical side.

As recently as November 2002 a passenger on an El Al flight was 'overpowered by sky marshals'. He may not have been a hijacker merely a nutcase, but I think it does constitute a profiling failure and hence an incident. Other El Al hijack attempts have been made in the past including the infamous Leila Khaled, but I can't say if that was before or after profiling interviews were started.

Let's not forget about the guy who tried to hijack a flight to IST with a knife a few years ago.

^

Even more ridiculous since the TSA started out with nearly 55,000 employees. It has since shrunk, but additional persons have been hired (mostly part time) since the ramping up in the summer of 2002. 1 in 1000 applicants would equate to over 60 million applicants since 2002. 60 million applicants? Hardly.

60 million would be nearly 43% of the total number of employed persons in the USA and over 40% of the total labor force in this country.

http://stats.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm

Anyone who thinks the TSA received more than 5% of that 60 million number is not a math whiz.

At most, probably about 2 million applications, as 1.7 million had been received by the end of 2002:

http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2004...a-04-26-04.asp

There you go, trying to apply logic and reason to a discussion on TSA.

How many times have YOU been a member of an "elite" organization that only hires "the best of the best."? "Others would die for the chance to sit in the seat you are in." Blah blah. Organizational mind-control to feed people those lines. I wonder if those at TSA are hearing this?

I do appreciate the work they do (misguided though management directives seem to be). The people are doing a job for which they are paid; but mathemetical analysis proves there are not 1000 applicants for every hire. If the org is spreading those numbers it is simply false.

I can only go by what managers have told us on this issue. I cant find anything to back them up. However your link is a review of applications to check for hiring issues it is not a difinitive list of the amount of people that applied for the jobs.

The bolded portion (in conjunction with the outlandish assertion that the TSA received anywhere near 60 million applications in filling about 60,000 positions) speaks volumes about your managers.

You can only go by what they told you? The outlandishness of the assertion on its face isn't readily apparent to you??

That any TSA employee would swallow such a ridiculous assertion without breaking out in uncontrollable laughter at their idiot bosses' lack of math skills/lack of honesty/whatever, is sobering.

If Denver has 1,000 screeners (just a WAG, I don't know how many there are), the "1 in 1,000 applicant" BS means that 1 million people applied for those jobs. That would be every man, woman and child living in Denver plus another half a million outside Denver County. That would be practically every non-retired adult of working age in the Denver metropolitan area. Think that happened? Think it's even a remote possibility?

The article I linked said that the TSA received more than 1.7 million applications by the end of 2002. True enough, 60 million is "more than 1.7 million," but I'm confident that had the number been substantially greater than 1.7 million, the TSA would have said so.

At some point, common sense has to be employed.

I'm a blond haired, grey eyed American with an Irish background. When entering and leaving and flying about the UK (where I currently work and reside), I'm harrassed a bit more than most professionals in their late 20s and early 30s. I would assume this is because people of my demographic (Irish descent) have been known to blow things up in Britan with a greater frequency than other demographics.

You might apply this logic to the treatment of people of muslim or arab lineage in the US.

Does it suck? Sure. If the current trends hold, however, it's not a total logical fallacy.

Let's not fail to note the logic that anti-terrorism measures and other anti-criminal approaches that have a very apparent element of ethnic/racial/community profiling and/or communal punishment is more often than not followed by an increase in incidents of criminality and "criminal sympathizing" in more than one corner of the world. Is it causation or correlation? Well, that is another question and subject somewhat more to debate. However it is a logical truth that anti-terrorism measures that have resulted in innocents (perceived and/or real ones) becoming a "casualty" or a "victim" through extrajudicial means and/or institutionalized communalism boils over more than once in a blue moon.

Exclude such from the thought process and meld it with an advocacy of communalistic policies/practices that gets implemented and don't be surprised when the undercurrents are violent and getting sadly stronger while "the help" declines, disappears and then becomes counterproductive or distracting from real threats while fueling new ones.

Generally, a LEO is free to approach you and ask questions for any reason whatsoever, or no reason at all. And generally, you have the right to refuse to answer.

However... if the LEO questioning is part of airport security, I suppose the consequence of remaining silent could be that you don't fly. Whether that will be case, and whether such a penalty would "fly" (heh-heh) with the courts, I don't know. I'm inclined to think that if the questioning is restricted to situations where the LEO has at least "reasonable suspicion" that you're up to no good, then the courts would be more likely to allow a no-fly punishment for pax who won't chat with Officer Friendly.