Our political figures are showing their many flaws yet again. And, sadly, the public is yet again unlikely to hold them accountable.

No surprise that the TSA will excuse what it does under the guise of "random", "changing" and "unpredictable" .... "to keep the terrorists off balance".

I think the "random", "changing" and "unpredictable" parts are suppose to keep the flying public confused and off-balance, not the 'terrorists'. I dont like to give evil-doers credit for anything, but I doubt the TSA and its procedures worry them much.

Maybe they got tired of FTers complaining about shoe sole height and this is their way of shutting down the complaint mill (in the name of security).

They sure reacted and changed things when it got out that online boarding passes with SSSS were undergoing the liquid paper treatment.

This new policy of "randomness" sounds just like the current policy: poorly executed protocols and procedures.

This sounds like a disaster to me. I'll admit that there may be some minor security benefit to something like that, but it seems to me that the more likely outcome is going to be more harassment and abuse of pax. :(

I find the entire concept of "additional" screening on a "random" basis to be deeply flawed. For example, how can show screening be justified on a random basis? If there was a real and credible threat from shoes, then every shoe should be screened every day. But we all know that this is a fictitious method. Likewise, conducting "additional" screening implies that "normal" screening is not good enough.

And did anyone catch that the "pat-downs" will be more thorough?

Yep, I caught that. I also caught that they are going to provide "favors and waivers" based on "age and gender". See where they are going with this?

Prep work or placate the holiday travellers with grandma? Demographic targetted exemption is what we are talking about here and more secondary searches for the demographically targetted.

Where did you see the "favors and waivers" thing, GUWonder? I missed that.

http://www.kltv.com/Global/story.asp?S=4194074

... and something on CNN too. The mixing of language by the TSA, and then reflected by the media, is likely deliberate.

Interesting - the article I read emphasized there would be only same-sex screening and said nothing aobut discretion to forego screening based on age or gender; hopefully, this will mean that no old lady will be forced to undergo the indignity of having some screener reaching up under granny's skirt to find her mid-thigh and patdown her legs. (from poster realted to me in another thread on this same topic.)

Don't worry, nobody's going to be reaching up under anybody's skirts. I've done loads of patdowns on dress-wearing women due to being in wheelchairs or having pacemakers or because their artifical knee alarmed the hand wand. No one has to reach under a skirt to pat down the leg.

Your airport probably squandered its resources on unnecessary personnel for shoe harassment, the Great Sharp and Pointy Object Search, BP haraSSSSment and other complete wastes of time. It's a problem that is epidemic across the system.

Have you not been to other airports? Denver's candy-assed sack of crap FSD routinely violates the SOP on this and other matters. Denver is the worst of the Shoe Carnival offenders and its FSD, Patrick Ahlstrom is nothing but a sack of human garbage.

Groping? Why the hell am I being touched when there are no unresolved alarms? That's groping.


All of them will do it, but the federal government is forcing the airlines to use the government's ridiculous, un-American screening "standards". The airlines didn't want the TSA created in the first place and I am sure they would shed no tears if the entire disgrace of an agency disappeared tomorrow.

[QUOTE=Spiff]



Have you not been to other airports? Denver's candy-assed sack of crap FSD routinely violates the SOP on this and other matters. Denver is the worst of the Shoe Carnival offenders and its FSD, Patrick Ahlstrom is nothing but a sack of human garbage.

QUOTE]

Wow Spiffy, you've outdone yourself..... :(

This is the reasoning for paying more attention to foreign Muslims, especially those from the Mideast, than to native-born Americans. Since they did it once before, we should be more vigilant. This reasoning is in addition to the Islamofascists' vows to destroy Western civilization.

Where did you hear those vows?

[Those "vows" sound "good" ... as a soundbite (that is hopefully toothless). But when/where did you hear those? I've noticed that "Islamofascists" kill more of their so-called "co-religionists" and other "Islamofascists" than anyone else.]

Tell us how you really feel Spiff. :D

I agree with you though.

Yeah, I'm not worried about those John Walker Lindh, uh, Jose Padilla types, and um, that one dude with one leg that was from Cali who fought with the Mujaheeden in Chechyan and trained in Afghanistan.......HEY! Does this stereotyping thing work?