Everybody hates TSA.
 

But I guess I can understand why.



I'm a screener at Logan, and hearing people talk about TSA is pretty funny. And it's true, a little knowledge is dangerous. I understand why the liquid rules appear silly, and the question of "how does a plastic bag keep us safer?" I was just reading an article on how we're "unintelligent" and should "have no authority over you." We don't have any authority over you. You're free to do what you want. You have chosen to fly, and chosen to not follow rules, surrender your items, etc. etc.

Btw, as of unintelligent, I can't speak for other airports, but you would be surprised how well-rounded some of us are (atleast at Logan), and how many gave up 6 figure jobs after 9/11 to work for TSA.

Plastic bags - Do not keep you safer, atleast directly, they instead are a measuring tool, which helps regulate how much liquid is being brought onto a plane.

Liquids - Are, unfortunatly a threat. Ask any MIT chemistry major, and ask him how unstable, how explosive, and how easily these threats are to mix, and use. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_explosive. Get learn'd.

Any highschool student with half a brain and a chemistry book knows how to blow locker doors off when they're slammed shut.



You think you, the passenger, get treated bad? Please. People talk about TSA having poor customer service, well what about poor customers? I work a low-paying Gov't job, where it is in our contract that we can't unionize, work irregular hours, much of it on manditory overtime, so please add insult to injury by verbally abusing me, as I try my best to keep you safe when you travel. On Christmas. When I will indeed be working.

Tell me how uneducated I am to the CJ degree on my wall.


Stop asking me if you look like a terrorist. You do.

Stop telling me that I wouldn't have my job if it wasn't for 9/11, do you want me to stop doing my job? Talk to Bush. I'd like a few words with him myself.

No, you don't pay my salary. Let's study a capitalist economy for a moment, everyone pays everyones' salary.




If you really hate us that bad, just stop flying. It's simple. You do not have the right to fly, you have the privilege. It is not an invasion of privacy, when you voluntarily purchase a ticket.

The TSA has all the Constitutional backing they need, 4th Amendment, implied consent, yadda yadda yadda. Once you enter the checkpoint, this is the implied consent. Your property now belongs to the United States Gov't.



People just don't seem to get it. And don't see how badly we're treated.

The "using our service is optional" argument is bogus. You'd have a valid argument if there were multiple competing security screening services at each airport. For example, we could pay $X if we wanted to be screened by TSA, or $Y if we wanted to be screened by company Y, and so on. But TSA has a monopoly on aviation security. You guys make the rules and you enforce them. We don't have a choice.

And sorry, there are no practical alternatives to commercial airlines for most of us. I suspect that the guys at the top of your organization--the guys who are making the ridiculous rules that we must suffer through--don't fly commercial, but for us common folk, private aviation isn't a realistic alternative. So please don't tell me I have a choice when I buy my ticket. The only thing I have a choice over is which airline I fly -- not who screens me (see previous paragraph).

As for paying your salary, it's true that in a capitalist economy we all pay each other's salaries. But the difference is that as US taxpayers, we are forced to pay your salary, and then we are again forced to pay you money each time we buy a ticket, whereas I am not forced to pay the a dime of salary of the Starbucks barista if I want to get my coffee somewhere else. Starbucks employees give me good customer service because they know I will take my business elsewhere if they don't. TSOs, in contrast, bark at us, harrass us, call LEOs when we disagree with them, and throw our legitimate complaints back at us on Internet message boards. Why? Because they know we have no choice but to pay them each time we buy a ticket, and each year in our federal taxes even if we never take an airplane flight that year!

I do think it's unfortunate that people take out that frustrations on you, and I don't envy your job, but I've also chosen a different line of work. I'm a little confused why someone would sign up to be a TSO, and stay in that position, and then complain that they have to deal with abuse. It's not "fair" that passengers abuse you because of rules that your bosses make, but nobody's forcing you to be a TSO, either. If eneough TSOs quit, TSA might actually have to change their policies to something that can sustainably be enforced on rational travelers. If anything, passengers aren't complaining enough!

What's that? Do you hear it? I think...it's the world's tiniest violin.

I really don't feel like getting fired, so yes, I have to fly. Do I want to fly? Hell, no; who does these days?

Please go back to those well-paying jobs. You will once again be making a positive contribution to society.

Lies.

Liquid explosives require laboratory conditions and time to mix the explosive. Get learn'd yourself. I'll be happy to school you or your manure-for-brains bosses if I get a waiver from DHS.

Why it takes time and temperature control to create liquid explosives 101 by Dr. Spiff.

Too bad your agency's "security" procedures permit anyone to bring plastic explosives across the checkpoint at will.


Heartbreaking.

You're certainly not using that degree if you think liquid explosives can be created by dumping two chemicals together.

With your attitude, you deserve it in spades.

I understand nobody forced me to be a TSO. Do I not have the right to complain about my job? You have the right to complain about mine, so why can't I? My job description says nothing about being told that "If it wasn't for this job, I'd still be working at McDonalds!"

Which I replied with "Sir, don't be silly. The people at McDonalds have far more training than us."

I don't see what rules are ridiculous. I didn't know "common folk" couldn't afford to watch the news, and buy a plastic bag.

Btw, the people at the top fly commerical. They work low paying jobs, just like the "common folk."

Ted Kennedy is a selectee. And Jesse Jackson is like 6'7''.

Anyways, my point of "you don't have to fly" is most certainly not bogus. I'm just comparing the TSA's rights to search/seize you and your property, to you being able to bring liquids on a plane, or even to fly at all.


People in Darfur suffer. Passengers don't.



And you also are really reaching with the choosing to pay the barista, vs. choosing to pay me.

And buying a ticket doesn't pay me. The gov't gives billions TO the airlines.

You're so right. I do. Please, school me on explosives. I know that you will impress me. You are the best.

Can you also school him in using quotes, Prof. Spiff?

Spiff, I can promise you you're wrong about liquid explosives. Promise.


But that's SSI, so go join EOD. They'll tell you all about it.

I tend to believe Dr. Jimmie Oxley of URI a lot more than the wikipedia or TSA.

http://www.chm.uri.edu/urichm/brochure/people/jo.html

She was interviewed here (http://www.theregister.com/2006/08/1..._terror_labs/). She and others experts have said that the plot wasn't feasible. Then again, no one since Richard Reid has even tried to bring a shoe bomb (per TSA and the FBI in an LA Times article earlier this year) but we're still removing shoes anyway.

That declaration speaks volumes about attitudes. No customer service can exist in the face of that statement.

The right to fly exists. And common carriers are held to a higher standard as to who they can refuse to transport than a restaurant on who they decide to serve.

:eek:

You're right - some people don't seem to get it, but it's not the ones on the receiving end of that attitude.

Bull.

I don't believe "magic" explanations, especially non-published, non-peer reviewed magic explanations.

Show me the money!

Sorry, I don't teach courses that exist only to meet deficiencies in basic skills. ;)

Having worked in the government and still holding an active clearance, I can also tell you that the first mission of any bureacracy is self preservation and within the IC and DHS, there isn't a terror target, no matter how infinitesimally small, that they don't like. It's all about money and power. If you somehow think TSA is above that ...

Please don't blather about SSI as if it's some big secret. It's not even classified information and falls in the sensitive but unclassified arena ... like FOUO (For Official Use Only). There are many people on this board, including some TSA'ers, who have worked with real sensitive info.

Super

Get DHS to give me a waiver and meet me in the lab. Bring your gutless, brainless boss, Comrade Hawley. I'll throw in:

How the x-ray works and why it doesn't detect explosives 102 (also by Dr. Spiff)

for free.

Diet Coke + Mentos = "liquid explosive"

Yup, that's the kind of liquid explosive that Comrade Hawley's stupid little liquid games are designed to catch. And the system is quite porous at that.

Dude, you are chumming for sharks.

You know, low IQ animals with primitive brains that must travel forward to live.

Keep your chin up, this is not a represntative group, just a vocal one.

The right to fly exists?

Pray tell what perumbra of an emanation that is hiding under?

You don't have the "right" to ride Greyhound without complying with the rules. Heck, you can't even really own a gun in DC and that seems pretty clear to me in the tattered rags of the constitution and bill of rights.

Sheesh, rules for thee and not me - let me be the first to yell commie.

I certainly hope you aren't the screener who yelled at me in Terminal C, to move down "Because my bags come out that end of the x-ray machine" :rolleyes:

and, last time I checked, that $2.50 or whatever "Security Fee" on my one-way ticket IS helping to pay for your salary.

I've been flamed for this in the past, but I really think that those of you generalizing about TSA are way off base. I've travelled UAL monthly from RNO-ORD for almost 4 years now. I would encourage all of you FTers to drive to RNO and begin travel there, :p because the TSA has always been excellent. Futhermore, I've never been treated improperly ORD either. -Sure I've been delayed, searched and have had things taken away. Its not pleasant, but c'mon! We're grown ups for christ sake!

It's the lack of common sense on the TSA's part that makes me crazy. In June I fractured my foot and tore several ligaments, and was in a cast for several months. Since I was in a wheelchair, it should have been obvious I was no threat. If the fondling I received from the TSA in ATL while seated had occurred in another setting, I would have called the police. There was no reason for that woman to touch my breasts and put her hand down the back of my pants. :mad: She swabbed my removable cast, and when I offered to remove it, she said it wasn't necessary. Why make us remove flip flops and sandals when the entire foot is already visible. If the TSA ever asks me if I want to fly, I'll just say no, collect my belongings and go to another checkpoint.

Sorry to hear of your injury. Again though, give TSA break. They do not know that you are an honest passenger. If you cannot pass the metal detector, then you must unfortunately be searched. Remember, TSA has no idea what is going through security attached to you and the wheel chair. Even if you are not ambulatory, you could never the less serve as a conduit for dangerous items.
As for removing your shoes, it's the shoes that TSA wants to check. Not (hopefully) your feet!

Why do it here, where a subset of us believe that your job shouldn't even exist? Troll?:rolleyes:

TSA's rights are my issue, and again 'even to fly at all' is absurd.


This can't be serious. I should hope that there is a difference between Darfur and BOS terminals. :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

:D ... they say Diet Pepsi works better. .... but no one will be bringing down a plane that way anytime in my lifetime. :D ^^

Valid point, since as we all know, in America you are guilty until proven innocent. (as is also codified in the laws of Canada and the EU)

I hoped you asked for a supervisor and filed a complaint because that type of search was against SOP.

Yes, and many of us resent being treated like children and subjected to rules so stupid, even a child can see through them.

Nope. Thank you for playing. There is a right to fly under US law.

People have to stop repeating this "there is no right to fly" meme as if it were true. It's old wive's tale, like the one the goes "humans are the only animals that kill for sport." It makes people feel good to repeat it, regardless of how transparently false it is.

Of course not. You need at least 2 litres to bring down a plane (I could tell you how but that's SSI) and that won't fit in your Kipppy bag. See, the rules work! (Now where's that rock that keeps tigers away?)

Someone has clearly forgotten about the words written in the Fourth Amendment. I'll copy them here just so we remember:

Where, pray tell, does that say the TSA has the rights to search/seize us and our property?

And any highscool student with 3/4 of a brain can figure out that an explosion that can open a locker door is unlikely to cause serious damage, let alone catastrophic damage, to a commercial aircraft. There are numeros non-liquid-explosive ways for a deranged pax (terrorist or otherwise) to take out one or two pax, burn someone's face off (maybe their own), and even cause minor damage to the aircraft (seats, bulkheads, maybe even crack/shatter a window). Think matches, newspaper, a laptop used as a club, flailing arms, etc.) None of those are credible threats to the aircraft or the aviation system. TSA is not here to protect us for deranged passengers with flailing fists or equivalent threats; otherwise TSA would need to be in shopping malls.

What I have not seen is any chemical experts come forward and say that airport/airplane mixed liquid explosives (or premixed liquid explosivies carried by bad guys) are powerful enough, stable enough, and easy enough to produce in the airport/airplane environment (if applicable) to provide reliably the degree of damage needed to with high probability take out an aircraft (or at least kill more than a few pax). Terrorists don't like unkowns any more than anyone else planning an operation, and a liquid concoction that takes hours to mix in a fancy ice bath and is as likely to burn your face as destroy an aircraft doesn't sound like much of a plan when it would be much easier to ship a container full of stable solid reliable explosives in the cargo hold.

And I don't for a moment believe that the government wouldn't release a video of placing a container of liquid explosive in a fake airplane shell and then blowing it to smitherines if it could. The demo would give the government credibility and DHS/TSA self-preservation. I suspect the problems are some combination of the lack of volunteers to carry the highly unstable liquid explosive onto the simulated aircraft (using a robot wouldn't make the threat look credible) and the generally pitiful size of the bang produced unless the container is rather large.

Please provide one actual example of a terrorist who looks like my living grandparents (89+ years old, white). Stop telling us we look like a terrorist and treating us all like suspects just because we want to travel; most of us don't and aren't.

Ugh. This is the real reason I'm replying; I hate this one. I don't have the right to fly like I have the right to free speech. I have the privilege of flying, which is granted by the airline not the government, and is granted in exchange for me presenting a big pile of cash or credit. The right of free movement is pretty well established in the Constitution (interstate travel, freedom of assembly) and other human rights charters. I have yet to see one legitimate claim that secret government blacklists with no effective means of redress, such as the no-fly list, which deny the right of travel to innocent people who have not been charged with or even suspected of any crime, are legal.

Huh? Do you really believe that? My property does not belong to the US Government regardless if I am standing with it in my yard, your checkpoint, or a commercial aircraft. Even TSA recognizes that it can't say "confiscate" with regard to (non illegal) prohibited items and that pax have the option to leave the checkpoint with their item instead of continuing on. If you tell a passenger at the checkpoint that their property belongs to the government, expect them to call over a supervisor and a cop; that's what I'd do.

I have no support for the vast majority of screener mistreatment, and you're right, it does happen. Most are trying to do their job well, and are just people. But I also have no sympathy for the TSA power trippers--and you know they are out there--who confiscate permitted items, perform retaliatory secondaries because a passenger stood up for the SOP or asked a question, and generally take pleasure in making up their own rules. And I personally feel those power trippers deserve whatever treatement they get.

Welcome to FT; I hope you stick around as we need all the points of view we can get. Consider passing on some of the comments you see here about TSA at BOS to your coworkers; BOS has had some of the worst offenses of bad screener behavior and confiscation of permitted items, especially in Terminal B.

Spiff, you hit it on the head. Wile I extend the welcome to FT to this new poster, he seems to forget that he is in a servic eindustry? If oyu don't like it don't fly? IF YOU DONT LIKE IT QUIT THE TSA!

He works for US, not the other way around. He is OUR EMPLOYEE. I would love to see the whole story behind anyone w3ho left a 6 figure a year job to work for the TSA.

This is a plant to curry sympathy for the TSA. The fact is, if Americans get sick of them they WILL go the way of the dodo bird. And I was pretty sure that interstate travel WAS a right and not a privilege.

And to the OP, perhaps if your agency followed its own published rules, followed its SOP and didn't have gum-cracking reprobates saying things like "I nah dem, dey nah me" you'd find a lot more sympathy amongst the rest of us.

THinking Americans can spot BS a mile off. So when you have an agency that insists that we remove our shoes for explosives screening and then put them into an X-ray machine that YOUR OWN AGENCY ADMITS cannot detect explosives, it's going to irritate thinking Americans.

Want to see the videotape I shot of FOUR TSA employees, on duty, in uniform, standing around complaining about their schedules on the sterile side of the screening checkpoint I shot this past year at at airport? If you're looking for sympathy, you've come to the wrong place. Your procedures are absurd, the lion's share of your employees couldn't pass a police civil service test and if you really do have a criminal justice degree, you more than most know that what your agency does is WINDOW DRESSING and is only preventing the most simplistic and amateurish of terror attacks. What percentage of test bombs got through screening at EWR?

--PP

Dear TSABOS: I'm a retired educator, college through preschool level. Didn't get my accolades (considerable!) from being dumb. Now, listen:

I DO hate TSA "that bad", and BECAUSE of TSA, I have stopped flying. Until the public lines of infuriation come to an end I will not fly. Not too stupid to figure out that to go through the lines is to bolster your job. That I will never do again. My momma would have slapped me if I'd turned out that stupid.

Smaller stations seems to have better results. BOI was a real treat. The screeners spoke thequeen's english, used humor to keep the stress down, explained everything, NO ONE was yelling at people like cattle, followed the published rules (at the time) on shoe removal, it was such a day and night contrast to EWR, ORD T2, STL, SFO, LAX and one day I had at IAH. As hard as this might be to beleive, LAS has actually been quite good recently.

Yes, there ARE some good TSA folks, and some stations that comport themselves to the best standards. However, there are so many other horror stories that they drown out the good.

--PP

#1, this guy obviously doesn't make the stupid rules that everyone hates. And he has to enforce them as part of his job description. Although he does personify the problem of TSA agents "internalizing" the rules, and taking this terrible superior power-tripping attitude about enforcement that everyone hates.

#2, the rules are made by people appointed by President Bush, confirmed by the Senate and tacitly supported by the American public. Take it up with your representatives (as many of you do), meet politicians in person and tell them how important this is, give $ to politicians that promise to make a change, heck even get involved in your party appartus of choice and get this in the platform. Over the last 4 years, I have become a "privacy" voter - these things are all connected and I don't want to live in a police state, and I vote and support accordingly.

#3, I have to say that the TSA folks at small airports are about a million times nicer than the big airport guys. This is not an option for everyone of course but TSA has actually driven my (minimal) business to my local aiport, AZO, where I pay usually a hundred dollars more to have a quick, friendly, and minimally invasive entre into the secure aiport system.

I agree, but you forget: When the TSA violates its SOP, you get some butthole staring you down saying "Do you want to fly today?" in an attempot to intimidate you into following whatever he said WHETHER IT'S SOP OR NOT. The agency is accountable to no one, their inner workings are kept from the people who finance its operations, and their PR machine is awfully good at trotting out some white bread suburban soccer mom who flies once a year on the family trip to Disneyworld saying "Oh, ANYTHING for security" for any idiot with a TV camera.

If the TSA were to become fully accountable to its owners (read: The America People) it would change drastically. That's why they are not accountable to us, their employers.

And by the way, a CJ degree means only that you attended class and passed the tests. It's no more proof of actual security or investigative ability than a math degree guarantees that you can balance your checkbook. Remember, the guy who scored DEAD LAST on the medical exam is still addressed as "doctor". Anyone bragging about his college degree as proof of legitimacy is deperate for the legitimacy that he clearly doesn't have.

--PP

"If you hate us that bad just stop flying". I pretty much already have.
You state you have a CJ degree why waste your time at TSA ?

Most CJ degree holders are cops, prison officers (well...) or POs, aren't they?

So that's where former FEMA director Brown ended up. I always wondered. :D

It would make sense. He'd be the TSA's poster child candidate to replace Comrade Hawley.