The majority of the traveling public flies once a year. TSA simply doesn't affect them much.

Depends more on how you get to the "majority." If each person who travels at all during a year counts once then yes, the majority likely support the TSA in their current incarnation, or at least are not opinionated about it. If you count each time someone passes though a checkpoint then frequent fliers get more votes and the numbers are skewed dramatically.

This is a great point.

Somebody smart please estimate the number of passages through TSA checkpoints yearly.

Best I could find via Google...

See number 1.5 here.

Oh, and the 16% number is very thin, as 86MM (over 85MM) is BARELY 16% of 535MM total bags, and the denominator was more tham 535MM, so the numbers are barely accurate. But that's what I could find.

Yeah, Doober with YOU and the rest of the public taking ALL of the risks when and IF O-Bam-Bam-Bozo, the clown gets the vote...

But remember it's the Electoral College that elects and NOT the popular vote of the common people...

That gives me a bit of hope.

The number of checked baggage opened for screening has actually very little to do with the total number of bags screened. Since TSA tracks the number of bags screened total versus the number of bags actually opened in checked baggage, I'd say that's probably a more or less accurate number than you're willing to give it credit for.

What I'm curious about, and I'm sure that TSO's in-the-know who know the SSI baggage procedures as well, is why that number isn't higher.

As for passengers through the checkpoint... neh... I'd be willing to bet it's not actually 708 million passengers, whereas it's more like 708 million passes through the walk-through metal detectors. Everyone who does that gets screened, but on days of canceled flights and massive delays we could end up screening the same person three or four times, then there's the airport workers that have to come through the checkpoint, our own selves as we report in for duty, et cetera.

It's the difference between unique individuals or persons screened. If you count unique individuals - i.e.; one person might get screened five times in one day, and he still only count as one - then the number would likely be much, much lower. Personally, I'd say the point is moot, though - the fact that they came through ten minutes ago doesn't alter one whit the things we need to do to clear them, and if they had a knee replacement and had to be hand-wanded before, then they'll still have a knee replacement and have to be hand-wanded again.

Personally, I don't think the TSA is going to be going anywhere regardless of which candidate gets elected. The only real difference between the two is probably going to be whether or not PASS is eliminated (Republicans are against it, Democrats want to move us to the GS-scale) and whether or not we get unionized (as if it already wasn't hard enough to get rid of the people that don't want to work). Re-privatizing airport security would likely destroy the aviation system and bankrupt the airlines, since they're the ones who have to pay for a private system.

From listening to my co-workers and friends, many of whom are the "once a year" travelers, I'll take issue with the above statement.

For the great majority, their attitude toward the TSA has moved from one of total support to one of realizing that most of the checkpoint hassle is useless; the liquids nonsense and "all shoes off" were the turning point.

The unfortunate thing is that these people won't do anything to make their feelings known.

OTOH, many of the above are formerly "dyed in the wool" Republicans who are planning to vote for the Democrat this year. However, that has come about as a result of the economy and the war.

My only point was that they seem to be claiming that 85MM+ bags is over 16% of 535MM+ bags. It would require 85,600,001 bags to be screened against a sample of 535,000,001 to hit 16%, so it was surprising to me that they presented the number that way, though it certainly is possible.

My understanding is that the majority of checked bags are screened automatically by the computers. Some subset of those are seconded to humans that look at the images on the screens. And of those any that cannot be cleared are then manually screened. So it goes.

@ red456: I'm glad to hear that even the folks who only deal with it once a year are starting to see through the fog on this topic. I still don't think that anything will change based on the election as the politicians rarely actually represent the will of the people. Anyone who stands up and tries to remove the TSA and/or restore a sensible approach to security will immediately be branded by their opponents as soft on security and soft on terrorism and will fight that throughout their reelection campaign. And I do not think any politicians are that stupid. When you have Chertoff saying things like this:
without anyone pushing back on the ridiculous nature of his premise you start to understand that the politics of fear are too strong to overcome in many cases.

I don't think it has to be that way. It can be done like at the test airports (such as SFO) where a security firm is contracted to do the security under TSA guidelines. If anything, I think TSA or the FAA should have an oversight role, set the rules and conduct inspections to ensure that reasonable standards (i.e. not TSA's current farce) are met. I think it would force accountability amongst the rank and file and I think security would improve overall. IIRC, SFO has some of the highest testing rates in the nation and they're private.

I agree that dumping the CURRENT cost of security could bankrup the airlines. However, considering security cost less than $1B per year prior to the gov't mucking with security, it doesn't have to be a death knell. Though I do agree that saddling them with the burden would definitely hurt with the state of the industry now.

I think the gov't should take a serious look at TSA, treat it as an experiment and one that failed. At least for the next few years, move it over to a model like SFO and put the burden on the airlines. Give them the liability waiver provided that proper security measures were met and it is shown that they weren't negligent should something happen.

The US tourism industry lobby has said that the post-2001 changes have reduced the number of foreign tourists to the US. But most such inbound tourism is concentrated in "blue" states (the "red" states that receive a good share of such tourism are the sparsely populated ones like the mountain west and Alaska), which means that such concerns are likely to be ignored by a president catering to a base that lives in "red" states that receive less inbound tourism.

Similarly, outbound American travelers are more likely to live in "blue" states than they are to live in "red" states. Again, a president who caters to a "red" state base will likely ignore the concerns of "blue" state voters.

Oh, right. I forgot that every airport in the whole farkin' country has EDS machines and we're stuck with 100% ETD setup here in Huntsville. Lifting every single bag onto a table, swabbing them by hand, testing them manually, putting them back onto the belt... hoy. I personally would just love to get even one of those EDS machines here.

The problem with that is that, by and large, the airlines and airports don't want to do it. SFO isn't unique - there were, I think, five airports chosen to be testing grounds for private screening. One of them performed better than TSA, one of them performed considerably less than TSA, the other three performed about on average with TSA. Once the test was over, there was a general offer made for any airport in the country to go private if it wanted to. Off-hand, I want to say only one or two, maybe three, actually chose to go with private screening, and one of the test airports actually chose to switch to TSA screening.

Realistically, there's not much of a difference. The TSOs, the LTSOs, and the STSOs are all private security screeners. You can argue all you want to that private companies are more concerned with customer satisfaction, but the fact remains that unless they are specifically beholden to the public-at-large to stay in business, then that's not generally true. They would not be getting paid money from the travelers, but from the airlines and the airport itself, and still have to do every exactly the way TSA has been.

And, sometimes, you can't even tell the difference -- we had a lady transfer from upstate New York (where they were a private security screening company) to Huntsville, and wherever she transferred from wore the TSA uniforms exactly as we do. Their only difference was a paperwork one. And the fact that she wore a US flag pin on the front pocket of her uniform, which she had to take off because it violated the dress code.

Given that team SFO routinely scores significantly better than the rest of TSA airport operations in red cell exercises, security would actually improve if the SFO model was introduced nationwide.

Let's put it to a vote nationally.

option 1: Gas is $1.50 a gallon and you have to show your driver's license every time you fly (like you've had to for the last 15 or so years that I can rememeber)

option 2: Gas is $5 a gallon and you can walk through security with no ID.

Which do you think would win the election?

Our civil liberties here are light years ahead of China, and to compare the two is absolutely silly. When was the last time we ran over our own citizens with tanks, or regulated the amount of children a couple could have?

It's not just about flying with ID, though that's what you picked on out of everything I said.

Of course, I think people would be dumb enough to trade freedom for a few bucks. The gov't would get off pretty cheap.

Doesn't mean we're not headed that way though. Do you want to wait till it gets to that point and THEN try and do something about it, or do something about when the problem is small?

If we got to the point of China, it'd probably take nothing short of bloodshed to get to where we were.

We are hypocritical at best when the US condemns China for spying on its citizens and restricting freedom ala Great Firewall of China when our government is doing the exact same thing to us. I'd rather get the frog out of the water when it's still warm rather than wait until we're boiled.

I hope TSA gets disbanded.
I hope the job is given to a real top gun agency, like FBI.
TSA has too many political connected people who got the job. Read "Cronies".
We need qualified, professional personnel.
Clean out TSA!!!