http://wokv.com/localnews/2009/11/te...chool-bus.html

My mother-in-law, a former school bus driver, just LHAO when I told her about this. Her comment "do they realize how much of a pain it is just to try to keep your eyes on the road while monitoring all of the kids on the bus?"

When is FEMA and the TSA going to go to the local primary schools to teach children to watch their parents and report them for suspicious terrorist activities that are a threat to the Party and Big Brother? George Orwell is alive and kicking.

A "reporting mechanism" to report suspicious activity? They need a training course to tell people to call the police when they think something's up?

Google "Pavlik Morozov". You'll see exactly what this reminds me of.

Obviously they do. Isn't there a new thread here today where a woman left her bag on the sidewalk after exiting a taxi? How many passengers and taxi drivers saw it in the hour and a half and didn't report it? Maybe people need to be taught to report suspicious things, despite what you think...

Of course, when a woman at ATL reported an unattended piece of luggage, the report resulted in ... absolutely no action at all. Seems like those who are supposed to receive such reports could use instruction as well ...

If I called the police every time I saw a misplaced bag while out in public, I wouldn't have time to do much else. I recall a programme being in place where I live where the police teach garbage collectors what to watch for in terms of suspicious behaviour (looking for residential break-ins mostly) while doing their rounds. I can support a programme like that, just as I can support asking bus drivers to call police to report dangerous drivers or any suspicious activity. I'm not too sure a backpack on a park bench meets my definition of suspicious.

Pretty soon the kids will be turning in their parents to the bus drivers.

Welcome to East Germany. Perhaps the "S" in TSA will stand for Stasi?

Hey, ya know, "V" just started its remake appearance. Maybe this is all the a-holes at TSA HQ reliving their childhoods and still wanting to be Visitor Youth Leaders.

I've been saying that for 7 years now.

Well that makes it different from other TSA projects, for a start.
This from an organization that can't get the names on the No Fly List sorted out, that can't inform its own employees whether shoes go in bins or not, that can't decide whether ice is a solid or a "frozen liquid", that can't decide between 3 and 3.4 on a fricking website, but they're going to correlate suspicious behavior reported by bus drivers to look for patterns???? You have got to be kidding!

Pretty soon. And I'm sure Hero's Medals will be established soon after.

ETA: PoliceStateSurvivor beat me to it.

Since TSA never does risk management, I'll have to do it for them.

Suppose a couple of guys with white robes and beards travel from West Hideoutistan with a 155 mm shell and plan to place their IED under a US street. At home they plant their IEDs at night, as it is harder to spot them. Suppose in the US for some reason they plan to dig their hole in the daytime. They scout locations for a few days to find a rural road with a daily low traffic period to dig their hole.

School buses drive fixed days of the week, drive a fixed route, at the same time every day and driving the same direction, one way in the morning and one way in the afternoon. The IED diggers notice this and decide "no digging when the school bus is due by."

Schedule regularity means school buses are the most easily avoided vehicle there is, and thus school bus drivers are LESS likely to see suspicious activity than other forms of transportation. Duh.

OTOH, since no induvidual bus driver is likely to see a single "suspicious activity" in their entire lifetime, and that rare driver who does see a "suspicious activity" is lilely to only see one in their entire career, how are they supposed to notice PATTERNS? One or less than one event does not make a "pattern."

Operation TIPS