There are two possibilities I see here:

1) The top-level administration is entirely corrupt and knows full well what they're doing, while the lower echelons are too stupid, too ignorant, or too starved for employment to bother caring about what they're really doing.

2) The entire organization is too stupid, too ignorant, or too starved for employment to bother caring about what they're really doing.

Neither is good.

Great. So are they going to swab me when I enter my airport hotel room?

bolding mine. Except for one problem, they are not checking everyone, just a few at random. This is a waste of resources and doomed to failure.

Hijack and plane crash statistics do not support it, but assume for argument (and TSA who loves to say "There are terryrists everywhere probing the system") that Every Day ONE 9/11 type bad guy tries to board a domestic US flight. There is ONE hijacker in the 2 million folks who will transit a TSA Clerkpoint, where all the sheeple are searched. Now imagine trying to find that ONE Bad Guy outside the Clerkpoint by Random searches.

Next week there will be 100,000 people at the Super Bowl. Imagine twenty Super Bowl stadiums full. Inside is ONE person carrying a billion dollar check which you can keep (The Big Prize) IF you walk up to that person and ask "Do you have my check?", the only restriction is that you can only ask 200 people at Random from those twenty football stadiums full. What are the odds of finding the check?

Now suppose you can play this game forever, however the people in the stadiums change every day so you cannot eliminate those you asked yesterday. Add the variability that some days there might be 10 people with checks but most days there will be none. How many years/decades/centuries are you likely to go and never catch the prize by Random searching of 200 folks a day?

Trying to find a one in a billion long shot by Random Searching is nothing but a huge waste of time. Taxpayer paid time in TSA's case.

This isn't about TSA specifically but given this "Random and Everywhere" mantra looks like mission creep is on over drive and we are all getting Pistole-whipped even if we don't fly.

http://www.news4jax.com/news/26654216/detail.html

Cops To Get See-Through-Walls Radars? - Jacksonville News Story - WJXT Jacksonville
www.news4jax.com

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- A proposal by U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson to give officers technology used by the military to see through walls is raising eyebrows. Friday, January 28, 2011.

One more thing I forgot to mention: As I was leaving the airport the night before I noticed that there were 5-7 guys who were there to do some sort of construction during the night. They were wheeling in large carts with large metal beams, tools and toolboxes. They were going around Security and entering through the area where you and I would exit from. No IDs, no one was checking the materials they were bringing in to the secure area, no one looked in their toolboxes....nothing. I stood and watched for a few minutes to see if anyone would bother to check all of this material, but no one did.
I'm glad they checked that I didn't have more than 3 oz of liquid......

TSA still has no powers of detention AFAIK, you were free to walk away and should have done so. I would also have taken him up on the offer/threat to call the police and I would be real interested in what their response would have been.

Unless everyone entering an airport is swabbed for ETD then this seems to be merely an extension of the SPOT magic pick-out-the-bad-guy charade.

The proliferation of these see-thru devices is going to drive down the cost to where anyone can afford them. Do we want some average jack to be able to have a device that sees thru house walls (not to mention clothes...). There goes your privacy. Those things simply must be banned/strictly controlled. Perhaps allowed out of the locker only if there's a warrant and their use strictly controlled....

Well, highways no longer TSA free. Here's the link: http://bulktransporter.com/fleet/tsa...k-fleets-0131/

What a load of crap.

TSA appears bent on alienating every segment of American society. Harassing truckers who pull off to rest at rest stops will not go over well. If they try to move into truck stops, they probably will end up be ordered off by the truck stop operators.

I think they'll find resistance from truckers will be much better organized than the resistance from airline travelers.

This is getting way of out of line: http://www.oldthinkernews.com/?p=24

yep. A little problem with the brakes and you'd have 80,000 lbs rolling right over the top of the scanner trucks.

That was done in Albuquerque, perhaps you have seen the threads.

If you got some time on your hands, over $10k, and are prepared to ask for "donations" on FT, I say go for it.

You tell them who's boss.

I hope so. I'd offer to squish them one clerk at a time w/ my F-250, but your approach would be much more efficient. The clerks will be especially unwelcome if I'm napping in my RV (have to park in the same area as the semis at rest stops) when they come aharassing.

They also will have another little problem, esp. at the rest stops: Most over-the-road trucks contain a small sleeping/living area behind the cabin. The police will need a warrant to enter uninvited.

On top of that, long-haul truckers have to log their driving time, and they're not going to appreciate being harassed during their rest time.

Here in MN the state DNR used to terrorize fishermen in ice houses, but even ice houses (since many containing sleeping & cooking facilities) are now classed as dwellings. Likewise, RV (both motorized & towed) are considered dwellings with regard to 4th amendment issues. I don't see how truckers' sleeping & living quarters will be any different.

Exactly, add to that the tight schedules that most of them work with and adding an hour or two to their work day, delays their break, delays delivery and then the carrier cannot confirm that their driver was actually stopped...I see this ending very badly for someone approaching a truck after the word gets around.

Searching for drugs and illegal substances in trucks. The TSA presence gives legitimacy to a claim of "administrative search". It would not surprise me if someday a site like Wikileaks published DHS papers that showed that much of this is about the war on drugs.