So ... even if the current technology you have is ineffective, you'll continue to use it? That doesn't seem to make much sense ...

Except that the events of 2001 weren't caused by screening failures.

...and if they had been, there would have already been any number of additional incidents caused by additional screening failures on the part of the TSA - as in missing the handguns, razor blades, and assorted other items via the carry-on X-ray device that has been around long enough that presumably any TSA employee who is capable of being trained has been trained on it.

I do believe it's more like the technology they use is the best they have, even if it has flaws.

Seat belts can save someone's life in a car accident but they will not save everyone every time, does that mean that since it does not have an 100% efficiency rate we should all stop using it?

I'm all for debunking useless processes but let's not go overboard.

HAHAHAHA, you assume that I work only with the folks on the checkpoint? Please, I work with everyone in the TSA at my airport. Many have higher education, most of those are in management, you know the ones who make policy? There are quite a few TSO’s who have degree’s, and yes I know quite a few. Others have a great deal of experience, law enforcement officers, banking, education professionals. More than half are prior military, both enlisted as well as commissioned officers, and some are still serving as members of the reserve.

Actually, you and others are making assumptions as to my meaning, and doing a real poor job of it.

And it does not make sense, if one were to assume that your position was accurate. But it’s not, the technology works just fine, does exactly what it is designed to do and does it very well. Its folks like yourself that misinterpret, intentionally I often feel, the data and reports to give the worst possible view.

No, they were not. They were caused by a wide range of things, including a lack of foresight by those we entrusted with the security of our commercial aviation infrastructure. Far too many things to mention here. Many of those failures have been addressed by the formation of the TSA and DHS, some by other agencies that already existed at the time, and some have yet to be addressed. And we still don’t know every failure that went into the events of 9/11/2001.

And terrorists will make them different, new, something that we may miss. There seems to be an entire commercial industry out there that does little else, and 99.99% of the people out there use these things with complete innocence. Some don’t. Those are the ones that interest me as a professional. Now, if there were just a magic way to tell one from the other, without making an error, we could stop treating everyone as a potential terrorist.

"HAHAHAHA"? How... condescending and insulting of you.

And despite your outraged protestations, you still haven't answered my original question - HOW MANY TSOs do you know who have masters and doctoral degrees? And WHAT DEGREES? HOW MANY is "quite a few"?

And on a different note, exactly what policies are made by upper management at YOUR airport? I thought TSA policy was set by TSA administration in Washington, not at individual airports around the country? Wasn't that sort of the ENTIRE purpose of creating TSA in the first place, to standardize (and thereby improve) security-related policies and procedures at all airports in the United States?

If you have degreed professionals in management in your airport making policies, aren't they contradicting the entire reason for TSA's existence?

That's a typical attitude in this country these days. Any time something bad happens, Americans immediately look for someone to blame, especially someone in government, which people seem to think is supposed to prevent any and all bad things of any kind from ever happening to anyone, ever.

That's not the way the universe works. Bad people will do bad things, and there is no way to prevent all bad people from ever doing any bad things. But that doesn't stop us from going to outrageously destructive extremes to TRY to change the way the universe works. Give up our freedoms, assault our citizens, spend ourselves into oblivion, all in the name of preventing the unpreventable and stopping the inevitable. And all the while, the preventable problems are woefully ignored.

This is not a dig at you, Ron. The whole damn country seems to think this way these days, and it both scares and disgusts me.

Actually, it could have been their poor choice of major. Astronomy/Astrophysics is a nice field, but you have to have a PhD to get anywhere near a paying job in it.

Which, again, brings us back to "unemployable."

Please do not call my motivations into question. I have never called yours into question. I treat you as an individual, and I would ask that you would treat me as an individual as well.

If I am factually in error, please point out my error, rather than dismissing me out of hand.

As others wiser than I have stated, there are exactly two changes that have happened since 9/11 that have addressed the failures of 9/11: the locking of the cockpit door, and the mindset shift among passengers enabling them to act in their own self-defense. Neither of those changes have anything to do with the numerous changes TSA and DHS have made since then. Both of those changes have led to documented, verifiable security "wins". It's unclear to me if any of TSA/DHS's activities have accomplished the same thing.

With regard to the thread's headline question, the TSA has problems with books in a manner reminscent of a middle school dunce who flunked 7th grade English: both have trouble understanding what is in the books and what is behind the books.

Why thank you.

Are you of the opinion that your local McDonalds does not have a few policies of its own, ones that the company didn’t hand down to them? How about your WalMart? Rent-to-Own? How about the ACE Hardware down the block?

Policies are not “procedures”. I believe that is where your error is, there is a difference between the two.

Only if one subscribes to your interpretation of the responsibilities of the local TSA management.

Please believe me when I say that I did not take it as a dig. You are arguing for better “personal responsibility”. I agree that in today’s society we seem to be lacking this one quality which made our country as great as it is. I am a strong advocate for personal responsibility, but I don’t put the limitations on it that you seem to (please correct me if I am wrong).

I am of the opinion that we must know what the rules are, but not the procedures. We must take the time to learn about our own personal safety, and practice what we have learned. We must teach our children about that safety as well, and do our best to make it second nature to them. We must take responsibility for our own actions, for our own futures, for our mistakes, and for our triumphs.

Personal responsibility is a dying thing in our country. You would never have heard Davie Crocket complain if someone said “you cant bring that in here”. He would have respected that, learned the rules, and taken the personal responsibility to not do that again.

Very well, please accept my apology. But try and understand, I am the one (and I hate to use religious terms, but it seems appropriate here) “Christian among the heathens”. So if I occasionally tend to paint folks here with a wide brush it should be understandable. Not right, but understandable.

I correct factual errors here all the time, and it gets ignored, all the time. At what point should I begin using that wide brush? I don’t keep a score card on the other posters here (as some seem to).

There are far more than that, and you would know it if you were honestly interested in the facts. Most have direct connections to the TSA and DHS agencies. The two you speak of are the two that you can see every time you board a plane (the cockpit door and the eyes of your fellow passengers), but the others are not in plain sight. To assume that they do not exist is dishonest. The facts are available to anyone who cares to take the time to look for them (and has an internet connection). Even the supposed problem that the OP asks about, TSA’s issue with books. One poster here got the answer right, all the others have gone off on personal tangents that have nothing to do with the OP’s original question (myself included it seems (sigh)).

Books are dense, square, and organic, as are many different types of explosives. 1+1. And we have to be sure. It only takes one mistake to make the news, and I’m sure no one here would like to be a part of that story.

I understand, and accept your apology. We can disagree without being disagreeable.

And we were doing so well ... now, you call my honesty into question once again. Please refrain from doing that.

It's not dishonest to refuse to acknowledge facts which are not made available for public discussion. All too often, the US government has made claims to the public that could not be verified for "security reasons" ... only to have those claims refuted months or years later when the truth was finally revealed. And, probably just as often, the US government has made claims to the public that were later shown to be verifiably true.

I, like many others here, am tired of people citing 9/11 as the reason for puffers and shoe removal and liquid restrictions and AIT and BDOs and all the rest ... when none of those things had anything to do with 9/11.

We all have to take responsibility for our postings --- you and I alike. But as Brandeis said, the remedy for bad speech is more speech, not silence.

And that's a mentality that TSA may need to reconsider. It's the fear of "making that one mistake" that leads to some of the more ridiculous stories of security overreaching.

There is no such thing as perfect security for commercial air travel. Someone will, somehow, someway, find a way to commit an act of terrorism aboard an aircraft. And rather than scaring TSOs into believing that they'll be held accountable as scapegoats when that event happens, we ought to have a rational discussion regarding the tradeoffs between security and liberty that form the basis of any security policy (not just those of TSA).

Alas, it's easier to argue in sound bites.

The saddest part is that the TSA thinks people are complaining about the books being searched, when the complaint is that the TSA can't be arsed to take a modicum of care in searching - instead tossing books and other possessions around like a poo-flinging monkey on crack.

Yes, that's one of an arsenal of straw men that TSA supporters love to set up and knock down, and pretend that means they're winning arguments. Others are:

"What do you want, NO security? That's crazy! There are people out there who want to kill us all!"
NO. Nobody wants zero security. We just want security that A) works, B) doesn't violate our Constitutional rights, and C) doesn't put our health in danger with untested radiation-emitting machinery.

"Oh, you'd rather BLOW UP in mid-air? You have no right to endanger MY safety!"
And neither you nor the government have any right to strip away my Constitutional rights in a vain attempt to somehow make air travel 100% guaranteed safe. There is no "right to safety" but there is a right to freedom from unreasonable search and seizure.

"I'd rather put up with a little hassle and inconvenience than have my plane flown into a building. Quit complaining about the hassles of air travel; you sound like a spoiled child."
And although we do complain about the hassles and inconveniences of air travel, that is a very minor side-issue. The main issue is, was, and always will be, security measures which violate our 4th Amendment rights while still failing to detect prohibited items 73% of the time.

"I'm willing to sacrifice some of my rights to stay safe."
Fine. I'm not. And neither you nor the government has any right to FORCE me to do so, just because you're afraid of some Muslim boogie man.

"Flying is not a right, it's a privilege, so the government can do anything it wants to keep it safe."
Wrong. Interstate travel IS a Constitutionally-protected right, under Article 4, Section 2, Clause 1, the Privileges and Immunities clause. Upheld repeatedly by the US Supreme Court (U.S. v Guest, 383 U.S. 745 (1966), Shapiro v Thompson, 394 U.S. 618 (1969)) as guaranteeing the People's RIGHT to unobstructed interstate travel.

"If it saves even ONE life, isn't it worth it?"
NO. Not if saving that one life trashes everything that hundreds of thousands of Americans have willingly given their lives to protect over the last 230-odd years, namely our personal liberties.

And my personal favorite, which is evoked not only in TSA arguments but in other issues like border security and war-related issues:

"The Constitution doesn't apply to this situation/these people/those places."
WRONG. The US Constitution ALWAYS applies, ALL the time, to EVERYONE in US territory (citizen, visitor, guest, criminal, POW, or illegal alien), and NOTHING trumps or invalidates the Constitution, which is the supreme law of the US.

Your honesty is in question. As is mine often enough. It’s a condition that is unavoidable in this type of venue, so we just have to get used to it.

It is dishonest to refuse to acknowledge that those facts have been made available. Not all of them, some are withheld because of national security, but enough.

Puffers were technology in the works prior to 9/11, and therefore a logical addition to the checkpoint. Shoe removal was the direct result to an attempted attack after 9/11 and has nothing to do with that day, and the same with liquids. In fact, one liquid explosive attack took place long before 9/11 and another was in the planning stage some time after that day before it was taken apart by excellent intelligence and investigative work. Liquids continue to be a threat vector according to the latest intelligence brief’s. AIT technology was also in the works long before the stated deployment reason, and that reason had nothing to do with 9/11. Not so sure about BDO’s, but then again I’m not one and do not know the background.

Some of those things had their roots in the 9/11 plot, most did not. All have been in response to specific threats though (with the possible exception of the BDO program), threats that we hear are still considered viable by terrorists around the world.

History has shown that there is reason for this mentality. Citizens demand that someone be held accountable for disasters. FEMA with Katrina, the CEO of Enron, Iran/Contra, Watergate. In all of these situations the citizens demanded that there be a “fall guy”, and it’s not uncommon for the little guy to be caught up in the wake of those demands and crushed.

But it sure would be nice to know that one can only be held responsible for their own actions, and not those of the folks with enough power to shift the blame. But again we are back to personal responsibility, and the fact that our nation is getting away from that concept. I suspect that the legal system has more to do with that than any other segment of our society.

There are times when I believe that handing your luggage to the American Tourister Gorilla is safer than leaving it to the non-existent mercies of the TSA.

(Link added for all you young whippersnappers who never saw the commercial on TV)