TSA efficiency scam
 

letter to the editor in Raleigh paper:

http://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/...-9067627c.html
Time for a better measure of RDU lines?

Regarding your July 24 article "Navigating RDU":
I believe the wait times shown for Raleigh-Durham International Airport in the government data are flawed.

I have, on two occasions, been selected as a "timer." As I arrive at the security line I'm handed a slip of paper that has been time-stamped. It says "TSA is measuring the time to get through security, in an effort to speed up your trip. Please hand this notice to the TSA officer after you exit security."

As a frequent traveler, I often leave on Saturday afternoon and return on Saturday mornings (slow air travel times) rather than Friday night. When I was handed the notice, I immediately thought it was "cheating" to do the measurements on a Saturday afternoon rather than a typical weekday, but I dismissed the thought, knowing that they may do measurements every day.

Also, I know that there are two security checkpoints at Terminal A, and since the first one is usually crowded (and was on this Saturday) I went to the farther one. When I was halfway through the line, the TSA officer took the notice back from me and time-stamped it. I didn't say anything about it at that time. (I have dates and times to back up all my claims).

For the next few weeks, I took notice of the timing system. I never saw it being used at rush hour.

About a month later, again on a Saturday, I was handed a slip, again time-stamped. I was in the line for about 10 minutes and the TSA officer walked over and took it back from me. I said "I'm not through security yet." She didn't say anything and then stamped it again. I said, "Hey, that's not accurate. I'm still in line here." She said, "Sir, do you want to fly today? Then please mind your own business." I made a few more complaints and she walked through security to the airport side.

While going through security, I asked a few officers who the lady was. They said she was the supervisor. When I got through (timed as 12 minutes and 15 seconds after the time-stamp) I approached her and said I thought she was "gaming the system" and that doing measurements on a Saturday afternoon and at the shorter of the two Terminal A lines was simply cheating. Further, that taking the time slip away from me before I even entered the security area was simply wrong. I asked that she correct the time to show the additional 12 minutes it took me to get through.

At that point, a police officer approached and told me, "Pal, you don't tell her how to do her job. And if you say one more word, you are not flying today, and I'll put you under arrest." I walked away.

Dare I say that this story suggests fascist behavior on the part of the TSA (not to mention the police officer who decided to get involved)? Oh, wait, that upsets some people. And let's not forget the usual accusations that the story is untrue. We're sure to get a few of those. :rolleyes:

Bruce

Although the writer does not say if he filed complaints, I hope he did so with everyone from the TSA, (yes, even directly to Chertoff himself), the FSD, to the airport manager, to the chief of police, and to his congresspeople and hope he has spoken to the local television station(s).

How many examples of fraud, waste, mismanagement, not following SOP will it take until someone acts?

OP: Had there recently been a story in the local paper touting the efficiency of the TSA at RDU that prompted this letter?

Obviously there had been an article - I didn't read the first sentence correctly - I don't care to register to find it. OP, could you possibly post a link for us? Thanks.

It sounds as though the OP was holding the "timing slip" where any/everyone could see it. How about trying this. If selected again for "timing", follow your normal path. But, keep the slip concealed until you clear the security CP. Then offer the slip to the last person at the CP. @:-) :D

I agree with the other posts regarding the complaints. Take that info to anyone and everyone at the airport and TSA. Be sure to copy the airline(s) as well.

You are a customer, not a criminal. You were making fair observations about a process for which you paid (say Security Fee). The LEO and TSA supervisor were way out of line. :td:

story was quoted
 

the full text of the article appears in the original post, I just included a hyper link to the story so that folks who wanted to register for that site would know I had not made it up.

Not to be a nag, but could you cut and paste relevant portions of the original article about "Navigating RDU". I'm really interested in reading it to see what prompted the gentleman's letter. The first time I clicked on the link, I went right to the letter, but now it doesn't take me anyplace but to the register page - and I really don't want to register.

Thank you.

well, it only took until 220pm to get my blood boiling today. I know the OP is not the victim here, but I hope the person in the article filed a complaint against this thug - he needs to be sent packing to the same Kmart security detail as the TSA supervisor.

As far as hiding the slip, I still think they can just discard the slip if they dont like the timing and get another passenger to carry it so they can doctor the time.

Please post more information on this article - I want to contact the paper and find out how they plan to investigate not only the timing fraud, but the behavior of the police at the checkpoint.

The methodology of collecting data like this is just another example of the TSA's mediocrity and incompetence. Obviously, nobody with any operations research or management engineering background ever had anything to do with this. Any data they collect, altered or not, would be meaningless unless you collected it after you determined a controlled scientific sample size of passengers and flight crews. But, this would involve the TSA's desire to improve itself, which we all know is completely foreign to their culture.

It's funny, though. I would have thought that the TSA would have lied in the other direction -- making the lines appear to go more slowly -- in order to justify an increased budget and more screeners at the airport level. The only reason I could think of to skew the results in the faster direction would be if you planned to lie to the airport management about how fast the lines were going.

Combined with the unprofessional harassment from the TSA manager and cop, this whole incident is just plain pathetic.

FYI, I copied my Congressman, who just happens to sit on the House Homeland Security Committee.

Answered My Own Question
 

OK, I registered and read the referenced article. It's basically a fluff piece extolling the virture of the new & improved RDU, except for:

"The security checkpoint can become a "choke point" for air travelers, according to a July 14 article in USA Today. Using government data, the newspaper ranked 100 of the country's busiest airports to see how they ranked in time travelers spend going through security.

RDU ranked 37th, with an average wait of 5.4 minutes and 14.5 percent of waits taking more than 10 minutes.

Hamlin pointed out that Transportation Safety Administration employees, not the airport, run the security checkpoints. "We work with TSA any way we can ... to alleviate lines at the airport," she said. This cooperation includes providing TSA with weekly reports on how many travelers are passing though RDU at certain times of day so that TSA can have more employees working during peak times. Over the past two to three years, the airport has also opened more lanes at each checkpoint, with five in Terminal A, four in Terminal C and three in Terminal A Extension."

So, it's clear to me the TSA lied to get the numbers down because of the local's desire to look better in the USA Today survey. I'm sure this paper is about as intellectual as the TSA management gets

That is worth a letter to the TSA, carboned to the FSD for the airport, the airport administrator, and some congresspeople :mad: The fact that she was gaming the system alone to fake the #s is bad enough and worth the complaint, but that she then bullied the pax by threatening not to let him fly?! :mad:

That is a real rent-a-cop attitude :td: I'd love to know what chargers that guy could come up with... "disrupting the screening process" or "disturbing the peace" or something equally silly, I bet :mad:

Interfering with screening is a federal offense. Another trial, almost certainly another conviction. Congress, do something!

Making false statements to the government can constitute a felony. I hope the Inspector General of DHS learns of this.

FWIW line waits approaching 20 minutes are a bad thing. Washington has to be notified at 20.

"Figures lie and liars figure." goes the old saying. I find it disappointing the data that is shown here. Averge time is meaningless with out the end data (low and high), and number of samples. More than 10 minutes? How much more? 14.5% of what? (of 24 hrs = almost 3.5 hrs! - guess which ones!?!)

Duh! These numbers don't really tell anyone anything useful.

Not jumping you, FW2M. Just screaming at my screen. :mad: :D

The worst part is that the cop might have indeed used that as the charge, despite the pax not doing anything to truly disrupt the screening process :mad:

When I got to IAD this morning, the line was about 30 minutes long. I wasn't able to get Mr. Chicken to add me to the standby list for an earlier flight, so I hung out for a while and just watched the line before heading for the United RCC.

What I noticed was quite interesting. The airport staff did a fairly good job of rearranging the lines, taking the original crowd and feeding them into three or four lines rather than one that didn't break up until close to the checkpoints. The ID checkers were going down the lines rather than waiting for pax to come to them, which helps (IAD stamps BPs to indicate the checker has seen them).

A 3-stripe TSA supervisor was helping direct pax to the shortest lines at the checkpoints (after the long airport-managed lines). The odd thing, though, is that they started shutting down a number of lanes when there was still a big crowd--seems they could have kept them open another 5-10 minutes and handled a lot more of the masses. The check-in crowds were slacking off as the morning banks of flights headed out, so I can see why they felt they needed less screeners, but it did seem they closed lanes too early and thus kept the wait time constant rather than going ahead and clearing it out.

The 3-stripe got in an argument with one of the airport staffers over which lanes she was sending people to ... not sure what that was about. By the time I joined the line, it was down to 15 minutes long, anyway.

A charge and arrest for sure....but a conviction? Also, consider this: would the federal whistle blower protection laws apply to a private citizen who is reporting fraud? Could this person have allowed themselves to be arrested, then turned around and sued the police under the whistle blower laws because he was attempting to report on, or prevent an act of fraud by a government employee.

That's correct, Bruce. No one ever has any problems getting through security here; no one is ever harassed, let alone threatened with the "Do you want to fly today?" should you dare ask a question or inquire. Nope nope nope, the TSA is perfect, all employees are friendly, they all follow SOP, and no one should ever question anything, even Privacy Act violations... Besides, think of the children!

SDF_Traveler

If their motives are pure, then they can do anything! "We're only trying to keep you safe," so what's the problem? (Maybe I don't want or need the government to keep me safe from extremely remote events?)

Bruce

I got a chuckle from the security video at IAD this morning--which I generally ignore--when it said, "Remember, the screeners primary interest is YOUR security!"

Airports do kind of cheat. I have been a "timer" at ORD. However it is always during a lull and the line is quick! Certainly not an average!

I just copied the letter and sent it to my local congress critters, also providing examples of problems at my local airport.

That certainly was a real rent-a-cop attitude :td: As far as charges, $20 says the individual would be arrested for disorderly conduct. Disorderly conduct is extremely vague and ambigious in most states, officers can apply it to just about anything (especially a bored airport cop with an attitude looking for some excitement).

I hope the letter finds the way to the local airport FSD. Only thing I fear is the name attached to the letter, but if the FSD or someone abused their position and added the name to a selectee list or no-fly list, I am sure the individual could make much more noise and get it published in the press. For that reason, I doubt such an abuse would happen, but you just don't know these days. Besides, it won't be long until every common name is on "the list".

FWIW, when I do write complaint letters, write something to a newspaper or am interviewed on the subject, I use a variation of my full legal name. This variation is what I go by but is different than full legal name which is used on airline tix I purchase. I would suggest others do the same - it can't hurt.

SDF_Traveler

I too was a timer in ORD. It was also after the rush hour crush. When the bouncer gave me the card at the entrance to the line, one of the id checkers followed me through the maze and conveniently opened a new entrance to the checkpoint right in front of me! She checked my ID, gave me a big enough grin to alow me to appreciate her gold tooth and took the card! Time in line... 1 min 30 seconds (approx.)

Weird. It sounds like she was trying to make them look extremely quick and efficent. That police officer should have been reprimanded. There was no warrant for an arrest.

TSA opens investigation of RDU wait time scam
 

http://www.newsobserver.com/news/sto...-9090741c.html
from Wednesday, August 3 Raleigh newspaper:

Inquiry focuses on RDU security
Wait times were doctored, flier says
Levitan says screeners changed his wait time twice.
By MICHAEL EASTERBROOK, Staff Writer
The federal administration responsible for screening passengers and bags at U.S. airports is investigating a Triangle man's claim that a screener at Raleigh-Durham International Airport lied about the time it took him to get through a security checkpoint.
The Transportation Security Administration opened the inquiry July 27 after seeing a letter to the editor in The News & Observer, said Christopher White, an administration spokesman. In the letter, Ben Levitan of Raleigh described how screeners allegedly fudged the time it took him to clear security.

Levitan, 47, claims that on two occasions late last year, screeners at RDU asked him to participate in a test used to measure how long it takes passengers to move through security checkpoints.

As he entered the line, they handed him a piece of paper stamped with the time and asked him to turn it in once he cleared the checkpoint. Instead, though, they grabbed the paper from him midway through the line and recorded the time as if he had already passed through, he said.

Levitan said he didn't think much of it the first time it happened on a Saturday morning in October. But when it happened again the following month, he complained to the screener.

"I said, 'What are you doing? I'm not out of the line yet,'" recalled Levitan, who works as an electrical engineer for a cell phone operator and flies about twice a month. "She said, 'Sir, you need to cooperate.'"

White declined to comment on the status of the investigation and said he didn't known when it would be completed.

"We take these allegations seriously," he said. "We have a unique public trust."

At airports throughout the country, screeners frequently ask passengers to carry time-stamped cards through checkpoints as a way of measuring wait times, White said.

He said the average wait at RDU was 3.9 minutes, while the average during peak hours was 11.2 minutes. Peak hours are when passenger flow is heaviest, usually Monday mornings and Friday afternoons.

When USA Today crunched numbers from the administration, it found that the average wait time at RDU was 5.4 minutes, according to a report that appears on the newspaper's Web site.

White said he's confident the administration's numbers are correct and added that most airports would be happy with RDU's wait times.

"I would say that a 3.9-minute wait time would be considered to be good at any airport in the country," White said.

Several passengers waiting for flights Tuesday said RDU checkpoints flowed smoothly compared to those at other airports. Only one traveler complained about the checkpoints.

"They appear to me to be very slow," said Barbara Irwin, 59, of Wilson, who was flying to Indianapolis to visit her daughter.

The Transportation Security Administration, part of the Department of Homeland Security, staffs checkpoints at more than 400 airports nationwide with 45,000 screeners. It currently employs 286 screeners at RDU and plans to reduce that number by five through attrition, White said.

The cuts are part of a nationwide reshuffling of screeners announced last week. While some airports will lose screeners, others will gain.

Mindy Hamlin, a spokeswoman for RDU, said the reduction probably would not affect wait times at the airport. But she warned that further cuts might.

"You do reach a point if you continue to reduce staff where you can't keep the wait times down," Hamlin said.

Staff writer Michael Easterbrook can be reached at 836-5701 or [email protected].

Fellow FTers, this result is EXACTLY why we need to keep filing complaints, writing to newspapers & other media, writing to our Congressional representatives, and generally staying in the face of the TSA. I'm not hopeful that anything substantive will come out of this, but we, specifically the writer, have made several TSA people squirm and not get away with something they would have gotten away with if somebody, at risk of being arrested (see his letter above), hadn't put their civic duty above self.

We've got to take back our government, one "letter to the editor" at a time if necessary!

Who wants first crack at THAT line?

I'll take it. They have a unique public trust in exactly the same way that -1 is a unique positive integer.

It upsets me that I have to tell the poor children that this story is untrue..How's that? :D

Have a great day all! :p

The data is helpful to me but only for an immediate operational purpose. I use the data to gauge the number of screeners I release on breaks/lunches during peak periods. I do it based on the number of upcoming flights, length of the line both to the checkpoint and at the ticket counters, and average wait time (data we collect AFTER a passenger has passed thru the WTMD and not BEFORE). The reason for the WTMD as the defining point is because the data is collected to determine how long you had to wait until you reached the checkpoint. When you pass through the WTMD, you have reached the checkpoint.

As for the rest of it, I agree: TSA is distorting this data to mean something it cannot. I don't buy it.

Hate to break it to you
 

This "article" has so many holes in it, that it would make great swiss cheese. Once the investigation is over, the results will probably not be printed. Reason being....there will be nothing to report.

This guy accomplished his goal. He got his picture in the paper.....his 15 minutes :rolleyes:

BTW......I work @ RDU

Would you care to elaborate? It seems to me he is doing something that most would not when faced with this situation. Most people would just not do anything because they are afraid of repercussions.

What are the holes and why will there be nothing to report?

Why do I get the feeling SSI will be invoked?

Whistle blower laws supposedly protect employees from retribution by employers. Why would you need to be protected as a citizen?

Beceause there can be so many different variables in collecting, analyzing, and interpeting the data that it can be skewed however you want. A supervisor could selectively choose the best times and discard the rest, duh. Unfortunately, things like this are used as a grade card instead of being looked at for improvement.

I think that qui tam legislation applies to everyone. In addition to receiving a portion of restitution that the wrongdoer is ordered to repay, a la doctors reporting Medicare fraud, I think that there is also protection against retaliation for blowing the whistle, perhaps in the form of monetary damages if such retaliation is proved. Of course, since TSA is so vital to the survival of our nation :rolleyes:, such legislation would probably not apply to it.

On a more serious note, TSA and DHS has tried to exempt itself from EEOC, OSHA, and other basic laws that apply to most other employers, both government and private, so the qui tam analogy may not apply, because of the governmental status of TSA. Yet another reason why I consider this to be a disgusting, un-American bureaucracy.

Because the person in this scenario was threatened with arrest by the police while he was attempting to report an act of fraud by a government employee - if he was arrested for doing it, he might have a case against the police for infringing on his public duty to report fraud.

Take Scissors Away said that the article has so many holes in it that it would make great swiss cheese. I was asking him to elaborate on that, not on the different variables on collecting, analyzing and interpreting the data. He hasn't replied to that as of yet.

If a supervisor is discarding data, then that is destroying an official government document. The methodology should be uniform, e.g., x number of surveys at x time each day instead of doing it randomly. But then again, consistency has never been a TSA strong point. :)

Actually, there's never been a real official explanation of what those data cards are really for. I already explained how I use them, but to be quite honest, the only guidance we've ever received was to collect that data every 30 minutes (except for designated "non-peak periods" which is normally at the end of regular day between the hours of 5 pm and 10 pm). It was never really designed for gauging peak periods. If so, then we would collect the data when the lines are long and perhaps collect it several times within a 30 to 60 minute time frame in order to determine if there's any progress being made. Instead, we are obligated to collect that data only once every 30 minutes.

What's happened here is that the TSA headquarters is spouting some PR information based on data that I don't believe was intended for nothing more than a 30 minute random sampling of how long a typical passenger has to wait in line.

As for discarding data, you are correct. No supervisor should intentionally distort or manipulate data of any type. Do people "fudge" data? Of course. Name one bureaucracy that doesn't. A lot of that has to do with human nature as well as the nature of all bureaucracies. However, there's a difference between that and intentionally distorting data for a manipulated outcome...plus or minus.