Anyone notice an increase in "While the flight attendants are PRIMARILY here for your safety [they may also bother to throw some peanuts at you]" type announcements on the increase? My last several UA flights have been that way. Maybe it's foreshadowing.

Your intent is laudable and potentially an improvement, but after 40 years of dealing with, contracting for, employing, and too often covering up for "private security" much if not most of it is on a level at or below the TSA, often manned by the same caliber of employee (if not of a lesser quality), capable of equal dunderheaded decision making, and in all honesty as practiced in civil aviation likely to result in the same old "low bidder" approach that has given us all those other aspects to which we object, the "Indian Call Center" syndrome, "Snack Packs" and nearly incomprehensible (and now and again indefensible) route choices.

No matter how is cleaved or faceted, Bulls*t remains Bullsh*t, and the requirements of a free society (even as mangled by the TSA from time to time) and the Constitutuion combine to insure that "security" as you might imagine it to optimally be is simply beyond accomplishment without such a harsh and punitive system that freedom of movement (except for the privileged and favored) becomes impossible. What we now have is an illusion not so well presented by a bureaucracy whose faults and excesses are glaring. The alternative, to be sucessful, would have to combine the horrors of the worst of the Chekists and their progency with the vilest aspects of the N*zi's Security Services.

Shucks, we can't even agree on a common ID card....