Thegeneral,
You're right. I do spend more time talking or whining about the TSA than actually dealing with them.

But the interactions I do have are often disturbing.

Not to rehash all of our collective frustrations, but it's the barking, the waiting in line, the drawn-out ID inspection, getting a random search at the checkpoint and AGAIN ten minutes later at the gate. Unless there is a delay, the TSA is the most time-consuming part of the airport experience.

It is somewhat dependent on which airport and which checkpoint you use. I have had some "glide through" TSA experiences. But with the ramp-up in random secondaries and gate searches, this becomes less likely.

Point is, General, even boredom beats the holy hell out of relinquishing my constitutional rights to anyone. For any reason. Any time.

Period.

At least that's what I believe.

You?

I guess you didn't look hard enough and this really explains the nature of all of your posts as a TSA/CBP cheerleader.

I'm a dual US/Australian citizen. In Australia I'm welcomed home by the immigration officer. In the US, I generally deal with an assclown holier than thou CBP idiot. From these experiences, I can only guess how much worse it is for non-citizens.

In Australia, I can board a domestic flight without removing my shoes, showing ID, or having to leave my dangerous liquids behind. Why? Because they are not credible threats. Australia gets it.

Here’s a start. I’m sure someone has some more complete figures on what was spent on security in 2000 (which should be a more accurate comparison than 2001):

Linkage

In their eyes of a traveler from outside the States, what’s the difference? The end result is the same if you have government employees with badges at airports with poor customer service skills. There’s plenty of vacation destinations in the world where one can go without being barked at, the Shoe Carnival, the War on Liquids, etc.

I guess my take on it is that a lot of folks here still enjoy travel. Like me though, the TSA is really taking the fun out of the game.

It's not just that. It's the fact that funding TSA adds more $$$ to the growing federal deficit, and produces nothing in the way of real security over and above what was in place before TSA.

I'm not a TSA cheerleader. I just think it's stupid how people make one sided arguments. They ..... about the limits of the liquid ban, but they don't stop to realize that they would be .....ing more if there were no solid guidelines. You call them on this and then they bring up their overall issues with the liquids ban. This, of course, almost always has nothing to do with the argument at hand.

I don't recall exactly how I was greeted in Australia. That said, plenty of people I know find Canadian customs and immigration worse than that of the USA. I have gone through customs in Europe once this year and I don't recall them asking me politely if I wouldn't mind if I could bend over so they could kiss my backside. I don't recall them doing this in Japan when I was there. Going through customs and immigration is a serious matter. I go through customs in the US about 20 times a year. I've yet to have had a problem with crossing ever.

Australia gets it? I guess the US and the EU and various other countries don't. Then again, I couldn't use my phone when I landed in Australia and had to spend an hour going through an invasive species screening. The folks there wouldn't even give me, "that's not a knife, that's a knife", "throw another shrimp on the barbie" or a few rounds of Waltzing Matilda. Of course, I didn't want or expect that. I wanted them to do their job just as they do stateside or in other border crossings.

The difference is rather elementary. They go through the same screening process when flying ANYWHERE as they do here. The immigration is the difference. Think back to Sesame Street and, "One of these things is not like the other".

They can go ahead and fly somewhere else of course, but if they're in Europe, they deal with the same thing pre-boarding. Of course, it's not called TSA just something else.

Having to take off your shoes and put your toiletries in a bag is ruining travel for you?

Disturbing? Such as what? Do they take you in a closed room and make you dissect kittens or something? What exactly is it that's distrubing? That' 10 seconds of taking off your shoes and removing your liquids? That's what bothers most people on here. Of course, they have to call it a shoe carnival and war on liquids in order to make it sound like something far worse than it is.

There was id inspection before 9/11. The random searches as the checkpoint are few and far in between. The searches at the gate even more rare. The odds of getting both have to be at most 1/1000. That's what, 500 trips?

In terms of the delays, you're flying out of SFO, they do have elite lines. If you don't fly enough to actually even get a basic elite status, why even bother posting on a website devoted to flying? Going through security now doesn't take much longer than it did before. Certainly, airline volumes and loads were very high for a while, but people always had to go through security. Somehow, people forget that.

By the way, the drawn out ID inspection is rarely a rate taking step. The drawn out part involves shining an ultra-violet light on my boarding pass. The id inspection at a strip club takes longer.

Things might be dependent on your airport, but in having a quick look at the regional forums, I don't see people .....ing about gates in their airport, but they come in here and feel that it's great to come in here.

Thus far this year I've gone through security in MXP, SEA, EWR, LAX, SAN, SFO, BUR, MSP, MCO, DEN and a slew of other airports. I don't recall either one taking more than five or ten minutes. The vast majority are in the <5 category.

Seems to me that it's "thegeneral" who doesn't get it.

Why doesn't this statement surprise me?

Well, not in most countries they don't.. But everytime a flight is to/from the US they have to check and double check everything. All these 'extra' security measurements originated from the US.

However, as I said, most countries do not have extremely 'thorough' check like gateway cities.. And it's much more friendlier and nicer than those of the USA.. Even in Changi!

Now, from my stand point; I don't really care about the security checks and what not, but sometimes the attitude is unbearable. I remember one time I was just asking a question and got barked at by TSA and the 'glare' got me scared.. That time was my first outbound trip alone from the US back to Indonesia and well, got treated like that really made me put on a defensive mode everytime I wanted to ask a TSA officer.

As a student that goes home twice a year and have moderate domestic flights inside the US, it's just hard keeping up with tight TSA security and so on.. Perhaps I might not understand why things are as is.. But I know very well that it's nicer flying in my home country and almost in any other countries that does not implement a very paranoid policy like the USA..

I'm a gold frequent flyer, and I do use the elite lines. But I'd like to think that anyone is welcome to post here. We welcome everyone's point of view.

It's interesting that you remember "an extra baggage search" and "an hour going through an invasive species screening." I'm guessing you've only visited Australia once, quite a while ago. I've flown in and out of Australia 2-3 times a year since 1990. I don't know what you mean by "extra baggage search" apart from a standard customs inspection. There was a short period several years ago when visitors had to have their shoes disinfected to keep BSE or some other livestock disease out.

I'm not saying these things didn't happen to you - I'm sure they did. But they're not a common occurrence. Even so, you remember these "extra" inspections and it colours your impression of Australia.

Is it surprising, then, that foreign visitors to the US might remember being barked at, scolded, and being exposed to a confusing set of arbitrary rules, and that this might affect their impression of the US? These things are, IME, far more likely to occur at a US airport than "an hour of invasive species screening" at an Australian airport. Is it surprising that some might be so irritated by it that they decide to take their tourist/business dollars elsewhere?

This is a really significant point. The US and UK invented the liquid and shoe lunacy (and the UK spread it to the rest of the EU). Int'l airlines had to comply if they wanted to fly to those markets. TSA tells everyone that there is international consensus on the danger of liquids and shoes, which is a lie, as the domestic procedures show.

Before 9/11 we did not have to deal with:

Routine shoe removal
Special SSSSSS screenings
TSA ability to open checked luggage anytime (and corresponding increase in theft)
Freedom baggies
Gate searches
ID checks with the special black lights
Occasional requirement to remove all electronics from bags at screening
Occasional draconian over-reactions like complete liquid ban
Very long lines at security (see below)

No they don't. Try flying domestically in Japan.

Then you are very lucky. I fly less than you, and I have, on several occasions, had to wait in line for 30 to 60 minutes for security. Never had to wait that long before TSA.

Once when traveling with my wife and in-laws (5 people in total) we had all our luggage hand-searched. Every item in our bags was removed and individually inspected. Then of course it all had to be re-packed. The whole process took 30 minutes. This was at a small airport in the midwest (roughly 8 flights a day on CRJs).

I've also been gate-searched and SSSSS'd on several other occasions.

Some of my work colleagues have had items stolen from their checked luggage after TSA banned luggage locks and declared their ability to open checked luggage anytime. This did not happen to them before TSA.

It's really nice that you've never been inconvenienced by the TSA. I am happy for you. I don't understand, however, why you repeatedly belittle the inconvenience experienced by others. And why you imply that just because we are a "subset of a subset" that our experiences don't matter and we should all just be quiet. I wonder if your reaction would be the same if you had experienced 30-60 minute wait times, detailed hand searches of your entire family's luggage, and theft of items from your checked bags.

This is a point that is worth repeating, if for no other reason than to destroy the myth that "all countries agree with the TSA." In Japan, TSA-type policies are only applied to international departures. Domestic flights are still free from liquid restrictions, shoe removal, gate searches, and arbitrary inspection of checked luggage. The reason international flights are subject to TSA-type policies is that certain countries such as the US require it. Initially Japan only applied this screening to flights bound for such countries, but it became logistically too difficult to set up screening checkpoints only at the gates for flights to the US (and UK, etc), so they ended up applying the more stringent screening to everyone at the main checkpoints.

Unfortunately, the same is true for domestic vs. international flights in New Zealand and Brazil.

I wish more countries would tell the US to go to hell regarding this idiotic and unnecessary "security".

Handbaskets courtesy of TSA, Mr. Spiff. Already in plentiful supply, as you well know.