Its nice to have someone from the TSA who is a realist in terms of what works and what needs to change.

*****

During the years 2001 - 2002 I worked for a firm that put in a bid to do mass hiring for TSA. As a physician, I was asked to set up the part of our proposal that involved designating qualified (occupational health) physicians nationwide to do "law enforcement physicals" as part of the screening/hiring process. The physical fitness requirements were quite rigorous with regard to BMI (Body mass Index, as a check for obesity), strength, agility, flexibility and endurance.

Our company was not awarded the contract, but it certainly appears today that many screeners working today would not be able to pass that physical exam. Something must have changed between the original concept and how it was implemented.

More people could qualify for workfare without such a test.

*****

Castrobenes, welcome to FT. I am unable to comment about whether TSA is a better employer than the private security firm you worked for, as I have worked for neither. Since TSA pays much better and provides better benefits, and now the screeners are federal employees, I can't imagine the situation being worse than working for a private security firm which underpaid its employees.
TSA employees are very inconsistent from one location to another.
I will comment on the issue you brought up, that one should not jam all the items in one bin. Sometimes there aren't enough bins available. At times the request for, more bins is met by yelling, put it all in one bin. I don't want to pout my shoes in the same bin as mother things, especially, not my medicines or my insulin supplies. It's a surprise to me that TSA requires using separate bins for various items. Not long ago, I had to go through secondary as I had a knee brace with metal supports. When a screener was assigned to me to do the secondary screening, he piled my cell phone, shoes, my glasses, my watch, my less than 3 ounce stuff plastic baggies and my insulin stuff and my medicines in the same bin. When I protested, he replied, "I have got only two hands" As I see it, the biggest problem with the TSA is that they seem travellers as adversaries, not as people who deserve respect.

Yaatri, get off it! We ALL know TSA's WRITTEN pledge of Dignity and Respect for Passengers. It's right there in their Mission Statement (down on at least ONE knee, peon!) and that means YOU and ME!

Sorry 'bout that, castrobenes. I haven't been physically criminalized by the TSA since I stopped flying.

Welcome to Flyer Talk, castrobenes! Considering whom you have chosen to work for, wear a cup...

Castrobenes and Bart,

Perhaps you can answer my questions from a previous post.

What exactly is going to happen on May 1st with Secure Flight?

Is TSA really going to refuse passengers whose name on their boarding pass and passport/drivers license do not match word for word, letter for letter? For example passport reads "Robert Thomas Johnson" and boarding pass reads "Robert T Johnson", "R Thomas Johnson", "Bob Johnson", etc.

If so, isn't this going to cause a mess since the airlines refuse to change the PNR to correct the name discrepancy after ticketing?

Castro:
Thanks for the thoughtful and detailed post. Whilst all of your suggestions are good ones, you miss many of the key problems people have with the TSA:

1) the war on liquids, shoe carnival and kippie bags; the 'barkers', SPOTters, and the spontaneously generating new rules are only part of it

2) the ID requirement. Getting rid of it would get rid of the rid of all the confusing, conflicting information about what is a "government ID"

3) mission creep -- drugs, cash, headless torsos and anything else that doesn't pose a threat to airline safety should be ignored as a matter of policy

4) the no-fly and selectee lists, which as the recent AF and the Cat Stevens incidents (amongst numerous others) demonstrate are being used for political -- not security -- purposes. The complete lack of common sense in their enforcement -- police ordering a mother to "step away" from her 5-year child because his name was on the no-fly list -- makes them as ridiculous as they are offensive

5) lack of accountability -- TSA's efforts to prevent people from filing complaints, their refusal to respond to complaints when filed, Bob and the PV team's evasive or non-existent answers to reasonable questions, Kip and Chertoff's declining invitations to congressional hearing on TSA problems as a matter of course

I know that all of this is beyond your control, but my point is that MOST of the problems are not with the front-line guys

Articulate and immaculately nutshellized, polonius. I might disagree with your final statement, however, inasmuch as the front line guys are the instrumentation of this outrage. They are the interface we, as paxs, encounter. They are what make the disaster of TSA "go" at full speed right into the face of What We Hold Dear as Americans and must be made aware of that fact, witless as some (most?) may be.

A parallel might be "Guns don't kill people, bullets kill people," in which case the TSOs are the bullets. Directly responsible for the dirty part of the mayhem but ultimately not in charge of being aimed or fired.

Yet, I posit that in this case the "bullets" most certainly have a choice as to whether or not to enter the dark chamber to be used by VERY questionable gunslingers, such as the ones you mention in point 5.

Yes, these are all concerns, and they have all been addressed. Not to the level that you and a few others here require, or over on the EOS blog, but addressed they have been.

That has been around far longer than the TSA. At the beginning of March of 2008 the TSA took over this function from the contract agencies that each individual airport had doing it.

Ignored. Hmmm, ok. Just who�s definition of �mission� should we follow? After all, this is what the cabinet secretary�s have defined as our mission, along with the safety of civilian aviation and other modes of transport. If you don�t like their instructions, just who should we take direction from?

How would you handle the issue?

The TSA has opened more avenues to address issues than any other government agency. More than most business�s. They don�t prevent complaint, they welcome them. If you cant get a complaint for from the supervisor at the check point, you have numerous options available. AS for the EOS blog team members, since they are �official� spokespersons for the TSA their every comment has to be vetted for accuracy and compliance with TSA directives. Additionally, the same questions keep getting asked and asked over and again, and the answers that they or others might provide are never enough. The answers, just like here, are picked apart by everyone with an agenda, or just plain ignored.

As for Kip and Chertoff, no one here can answer that. You would have to ask them directly. Good luck with that, please bring any answers you get back here so that we can review them.

Until they get here. Then its all about the front line guys.

Ha ha ha. And might I add, ho ho ho. That's a good one. Tell us another.

As always we can count on Ron to do everything he can to change the direction of the thread and deflect having to give any answers by asking more questions.

You're funny Ron.

Hi-la-ri-ous...

When's your next show? I'd like to attend. If you can do a 30 minute set full of things like this, you have a bright future in stand up comedy.

Really, TSORon.
Care to explain how the whopper about transporting >$10,000 in cash being illegal, yes, just flat out illegal, managed to slip by this crack TSA EOS blog vetting?