Public Comment is Open on the Full Body Scanners Until June 24.

As many of you know, you can share your opinion on the TSA’s use of Full Body Scanning technology by going to the Federal Register website, up until June 24.

From Christopher Elliot, in the Chicago Tribune:

“It’s been almost five years since the Transportation Security Administration quietly began installing its so-called Advanced Imaging Technology (AIT) — better known as full-body scanners — at airports nationwide. And now the government wants to know what you think of the machines.”

Please go to the Federal Register site, and voice your opinion. Fairly soon, I am going to share my opinion on the matter. Stay tuned.

-N.J.R.

Letters from Passengers and Screeners

Our first two letters have to do with Confession #7, The Most Awkward Moment for a TSA Screener, which concerned many TSA screeners’ bad habit of inquiring about passengers’ gender prior to being body scanned. A TSA screener who wishes to be called “T.J.” wrote: 

Hi. I am a TSO. I just read your article about TSOs asking passengers’ gender.

Whenever I have a doubt about the passenger’s gender (and it is only when I am pushing the button on the AIT*), I simply pause and ask the passenger how they are doing tonight. Every time their voice has given me the answer. I then know what button to push.

Another work around instead of the ID checking.

*because the rest of the time it is none of my business.

Thanks T.J., for another more subtle method of gender-investigation that TSA headquarters could officially provide  its workforce as an alternative to TSA screeners asking people if they have penises or vaginas.

—

Our next letter comes from a pre-op transwoman. N.I.P writes:

What is the least mutually embarrassing / awkward / humiliating way
for a (reasonably attractive, young, and passing) pre-op transwoman to
make her way through the TSA checkpoint?…

Would there *actually* be any reasonable opportunity for me to object to Bubba feeling me up without causing further unnecessary delay?

-Nobody in Particular

Dear NIP,

I would say your best bet would be to preemptively and quietly inform the full body scanner operators that you would prefer a female, *in the event* of a pat-down: get everybody on-board right off the bat, so that you don’t have a TSA screener asking whether or not you have a penis or a vagina. 

As for the least mutually embarrassing/awkward/humiliating way  for anyone to make their way through a TSA checkpoint, the answer is: I have absolutely no idea. I spent 6 years trying to figure that out.

—

This next letter comes from anonymous:

Would you be interested in reading my FOIA request to the DHS? It was to find out how many TSA screeners don’t have a diploma or GED.

Dear anon,

I would have loved to read that FOIA request, but you never got back to me. Personally, and to be fair, nearly every TSA screener I ever worked with did, in fact, have at least a high school diploma or a GED. One of the few GED-holders that I knew did very little to set herself apart from the stereotypes of GED-holders. For instance, back when we used to give passengers enhanced screening based on their nationality (as compared against a list of 12 selectee countries), I once saw this GED-TSO order additional screening for a man due to the fact that he had a passport from Kazakhstan, founded upon her conviction that Kazakhstan was the capital of Afghanistan; Afghanistan itself being a place which, according to her, was located in Africa.

That’s probably just one example of why the TSA realized the selectee list was a bad idea.

—

Up next is Mark:

About a year and a half ago, I was flying out of National here in DC.

I get to the lines, and there were five of them, which at the end came down to three TSA people to check ID. When I got to the front, the TSA woman seemed older and reasonable, and so I asked her about it. Her response was that I was lucky; most of the time, it was six lines filtering to three people. When I asked her why they didn’t have more people, she told me she’d tried that, and they wouldn’t pay attention to her, and maybe I could ask my Congressman…

When I’ve run something at a convention, or been in charge anything, if I didn’t have enough people, I was on the front line doing what needed to be done. But, of course, I suppose the TSA managers are too important to get on the damn line and check IDs with their front line…

Dear Mark,

While some TSA managers are cool, and are willing to get on the floor and help, the majority, as far as I ever saw/heard of, are people who are far too pleased with themselves for having landed a federal job that allows them to put on a suit every day and walk around issuing commands about things such as bubble gum-chewing.  Many of them do, in fact, believe that they are too important and play too-integral a role as managers in America’s fastest rising despised agency.

—

Our final letter for today comes from Rachel, who really knows how to make a blogger smile in the very first sentence of a letter:

I LOVE your blog almost as much as I love giving TSA a hard time when I fly.  Which is what my question is about:  when TSA approaches me in line to ostensibly dazzle me with their Israeli Behavioral Training skills by engaging in friendly banter, will my refusal to participate in said banter harm me in anyway?  Obviously appearances matter, so you should know I’m an average-looking middle class, white woman.

Whenever random old white men try to make eye contact with me and ask me stupid questions I don’t want to answer, I overtly and blatantly ignore them by turning my back on them until they go away.  I know I’m supposed to act differently because I’m in an airport and these are Highly Trained Professionals Capable of Spotting Terrorists, but I’m not quite willing to capitulate.  Strange men dressing up in fake cop uniforms are not entitled to my attention.

They are just doing their jobs and I don’t want to be an overt jerk to them.  But I also don’t see a reason to robotically recite lines on a security theater role forced onto me.

Thanks for your blog!

-R

Dear Rachel,

No worries: having known many BDOs in my time at TSA, I can assure you that, somewhere inside,  most BDOs (Behavior Detection Officers) expect passengers to ignore them until they go away. Their greatest fear is that passengers will write congresspeople until they go away.

—

Send all letters to takingsenseaway@gmail.com. I can basically find Kazakhstan on a map.

More Letters from Passengers and Screeners Coming Soon.

I’m going to get into a more regular update routine, soon, starting with another round of Speed Letters.

-NJR

Confession #8: The One Way in Which the TSA Really Takes Care of its Screeners.

A TSA officer after having found someone with a bomb ass sandwich.

As I’ve mentioned before, the TSA has never done a very good job of making itself the kind of place where good, smart workers would even think about staying, at least on the floor-level.

Nearly every single screener you see at the airport is profoundly unhappy with his or her job, dear flying public, and desperately wants to get a new and better job (save for two kinds of people, at opposite ends of the age spectrum: those who are close to retirement, and those who have just begun paying their way through college).

Walk up to nearly any TSA screener and ask what he or she “thinks about being on the PASS or TOPS system instead of the GS scale.” Go ahead. I dare you. In the world of a TSA screener, it’s like saying “Beetlejuice” three times. Things will get crazy.

Imagine:

You’re working at an agency that is looked upon with disdain, at worst, and ambivalence, at best, by the public. Many of the supervisors, managers and other higher-ups who are bossing you around would be standing behind a Wal*Mart cash register had 9/11 never happened. Every few months you have to take an absurd, mostly-theoretical SOP and practical test that can potentially get you fired (you’re incessantly and redundantly being tested; tests that are just as nonsensical as the idiotic rules you’re forced to impose upon the flying public). The TSA promotion system makes very little sense. The furthest you will ever even theoretically advance in life, on your present course, is to the post of leading an organization that everyone A. Thinks is funny and doesn’t matter. or B. Hates.

Doesn’t sound like the ideal job, does it? So are there any perks, outside of decent health insurance and a few government discounts, that the TSA can provide?

Duh-duh-duh-duhhhhh.

UNLIMITED TSA UNIFORMS.

As a TSA employee, I had access to more uniforms than I could have ever needed. You too will find this to be the case should you ever become a TSA screener. This is the one selling point that the TSA could honestly post in its job announcements: “We will give you so many uniforms (which you’ll generally be embarrassed to wear) that your fucking mind will be blown.”

Your first year, things will start off sensibly: you’ll be given a few pairs of uniforms. “OK, this seems reasonable,” you’ll think, “I have a few pairs of uniforms, here.”

Then, not long after, you’ll be given approximately $400 in credit to buy more uniforms.

“Well OK, I have back-up uniforms now: 7 TSA shirts, 7 pairs of TSA pants, a TSA jacket, TSA shoes…that’s literally a week’s worth of uniforms without having to wash, not counting repeat wears, which everyone does. This is cool. I also have 10 pairs of these shitty VF Solutions-issue socks that are like wearing alpaca towels on my feet, but hey, whatever. This is coo–”

Wait, there’s more! You just got more money deposited into your uniform allowance! Go crazy!

“OK so I have 12 TSA shirts now, 9 pairs of TSA pants,  a TSA tactical sweatshirt, a TSA jacket, a TSA all-season jacket, and 14 pairs of TSA towel/socks. I’m just two years in with this agency, and I’d say I’m just about covered as far as uniforms go for the next couple years or–”

Hold up (wait a minute!). You now get additional funds deposited into your account annually, on your hire date!

Go ‘head, it’s your birthday! Go TSAshop, it’s your birthday!

“OK. So 16 pairs of pants, 2 TSA tactical sweatshirts, a TSA plain jacket, a TSA all-season jacket, 1 TSA knit cap– I’m based out of Phoenix but fuck it, you never know– 2 spare name plates, 17 TSA shirts, 2 TSA belts, 4 back-up epaulets just in case, 19 pairs of TSA socktowels, and a pair of TSA-issue shoes that I don’t wear.  Three years in and I’d say I’m just about covered for the next couple years or…”

BAM! The whole thing starts again!

—

Working for the TSA is like being in a bad movie running in ass-backward reverse. Instead of using time and resources to make the agency a little closer to being one that the public doesn’t despise, and where workers are at least a little happy to put on their TSA gear, the agency spends all its money doing things such as piling blue clown uniforms on its employees. For some reason, even the people in the Coordination Centers are mostly required to wear the uniforms in some kind of patriotic public display of pride and solidarity for their highly respected organization. Know what’s weird about that last sentence, besides the entire second half of it?

The public never even sees the people in the Coordination Center. It’s a complete waste of taxpayer money. Even they don’t want to wear those embarrassing blues.

It’s like the TSA has been determined from day 1 to put as many federal airport/mall cop uniforms into circulation as possible, in the hopes that…you know what, I don’t even know what the motivation behind that would be.

Just thinking about wearing a TSA uniform is giving me indigestion, so I have to stop typing now.

—-

Letter From a Screener: So We Found a Suicide Bomber With The Full Body Scanner: Now What?

—-

A TSA screener we’ll just call “Confused in Colorado” writes in:

Dear Taking Sense Away,

I’ve noticed that our protocols never really give us guidance on what to do once we do uncover a bomb strapped to someone’s body, like with the Full Body Scanner. It’s like, so we found it: now what? Apparently, I’m supposed to tell the suicide bomber to hold on a minute while I call my supervisor. The lack of real preparation for the scenario almost makes me think that it’s because this is all just some kind of game we’re playing, not rooted in reality. What do you think about this?

-Confused

—-

Dear Confused,

I wish I could tell you that balloons and confetti will fall from your airport’s ceiling in celebration of having caught your one-in-a-billion customer, but this will not be the case. Now, my advice should not supersede the wisdom of the Transportation Security Administration’s standard operating procedure, but, if I may make a recommendation: you should very calmly run away, in as patriotic a fashion as you know how.

As we recently saw, TSA screeners are not exactly well-equipped to deal with conflict.

Now, the running you’ll be doing should you ever actually bump into a suicide bomber strapped to the gills is perfectly natural, so don’t be ashamed if, on that one-in-a billion chance, it ever actually happens to you at your airport: you haven’t made hundreds of thousands of rounds of evolutionary cuts for nothing. But what you should mentally prepare yourself to do is to run away from the batshit insane madman with a bomb in as altruistic a fashion as possible. This can be done with engaged screaming.

What you don’t want to do is just scream: it accomplishes only so much. What you want to do is scream in an engaging! (see the Insider’s TSA Dictionary) fashion. Let’s think of some things we can scream about that will engage the non-terrorists around us and give us some kind of dignity should we survive.

-Screaming to other people about the man or woman with the bomb strapped to his or her body.

-Get your audience involved by screaming questions, such as “Why aren’t you running, too, you morons? There’s a person with a bomb back there.”

-“Can you please fucking move? I’m trying to get away from the person with the bomb back there.”

-“Are you going to give me your car keys or do I have to take them from you, lady? We have to get as far away from this airport as possible, right now. We discovered a person with a bomb back there and all bets are now off, I guess.”

You can also:

-Scream for someone to call the “If You See Something, Say Something” number.

-Scream for other people to join you in your screaming, so as to better get the word out about the person with the bomb strapped to his or her body back there.

-Scream for assistance from real security entities, namely, the police or courageous members of the public.

All of these things can make you flee more effectively.

Hope this helps,

-N.J.R

Send all questions to takingsenseaway@gmail.com

Letter from a Passenger: Keep on Trucking, NJR.

Frank writes in:

I just wanted to send a quick note to urge you not to give up your blog just yet.  Take time away from it as often as you need, but I feel that it is a very important and necessary tool in restoring some common sense and reality into this country.  I can’t even begin to imagine the ridiculous emails you must get on a daily basis, but you have to remember that the majority of people in this country have been brain-washed for over a decade now and willingly brain-washed at that.  I think that makes it exponentially worse in my own made up calculations on brain-washing effectiveness.  Those people will be very slow at accepting and changing their way of thinking. Some of them are total lost causes.  However, I do see it working. With your blog, Jon Corbett, the tsanewsblog.com and many other blogs, articles and people speaking out on this subject. I remember not so long ago I felt like the only person seeing how wrong, archaic and arbitrary the entire TSA was.  Now I feel like I see people speaking out against the same things I have been thinking for quite some time on almost a daily basis.  That give me hope.  I appreciate everything you have done so far and I truly appreciate your blog. 

 

—-

Thanks Frank. I was only kidding about giving up this blog. Blogging about the TSA will inevitably lead to talk of knitting needles, scissors, and quart-size ziptop bags.

The reason updates will be a little slow for the next two or three months is owing to the one downside of quitting TSA for a new career: you have to take your job home with you  in most higher-thinking type jobs. For the most part, TSA is a job where you literally punch out of your Kronos clock, and the job is completely over for the day. No thinking, planning, or strategizing required, a fact that is apparent at a lot of checkpoints around the country.

Thus far, I haven’t had a passenger ask me:

“What did you hate most about working for the TSA, and what do you now miss most about working for the TSA?”

It is a question I will elaborate upon later, but for now, the short answer is:

“The fact that I didn’t have to think as a TSO, and the fact that I didn’t have to think as a TSO.”

—-

This Blog is About Knitting Needles Now.

Sorry, guys, but it appears that’s just how it is. I guess it was almost inevitable that a blog about the TSA would careen out of control into pedantic fussing at one point or another.

I have become all that I loathe in the world and the TSA.

So after this next letter, which brings up yet another good point about knitting needles, I am going to take a break for a week or so, just to reassess my decision to blog about the TSA, and decide whether or not I can even live with myself after having spent 2 weeks of my life blogging about scissors and knitting needles. This letter comes from Bert:

In the latest, you had a reader call you out about knitting needles and you admitted a lack of direct experience with them. I’m going to assure you that your assessment of their dangers is well founded.

My personal experience with how dangerous a needle can be stems from my own stupidity, but clearly illustrates their potential. I was knitting a pair of socks one afternoon and when called away, placed my work on the floor. After that, I had forgotten that I had left them sitting out and while walking past, managed to place my foot in line with one of them. The next step consisted of excruciating pain as the needle was driven a solid 3 inches between my toes.

Aside from some creative cursing, there was little else to do but extract the aluminum shaft and assess the damage. I was fortunate in that I was only working with 2mm diameter needles so the hole and subsequent blood loss were relatively minor, but it was still a pointed lesson in not leaving them on the ground.

I suspect that your reader had little exposure to the aluminum and steel needles used by many knitters and assumed them little more than sharpened dowels. Honestly, I would be quite concerned if I were facing an attacker who brandished some of the more expensive needles. The points can be sharp enough that it wouldn’t require much effort to pierce the skin.

—-

Thanks for the letter, Bert. If you don’t hear from me by this time next week, know that it’s not your fault.

-NJR