Confession #7: The Most Awkward Moment for a TSA Screener.

I endured many, many awkward moments during my 6 years of employment at TSA. But by far, the most awkward routine occurrence was this: the moment when an androgynous passenger came through the full body scanner.

For those of you who don’t know, one byproduct of the wasteful, incompetent, and ham-handed implementation of full body scanners by the Transportation Security Administration over the past 3 years has been an all new opportunity for humiliation at the airport for people who are gender-ambiguous. Where before, androgynous passengers were largely free of the scenario in which they had to opt out of radiation-emitting full body scanners, and of frequently occurring mystery pat downs caused by poorly functioning millimeter wave scanners with outrageous false positive rates, now, the androgynous passenger finds him or herself walking a virtual minefield of potential scenarios in which a TSA screener will utter these words, in front of at least a few strangers:

“Excuse me: are you a male, or a female?”

You see, in order to resolve an anomaly on a full body scanner (i.e., if the operator of a Rapiscan backscatter radiation sees something “suspicious” on a passenger’s body in a remote viewing room, or if the Automated Target Recognition algorithm on an L3 millimeter wave scanner produces an anomaly box on the generic, non-nude images produced by those machines), it becomes essential for a TSA screener to know the gender of the passenger, in order for that screener to initiate a same-sex pat down for the passenger.

TSA screeners are generally not allowed to pat down the opposite sex, much to the chagrin of countless TSA screeners, I assure you.

What all of this means is that a TSA screener will occasionally find him or herself in the harrowing position of having approximately 5 seconds to decide what gender the boy/girl-looking passenger in front of  him or her is, in order to call for the appropriate male, or female assist. Oftentimes, if the screener is unable to decide, he or she will outright ask the passenger, “Excuse me: are you a male, or a female?”

Being that the average  TSA screener is not the brightest star in the galaxy, this humiliating question is usually posed by a complete moron-of-a-TSA screener whose education level is far below that of the androgynous passenger’s, making the situation all the more degrading for said passenger. But sometimes, it’s just a new-hire TSA screener (See: “White Shirt” in the Insider’s TSA Dictionary) who hasn’t had 10 years of employment with TSA to figure out a better way of going about this.

These awkward scenarios play out all across the nation, at hundreds of airports, on thousands of checkpoints, day in, and day out. So you’d think that TSA headquarters and upper management, with their near-6 figure salaries, would have found a way to ease the humiliation of these extremely common occurrences, both for taxpayers, and for its employees, right?

Of course they haven’t! This is our TSA we’re talking about, here!

Luckily for the TSA PR Department, the vast majority of these situations happen to people who are relatively defenseless, and who lack a voice with which to express the deep humiliation they endure on account of being asked, “Excuse me, are you a male, or a female?” in front of dozens of strangers.

Unluckily for them, one of them was a blogger, whose blog post was republished by the Huffington Post this morning: an article entitled “Why I Hate the TSA.” From the article:

“The passenger behind me was lucky that he was all lined up as a man. The woman operating the machine hit the ‘male’ button. Zip, bang, boom! The man got to step out and go on his merry, male-identified way. Now it was my turn. 

The woman signaled for me to step back inside the scanner, and then — here’s the kicker — she asked me, ‘Would you mind if I ask you if you are a man or a woman?’

Yes, I mind. Wouldn’t you mind the question: ‘Hey, are you a man or a woman? Are you a freak? I can’t tell. Hey, do you have a penis to go with those breasts?’ 

I didn’t have my friends with me, or a girlfriend to squeeze my hand and whisper, ‘It doesn’t matter, baby. It’s OK.’ I was without coping mechanisms in that situation. So what did I do?

First, I tweeted about how angry I was, including to the TSA. Then I took a few minutes to call a very good friend for help. She was on my side, and I teared up as I told her what had happened. And I wrote, of course. It made me feel better immediately. I am filing a complaint with the TSA.”

And after filing her complaint, she had her blog post republished by HuffPo, and now thousands of people hate the TSA just a little more, on top of the hundreds of androgynous people who endure this situation every day across the nation. Good job, TSA headquarters! And here’s the real kicker: you could easily avoid most of this! For future reference, here’s an almost complete solution to this routine problem of yours.

Solution to Yet Another TSA Publicity Debacle, From a Former TSA Screener

See, some of us thinking TSA screeners, who were actually out on the floor for several years encountering this stressful and embarrassing situation time and time again, had to be resourceful. We quickly found a clever little solution to this problem, and formulated a little rule among ourselves:

As a TSA screener, you never, ever, ask a passenger the question: “Are you a male, or a female,” because that is a question that should generally not be posed by one human being to another human being under any circumstance at an airport.

And how do you go about doing this, you may be asking right now, TSA Public Relations Department? I’ll tell you, free of charge!

The TSA screener asks to see the passenger’s I.D. so as to read the little section that says “gender,” and then goes from there!

Voila! Now I know what else you may be saying to your computer screens, current TSA screeners reading this in a break room at an airport:

But what if the gender on the I.D. is not how the passenger wishes to present themselves?

Well, the chances of that happening are actually smaller than the chances that you’re going to embarrass the living shit out of everybody within 10 feet of the full body scanner by uttering the words, “Excuse me: are you a dude, or a chick?” And even if it does happen, the passenger will likely just say, “No. Although my I.D. says ‘Male’ I’d prefer to be patted down by a female.” Which clears the whole situation up much more smoothly than a direct do you have a penis, or a hooha strike, you’ll find.

Now I know what you may be saying to your computer screens right now, over in Virginia and Washington D.C., TSA higher-ups, because I know you guys read this blog:

What if the passenger doesn’t have his or her I.D. on their person?

Boy, do I have a doozy of a surprise for you guys, today! Because guess what? You guys are the ones holding the reins of this this big old neurologically-disabled bear-of-an-organization! Can you guess what you have the power to do? You can rewrite the goddamned SOP so that screeners will encourage passengers to keep their I.D.s with them through the screening process. OR (and in cases where the passenger forgets his or her I.D. in their coat pocket, etc.) you can train your officers to discretely pull the passenger off to the side for a moment, without stopping the whole security theater show, in order to take a quick look at their boarding pass and I.D., so as to spare  both screeners and taxpayers this soul-destroyingly embarrassing moment.

And finally, there is a small possibility that some SOP-whiz kid of a TSA employee is out there right now, saying to his or her screen:

Technically, that’s already in the SOP, Section 4,67A Subsection 43, paragraph 8, four sentences in.

Well guess what? If that’s already in the SOP, then not enough TSA screeners know about it, I’ll tell you that goddamned much. Do you know how I know? Because I never once in 6 years heard a single supervisor, manager, Federal Security Director, or training class instructor outline the advice I just offered. And do you know how else I’m certain that not enough TSA screeners know about this nifty little solution to an extremely common, panic inducing TSA checkpoint scenario?

BECAUSE THERE’S A FUCKING ARTICLE ON THE FRONT PAGE OF THE HUFFINGTON POST TITLED “WHY I HATE THE TSA” RIGHT NOW, AND THE AUTHOR HATES THE TSA BECAUSE SHE’S ESSENTIALLY BEEN ASKED SEVERAL TIMES WHETHER OR NOT SHE HAS A WEEWEE BY TSA SCREENERS IN THE MIDDLE OF A CROWDED AIRPORT.

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Honest to God, this whole running-a-blog-as-a-former TSA screener thing is exhausting.

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Twitter: https://twitter.com/Jas0nHarringt0n

New Entries to the Insider’s TSA Dictionary

The number of submissions to the Insider’s TSA Dictionary I’ve received is amazing, and they keep coming in. Here are a few of the entries that will soon be added to the Insider’s TSA Dictionary (at least a few of them courtesy of anonymous current or ex-TSA screeners, I believe it’s fair to say) with a little editing by myself for stylistic consistency.

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15-30-15

Formally, what the TSA employee’s breaks are supposed to be (in numbers of minutes), but these numbers are doubled for lazy people and people in suits. The rates for people in suits who rank higher than the other suits increase exponentially.

-Submitted by anonymous

The Burka Conundrum

A question that the TSA has never addressed about its BDO program: Behavior Detection Officers (See “Airport Wizards” in the Insider’s Dictionary -ed.) are supposedly looking for indicators such as microexpressions in would-be terrorists, but what about a woman (or any person, for that matter) wearing a full body burka? Do the wizards have x-ray vision? Another one of the infinite number of ways that a determined terrorist can glide right by TSA security theater at any time.

-Submitted by anonymous

Doctor’s Note

A magical thing for TSA employees that makes everything alright. Example: “I called off 6 days in a row after failing my practicals, calling my supervisor an asshole and falling asleep on the exit for 2 hours, but I’m getting a doctor’s note for it all, so it should be kosher.”

-Submitted by K in Cleveland

ICMS

A TSA abbreviation which is supposed to stand for “I See Me in the Solution.” Another nugget of wisdom that TSA officers receive in their condescending training “classes.” There is a popular sentiment among TSA employees that it should be changed to ICUP, “I C U in the Problem,” and that this new slogan should be posted on the office doors of upper management.

-Submitted by anonymous

Quit now or get fired later

A bargain sometimes given by TSA management to employees, either unfairly or much later than it should have been. It is also sometimes a scare tactic used to trick employees into quitting when management in fact has a non-existent or flimsy case for termination against you.

-Submitted by M.M. in Boston

Suitcase Surgeon

Informal term for a TSA employee, derived from the blue gloves they wear. Used ironically, because it’s not like what the TSA ever does requires anything remotely approaching the mental capacity of a surgical procedure anyway, even though you may feel as though you’ve undergone a surgical procedure after they’re done with you.

-Submitted by Avery in San Diego

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To submit proposed entries to the Insider’s TSA Dictionary, email takingsenseaway@gmail.com with “Insider’s TSA Dictionary” as your email’s subject.

On Shaming the TSA

I thought long and hard before making this post.

TSA screeners are not exactly the most beloved government employees in the country; they’ve definitely taken their share of flak over the years. And so when I received email concerning an act of defecation upon a TSA screener, I must admit, I took editorial pause. Did I want to run such a letter? Would it be responsible to publish such strong– some would say, disturbing– sentiments in regard to a TSA screener? I sat down and considered the thing from all angles. Then it hit me, all at once.

Yes. It would be responsible, in this context. Because this dog–

— took a poop– nay, the largest poop of his life– on a TSA agent, when his human was going through airport security.

This is a bad, bad dog. Unlike the Never Forget 9/11 Freedom Puppies of the TSA’s.

Though this dog is obviously a sick little deviant, I wondered if, by publishing his Dog Shame Shot, sent in by a reader named Audrey, I would be glorifying poops upon TSA screeners. Then I realized something: the TSA has been dog shaming its pooches for a while now.  Every time the TSA seizes upon the opportunity to publish photos of its K9 puppies in a cloying bid to improve its public image, it is bringing shame upon those puppies.

Because if those puppies were able to comprehend what the three letters inscribed on their collars signified, in comparison to the puppies in the kennel whose fate was to have letters such as “DEA” or “FBI” around their necks, let’s face it: they would be a little embarrassed. Kind of like TSA screeners who go on to jobs at other agencies, where they do their best to not talk about their former employer with their new co-workers.

If TSA dogs could talk, they would approach you in that quintessentially-bureaucratic Managed Inclusion line (playing their role, of course, as just one of multiple layers of security in place so as to indirectly conduct a real-time threat assessment of you, which then introduces objective uncertainty into the system via an electronic mat with randomly-generated arrows, in keeping with the unpredictability that is key to the efficacy of the TSA’s risk-based screening approach vis-a-vis the terrorist threat , dear passengers) sniff you for a second, and say:

Look. I put my application to Customs and Border Patrol in a year ago. They should be getting back to me any time, now. Woof woof, arf arf and all that shit. This TSA thing was just while I was finishing college. I shouldn’t be doing this much longer.

So in the end, it’s really shame on all these puppies, and shame on you, TSA, for conscripting them into the security theater show.

Still, let me be clear: none of this justifies literally crapping on a TSA screener. This is a bad, bad, dog right here, nervous or not. You can see in the photo that he sort of knows it. And so we are going to shame him again.

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Update: 2/9/13

A Cat Owner Strikes Back:

I must disagree: like my cat Bandit, who left a similar gift in the private office the TSA screened her in several years ago in PHX (which I somehow forgot to tell them about, my bad…) the pooch in the post is merely speaking for millions of disgruntled travelers everywhere!

-Laura A.

A Gift to TSA Headquarters.

Almost any TSA screener will tell you (in hushed tones, at least) that one of the more frustrating aspects of the day-to-day rigmarole is having to field questions from smart passengers who demand to know what kind of sense this or that TSA policy makes.

Trying to explain to a little old man, for instance, why the tiny blade on his Leatherman multi-tool warrants the entire multi-tool being confiscated, while, right next to him, a 300 pound muscle-bound man fresh out of prison gets to keep his pair of scissors, a lighter, his toothbrush, along with all the other shank-making tools he’d just spent 10 years mastering in the penitentiary.

Then you have TSA headquarters, telling the public one minute that anyone could be a threat at the airport, regardless of age, size, shape, color or creed— even kids, because “terrorists are not above using children” to carry out attacks (which was why kids had to get inside full body radiation scanners for the first year of the backscatter machines, we were told)— and the next minute saying that people who even appear to be sort of young will no longer be touched. (The next thing you know, the TSA will claim the existence of intelligence regarding a team of pygmy ninjas plotting to exploit the TSA’s 12-and-under policy in order to rain terror from the skies— kids will be asked to spend 5 minutes with a Child-Certified Behavior Detection Officer at the new TSA Checkpoint Playpen ™.)

Then we went from all passengers having to receive equal screening— there was no telling what form a malicious actor could take, after all— to an elite stratum of society being largely excused from security theater, providing they had given enough money to the airlines. Because hey, it’s not like there’s any possibility that a perfectly upstanding frequent-flying U.S. citizen with a clean skin could suddenly snap and decide that he wanted to, oh, say, fly a plane into a building, or anything.

Look. My heart goes out to all the good, hard-working TSA screeners out there on the floor, who have to explain these contradictory and absurd TSA policies and rules to passengers, as I did for so many years. And I respect the TSA PR people, too: their jobs must get boring, having to recycle the same vacuous jargon over and over again in their official statements to the media in order to explain the convoluted policies and wacky situations their bumbling organization is always getting itself into.

And so I am giving a gift to the TSA today, to serve as a peace offering. A little gadget I came up with to make the TSA’s job a little easier.

I took the liberty of designing my gift with an eye to adaptability; programmed it with possible future terrorist plots and the probable corresponding TSA policy responses; extrapolated from the current TSA mission creep, in order to arrive at the likely TSA mission creep of tomorrow.

I built this thing with love for you, TSA, and then tweaked it, honed it, and rebuilt it, to make you better, stronger, faster.

This invention of mine will enrich the American public, as well.  If TSA headquarters utilizes the gift I am giving them today, at least a few high-paying positions in the TSA PR department can be eliminated, along with a few Policy Analysts. At this moment, American taxpayers are potentially witnessing at least a million dollars being trimmed from the TSA’s annual budget, in one fell blog post. With the Washington D.C. TSA policy makers’ and PR department’s six figure-salary jobs now being fully automated, the TSA can redirect more of its resources and brain power out to the checkpoint floors, where it’s sorely needed.

Click on the “For Employees” button on this blog’s menu bar right now, my fellow Americans. You’ll notice there is a new addition: “For TSA Headquarters.” Ladies and gentlemen, I give you…

The TSA Policy and Statement Generator.

Surprise Announcement Coming on Wednesday.

I have a special gift for the Transportation Security Administration and the American people coming on Wednesday.

(Don’t worry, TSA, it’s the kind of gift protected by the 1st Amendment, of course. That’s how I roll.)

Stay tuned.

-N.J.R.

Letter from a Passenger: “Hi. I Really Like Your Blog. I’d Like to Share My Story of TSA-Approved Molestation.”

One of the interesting things about running a blog like this is that you sometimes get letters that start with things like “Hi, I appreciate what you’re doing. Here’s my story of government molestation.” It’s actually pretty unsettling, yet darkly humorous, and I would suggest that everyone try it, if it didn’t involve having to work at a bottom-of-the-barrel government security agency for 7 years before starting a blog that will definitely cause your name to be on some sort of a government shit list at some point, if not already.

Robynne writes in:

Hi. I’d like to share my story of my TSA-approved molestation in Honolulu. The agent I encountered was incredibly rude from the start, and she kicked me out of security at practically no provocation. Further details are on my personal journal. It’s overly long, but I wanted to write as much down as I could before I forgot anything. Again, you can quote me if you like. 

Do you think I’m right in my assessment that they were deliberately lying and not telling me things? I suspect that part of the training is to confuse people and make them feel threatened.

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Dear Robynne,

I have absolutely no idea if the TSA employees were deliberately lying and not telling you things. I do know that you opted out, and that an opt-out often elicits an adversarial feeling on the checkpoint.

You see, the majority of people comply with their government’s initial request to step inside a body scanner, leaving the unoccupied, non body scanner-operating screeners on the floor free to not have to worry about you. Then you come along, the 1 out of every 50 or so passengers who decides to opt out, thereby interrupting a TSA screener’s conversation about their weekend or about an attractive female passenger or about their dreams of one day becoming a real honest-to-goodness police officer. Depending on the screener, and on what kind of day he or she is having, an opt-out can definitely bear the brunt of a retaliatory attitude. You may have suffered that, at the beginning of your ordeal.

As you can imagine, I represented a little bit of a unique situation as a TSA screener. I loved the hell out of the opt-outs, being that I agreed with them to the tune of, say, a year’s worth of future blog posts.

But even then, I would occasionally get a passenger who was so vehemently anti-TSA, or, perhaps to put it another way, came to the checkpoint in such an all-out, frothing-at-the-mouth fury about the TSA, that no matter what I said to him or her (“No, listen. I’m on your side, really. I agree. Seriously. Just listen…”) he or she would still be like “Psh fuck off you idiot TSA goon I don’t want to hear it.” So I guess what I’m trying to say is that there are times (many) when TSA screeners  are the main problem, and there are occasionally times when the passenger is just determined to direct a hate ray at any and everything on a TSA checkpoint, even if there’s a TSA employee giving a little wink and saying “viva la resistance.”

At any rate, in your case, Robynee, the fact that your experience escalated to you being expelled from the airport is indeed outrageous. Back around 2005 and before, I heard of a lot more stories involving the whole “Do you want to fly today? I don’t like your attitude, you’re not flying today” routine playing out, which decreased as time went on, at least at my category X airport: TSA headquarters began to realize, as the years rolled by, that they had, in fact, hired thousand upon thousands of people with criminal backgrounds that had been improperly adjudicated in the hiring rush of 2002, that some of those people were out on their checkpoints in manager’s suits running the organization even further into the ground than it already was, and slowly began to try to clean some house on that end.

I did see a few arrest/flight denials after 2007 or so, but they usually involved a passenger who had said some combination of the classic, magic, sarcastically-delivered words: “Look at me. Do you really think I’m a threat? Fine, I’ll admit it: I have a bomb. There, you happy?” At which point the supervisors/managers grabbed their Blackberries and rubbed their hands together diabolically, as they could now call in the police and order a fly-deny on a technicality.

There were also fairly frequent cases of passengers threatening a screener’s life, or lashing out physically in some form at the screener, which would also bump the situation up to the police, and bring about expulsion from the airport. But in your case, per your account, none of that happened, which would make it all very unjust and just all around some serious unfair bullshit that had been perpetrated upon you.

Excuse me passengers, but while we’re on the topic of Honolulu International Airport–

–there’s something I have to do on behalf of my former co-workers. This is TSA-screener business. Don’t mind us.

Hey Honolulu International screeners: on behalf of the thousands of TSA employees across the nation in crappy cold cities who have futilely put in transfers to your airport:

Don’t any of you assholes ever quit or get fired?

Letter from a Protester: “TSA, Stop Warrantless Searches on the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority.”

This next letter comes from Tamarleigh. She sent me a letter about this protest taking place tomorrow, February 2, 2013. The Facebook page for the protest to end railway searches on the MBTA in Boton is here. Their official statement is as follows:

As local Bostonians we are determined to bring an end to the warrantless searches the TSA conducts on the MBTA. This policy flagrantly infringes upon our civil liberties and is in direct violation of both Article XIV of the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the 4th Amendment of the Constitution of the United States. As long as the governor, the mayor, and the representatives of the Commonwealth permit the enforcement of this reprehensible policy, they are in direct contradiction of the constitutions they swore to uphold. We demand that every TSA checkpoint in the MBTA be discontinued at once.Taxpayer dollars have been ill-spent in the investment of this program. Maintaining these checkpoints in our transit system not only creates a hostile environment for tourists as well as locals, but also illuminates how, in this great time of need, our representatives are increasingly out of touch with the people, as demonstrated by their misguided actions. The desire and/or need to use public transportation does not constitute a search warrant in the slightest. All citizens are completely in their right to refuse any search without a warrant. We call upon everyone to pressure the state government to remove these TSA checkpoints immediately and insist that our representatives make more appropriate use of our money.

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My opinion on the TSA moving out to rail systems in this way? It’s silly. It’s more security theater. It’s a waste of taxpayer money. The TSA should be confined to airports and be happy they’re still tolerated there.

But over at TSA headquarters, they’ve been sitting around a conference room with PowerPoint slides of the wreckage from the Madrid train bombing in 2004 and London transit system bombing in 2005 for some time, predicting, quite accurately, that something bad will eventually be attempted on a train in the United States. Something malicious will happen in nearly every variety of crowded public space you can imagine, given enough time. It’s not a surprise; it’s human nature. It’s pure probability. It’s inevitable.

The question is how do we prepare for the eventuality, how much money do we spend to protect against the eventuality, and would it even be worth it to spend any money or compromise any freedom at all to defend against the eventuality.

In the case of thousands upon thousands of train and subway networks across the nation (along with the millions of other highly populated public spaces) being occasionally patrolled by a few thousand gadget-wielding random screeners looking at miroexpressions, I would say no, that’s not worth it. That’s like playing Whack-a-mole on a 3.5 million square-mile board, where 2 moles pop up once every 5 years for 30 minutes. It would make more sense to spend money trying to target the source of the moles (spend money on intelligence agencies or on lowering our dependence on foreign oil, not the TSA, if you really want to try to lower our chances of being hit by a terrorist act) than on blindly batting around hoping to scare off the moles.

This is pure Cost-Benefit Analysis, of course, on which there is a lot of great in-depth literature out there (Cass Sunstein, “Worst Case Scenarios,” is a good place to start).

Unfortunately, part of the whole cost-benefit analysis picture–the part that is on the TSA’s side– is our society’s irrational, panicky overreaction to extremely infrequent yet traumatic acts of violence. You can be sure that the day after something happened on a train, for instance, there would be a large media mob beaming headlines along the lines of “TSA: 8 Billion Dollars to Hassle Us About Snow Globes at Airports, But Where Were They at the Rail Station Yesterday?”

The best minds at TSA headquarters (knowing, I would hope, that they themselves are on a largely irrational mission) are acting preemptively with railway and public event checks, not really believing that they will be able to thwart or even deter an attack on one of the millions of targets available to would-be terrorists, but rather, in order to have a paper trail-backed official statement ready to counter the inevitable irrational outcry over their failure to prevent said attack. People are often irrational, society is often irrational. The world is often irrational. The TSA has mostly been, from the very beginning, a manifestation of the irrationality in most of us.

But that doesn’t mean that we can’t or shouldn’t try to spread the message and get as many people on-board as possible to the basic truth: bad things sometimes happen in the world– it’s just one of the prices we pay as humans–and overreactive, senseless, emotionally driven responses to those things do us more harm than good, in the long run.

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Letters From Passengers: Part II.

Let’s do this.

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Dear Taking Sense Away: I have a quick question that I suspect is a relatively common issue.  Last year, I had a bilateral mastectomy and breast reconstruction with implants.  Are my implants and scars visible on the full body scanner images?  If so, should I expect to be hassled about the implants?  Is there anything extra I should do to help make my trip through security speedy and smooth?  

 

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Yes, your breast reconstruction and implants are easily distinguishable in airports that still haven’t replaced their remotely-operated backscatter machines, yet. Fortunately, the TSA is going to be removing all of those remotely-operated machines within the next few months. I am honest and try to be fair with this blog, so I will tell you the truth: I never in my time at TSA heard anyone joke about mastectomy/breast reconstruction issues, even though they were instantly visible to us in the remote viewing room. No matter how bad some of those TSA screeners were, they all had mothers or sisters, at least at some point, after all. That much can be said for TSA screeners.

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Our next question comes from Skeptical T.:

Just curious, do the TSOs have a tool to enhance the resolution or magnification on body images seen in the private screening rooms?  I have always assumed that what the TSOs really are viewing is much more detailed than the images released to the public.

Hello Skeptical Traveler,

Resolution, no. As far as I ever saw, the images released to the public were about what we always saw in the remote viewing rooms. I saw images of (non-human) test targets with the software’s resolution-reduction setting temporarily disabled (during maintenance) and yes, those images were much more detailed than the ones I regularly saw in regard to passengers. They were possibly detailed enough to allow a screener to see, oh, I don’t know, a carefully positioned gun on a passenger’s side, placed against a black background.

The TSA is perpetually twisted in knots, trying to be Israeli-like in the reach and penetration of its security methods against the backdrop of the American political and social landscape. It is a wasteful and pointless endeavor, one where the TSA tries to make full body scanning mandatory for everybody, but then has to allow people the right to opt-out of the technology. And then has to bow to the ACLU and soften the technology’s detail capability. And then has to allow anyone with a disability who may be unable to raise one arm to not go through the scanners. And then has to allow anyone who may look a little too young to be exempt. And then has to do away with sentient beings ever looking at the image, because that was ill-conceived, too.

It finally gets to the point that whatever the TSA was trying to do has become so diluted that it is all but pointless. The full body scanners and the SPOT (Behavior Detection Program) program are the two biggest examples of this. Both of those programs should be reduced to about a tenth of their current size and complemented with random screening, which is basically what almost everything the TSA does boils down to, anyway.

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Speaking of SPOTS (God, the official TSA blog rubbed off on me. Fucking shoot me, someone) speaking of spots, our next letter comes from a girl with a questionable one on her chest, RN in CA:

I travel a lot for work, and for the last several “naked scanner” times, I’ve been stopped because a “questionable spot” is on my chest. The spot is dead center, on my sternum, about where the pendant of a necklace would be. TSA asks if  I’m wearing a necklace (nope, never do), or if I’ve had surgery (nope!), then have to “pat down the area” which usually turns into a poke.  No one can ever tell me what it is, TSA is dumbfounded and usually just shrug when I ask what it is and why it only shows up on the naked scanners.  Do you know anything about this or has anyone ever sent you info on it?

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We’re dealing with the MMW Scanners, here. It could be absolutely anything that is causing you to be targeted by the scanner’s algorithm. The thing about automated target recognition is that, while it removes the unnecessary and outrageous presence of a TSA officer looking at your nude image in a remote room, it replaces it with an inflexible machine/algorithm. There are all sorts of things that reliably cause false alarms on the micromillimeter wave scanners. I would not be surprised if at some point in the future someone else figures out a way to beat the ATR-equipped scanners, just as the remotely-viewed machines were successfully exploited. Then where would we be? Right back to being systematically patted down after going through the multi-million dollar scanners. In the immortal words of security expert Bruce Schneier: “It’s a stupid game, and we should stop playing it.”

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What it all comes down to is that 95% of these machines may as well have just remained walk-thru magnetometers, fitted with random alarm generators, with maybe one or two full body scanners present per terminal, depending on the size of the airport: this would have achieved the same deterrence value, at a fraction of the cost. People can just opt right out of the scanners, anyway, or make themselves ineligible for the scanners in countless ways. That the TSA would venture to make this obviously limited security method (full body scanning) the primary mode of screening makes no sense, and is a waste of everyone’s time and money. If anything, this full body-scanner-as-primary-screening-method quest of the TSA’s has made us less safe, especially when one factors in the things that the money could have been spent on instead, as well as the incalculable damage inflicted upon the public’s already-tenuous trust in, and perception of, their TSA. The long-term effects of the public becoming inured to this sort of irrational, wasteful, and unnecessarily invasive policy-setting by the TSA is another thing to be considered. 

—-

And finally, for tonight, a letter from anonymous:

I’ve never understood why people put up with this sort of mistreatment from the TSA when they have the power to end it- why doesn’t the flying public go on strike?

Unions strike for better pay contracts and working conditions, so why can’t the flying public go on strike for better travel conditions? I personally have not flown since 2009, and I will continue to sit on my hands and my wallet until things change. I understand some folks must fly or lose their jobs, however, most travel is purely discretionary- people do have a choice, they do have the power and it doesn’t take everyone just enough people who are sick and tired and not willing to take it anymore.

Keep up the good work!

Dear  Anon,

I think the TSA has successfully been just not bad enough since its inception.

-N.J.R.

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Send all questions to takingsenseaway@gmail.com. I try to answer them within a couple month’s time.

Letters From Passengers and Screeners: Economy Size, Part 1.

I realize I said I’d try to respond to all the letters from passengers and former screeners by the end of January. Well, the end of January is here, and it ain’t happening. I have a backlog of at least 200 letters. There’s no way I could possibly give all of them the in-depth responses they deserve.

And so I’m going to wash a shot of espresso down with a Red Bull, brew a pot of coffee, and answer as many of them as I can over the next 48 hours, in a half-assed fashion.

Let’s rock and roll.

—-

First up is the first letter I received from anyone, a current screener. This was before anyone picked up on this blog; back when about 6 people had viewed this site, total. This was a really nice bit of encouragement, from someone with an AOL email address, “Sherlock.” Sherlock wrote in:

Funny stuff! You have only scratched the surface

-Soon to be ex-DHS employee

Thanks for believing in me before anyone else thought that I was a special little snowflake, Sherlock. You were my first, and I’ll never forget you. I would like to think that my blog had something to do with you quitting.

Up next, another letter from a former screener:

Hi!

I really do like your blog! I was named the TSA witch after what happened to me when I worked for them! It is a long story, but you can google tsa witch and read all about it! So, if you ever need any input, feel free to ask!

Thanks for writing in, Madam TSA Witch. I read your story, and it is amusing. I recommend anyone else so inclined to Google “TSA Witch” and go for it.

Up next is the full text of what I consider to be the now-classic “making fun of TSA is somewhat akin to poking a large retarded bear” email.

Hi,

“Work X hours of overtime”, “working overtime until X” – code for an attractive passenger, where X is the direction of the passenger relative to the officer.

I can’t argue with anything you say on your blog, and even if I could, I probably wouldn’t. However, I do feel like its akin to poking a crippled, retarded bear with a sharp stick.

I believe the first part of the above email was a proposed entry to the Insider’s TSA Dictionary, and I’m fairly certain that this is a current or former screener. What you see in the above email is the type of on-the-checkpoint slick guy-speak that actually goes on, flying right over your heads, ladies.

As you can see, even if the Federal Security Director of an airport were to read this blog and put out an airport-wide directive stating that “There will be none of the sexist TSA guyspeak exposed by the Insider’s TSA Dictionary going on at this airport,” the screeners would easily be able to evade detection with the deployment of Advanced Complexity Guyspeak.

In the above case, you have what is probably a current screener who, at his airport, communicates the location of an attractive female by saying “Hey Joe, you gonna’ be working 12 hours of overtime next week?” where the attractive female is at 12 o’clock, directionally-speaking. Then Joe would respond with something along the lines of, “Yeah, by the D gates, it’s hot over there,” all going on right in front of you, ladies, with you probably none the wiser.  So that’s how that works.

Anyway, thanks for writing in, current screener. And yes, it still is like poking a retarded bear. You’re still right.

Our next letter comes from Mike:

Last year I was on vacation on the big island of Hawaii. My family and I had stopped at a local farmers market and was talking with a couple who had sold their business in southern california, moved to Hawaii and started a business selling locally made jams and jellies. We were talking about the state of the world, travelling and various subjects when the husband told me this story.

 

At one of the other farmers markets on the island a man came up to him and told him how much he enjoyed his products. Never having seen the man before the husband asked the man where he had purchased the items to see how his marketing efforts were paying off. The man said, “Oh, I never buy your products. I work for the TSA at the airport and when they are confiscated them from passengers, I take them home.”

 

Another story about how TSA employees steal from the travelling public. If you publish this story you can use my first name as Mike.

—-

Thanks for the story, Mike. I do not doubt for a second that this is true. At the airports where I worked, there were constant, year-round stories of people being fired/arrested for theft. For some reason, I was never really friends with any of the people who were busted. But I did know quite a few people, back around 2005, who had no compunction about cleaning the change out of the little tray beneath the x-ray belt that collects things that fall out of overturned bins and bowls.

One TSO I knew would go around to the lanes, kick the trays, and collect dropped change until he got enough to buy his daily cup of coffee. I thought he was crazy for doing it at the time, still do, because that’s just the sort of thing that gets back to the wrong people, causes cameras to be rolled back in managers’ offices, and finally results in a swift termination. But back in 2005/2006 and before, there was a far more lawless spirit on TSA checkpoints, if you can believe that, dear passengers. (And the TSO who got his daily cup of coffee from dropped passenger change pretty much had the Office Space excuse: “It’s not really stealing. It’s sort of no one’s money. Dropped change. Fractions of money, is what it is, that I’m just sort of directing toward a cup of coffee.”)

Next up, speaking of thefts at TSA, is a letter from Paul, who wrote:

I recently wrote a blog post about the TSA and how to simply defeat their ability to steal your stuff out of your luggage.  the blog post appears at: 

http://blog.paulstaxi.com

For those of you who don’t have time to read Paul’s entire proposed method, it’s a tad involved, having to do with a declared firearm, and probably not very feasible for the average Joe or Jane, but hey, what the hell. We’re publishing em’ all here this week on Taking Sense Away.

Next is Curt, who wrote in:

Hi, I just found your blog via the recent article on slashdot and I
quite enjoy it.  I travel often compared to most other Americans, and
I’ve always wondered what it’s like for the people “on stage” as it
were, in our security theater.  I wonder if you would be willing to post
sort of “day in the life,” documenting what a typical day was like as a
screener.

Dear Curt,

See, this is why it’s so hard for me to even begin to try to respond to all the email I have sitting over here in my inbox. This is a very good request, a very good piece of mail, and it’s something I would definitely like to do. But answering this is a huge blog post unto itself. And, quite frankly, a mostly boring blog post, too.

The typical day in the life of a screener. Hm.

I’ll just try to do a “TSA Screener’s Day in 30 seconds” type deal:

BRIEFING: Good morning everyone, thanks for coming in. Blah blah don’t call off too much blah blah now let’s talk about a thing that management is making a big deal about this month but will forget about next month because someone just happened to get caught doing something stupid such as trying to use their DHS badge to get out of a speeding ticket blah blah blah make sure you re-run all bags after you do a bag check blah blah no gum chewing because the terrorists are out there looking for signs of weakness such as gum chewing have a good day here are your lane assignments, GO!…

…I’m stuck working this full body scanner that doesn’t even work. This is terrible. I hate this job…

…Maybe I should start a blog one day telling everyone about how outrageous it is that I’m putting a toddler into a full body radiation scanner that really doesn’t work…God, do I hate this job. It is a paycheck though. Direct Deposit. Should get paid this Saturday, too….

…Now I’m on X-Ray. This is boring, too, but at least it’s not as bad as working that full body scanner that doesn’t even work. I wonder if I should call a bag check on this toothpaste. It’s just fucking toothpaste. Calling a bag check on what I know will turn out to be that old lady’s toothpaste isn’t going to make the world any better in any way.  I hate this job so hard. Is anyone looking? No, there’s only a few cool people around, and the supervisor is over there flirting with that American Airlines flight attendant. I’ll just let the toothpaste go…

…Oh look, they’re putting L3 Micromillimeter Wave scanners in, now. I guess this will be better. But it sure is giving out false positives on every other thing. This is annoying, too. But it’s better than the backscatter radiation scanners, and we’re sparing the children, now. So let’s just be grateful for what we have. God I hate this job, though…

…I’m sitting on the exit. Thank you, Jesus. This is the best thing that’s happened to me all week. Hopefully they’ll let me just sit here on this exit all day, as long as they don’t partner me up with one of the insufferable dullards I work with. Sitting here and making sure no one comes in after exiting security is as good as it gets with this job…

…aaand I’m back on the lane now, because someone on light duty came into work and forced me off my sweet exit lane assignment. I hate this job. Please let this day just be over. Oh God. There’s an idiot on the x-ray now. She’s going to call every little liquid that comes across that x-ray screen. There she goes. It’s a half empty tube of toothpaste. I have to throw out a half-empty tube of fucking toothpaste or else I’ll get fired for letting the terrorists win. I hate this job…

DEBRIEF: “Thank you all for a great job”/”Curse you all, you can’t do anything right”/”Pop quiz, officers: blah blah boring theoretical SOP question that doesn’t really matter”/”Can anyone tell me the proper thing to do if a person who looks like he’s 9 years old  but who claims he’s 47 approaches you claiming that he has both a rare disease and a diplomatic pouch in his backpack?”/ “Thank you all for coming, see you again tomorrow, and remember: if you hate this job so much, you can always go work at McDonalds over in the food court.”

END: ROUND 1.

—-

Letter from a Passenger: “Any Comment on the Report that TSA Employees Are Being Instructed to Save Themselves in the Case of a Shooting Incident?”

Girl from the Burg writes in, again:

Any comment on this story?

“At least some unarmed Transportation Security Administration (TSA) airport screeners are receiving training to prepare them for the possibility of a mass shooting at one of the agency’s airport checkpoints. According to a TSA source, they are being instructed to “save themselves” instead of attempting to protect passengers.”

—-

It took me 30 seconds of  Googling to find this blog post by a security and emergency preparedness blogger.

I suppose the TSA could instruct its employees to jump in front of citizens and take bullets for them in the unfortunate event of an active shooter scenario. But let’s just be real here for a minute.

I don’t think the theoretical training would translate to the chaotic reality very well.

In the middle of an all-out fire fight, you would have a TSA screener, who’d once read a training packet or online module about what to do in the event of a shooting, who had never officially received any sort of hand-to-hand combat training, never been taught how to deal with weapons in any capacity (besides the removal of Swiss Army knives from passengers’ bags, and honestly, I think we can all agree that TSA screeners should remain unarmed) and whose only qualifications for getting the job were the possession of a GED (if that), the ability to dead-lift an awe-inspiring 70 pounds, stand on his or her feet for 4 hours, and differentiate between the colors violet and blue. The TSA screener most likely despises his job, the public (who generally despises him), or both.

That guy, Vs. an AK47.

I have a feeling that our hypothetical shooter would, in fact, opt out of anything the TSA screener tried to instruct him to do, and refuse to stand still for an inner thigh up-slide. The TSA screener would be fresh out of the ol’ tools at his disposal, at that point.

I think that no matter what kind of training packet or online course you have a TSA screener read, if the shit hits the fan, that TSA screener is probably going to try to save him or herself, if he or she can even manage to do that much: there would be a damn good chance that anyone who snapped near a TSA checkpoint would not exactly rank TSA screeners very highly in their Mercy Index. When news stories emerge about a person smacking a TSA screener, people flood the comment sections hailing the person as a hero, after all.

All of these things are unfortunate truths, but there they are.

-NJR