In Response to an Official Government Response.

So, I decided to check the official TSA blog a few minutes ago, owing, I suppose, to a sudden urge to look at beautifully laid-out photos of inert weaponry, and lo and behold, I discovered that about a week ago, “Blogger Bob” commented on some things involving this blog and the media’s coverage of it. Blogger Bob (I am actually going to stop referring to him as Blogger Bob, because it makes me feel as though we are living in a Sesame Street episode, or some such) Bob Burns ran a very official government boilerplate response-type line: “The officers are always professional in the backscatter image review rooms, they’re too busy looking for terrorist threats for any horseplay, that anonymous source is not to be believed, pay no mind,” etc.

Look. I respect the intelligence of this blog’s readers, so all I am going to do is point the good reader to another story that hit the media in May of 2011, right around the time that the backscatter radiation machines were being installed en masse around the country. This story definitely made the rounds of TSA screeners at the time, though it may have slipped under your radar or faded from your memories, dear passengers.

Here is the story of some TSA employees, concerning the backscatter radiation full body scanners. Extrapolating from this, I’ll let the reader decide whether or not he or she believes that TSA employees have ever acted in a less-than-professional manner concerning passenger images.

That’s all.

-NJR

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Letter from a Passenger: A TSA Poem.

A few days ago, I asked passengers to send me any TSA-dedicated poetry they may have. I did not believe that anyone would actually have a ready-made poem inspired by the Transportation Security Administration, but as I’m coming to find out, never, ever doubt the American people when it comes to strong feelings regarding their TSA. Pat wrote in:

One of the running jokes with my friends is that I’ve never gotten pulled aside for a TSA groping. Perhaps it has something to do with that fact that I’m a 270 lb middle-aged balding white male, and no one is particularly interested in touching that demographic. Anyway, all year it was a running theme of “will I get some TSA action this time? Will this be my lucky flight where I lose my TSA cherry?” Alas, it never happened.
 
Knowing of my quest, my best friend wrote the attached parody of “Twas the Night Before Christmas”, imagining a scene where I’m travelling with my wife and finally get my wish-come-true.

 —-

‘Twas a night at the airport, when all through the gate

Not a creature was stirring, after all it was late;

Pat’s junk ‘twas hung ‘tween his legs with care,

In hopes the TSA agent soon would be there;

His cajones were nestled all snug in their sac,

Like teeny sugar-plums all out of whack;

Pat in his beard, and the Agent in his cap,

Had just settled down to look at Pat’s lap,

When out of the scanner there arose an alarm,

Diane was now seized; held by each arm.

An agent held up battery powered devices

And scolded Diane for indulging her vices

Her handcuffed wrists were glinting in the light

As Diane was hauled off to the agents’ delight,

The Agent returned to Pat, still in shock.

And said, “You can go, I’m not touching your jock.”

Pat’s eyes, how they fell. How could he be merry?

His chance was now gone to lose his TSA cherry!

But the Agent’s droll little mouth was drawn up in a grin,

As he reached his hand out, Pat warmed from within!

The Agent had a broad face and a little round belly,

That shook, when he laughed like a bowlful of jelly.

A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,

Soon gave Pat to know he had nothing to dread;

The Agent spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,

Feeling up both Pat’s legs; giving his willy a jerk.

And laying his finger aside of Pat’s junk,

He passed over his card, growling, “Better call me… punk!”

He sprang to attention, pointed Pat to his gate,

And said, “Hurry up! You’re going to be late!”.

Pat grabbed his bag and hurried away,

Shouting, “Thank you so much, you just made my day!”

—-

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Letter from a Former Screener.

Myca writes:

As soon as I read your blog I had to write you. please excuse my typos as I have MS and my hands dont work like they used to.

I was a TSA screener at LAX. I’m concerned about my fellow screeners.  Numerous screeners are coming down with brain tumors and various cancers. Of my old co workers 6 have died and even more are getting diagnosed and coming down with symptoms of cancer and other auto immune diseases, like mine. Since there really isn’t a place for screeners all over the country to discuss this I figured writing you might get some attention. I think the public should know that the radiation from our machines CAN/WILL cause cancer. I hold TSA responsible because as you sit in your training classes your told that everything is safe…do it for 9/11…but we as screeners are NOT safe. The job is killing many old co-workers and some amazingly strong people that I have been blessed to work beside. I now worry that I might one day find out I have cancer. I have 3 kids. I can’t afford to get cancer. I am tired of attending funerals. And even more tired of FB posts from good people announcing their cancer diagnosis. Just last week a 30 y/o screener messaged me saying “I have inoperable brain tumor.” I’m so scared. Please help me spread the word and try and unite those that are sick so we can take a stand to protect everyone.

-Myca

Former TSA-LAX

—-

(Editor’s note: I personally knew many, many TSOs who felt uneasy working backscatter radiation machines for typical 8 to 10 hour shifts, and so this letter is, at the very least, representative of the concerns of many TSA employees whom I have personally known. LAX recently replaced their backscatter machines with MMW scanners, as the TSA has begun doing all across the nation, though I believe there are still at least dozens of them in operation. I will gladly forward to Myca the contact information of anyone who would like to get in touch with her.)

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Hate Mail, Part 2: Wherein I am Called an Asshole Who is Only Trying to Make the TSA Look Bad.

Anonymous writes:

Subject: “Letter from a Current Screener

How much of this site borders on SSI (Sensitive Security Information)? Why don’t you just stop this and stop making us look even worse, asshole? We already have plenty of assholes in the organization who get caught stealing or acting like jerks to kids in wheelchairs. Do we really need more of this?”

Dear Anon,

First of all, what is it with screeners always choosing “asshole” from their vulgarity arsenals when sending me hate mail? This is hate mail Part 1 all over again.

At any rate, Anon– may I call you Ginny, for reasons that will later become clear?– at any rate, Ginny, I thought long and hard about this, well before I even started this site. Though my primary mission with this blog is to entertain readers with slices of my experience as a TSA screener, whilst giving them bullshit-free analysis and opinions on what’s going on–or has gone on in the past– with the TSA, and to give screeners , ex-screeners and passengers a platform upon which to voice their opinions and experiences, I also want to offer suggestions, whenever possible, as to how things could possibly be made better with the TSA.

For those readers not familiar with the below reference in Ginny’s letter–

“We already have plenty of assholes in the organization who get caught acting like jerks to kids in wheelchairs.”

–Ginny here was referring to a story that hit the media a couple weeks ago, about what happened to 12-year old wheelchair-bound Shelbi Walser on her way through the airport to receive her routine medical treatment for a genetic bone disorder. The little girl’s hands were swabbed, right on cue in the TSA’s robotic-like security theater dance routine, and, surprise, she alarmed. What followed was the little girl and her mother being detained for an hour, as the girl wept, the mother took video, and one TSA agent was overheard on the video assuring the little girl “It’s OK, we’ll have you out of here in a second” (if the TSA employee was so sure she’d end up being clear, then what’s the problem? There, in a single, tiny flash, you can see and hear, in microcosm, an interesting thing– gut-level common sense clashing with dopey government bureaucracy. And yes, I know, “these TSA agents did nothing wrong…within the system as it is set up”. After all of that, the little girl is released.

tsa shelbi wahwah

Later Shelbi is interviewed by Fox News, and asked to give her impressions of the ordeal. Shelbi has this to say of the incident:

“It was kind of frightening and…I got mad.”

Well I’ll be damned, TSA! Looks like the next generation of travelers is already wise to what the TSA experience is generally all about!

Let’s just break this whole thing down.

ANATOMY OF YET ANOTHER TSA PUBLIC RELATIONS NIGHTMARE.

First of all, it is absolutely no surprise that this whole thing started with a hand swab alarm. As any frequent flyer has probably noticed, and as any TSA PAX screener knows, swabs are like the duct tape of the TSA: something’s potentially broken, go for the swab. Only this duct tape doesn’t really fix anything at all, and is constantly crying “wolf!” all day and night. As a TSO I used to hear rumors about how much each of those canisters of ETD strips cost, and if they were anywhere near true, then there’s another thing for you to investigate and rightfully be infuriated about, dear tax payers.

You have no idea how much of a TSO’s day is spent going around just mindlessly swabbing things. After resigning from the TSA I had PTSD (Post-TSA Swab Disorder). Kid you not, I tried to fix a leaky faucet the other day by swabbing it with a piece of cloth and shouting “CSS.”

Hey, TSA: if every other thing is alarming, then nothing is alarming. As a screener on the floor, all those hand swab alarms become white noise– white noise that, as you just found out, can occasionally lead to all-out PR nightmares. You might want to rethink your policy on swabbing everything that moves, because guess what? By overusing any one security procedure, you all but guarantee that said security procedure is the one thing that will never be the successful hail Mary security play to foil a person with malicious intent, in deterrence terms, or otherwise. You’ll only give the theoretical, one-in-a-trillion, real-deal, cunning suicidal terrorist the cue to use a little creativity to side-step the overused, heavy-handed procedure. If anything, you’re actually making things less safe by mindless, hamfisted use of your technology.

As to why she alarmed, and as to Ginny’s question regarding “SSI,” I do not have to get into any sort of SSI to explain exactly what happened with this particular PR nightmare incident, or to explain anything else on this blog. In fact, nothing on this blog will ever be anything that anyone could not find floating around on the internet,  playing itself out in plain public view at any airport security checkpoint, or deduce using common sense. My “shocking revelation” that ran on ABC News last week regarding what I’ve witnessed in the I.O. room on non-ATR fitted Rapiscan AIT machines? The whole “officers laughing and playing in the I.O. room” shocker? A blogger at Jezebel had the best handle on the “story”:

“…for me, it’s hard to imagine it [officers laughing and playing in the I.O. room] is not happening. Just think about it — when you put people in an awkward position of power over others and then make the people they have control over extremely vulnerable, how could it not? The fact that this leads to hooking up is not surprising, the rooms sound perfect for it, and the making fun of part makes total sense, too.

It’s just common sense, knowing what we know about people. And to the TSA spokesperson who assured the public that such things were not happening in the I.O. room, pray tell, good sir, how could you possibly have access to the knowledge of what has or has not happened in hundreds of tiny, private rooms across the nation with federally-mandated signs upon them reading: “No recording devices of any kind are allowed in this room”?

Back to Shelbi Walser: check the comment sections on any of the hundreds of write-ups on the story. Go ahead, literally scroll down for 2 seconds on that Fox News write up, this is what you find:

“sidbakmer • 13 days ago”

“Certain…[REDACTED, ON GROUNDS THAT IT COULD BE SSI. SEE, I’M MORE CAREFUL ABOUT NOT DIVULGING THINGS THAT COULD BE CONSIDERED SENSITIVE SECURITY INFORMATION THAN EVEN YOU ARE, TSA]…can set off the explosives detector. Why are TSA agents and its managers so damn ignorant? I’m unemployed with 2 degrees. If those imbeciles at TSA are the best the government can do, I’m available.”

Try going to other comment sections where this story ran, or any forum where news stories such as this are discussed. Or go to any of the forums solely dedicated to the dissolution of the TSA, for that matter. I’m sure you’ll find the same thing. There is absolutely no information regarding day-to-day TSA checkpoint procedures and technology that the millions of often highly educated and internet-connected passengers of the world cannot easily deduce or search out. As the world has most certainly discovered over the past couple decades, the crowd will be smarter and faster than any bloated, lumbering government bureaucracy, any day. But still, I will never be interested in going there.

Which brings me to my next point. TSA security techno-theater aside, the TSA’s overuse of hand swabbing is actually purely incidental in this story; it is only symptomatic of a larger problem, as it relates to the sick-girl-in-a-wheelchair-crying-as-she’s-being-detained-by-TSA-employees debacle.

Kip Hawley, former TSA chief, has repeatedly stated that the biggest thing he believes the TSA has to do in order to improve as an organization is to move toward a more decentralized dynamic; to “make screeners more accountable for their actions; less able to simply hide behind regulations and the SOP if and when something goes wrong.”

John Pistole, the current TSA chief (and I actually sort of like Pistole, all things considered, sorry to tell you, rabid TSA-haters) has, I believe, truly done his best to move the TSA in this direction. When the words “screener discretion” began showing up in the life of a TSA screener after Pistole took over, the thinking TSA screener was overjoyed (I’m aware of how absurd these next two sentences are, but this is TSA we’re talking about): “Hurrah, we’re allowed to use common sense! It says so right there in the rules!” (The same common sense that the mother of the 12 year old girl in the wheelchair as well as thousands of very smart commentators, have lambasted the TSA for not using in their latest PR nightmare.)

I received a letter from a passenger the other day, Ron C.:

It seems that a partial solution to the TSA making flying so unpleasant would be to have each checkpoint manned by one TSA employee who served as sort of Ombudsman for the flying public. This person would be responsible for making sure that passengers were treated efficiently, with dignity, and courtesy, and that their civil rights were not violated. It would also create a few jobs. Maybe a massive stack of printed complaints would convince Congress to fund this. Well, a guy has to have dreams, right?

Thank you for the letter, Ron. While a dedicated ombudsman on the checkpoint is a noble dream, I believe that in practice what you would get is a man or woman profusely apologizing all day, while explaining that there is “nothing that he or she can do about” this or that idiocy, because his or her “hands are tied by the SOP.” The TSA could definitely focus more on a screener’s interaction skills with the public when it came time to assess his or her suitability for the job, though.

But I think Ron’s onto something.

Let’s start by taking what the TSA already has, and trying to rearrange it in a better way. Let’s look for a moment at former chief Kip Hawley’s belief that the there should be more screener accountability and judgement-call capability on the floor. Now, in my nearly-7 years of employment with the TSA, I can verify the truth of what you’re probably thinking right now, dear passengers and screeners: it wouldn’t be wise to give the kind of people the TSA has on its frontlines carte blanche in regard to procedural decisions. You’re absolutely right. The average TSA screener is not the best and brightest that America has to offer. But there is someone on every checkpoint who sucks up just a little more more tax-payer dollars than the other screeners, and who has already been vested with some authority to make judgement call-like decisions: the checkpoint supervisors, or STSOs.

Now, on one hand, we have a lumbering government bureaucracy with its ever-present endless tangle of rules and labyrinthine SOP red tape, all looped into hoops that must be jumped through. But on the other hand, for whatever reason, this same organization has granted thousands of minimally-trained people the authorization to look at people’s behavior, facial expressions, and body language, and on that basis, determine whether or not they represent a potential threat to be pulled aside for additional security scrutiny at the airport.

And finally, you have tax payers who have been shouting in unison, for nearly 10 years, “Bring common sense to the TSA!”

Now I know this suggestion may seem completely outlandish to you, dear TSA, but I’m going to put it out there, anyway:

How about we take all of these ingredients, and produce one, just one, tax-payer funded TSA employee on every checkpoint who is authorized to use– in common parlance– common sense? Put that wasteful BDO program to work for the American people who fund it. Wrap the common sense in government-speak– go ahead, we know you have to do it– so call it an Authorized TSA Behavior Detection Threat Level Judgement Call for Common Sense Optimization Procedure.

As I, and any TSA current or former screener will tell you, the number of times that a TSO finds him or herself standing around on the checkpoint, helpless and completely de-clawed of the ability to use common sense to clear a 99.99999 (repeating) percent certain non-threat (such as, say, a 12 year old girl in a wheelchair going for her routine brittle bone disability medical treatment who alarms on a hand swab– one of the day’s 200 false alarms, in terms of people with actual malicious intent), is countless.

Maybe lawmakers should clean a little house at the K, L, and M-band salary tier of this “top-heavy organization,” (per the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and the Government Accountability Office’s perennial findings) and spread a little of the high-paid thinking out to the checkpoints, where the public actually deals with the TSA.

Maybe the TSA could use some of the billions of tax payer dollars being wasted on the Behavior Detection program in order to certify supervisors as dual-certified BDOs– trained “behavior detection officers”– who would then be authorized– with the burden of full accountability if anything went wrong– to, for instance, look a tearful, sick little girl in the eyes, talk to her mother for a few minutes, size up the whole situation, in toto, and say, “Just another false alarm. No need for this to go on any longer. This little girl and her mother are not a threat. Clear.”

So, in response to the question of the person who sent me the hate mail:

Yes, Virginia, there is a need for this blog.

-J

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Letter From a Passenger: I Am the Kobe Bryant of the TSA.

Dear Taking Sense Away,

Like many of your correspondents, I too travel this great land of ours by air on a weekly basis, trying to eke out a living in these austere times in the commercial sector. While I have had the great pleasure of meeting many TSA screeners over the years, I think I met the dumbest of them all recently as I was passing through LAX.

I had opted out of being irradiated for the 8th time that week, and after a stint chilling with the quietest screener I had met in a while (she was assigned to guarding the glass partition door next to the magnetometer and occasionally whispering, “Male opt out” (note the lack of exclamation!)) a buoyant, young gentleman bounded up to escort me to the footprint mat for my run though the enhanced pat down mill. I was asked to spread my feet apart wider than the shadows of human feet woven into the mat as the officer waved his freakishly large hands about and explained how he was only going to touch my genitals and my buttocks with the back of his hand.

At this point I made it fairly obvious that I had been through this before by answering all of his questions before he had finished asking them, and assuming the position before being instructed to do so. It was at this point that he looked me square in the eye, stretched the blue glove tighter on his giant paw and said, “Don’t worry, I am the Kobe Bryant of the TSA.

I am not the biggest sports fan, nor am I a big entertainment “news” follower so it took me a second to double check in my own mind the association between Kobe Bryant and his reported, (alleged ?) misconduct with people of the opposite gender. Bewildered by his statements but 99% sure Kobe had done some jail time, I snickered and mentioned that he might want to pick another icon to refer to in the future. The “officer” was completely clueless as to why I made that statement and clearly didn’t believe me when I referenced Kobe’s previously reported transgressions. I wonder how many other passengers he had used that line on and received sideways glances as he used the back of his hand to probe their nether regions and tightly clenched buttocks!

Cheers,

Anonymous

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Mail Bag Monday is Coming.

On Monday, I’m going to start publishing dozens of the letters I’ve received, continuing throughout the month of January.

At the end of January, we’re updating the Insider’s TSA Dictionary, so get those entries in. The Insider’s TSA Dictionary was inspired by the best of the The Urban Dictionary, so that’s the style we’re going for.

I think I’m going to change it to The Insider’s and Frequent Flyer’s TSA Dictionary, because, honestly, if you took frequent flyers and put them in TSA uniforms, they could probably do a passable job of getting through a TSA screener’s average day. They used to recite the pat-down verbiage to me.

And if you have any haiku poetry, Irish limericks, or any form of poetry that you would like to dedicate to the TSA, please, send it in.

-NJR

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Confession #5: “I Think We All Know What a Crotch Looks Like. Now Let’s Get Out There, and Perform”: Inside Radiation Scanner Training

“The beauty of an airport is in the splendor of wide open spaces. An airport should be naked.”

-The architect Le Corbusier, 1930, on the future of airport design.

It’s early 2010 and I’m slumped in a seat in a cramped training room at O’Hare airport. There’s a sinking feeling building in my gut, threatening to pull me down into the lower level, down through the airport’s subterranean maintenance tunnels, lower still, into the debris-filled marshlands over which the airport was originally built. Just a few months prior, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab had attempted to take down an aircraft with an underwear bomb on Christmas day, so we’re all being trained to put people in x-ray machines, now. The suits are laying the propaganda on thick about it all, which is why the sinking feeling— propaganda makes me nauseous.

The world will be safer if everyone just gets in this machine. They’re the only option, now.

Everything we do is for the victims of 9/11.

All of our officers will, of course, view the nude images with the utmost professionalism. The good, thinking American— the one with nothing to hide— will have no problem with getting in this machine, but—

“—I’m sure you’ll find that a lot of the general public won’t like it. They’ll be squeamish about the radiation, about being viewed naked. Well, the sad fact is, we can’t trust the general public, anymore.”

Our training instructor has a habit of shrugging his shoulders at the end of sentences, as though absolving himself of responsibility for pronouncements made.

Next to me, thumb tacked to the wall is a large piece of construction paper with writing in bubbly black marker that looks like this:

September 11—————————>Formation of TSA
Richard Reid Shoe Bomb Plot———–>All passengers must remove shoes
U.K. Liquids Plot———————–>Liquids ban
Underwear Plot————————>Full body scanning

As usual, it seems as though the class sees nothing intrinsically wrong with this. As though this chart of cause and effect is unfurling with perfectly logical precision, just waiting for another piece of construction paper to be taped beneath it in addendum at some even more absurd point in the future:

Printer Cartridge Plot*————>Printer cartridge restriction
Inevitable Body Cavity Bomber—-> Random Cavity Searches
Giant House Bomb Plot————> Restriction on Closed Curtains
Telepathy Bomb Plot—————> Psychic Team Roll Out

(One thing I can’t stand is the conspiracy theory type; those paranoid, melodramatic souls who find descents into totalitarianism in every other highway billboard; a looming reprise of the worst of the 20th century’s regimes in every speeding ticket. But you begin to wonder if maybe they’re not all so far off the mark, working for this agency— there’s just no way around it.)

“…it’s not like this over in Europe, you know,” the instructor continues, “in Europe, nobody minds giving up their nude images in return for a big heaping pile of safety. It’s only in America that people get all up in arms. When you get irate passengers out there, people, just remember: flying is a privilege, not a right. “

The class blooms into a field of nodding heads.

“Now, if there are no more questions, I guess I’ll just congratulate you on being Full Body certified. Oh, one last thing: we’ve been getting a lot of enhanced pat down calls from officers mistaking men’s testicles for bombs. Now, I know there are a lot of different types of genitalia in the world, but please, try to be reasonable, people. Don’t look for threats where there aren’t any. OK?”

One hand springs up—a girl, no older than 18, jaw vigorously working a piece of gum.

“What about if a passenger shoves explosives up their— excuse me, but— ass? We ain’t gonna’ be able to detect that now, are we? Bombs up their ass?”

The class titters. The instructor holds up a hand and smiles. He’s heard this a million times.

“The folks in D.C. know what they’re doing, and of course, they’ve thought of this. Believe me, if there was actionable intelligence on a…cavity threat…they would know about it. And we would get the orders to do whatever was necessary to neutralize that threat, just as soon as it sprang up. D.C. is just on top of it, like that.”

A kind of deferential silence falls over the class at the mention of “D.C.”—  always an unquestioning reverence for headquarters with most of my co-workers.

We can’t trust the general public.

It was the general public that stopped the underwear bomber, and nearly every other thwarted terrorist attempt over the past 9 years, for that matter. Maybe it was the general public who shouldn’t trust us. I wanted to raise my hand and say that, but a thing like that could get a screener marked.

“Well then, alright,” the instructor concludes, hands clasped. “I think we all know what a crotch looks like. Now let’s get out there, and perform.”

Thousands of kids fresh out of high school with minimal training were being granted the power to put people into radiation machines and view their nude images; the descendants of entire generations of boys let down by empty comic-book promises of x-ray spec vision finally scoring— and, of course, all of it was feather-light on the benefit side of the cost-benefit scales. It seemed to me that it was the beginning of yet another soul-stiflingly dumb thing at the airport. I would turn out to be right.

Sitting in that training room that day, I realized I would have no choice but to continue doing what I’d been doing for the past several years, just to get through the days:

Pretending that my job was a matter of national security.

—-

*Actual restriction on printer cartridges would come later that year.

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Letter From a TSA Officer: “I Came Here to Chew Bubblegum and Kick Terrorism’s Ass, and I’m All Out of Bubblegum, Because My Transportation Security Administration Supervisor Ordered Me to Spit it Out.”

I Came Here to Chew Bubblegum and Kick Terrorism’s Ass, and I’m All Out of Bubblegum, Because I Was Ordered to Spit the Bubblegum Out, Because the Terrorists Are at this Airport Right Now Looking for Signs of Weakness Such as Bubblegum Chewing in Our Nation’s 20 Security Layers, My Transportation Security Administration Supervisor Claims.

Dear Taking Sense Away,

I work at a fairly large airport on the West Coast which shall remain anonymous. Our checkpoint supervisor is a typical micromanager, making mountains out of molehills and generally making everyone miserable for petty things (one time she rallied to get someone fired for not confiscating an old woman’s orange juice, for instance). But her real obsession is with gum chewing.

It seems like all she does, as a sworn federal security officer and defender of the United States of America from terrorism, is carefully watch our jawlines to make sure none of us has even a sliver of Juicy Fruit in our mouths, as though there weren’t enough in life to worry about and make each other miserable over already, without worrying about officers discreetly chewing gum to bring just a little bit of fruity joy to their miserable 8 hours with this woman.

Maybe she could user her officer observation skills in order to see if they are stealing from the public, for instance.

The thing that really gets me is how she invokes 9/11 and the threat of terrorism when she threatens to write us up over gum chewing. She often asks us to open our mouths and show her what we are chewing. If it’s a Mentos or a Starburst being enjoyed, it’s fine. Sucking on a Jolly Rancher is fine, as far as she’s concerned. Chewing on a piece of taffy at a turtle pace, slowly for hours, is also fine. But if it is an official piece of gum that we are officially chewing (and sucking on the gum is also fine) then she sometimes has us written up, the write ups including the words “failure to maintain command presence, uniform code,” and she is constantly chiding us about how terrorists are out there watching for someone with their guard down, chewing gum.

Anyway, basically, do you have any advice on this?

-D, Screener from out West

Dear D,

I think every TSA employee has experienced what you’re going through there, D. I know I sure as hell suffered a few supervisors with absurd gum fixations when I worked there. It should never come as a surprise to reasonable people working at TSA that you find yourself at any one time surrounded by a lot of unreasonable, not-too-bright, and incredibly anal retentive people. Look. You are working for an agency whose culture is one of absurd, picayune semantics disconnected from reality. One that has, historically, made enormous stinks about tiny snow globes and nail files. You seem like an intelligent and reasonable person, D.

My advice is to get the fuck out of that job.

Wishing you the best,

-Jason

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I Have Over 150 Letters from Passengers and Screeners In My Inbox. From Yesterday Alone.

I am trying to respond to all of them as fast as I can. I appreciate all the kind words and interesting stories. But I think the best thing I can do at this point is to try to arrange all the strong emotions and curiosity that people have about the TSA in an artful manner; transform it all into something new and beautiful, like Marcel Duchamp turning a urinal into a conceptual masterpiece.

So here are two letters from passengers and one from someone who is, I believe, a current or former screener: letters I chose to publish because they manage to achieve a fairly fluid narrative dynamic when placed together.

This one comes from Eric, who I believe is a current or former screener, given the very insider-y feel of his proposed addition to the Insider’s TSA Dictionary (I will update all the best proposed additions to the Insider’s TSA Dictionary in one lump post somewhere down the road). At any rate, after his proposed dictionary entry, he went on to say:

…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 it’s akin to poking a crippled, retarded bear with a sharp stick.

Dear Eric,

You’re right.

Sincerely,

-N.J.R.

Our next letter has a warm and fuzzy vibe to it, a rarity among all these letters I’m receiving. TSA most certainly is a large, crippled, neurologically-disabled bear. And so now we will lovingly stroke the bear for a moment. This one comes from Anne Marie:

Dear Taking Sense Away,

Here’s my favorite TSA story:

My father visited me in Oregon one year.  I had just lost my job, but had
previously promised to adopt a coworker’s cat.  My father agreed to take
the cat back to California.  Naturally, the cat would fly with him.

First of all, this was no ordinary cat.  He was big,
fuzzy, orange, and extremely friendly…

…Dad took him through the line and offered to put the cat through the x-ray. Naturally the TSA ladies shouted him down and said they would need to search Fred manually for, you know, WMDs.

The first lady put her hands in the bag, and felt up Fred, front and back,
paws, belly, tail, etc.  Fred LOVED it.  She then called over her coworker,
insisting that she had to check too.  Fred purred some more.

When every single one of the TSA bag search people had “searched” Fred,
they let him through.  Fred was deliriously happy with the attention, all the
ladies at the bag search got to feel up the fluffiest, fuzziest, furriest, happiest cat on the planet…

As evil as the TSA can be, they were thorough with Fred.  He didn’t unload
his litterbombs until Dad got him home.

-Anne Marie 

Dear Anne,

Thank you for sending in this warm and fuzzy story– well-written, too, and just in time for  the holidays. I especially loved how you prefaced the conclusion of the story with “As evil as the TSA can be…” It’s almost as though the TSA actually not being aggravating/senseless/rude/infuriating/offensive for once is something to write home about.

The large, crippled, mentally-challenged bear needed this.

Wishing you the best,

-N.J.R

Which brings us to our last letter, for now, from anonymous:

Dear Taking Sense Away:

I’m a very frequent flyer, traveling every week all around the US.

I try to be a good citizen, and so although I have deep doubts about the usefulness of TSA’s procedures, I do try to do my part and follow the TSA’s directions. Sometimes this means I have to deal with screeners who are, quite frankly, morons. But sometimes, I get screeners who seem like honest, decent people who are in fact just trying to make the best of a bad situation.

As a mere passenger, what can I do to help these good screeners? What can I do to be a better passenger, perhaps make their jobs a little easier for them, maybe make their day just a little bit brighter?

-anonymous

Dear anonymous,

As a screener, by far, the most spirit-lifting thing that passengers would occasionally say to me and a few of the screeners I worked with on the checkpoint was: “Wow. A really cool TSA screener, for once!” So, saying something to that effect will let a cool screener know that he or she is actually accomplishing something.

You could also try bringing a big fluffy kitty with you through the checkpoint, because screeners generally find that to be heart-warming, as Anne Marie pointed out.  Although there has been intelligence, which TSA is well aware of, regarding half-assed terrorist plots to surgically implant IEDs inside of pets (probably in an attempt to see if the TSA would begin confiscating and or vivisecting pets at the airport in response.)

So be careful with that strategy, Anne Marie and Anon.

Happy Holidays,

-N.J.R.

Email me at: takingsenseaway@gmail.com

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Letter From a Passenger: “How Do TSA Employees Feel About Working For a Despised Agency?”

This one comes from Rod.

“Would you know if the TSA higher-ups acknowledge the outcry against the agency and how they are attempting to handle said outcry? And are the screeners themselves aware, and how are they attempting to handle the outcry?”

Dear Rod,

Forgive me for answering the first part of your question in the style of a fairy tale, but it’s the only style in which information has ever been delivered to me by TSA higher-ups…

Every now and then in the life of a TSA screener, higher-ups from Washington D.C. will come around to his or her airport to hold a little town hall-style meeting for the officers, which, for the most part, nobody gives a shit about. The higher-ups at these meetings invariably assure the screeners that TSA is moving toward an “advanced counter-terrorism agency” that will “one day be highly respected,” and will be “quite a desirable job in the federal family.” They then throw any and all available data up into the air above the round table, like Gandalf throwing up a plume of magic dust– a dazzling flurry of information and statistics (such as the recent poll that the “majority of Americans think the TSA is doing a good job“). And yea, many of the screeners in the room stand rapt, and in awe.

And all the believers in the room go prostrate and weep tears of joy, for one day, they all believe, salvation from the land of Most Reviled Government Agency (a land in which the TSA daily does battle against the ancient and mighty IRS dragon) will come.

But really, the higher-ups know that the battle to leave the Land of the Damned Reviled Government Agency will never be won. Nay, not in this decade. For the TSA was formed at a terror-crazed, hysterical moment in history, and reacted to everything thusly, and with corresponding heavy hand. Forsooth, even though the heavy blue-glov’d hand could have been put away long ago, it takes enormous bureaucracies forever to do anything, and so the elimination of idiotic policies and unpopular, invasive, privacy-compromising measures, such as nude radiation scanners that do not work, will endure for many moons

~~~

TSA higher-ups (such as the ones whose town hall-style meetings I’ve attended) know, and sometimes admit (in hushed tones), that the public, in general, either A. doesn’t care about what the TSA does, at best, or B. wishes dissolution upon them, at worst, but as a bloated bureaucracy tangled in the accompanying red-tape morass, with a confused mission and culture on top of it, change is extremely slow in being implemented– decisions being made by committee, as they of course are– and it certainly doesn’t help that the members of the committee in this case know that they are at a bottom-of-the-barrel agency, and probably want to transfer the hell out of the agency to somewhere more respectable, ASAP. Either that, or they sit around trying to make names for themselves within the miserable agency by filibustering decisions up for review such as “should we just let people take their 5 ounce bottles of shampoo? Is there a way we can do that? Can we do that?”

On the floor, screeners also know that the public is either ambivalent or hostile toward  them. In general, the screeners do what people naturally do: order the situation into an Us vs. Them dynamic.

So you get a lot of screeners who are all, “What’s these passengers’ problems? Why don’t they and their families just line up and jump into our fucking radiation scanners and give up their nude images? Whiny bastards.”

And you also get screeners who are all, “I don’t really care about any of this, I’m just here for the pay check. Everything bounces off of me. Whatever.”

And some screeners, my personal favorites, are sort of like, “Well, no wonder so many of them hate us. Look at the mindless, senseless shit I am doing right now. Like this jar of apple butter belonging to that grandma over there that I am throwing in the trash right now? Makes very little sense. I sure do hope my application to Customs and Border Patrol advances along, soon, because this is just dumb.” (I’ve known a few screeners who went from TSA on to the FBI, and who assured me that they pretty much have to do their best to hide their previous employer from their new FBI buddies in much the same way that a child molester tries to hide his crime from prison mates. TSA is the laughing stock of America’s security apparatus, which will come as no surprise to anyone.)

In short: the higher-ups are of course aware of people’s general disdain for TSA, and seem to handle all the TSA-hatred defensively, reactively; wrapped in a constant state of damage control, weathering a seemingly-endless storm of negative media attention, while constantly putting to the test the riddle: “How many suits making $100,000 a year does it take to figure out a way to not confiscate 8 oz. jars of peanut butter and tubs of hummus from grandmothers thousands of times a day all over the nation, solidifying the nation’s disdain for our agency?”

And the screeners are certainly aware of the state of things, as each day every screener comes across various unhappy passengers, many of whom let them know that the policies being enforced are ridiculous. The screeners either A. Have the 6th grade mentality of, basically, “our policies aren’t dumb, you’re dumb” or B. They quietly agree with the passengers, and do their best to bend the dumb, rigid rules, whenever possible, as they figure out a way get out of TSA, ASAP.

Hope that helps,

-NJR

Send all questions to takingsenseaway@gmail.com

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