TSA Agent Helped Pilot Cheat During Test of Heroism

Well, here’s another one from the no-surprise department: another bad apple TSA employee.

Apparently, pilot Raymond Cody, while flying a single-engine plane across western Colorado, suffered a cockpit malfunction and lost all navigational equipment on his dashboard. He then called the TSA’s coordination center at Grand Junction Regional Airport and was put in touch with CCO Gene Manzaneres. Manzaneres was able to help Cody land the plane safely, but here’s the interesting part:

They cheated. By using an iPad app. The same Apple product that TSA officers have been known to steal from the public. Coincidence?

What do you think, readers? We all know that the TSA is a uniformly evil organization bent on ruining Disney World and all warm childhood memories for America, but what are we dealing with, as far as this story goes? Was the iPad that the pilot used to cheat his way to safety bought on the black market after being stolen by the TSA employee? Or is this entire story just a fabrication meant to soften us up for the body cavity searches that we all know are coming?

The TSA Cover Up Scandal

This is the girl.

I’ve received a few pieces of email about this story.

It’s about Mark Fraunfelder’s 15-year-old daughter being told to “cover up” due to the fact that a TSO made the moral judgement that the girl was inadequately covered in regard to her clothing choice. As always, the reason that this inappropriate behavior by a TSA agent comes to our attention is because the guy picked the wrong person to fuck with: Mark Fraunfelder, the father of the girl, is the founder of Boing Boing. If something gets posted on Boing Boing, there is always a damn good chance that it will go viral.

I occasionally heard TSA screeners saying things similar to “she should cover up!” while working at TSA, though the remarks I heard about teenage girls’ clothing choices were always made in private, off the checkpoint floor, not directly to the girl, as in this case. To my regular readers, I apologize for repeating myself, but I again direct everyone to another former TSA employee’s blog. She, the former TSA screener, says that as an employee for the TSA, she felt that a lot of girls should be embarrassed about the way they dress going through the airport. I quote:

A good deal of you should be embarrassed and humiliated. I have seen 12 year old girls dressed like Tijuana whores with mommy right next to them dressed the same way…

…this is the stuff you should be ashamed of and worried about TSA officers seeing.  This is what should make you feel humiliated.

You can read this former TSA employee’s blog post here. Of course, we all have opinions on what’s appropriate in regard to people’s clothing choices, and what’s not appropriate, based on various criteria. Most of us keep those opinions to ourselves, though. And if you’re a federal employee, voicing that opinion directly to the person is not only wrong, it is just plain stupid. Really, really stupid.

It’s such a stupid thing to have done that I believe that this was likely a case of a somewhat mentally unstable TSA screener who decided to get all Taliban on the girl. And yes, of course, the chances are fairly good that the screener was attracted to the girl, and projected his deviant desires onto the girl. (“I find you attractive, and I know that this feeling could potentially manifest itself into deviant behavior. I don’t know how to cope with this. So…cover up, you!”) But now we’re getting into the whole Freudian pocket-psychoanalyst thing. We’ll never really know what was going through his head. What we do know is that the TSA screener made a moral judgement regarding the girl’s clothing choice, voiced his opinion to her, embarrassed her, and is soon going to be out of a job.

He will very likely be terminated, most likely either within a week (if the employee has been with the agency for less than 2 years) or within about a month or two (if the employee is past the 2-year probationary period). They’re most likely running the security footage tapes back at LAX up in the manager’s office right about now, and preparing to bring the screener in for questioning, if they haven’t already. A post will likely go up on the official TSA blog fairly soon, first telling us that an investigation is being opened and that the TSA does not tolerate such behavior, and then, within a month or so, informing us that the screener has been terminated, and that he represented an anomaly in the TSA workforce.

I tried typing “15-year-old girl” into the TSA Policy and Statement Generator, and after just 4 clicks came upon an appropriate statement for their PR department in regard to this matter.

“Our track record is clear: since 9/11, not a single 9/11 has happened again. The news story currently going viral concerning a passenger’s 15-year-old-girl is not representative of our otherwise successful track record.”

I hope you’re using the Statement Generator, TSA headquarters. I’m telling you, it will save you guys a lot of time.

—-

Letter from a Passenger: “I Intend to Begin Fucking With Barney Fife TSOs”

J.F. writes:

I’ve been at an airport so often this year that I’ve started playing Spot the Excited Rookie. Recently some airports (EWR and FLL at least) have started requiring that passengers hold on to their boarding passes through the detectors. The most recent flight (out of EWR) involved an apparent rookie who challenged a passenger without a boarding pass, though it was required to get past two other TSA personnel.

Rookie: “Everyone: Hold on to your paper boarding pass as you go through the detector!” (seeing someone without a boarding pass) “You! Where’s your paper boarding pass?!”
Passenger: (confused) “I… I don’t have one.”
Rookie: (accusingly) “Then how did you get back here?!”
Passenger: (still confused) “I have an electronic boarding pass on my phone.” (points at the X-ray machine which has already taken in his effects)
Rookie: (disappointed) “… Fine. Go on.”

I have a cracked screen on my phone, and for that reason this year I’ve been getting paper boarding passes to make easier the lives of the TSA people. Because of Excited Rookie, though, I’m going with electronic boarding passes from now on. I’ve got 21 segments already and probably another 15+ to go before the end of the year. Apologies to the guys that have to decipher it.

Withholding my name would be appreciated, though I am admittedly curious about the various back-room procedures available to supervisors.

—-

Dear J.F.,

One of the rare, cool TSA supervisors I knew used to refer to the Excited Rookie screeners you speak of as the “Barney Fife Types.” I always thought his term was brilliant, and perfectly encapsulated the mentality of those screeners. I knew many, many of the “overly-excited, delusional, power tripping” types. Not all of them are new TSA screeners; some of them have been at TSA for years, and will always just be like that, I’m sorry to say. They likely emerged from the womb in Barney Fife fashion, commanding the doctor in the delivery room to surrender all tools over 7 inches and put his hands up.

The Barney Fife TSA screeners are the ones who honestly believe that every day they hit the checkpoint floor is a day in which at least one Al-Qaeda operative will pass through the airport, either in a dry or live run. They have been told in TSA training videos that there are terrorists everywhere; that there are dozens, if not hundreds of cunning, patient, well-organized sleeper cells spread out across the U.S.,  just waiting to come alive and hit the nation’s aviation system with a vengeance, and they believe it. The Barney Fife TSA screeners go through the day firm in their conviction that the terrorists are always nearby– watching, waiting, and plotting to destroy truth, freedom, apple pie, happiness and puppies. And the means by which the ever-lurking terrorists at the airport will accomplish this is, obviously, by repeating what worked so well for them in the past: either 9/11– this time with the use of some sort of advanced terrorist laser to vaporize the reinforced cockpit door– or with a riff on the Bojinka Plot that the TSA loves to drill into every TSA screener’s head.

(The beauty of the Bojinka Plot for the TSA training department is that it is an actual thing that the TSA can point to that basically covers every movie plot terrorist scenario that the organization needs its screeners to believe in, packaged in one convenient location: are the terrorists going to try to assassinate the Pope? Simultaneously bomb 11 airliners? Hijack and crash a plane into CIA headquarters? The answer is yes, according to the Bojinka Plot featured 37 times in every TSA screener’s recurring training module.)

So basically, J.F., what you are probably seeing with those TSA screeners who leap up and figuratively shout “AHA! Gotcha! Terrorist!” when discovering things such as the fact that you are not holding a boarding pass because it is on the same phone that they just commanded you to run through the x-ray machine, are people who believe that they have just thwarted that day’s terrorist run. In your case, J.F., the plot that the Barney Fife TSA screeners will believe they have thwarted will be some variation of the following:

You are a deadly, brilliant terrorist whose only obstacle to taking down a plane is the fact that your name is on some sort of watch list. U.S. intelligence agencies have collectively fallen asleep at their respective command centers, and accidentally allowed you to walk into a U.S. airport equipped with I.E.D. components, ready to bring the pain. It is now up to  TSA screener Barney Fife to save the United States of America.

Everything has gone according to plan for you, but there is just one problem: the fact that your ticket will come up with an enhanced screening mark on it, due to that watch list you’re on. Though you were cunning enough to have avoided being captured by police and intelligence agencies up until now, and to have discovered a surefire way to slip everything you need to destroy an airplane past the TSA’s regular security, you could never figure out one thing: how to defeat the formidable TSA enhanced screening that will arise on account of the four “S”s that will appear on your boarding pass. There is simply no getting around this fatally daunting aspect of security for you, and so you’ve decided there is no choice: you are going to have to ninja your way on-board the plane without any sort of boarding pass, Allah willing– past the airline people who are checking for boarding passes, past the TSA Travel Document Checker with his light and loupe,  past the ever-vigilant Officer Fife, and, finally, past the airline employee who scans everyone’s ticket before allowing them to board. Your meticulously-wrought plan will bring you eternal glory in heaven, if only you can overcome the problem of getting your surgically-implanted terrorist laser and body cavity-stashed bomb past security without the benefit of a boarding pass. 

That, J.F., is more or less what’s playing out in the minds of those Officer Fifes as they freak out and accusingly question you as to why you are standing in front of them sans a boarding pass, and then look sort of disappointed when there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for it. It is what’s either going through their minds, or through the minds of the managers or other TSA higher-ups who have made holding your boarding pass in your hand as you go through the scanners or walk-thru metal detectors a big ass deal, thereby traumatizing the screeners on the floor into reacting that way.

Either way, I think it’s funny that you’ve decided to fuck with them.

-NJR

Send all letters to takingsenseaway@gmail.com

TSA Chief Orders Random Cell Phone Checks to Get Director of National Intelligence to Notice Him

Arlington, VA

Amid controversy surrounding the NSA’s secret program to collect and sift through millions of records from telecommunications companies, TSA chief John Pistole has reportedly developed a huge crush on Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, ordering front-line TSA workers to begin randomly checking passengers’ cell phones in  a bid to win Clapper’s affection.

“For a while there it was mostly us in the news when it came to accusations of 4th Amendment violations,” Pistole said, referring to his beleaguered Transportation Security Administration. “But then this thing with the NSA comes along, with Clapper at the helm. I just think it’s super hot, when a security director is willing to oversee an unsettling, sweeping surveillance program at the risk of being put in the hot seat by the media and privacy rights advocates, all in the name of fighting terrorism. Basically he’s everything I dream of in a security director.”

Pistole reportedly issued an emergency directive to TSA workers late Saturday night in the form of a “playbook operation,” instructing screeners at airports across the nation to randomly swab passengers’ cell phones, and then check the last 10 calls and text messages in the phones’ histories. In addition to swabbing and perusing passengers’ smartphones, screeners were also ordered to randomly record the contacts found within the phones, and then copy that information into what are known as PMIS reports, which will soon be forwarded to Clapper, after being stapled to handwritten love letters from Pistole sprayed with Gucci Guilty Intense.

“We have our full body scanners out there invading people’s privacy, and for a while that was really cool. We could look at people naked, which was great. It felt like we were playing with the big boys when we had the radiation scanners. But then privacy rights people backed us down and we had to compromise with these new scanners. You can’t see shit with those. Definitely no nude images.  I never get to have any fun,” Pistole said, kicking a can and pouting.

“Not like Clap. Clap is God,” he added, referring to his pet name for Mr. Clapper.

Pistole also cited the coolness of the NSA’s programs’ names as a factor in his budding infatuation.

“‘PRISM’ and ‘Boundless Informant’: these are really cool names for privacy-compromising anti-terrorism security programs. I bet Clapper came up with those. All of our invasive technology and programs have to be given these really lame, banal-sounding names, like ‘WBI technology with the right to opt-out,’ ‘Standard pat-down’ and ‘SPOT.’ I’m calling this cell phone play something awesome, so Clapper will notice. Maybe ‘Operation iPeek’ or something.”

Pistole reportedly first noticed Clapper in a news article which featured the National Intelligence Director defending the security value of the controversial surveillance programs while looking totally hot in his old military uniform. Passion was inflamed when Pistole learned that the programs under Clapper’s direction had allegedly foiled at least 2 terrorist plots.

“Oh man, what really did it was when I heard The Clap say that he had proof that his programs had actually prevented terrorist attacks. At the TSA we do lots of poking into people’s privacy, but we never get any solid evidence of terrorism prevention that we can point to. When Clapper told that reporter that his surveillance program had actually been the key to thwarting Najibullah Zazi’s 2009 N.Y.C subway bombing plot, I got weak in the knees,” Pistole said.

“I mean, that was a transportation-related terrorist plot. That was sort of under my watch. Clapper’s all over the place, covering my ass and his. How sexy can you get?”

In addition to Pistole’s admiration for the NSA programs under Clapper’s direction, sources close to the crush report that Pistole has drawn up a list of other traits he finds dreamy in Clapper, reportedly written in a ruled-notebook adorned with magenta hearts. The list allegedly includes the entries “Interview-poise,” “Pretty green eyes,”  “Cute Yoda ears,” and “Way he flexed muscles at Edward Snowden.” Pistole confirmed the last trait to be the dreamiest.

“A whistleblower spills the beans at the NSA, and you see how Clapper handles it. Clapper comes right out and calls bullshit, releasing a cool ‘list of myths‘ that the media covers. Hell, even the president falls in line behind Clapper. The Clap makes sure whistleblowers get dealt with like a man. When I have a whistleblower on my hands, all I get is grief,” Pistole said, sighing as he gazed at a glossy 8×10  of Clapper.

“Grief and lawsuits. That I lose.”

Pistole says that he would like to take things slow with Clapper, being that his feelings are for real this time, unlike his 2011 obsession with Yoram Cohen, chief of Shin Bet, the Israeli Security Agency.

“I’m just hoping The Clap and I can maybe share information over coffee, or something.”

—-

Follow me on Twitter here.

Investigators Determine Airport Wizards to be Silly.

One of the first things I spoke out about on this blog was the TSA’s SPOT program (more commonly known as the Behavior Detection program), providing a veritable link storm of expert opinions regarding the program’s uselessness. On Wednesday, the world was blessed with one more link to add to the pile of reasons for disbanding the SPOT program: a report by the DHS inspector general, which yet again corroborated what is obvious to almost every TSA screener and thinking civilian alike.

Even more interesting than Wednesday’s 41-page report, however, is the 228-page subcommittee hearing from 2011. I realize that reading the transcripts and pertinent data of a 200-page hearing is not something that the vast majority of sane, healthy people are willing to do. The good news is that I did it for most of you over a year ago. I will excerpt two of the more interesting portions of the hearing.  

From page 96, where Chairman Paul C. Broun  is grilling Larry Willis, Senior Science Advisor at DHS and Director of Suspicious Behaviors Detection Programs.

Let’s listen in…

WILLIS: For every person correctly
identified using Operational SPOT, 86 were misidentified. For the
base rate or random study, for every person correctly identified, 794 were misidentified.
Chairman BROUN. Wow. SPOT was initially developed as intended to stop terrorism. That is the whole point of it. Now, we see that the program has expanded to include criminal activity. Why was this done?
Mr. WILLIS. You are asking a question about the mission. I am from Science and Technology, sir. I am unable to answer that. May I refer you to TSA?
Chairman BROUN. Well, that is the reason TSA should be here and the reason that I think Ms. Edwards and I are both extremely disappointed that they are not here.
Mr. WILLIS. I could, sir, talk to you about why we use metrics that deal more with criminal than with terrorism.

Chairman BROUN. That would be sufficient—or helpful. 

Mr. WILLIS. Sure. The reason we use those metrics that we had just listed, sir, was because they were available to us through the data in sufficient numbers to analyze, even though they themselves are low base rate or extremely rare. And data directly dealing with terrorism is unavailable and, thus, can’t be used as a metric.

—-

GREAT! So here we learn that a billion-dollar program developed to catch terrorists is now being used to arrest people for everything except terrorism, because– surprise!– there are barely any terrorists out there! So is anybody running a cost/benefit analysis on this program in regard to our tax dollars? Let’s go to page 109, where congresswoman Donna F. Edwards, of the Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight, is probing Stephen M. Lord, Director of Homeland Security and Justice Issues at the GAO, in regard to that question.

Let’s listen in…

Ms. EDWARDS. And then finally, Mr. Lord, since you already have the microphone, DHS hasn’t done a cost/benefit analysis on the program or a risk assessment. And it is my understanding that they don’t do a great job actually—and I apologize for the critique—of either conducting cost/benefit analyses or risk assessments for many of their programs. How do we know if we even need the program?

Mr. LORD. Well, typically, as part of our analysis, we would look at the cost/benefit analysis or the risk assessment to study, number one, how they decided—for example, you need a risk assessment, we would assume, to show where you needed to deploy the program. It is at 161 airports, so our question was how did you establish this number? Did you have a risk assessment? And the answer was no. They are in the process of ramping up the program now. Every year, you know, the funding has increased. We assumed that would be justified by a cost/benefit analysis. They don’t have one yet, although to their credit they have agreed to complete both a risk assessment and a cost/benefit analysis. But traditionally, we would expect to find that early at program inception, not 4 or five years after you deployed a program.

Ms. EDWARDS. Well, thank you all for your testimony. And Mr. Chairman, I would just say for the record, it would be good to get a cost/benefit analysis and risk assessment before we spend another, you know, $20 million, $2 million, or $2 on the program.

—-

It would  be good to get a cost/benefit analysis, indeed! Hell if anyone knows  if the BDO program is actually serving the public in any way! Well, at least it’s not like a story showed up in the New York Times about the BDOs profiling people, or anything.

Look. My fucking Twitter account’s avatar was inspired by the BDOs. It’s an Airport Wizard (from the Insider’s TSA Dictionary). You know what’s just as ridiculous about that today as it was 8 months ago, when I started this blog? The fact that Airport Wizards essentially exist, at a cost of approximately $50,000 per year a pop, on the taxpayer’s dime.

Even BDOs themselves admit that their program is an enormous waste of everyone’s time and money. I should know; I’ve personally known many BDOs. I’ll close this out by giving you some of my favorite quotes from BDOs whom I knew. I could put the actual names to the officers, but we’re not that type of blog.

Yet.

“What’s working as a BDO like? I’ll tell you what it’s like: walking around all day getting paid a lot of money for doing nothing.”

“Worst part about being a BDO is that it’s boring. Because we really don’t do shit.”

“It’s easy money. The only thing that sucked was losing my seniority when I went from TSO to BDO– I had to work a morning shift for the first 6 months– but I got a good shift now. Yeah [BDO number 1] is right: [laughing] we pretty much do nothing all day.”

—-

In all my years at TSA I did know one BDO who claimed that it was, in fact, somewhat difficult work. In the interest of fairness, I will give you that quote, too:

“It’s walking around all day doing math problems in your head. That’s what being a BDO is like. I’d like to see you try it.”

—-

Update: Former TSA Screener/Blogger, We Hardly Knew Ye.

He’s not big on spell check, but his heart’s in the right place.

(link)

I just found the other former TSA screener’s blog. He had a decent thing going there, and then suffered the all-too-common new blogger’s fate: he ran out of steam after a few months of writing, and abandoned the site. Unfortunately, the links to the pictures he drew on the exit lane at his airport are now dead, except for two.

It helps to be a TSA employee in order to understand what’s going on here.

His comics were pretty good. I just read nearly his entire blog (the first time I found it, I only read a couple of his posts along with his comics), and am a little creeped out by how universal certain TSA employee experiences seem to be (read his posts on doctor’s notes and gum-chewing. It’s uncanny). If you’re reading this, Sean, put those TSA comics back on your site, please, and knock out a few more posts.

From his blog:

My Name is Sean Langdon and I just resigned from what should be known as the joke of airport security. This is the organization known as the Transportation Security Administration. The airport I worked at was The Greater Cincinnati Northern Kentucky Airport (CVG) I began working for them on day one of their roll out nearly seven years ago.  I like many others thought in the beginning that we were serving our country.  But let me tell you it was seven years of pure hell and seven years of my life wasted.

I’d like to buy this man a beer.

EDIT 6/7/2013: For anyone interested in putting together a comprehensive collection of online writing by current or former TSA screeners, for whatever research-related reason, I point you to one last source: TSORon, over at the FlyerTalk forum. He is most certainly either a current or former TSA employee, probably current, assuming he has not died or blabbed himself out of his job, as his is the classic profile of a “lifer”; someone who will be at TSA up until the very end. You can read through all his posts by clicking here, and then  “statistics.”

Ode to the Other TSA Employees Who Blogged and Vlogged Before Me.

While planning this blog back in 2011, I thought it necessary to do a lot of research into whether or not there were other current or former TSA employees out there who had started a blog. The purpose of this post is to make me feel as though all those hours of Googling “TSA worker blog,” “Former TSA employee,” “TSA officer blogger” weren’t for nothing. So before I forget, here are the meager fruits of my labor.

In all those hours of research, I found two blogs by former TSA screeners, and one YouTube account by a self-proclaimed current screener. The YouTube account was a girl in her early 20s with a slight Southern accent– a video-confessional affair– asking that passengers stop complaining about the TSA, because it was her opinion that passengers  were ruining everything at the airport. The best part of the 5 minute video was when she, the TSA screener, admits that:

“Yeah, OK, some of us are fat and lazy, and some of us steal, but still, ya’ll need to shut the fuck up.”

It had about 700 views when I found it. I couldn’t help but think that if TSA management at her airport got wind of that video, the TSA-YouTuber would probably be in some amount of hot water. I’m almost reluctant to bring this up now, due to the possibility that the girl is still employed by the TSA, and that someone will now find the video and call her out on it, but then again, now that I think about this sentence, I realize that I am not at all reluctant to bring this up, because it would probably be best for everyone if someone found that video and called her out on it.

I can’t seem to find one of the other blogs by a former TSA screener, either, which is a shame, because it was pretty good, if I recall correctly. I realize that I’m failing you guys right now. It was an intimate little joint with a recurring feature titled “Sketches from the Exit Lane,” or something like that, which consisted of drawings the blog’s owner had done while sitting bored on the exit lane at his airport. That’s about all I remember. I found it one night, failed to save the blog’s address, and haven’t been able to find it since. If you’re out there, Sketches, email me your blog, please.

And now, for the finale. The first blog by a former TSA screener that I ever found. It took me about an hour of Googling to rediscover this, but mission: accomplished. If you guys aren’t familiar with Mom Vs. World, you’re in for a treat.

Mom Vs. World is a mommy blog/shamelessly search engine-optimized and monetized affair. According to the about page, it’s run by a 39-year-old woman who has held many job titles, including that of Transportation Security Administration Officer, a position she held for about 5 years. Mercifully, Mom Vs. World has steered clear of  TSA discussion for most of its history in favor of more traditional mommy blog subjects . However, one day, back in November of 2010, Mom decided it was time for her to speak out as a former TSA screener, and show the world that it was, indeed, she who put the “Vs.” in “Mom Vs. World.”

And speak out she did. It was, truly, Mom vs. the World with that blog post, as you can see by all 545 comments. Here is an excerpt of what resulted (my favorite part is how, after vigorously defending the TSA, she admits that she has a huge dislike for TSA and would like to see a lot of managers get terminated. Yep, that’s a former TSA employee, alright, as all my TSA people can attest):

“TSA is the most hated government agency.  TSA officers are very aware of that fact.  We get that some of you come through and even though you hate it, you suck it up and do what you have to do.  Then there are some of you who intentionally make things difficult.  Screw you and stop it.  It is a Federal crime to mess with a TSA officer trying to do their job and you will get arrested.  You want to make a point and show your outrage to the world.  TSA headquarters is in Virginia.  Get on your little bike and ride…

I am not a spokeperson or representative for TSA in any way. I actually have a huge dislike for them and would like to see a good deal of management fired. These are my views and opinions and those of some of my friends and former co-workers who happen to still work for TSA.”

Ladies and gentlemen, after two false starts in which I began to tell you about things I’d found on the internet but can no longer find, I now give you the classic that was nearly  lost…

“Shut Up and Get in the Scanner,” by Mom Vs. World.

Confession #9: I’ve Been a Current TSA Employee, Not a Former TSA Employee, All Along.

When I started this blog, my greatest worry was that no one would find it. Then, after the blog caught media attention, my greatest worry became that the TSA would find me: I was blogging as a current TSA employee, not a “former TSA employee,” up until a few days ago.

It was the TSA’s use of the full-body scanners that prompted me to first speak out and voice my opinion that the technology represented a wasteful, reckless, and unnecessary infringement upon people’s privacy; an opinion informed by several years’ experience operating the full body scanners, and it is for similar reasons that I am making this confession today— in light of the fact that now, the public finally has the chance to voice its opinion on the matter.

Though my primary goal with this blog is to bring some levity to my experiences as a TSA employee, the TSA’s mission to make the scanners the primary mode of screening is the one thing in which I have been unable to find much humor.

While a small contingency of civil liberties advocates opposed the scanners from the moment the TSA announced its plans to roll them out en masse, I was privileged with a behind-the-scenes view.  From day one of training  I had the sense that the TSA’s implementation of the scanners was  an ill-conceived and clumsy venture. As time went by, my inkling was to be borne out by evidence: we TSA screeners on the floor-level soon learned that the scanners essentially did not work. It did not take long for members of the public to deduce that fact and reveal it to a wider audience.

It was around this time, in 2011, that I began planning to separate from federal employment.  I had to find another career path, but in the meantime could not remain silent on the many absurdities that I was witnessing from an insider’s vantage point; could not continue to watch quietly from the sidelines as citizens waged legal battles against the TSA, while my TSA co-workers and superiors hid from the public what we knew to be the truth: that the scanners were only superficially effective, at best, and completely ineffective, at worst.

It was harrowing for a while, donning a TSA uniform by day, and expressing my uncensored opinions on the TSA to a global audience by night. At times I was going into work and quietly enduring TSA supervisors and managers obsessed with trifling matters  such as gum-chewing, and then coming home to discover encouraging e-mail from former Undersecretaries of the Department of Homeland Security and other D.C. higher-ups in my inbox.

There were other surreal moments, like the realization that two of my co-workers were following my blog’s Twitter account, unaware that they were actually working side-by-side with the anonymous “former employee.”  There was the time I noticed two co-workers reading this blog on their smartphones in our break room, laughing and speculating about which airport the blogger had been based out of. There was the joy of giving voice to an underrepresented group of people—former TSA screeners who wrote me expressing various concerns, some of whom, after being published on this blog, went on to receive media coverage in their own right. And, most significantly, there was the time— December 31, 2012, 9:22 A.M.— when I logged into the TSA’s intranet system (the TSA’s “Idea Factory”) to find that a TSO had posted a comment regarding this blog, proposing that the TSA’s PR department do more to deny the truth of everything that I was writing; I watched the comment section with a certain amount of dread, worried that I would find a chorus of TSA employees echoing his sentiment, but was relieved when he received no comment from his peers (save for criticism of his grammar).

A few passengers emailed me asking me what I would do if the government tracked me down; if I were proverbially “thrown in Guantanamo” for speaking out about the TSA and DHS. On January 23rd, I received a question from a passenger named Shane, regarding Sensitive Security Information:

My question to you is: If you’re not an employee of TSA anymore, does that make you no longer a “covered person”? If not, what’s your rationale behind continuing to uphold a directive that TSA has been been seen to use as a shield to avoid accountability despite it offering no actual security benefit? Do you fear retaliation by TSA? I would understand if you did, as the agency is nothing but authoritarian. Do they claim that ex-employees are still bound by SSI guidelines even though SSI isn’t a real security classification?

I apologize that it’s taken me so long to respond to your letter, Shane, but yes, the possibility— perhaps inevitability— of retaliation by the TSA has always hung in the back of my mind. After all, I began receiving hate mail from TSA employees early on, some of which I’ve published, some of which I have not. But I felt that the benefit to the public of voicing my opinion outweighed the risk of civil penalties or “other corrective actions.”

Now that I am truly a former employee, I can say that working for the TSA rarely ever felt like anything more than being on-tour with a clown troupe doing a 21st-century parody of the Keystone Cops. Only instead of making people laugh, for the most part, all we did was impinge upon their privacy and compromise their rights, under dubious pretenses. To be sure, there were some golden moments of laughter: there was the TSA supervisor who told us, in the wake of the 2006 liquids plot, that sandwiches were not to be allowed on-board planes until he got official word on whether or not the sandwiches’ mustard and mayonnaise constituted a banned liquid; there was the manager who declared that passengers were to be forced to surrender tinfoil due to the boxes’ potentially dangerous serrated edges; there was the sheer absurdity of coming to find out that we were operating full body scanners that couldn’t detect guns.

OK: there were actually a lot of humorous moments at the TSA, and as you have seen, I have tried to tease humor out of the organization wherever possible. But I would rather write jokes than work for one, and so recently, after much searching, I received a job opportunity more in-line with my goals, and officially resigned my post as a TSA officer.

The purpose of this post is to encourage as many people as possible to take their turn in expressing their opinions on the full-body scanners, now that the TSA has been forced into a measure of accountability. There are still 3 weeks remaining for citizens to officially speak out.  The TSA is attempting to make the case that its initial roll-out and continued use of the full body scanners represented a public good; that making full-body scanners a new fact of life for the public was necessary in the interest of ensuring our safety. They tout their new “privacy-friendly” millimeter wave scanners as the solution to their badly bungled initial decision to expose the public to radiation-emitting Rapiscan machines, but the truth is, the millimeter wave scanners are ineffective, too. The truth is that an alarming number of TSA employees with whom I was personally acquainted were privately of the opinion that the full body scanners, in all their iterations, should be abandoned as a primary screening method.

The truth is that I knew several TSA employees who, through independent internal tests of the millimeter wave scanners, discovered a weakness in the technology’s detection capability: the MMW scanners are consistently unreliable when it comes to detecting threats in a certain area of the body,  the exact location of which I have decided not to divulge. Suffice it to say that it is a laughable weakness. Various TSA employees have attempted to bring the aforementioned vulnerability to the attention of TSA higher-ups, and to recommend that the scanners be done away with in favor of a slightly enhanced version of pre-2010 security protocols—the level of security deemed satisfactory by several nations. But the concerns and opinions of those vocal employees have fallen on deaf ears at TSA headquarters; or at least upon the ears of those whose interests do not intersect with acknowledgment of the inefficacy of the full body scanners.

It is not just one weakness, either: the millimeter wave scanners are fraught  with defects— there is their high false alarm rates, which alone caused some governments to decline to implement the scanners. There is their costliness, which, when factoring in the price of manning the machines, quickly runs into the hundreds of millions when spread out over several years. There is the comical degree to which the scanners are rendered inane due to the TSA’s need to make them PWD and kid-friendly: there are several loopholes one can exploit to make oneself ineligible for the scanners (e.g., claiming the inability to raise one’s arm, going through security holding a small pet, or simply traveling with someone who appears to be aged 12 or under.)  There is the false sense of security that the scanners give TSA screeners and passengers alike, thereby compounding the security weaknesses of the scanners-as-primary-screening-method configuration.  And last but not least, there is the possibility that the full-body scanners will have the effect of conditioning the public to be willing to submit to unnecessary, invasive security measures as a result of highly infrequent and statistically negligible terrorist threats.

In short, the full body scanners are inherently plagued by so many weaknesses that it would be in the public’s best interest for them to be removed from airports as a primary screening method. This is my opinion, and the opinion of many TSA employees whom I knew. EPIC’s lawsuit is correct in its statement:

“When the TSA deployed the body scanners, it initiated one of the most sweeping, most invasive and most unaccountable suspicion-less searches of American travelers in history.”

With this post I am merely voicing the opinion of many TSA employees who are too timid or complacent in their jobs to speak out about the gross mismanagement and abuse of public trust endemic to the TSA.

Whatever may happen to me as a result of this blog in the coming years, I will not regret its publication. I believe there to have been an intrinsic Good in having spoken out; a small triumph in the very presence of these words on your screen, for I believe the function of free speech,  in the words of Thomas Sowell, to be a social one:

“Intended to benefit vast numbers of people who do not themselves exercise their rights.”

Combo Pack: Letter from a Former Screener, 2 New Entries to The Insider’s TSA Dictionary (Wherein We Learn of Passengers Spooging Their Liquids, Gels, Creams and Aerosols).

B. writes:

I worked for TSA in San Jose for 3 years and have since moved on to a career I enjoy in another branch of DHS, but it can’t be said enough that you are dead on balls accurate on everything, down the line, from the Rapiscan AIT to the utter absurdity of the TSA uniform system.  I’m particularly impressed with the fact that you managed to get the message across about those disgraceful wastes of taxpayer money without violating any of the various Federal Regulations regarding information detrimental to TSA.  Well done.

In response to one issue I’ve seen on your blog: I worked with a GED screener in San Jose who defied all expectations of a person with a GED.  He was a textbook match for your “good” TSA Screener.  He was also one of the most articulate, intelligent, and thoughtful people I’ve met.  One of the ways I would entertain myself at that banal job was to get another “good” screener to start advocating regressive tax systems in the presence of the previously mentioned GED screener.  The ensuing debates were more entertaining, informed, and high minded than any held between Governor Romney and President Obama.  I’m sorry to say that last I spoke with him he was on to a better paying, theoretically more intelligently executed job as a TSA K9 handler.  That GED was a real weight on his neck when he tried to advance in his career…

—

That’s the first part of B’s letter, and thanks, B.

I’m glad that the GED-screener you knew was better than the one I knew (the girl who thought that Kazakhstan was the capital of Afghanistan).

I especially love the second part of your letter; your proposed additions to the Insider’s TSA Dictionary. Now, prepare yourselves, readers, because B. has blessed us with two mighty fine (possibly disturbing, depending how you look at it) new entries to The Insider’s TSA Dictionary.

—

…I’ll finish with two suggests for the dictionary:

“Splitting the upright”: Developed after the introduction of enhanced patdowns, refers to a screener’s hand coming off the leg during the search of the upper inner thigh and striking between the genitals, usually testicles, of the unfortunate victim, rather than remaining in contact with the leg until meeting resistance.

This was a joke my circle at the airport told as a possible retaliation toward those few traveler who came in determined to get in a fight with us.  I never did it.  I never saw it done.  I can’t say it never happened.

“Spooging”: AKA a Fhaw (refers to the best onomatopoetical description) a traveler becomes frustrated with absurdity of TSA’s liquid restrictions and attempts to use logic on a screener who is confiscating her mostly empty, 4.5 oz, $25 hand lotion.  The traveler takes the bottle from the screener and opens it to demonstrate the contents.  The traveler then “accidently” throws some of the lotion onto the screener, to the sound of uproarious laughter from the nearby TSA staff.

—

“Spooging” is definitely something that I saw at my airport; passengers becoming enraged due to their liquids being confiscated and giving a screener a retaliatory facial cream shot, and I heard rumors at my airport of retaliatory rough pat-downs delivered by TSA screeners ala “Splitting the Upright.” It’s good to at least get some corroboration on the rumors. 

I’ll be adding those two, along with a few others I’ve received, when I do the semi-annual (it’s looking like it will be twice a year or so) update of the Insider’s TSA Dictionary, a couple months from now.

—

Send all letters and proposed entries to the Insider’s TSA Dictionary to takingsenseaway@gmail.com

Letter From a Passenger: “Is it embarassing having to tell people you work for TSA?”

This question comes from Chris:

Was it embarrassing having to tell people you work for the TSA? The reason I ask is because I’m thinking of applying to TSA. Thanks!

-Chris

—-

Dear Chris,

That’s a hard question to answer, only because there does not exist a font large enough to convey a large enough “yes.” Personally, I am happy that I am no longer a TSA employee, having recently resigned in order to do something that I actually enjoy (as opposed to coming into work and finding out that, for instance, I have to direct toddlers into a nude radiation scanner or else face disciplinary measures).

But yes, having worked at TSA for several years, and having known many TSA employees, I can safely tell you that it is indeed generally embarrassing, especially for people who have the potential to be more in life than a suitcase surgeon (thanks to Avery from San Diego who emailed me the term “suitcase surgeon”).

Imagine for a moment that you’re at a party, and everyone’s asking what everyone else in the room does for a living. Here a doctor, an attorney, a web designer; there an architect, a college professor, a small business owner, and then the question comes to you. There’s no way out of it, no denying it: you pat people’s crotches down every day for a living. This is what your life has come to.

I will tell you, and anyone who works for TSA will tell you (if you ask), that no TSA employee will ever, under any circumstance, claim “the TSA” as an employer to a stranger. Every last one of them claims the Department of Homeland Security as his or her employer, because “the Department of Homeland Security” sounds much more official and potentially respectable than its little red-headed bastard step-child-black-sheep-of-the-national-security-apparatus family, TSA.

Hope that helps,

-N.J.R

Send all questions to takingsenseaway@gmail.com