11-21-2010, 09:49 PM
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#26
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TSA has met the enemy — and they are us
Frustration with the federal agency is boiling over after nine years
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"After 9/11 people were scared and when people are scared they'll do anything for someone who will make them less scared," said Bruce Schneier, a Minneapolis security technology expert who has long been critical of the TSA. "But ... this is particularly invasive. It's strip-searching. It's body groping. As abhorrent goes, this pegs it."
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A traveler in San Diego, John Tyner, has become an Internet hero after resisting both the scan and the pat-down, telling a TSA screener: "If you touch my junk, I'm gonna have you arrested." That has helped ignite a campaign urging people to refuse such searches on Nov. 24, which immediately precedes Thanksgiving and is one of the year's busiest travel days.
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After Congress approved creation of the agency in late 2001, the TSA grew quickly from just 13 employees in January 2002 to 65,000 a year later.
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But the agency was working under what Freeman calls "an unachievable mandate." Congress demanded an agency that eliminated risk. But the risks are always changing, as terrorists devise new methods and government parries. That has led to an agency that is always in crisis mode, constantly adding new policies designed to respond to the last terror plot.
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The pushback against the body scanners and pat-downs shows the agency at its worst, Elliott said, issuing a policy that wasn't properly vetted or explained, but determined to defend it.
Growing dissatisfaction with TSA has even led some airports to consider replacing the agency with private screeners. Such a change is allowed by law, but contractor must follow all the security procedures mandated by the TSA, including body scans and pat-downs.
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Elliott said that better communication would probably win the TSA more cooperation. But the pushback suggests that a growing number of consumers, particularly frequent travelers, are questioning the premise at the heart of the agency's existence.
"I think at some point Americans said to themselves, maybe in their collective subconscious...there's a line here where it's not just worth it anymore," he said. "There's a growing sense that that line has been crossed."
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To read the whole story... http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40298973...liner_security
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