Someone else hates the TSA

[kathyp]

i don't mind them holding people.  i don't mind being held.  they do need to have a faster way to clear people and they do need to be a lot more polite.  after all, we are the ones always screaming "innocent until proven guilty".  

i have watched the way the Brits do this.  they do open profiling, which i think is just fine.  they do individual interviews with people that they think fit the profile.  they take people away and hold them.  they do it all very politely.  now i don't know what happens when they go to the little room.......

i think we can do what we do, but we don't need to be rude about it.  they ought to send the TSA workers through some of these touchy feely classes that i take.  they'll have to hire a cleaning service for the floor mop up, but maybe they could get these idiots to lighten up a bit.

oh ya...for those of you who travel....i have noticed that the TSA workers have different attitudes depending on where you are.  maybe it has more to do with the supervisors than the organization?  portlands TSA used to be real pr****, but last few times i flew, they were actually pretty funny.  

coffee
i'm rambling

[Understudy]

If I am detained and miss my flight. I am darn well going to expect them to do recovery in a situation they created. You want to detain me fine. You screw up my schedule and then just turn around and say oops, sorry we screwed up, have a nice day. I will raise hell.

Sincerely,
Brendhan

[reinbeau]

Kathy, are you suggesting......gulp......profiling?  Oh, no, that would be a violation of their civil rights!    Surely we should search children, little old ladies, in wheelchairs, even, rather than the shifty eyed swarthy fellow fiddling with things in his briefcase....surely you jest.....

[kathyp]

i jest not!   

when red headed, over the hill women start blowing things up, i'll be please to be groped by an agent of the government.  until then, there is no thrill to it. 

really, i don't have a problem with random searches.   they keep people guessing.  there is no harm in taking an additional look at people who actually do fit the profile of the current terrorist groups.  if people have a problem with profiling, perhaps TSA should grope everyone! 

[KONASDAD]

Profiling is dangerous. How difficult would it be to hire someone who doesn't fit the profile. Would T. McVeigh have been stopped by profiling? Profiling sounds good but is easy to use againts the profiler.

[kathyp]

sorry konasdad.  other countries use it with good results.  just because you profile, it does not mean that you ignore other possibilities.  it just means you take a closer look at those most likely to be bad guys.

profiles need to be fluid.  as the profile changes, so must the profiling.  in Europe they do not look only for people coming from the outside.  they are looking at those who are radicalized inside.  here, we are more apt to get people from outside and we should be looking at those coming easily here from Europe.

there will always be exceptions.  mcveigh may be one.  there were many factors that went into his successful attack.  he might very well have been exposed using other methods that were not available then, or were not employed.  you don't even have to be heavily into conspiracy theories to know that the OK bombing has some twitchy spots in it.  it might be an exception that just needs to be thrown out of the calculation unless we get the full story.

[Brian D. Bray]

As a retired cop who used profiling long before the term came into common use and disenfranchized I have found it to be efficient at directing police to problem areas/people.  Sure there is an occassional mixup but profiling is a legitimate tool.  When you make profiling illegal you make law enforcement that much harder and ineffective.

The trouble is that with the TSA you have had a concentrated effort to take disadvantaged people and give them hiring preference.  They quickly become what cops call badge happy aka excessive use of authority.  When you amend hiring rules to hire unqualified people for what is actually a very complex, sensitive, and powerful security position you end up with abuses. 

Me, I'd rather ride on an airplane where everybody aboard is carrying a gun than on one where nobody can carry one.  Just think of what a difference that would have made on a certain plane over Pennsylvania on 9-11.

I once arrested a man on a warrent from another city.  His complete name, date of birth, and address matched up.
I later found out that it was the wrong man.  The one that had the warrent issued lived at South Street not North Street but that fact was omitted from the warrent.

The system will make mistake but creating rules that insures them is stupid--TSA.