Slashdot Mirror
Confessions Of an Ex-TSA Agent: Secrets Of the I.O. Room
Jason Edward Harrington has seen some of the same frustrations, misgivings, and objections that have crossed the mind of probably every commercial airline traveler who's flown over the last decade in the U.S. One difference: Harrington got to see them from the perspective of a TSA agent. His description of the realities of the job (including learning the rote responses that agents are instructed to reassure the public with) is wince-worthy and compelling. A sample makes it clear why the TSA has such famously low morale, even among Federal agencies: "I hated it from the beginning. It was a job that had me patting down the crotches of children, the elderly and even infants as part of the post-9/11 airport security show. I confiscated jars of homemade apple butter on the pretense that they could pose threats to national security. I was even required to confiscate nail clippers from airline pilots—the implied logic being that pilots could use the nail clippers to hijack the very planes they were flying." It only gets worse from there.
well it comforting to know that the same government that managed this program is now moving on to something as *truly* important as our and our childrens healthcare.
right?
never bring a twinkie to a food fight.
The TSA exists because Americans tolerate it.
It's that simple.
We hold the purse strings AND the votes. Either one alone is enough to eliminate the TSA. But we have said, en-mass, that the TSA is acceptable in our society. So it will continue.
Most of the people where I work feel the TSA is doing a good job. In fact their response reminds of the Simpson's clip where Lisa sells Homer a rock that keeps bears away. You cannot reason with people this ignorant. They actually believe that the TSA is preventing terrorism and that the only people complaining are brown people. The only way for people to question the TSA is if someone like Edward Snowden manages to get media publicity and expose a bunch of documents or expose some insider contract on those X-ray porno machines sold by Michael Chertoff.
I can't believe this. We've been subjected to the Slashdot beta site against our will now for probably a month, if not longer. The hatred for it is unanimous.
EVERYBODY WHO HAS HAD TO USE THE BETA HATES IT!
Why can't those running Slashdot see this?
I see comments expressing EXTREME HATRED for the Slashdot beta in the discussion of nearly every story I read here.
NOBODY LIKES THE BETA SITE BECAUSE IT IS TOTAL SHIT! THIS HAS BEEN EXPRESSED TIME AND TIME AND TIME AGAIN!
Please, this failed beta project needs to be canned. Put an end to this total stupidity now. The beta site is a failure in ever respect, and it cannot be saved.
This surreal drawn-out failure is absurd. How long do the users here have to point out how completely awful this beta site inherently is? How long until somebody at Slashdot clues in about how everybody absolutely hates the beta site?
I don't know what's the worst part of your anecdote. How oblivious you seem to be at your privileged status and why that is a Bad Thing for the rights of all to be considered equal under the law, or how easy it would seem to be to join those ranks. One faked up official looking ID and maybe I could be treated like a free citizen like you.
Oh and using repeated exposure to relax the vigil of the guards is an old ninja trick, get a job as feeble sweeper of courtyards or emptier of chamber-pots until the guards know you, then strike your target. The guys who go easy on you because they know you are failing in their jobs. (no surprise there. Their jobs were failures from the beginning)
Then there is the servile response of the TSA agent and what it says about his mindset. He's trained and required to do things he KNOWS are useless, annoying and almost certainly infringing on the civil and constitutional rights of the citizens he searches. He's trained to say that everyone is subject to this, no exceptions, but he appears to believe that irritating a member of the bureaucracy may result in retribution in some form. A civil servant, in one of the crappiest jobs there is to be had in government service, was afraid of you and what you might choose to do if delayed. Do you really think that cringing, on the part of any civil servant, but security people especially is a good thing?
The moral of your story seems to be that the security theatre we all complain about is clearly something to be inflicted on the peasant masses, not members of the elite like yourself. You get a free pass on the bullshit the rest of us are being forced to endure and you attribute that to a few agents having their heads on straight. You are a functionary of what has become the ruling structure, you are getting special treatment as a result and you think that means the system works. You're an apparatchik and don't even know it....
The TSA must be a "different" kind of organization than that which I work for, the United States Air Force. I have written many "letters to the editor" under my real name on many topics that expose my generally Socialist bent and strong anti-authoritarian opinions. Yet, I have never been "admonished", and I recently had my security clearance extended for another 10 years after the standard Security Clearance Anal Probe.
I think the TSA is a "different" kind of US government agency, one that need to go.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
He was responsible for renewing the Patriot Act in 2011. He was responsible for the scanners going into airports. He is responsible for every stupid policy that the TSA has. He is the leader of this country whether he wants to be or not, and he should act like it, grow a pair, and use some of his new affinity for executive action to actually do something that improves our way of life rather than impede it. Bush who?
Do we really want to keep repeating the same mistakes for thousands of years? Because basically, if things stay as they are, that's exactly what will happen.
I'm just tired of the world being mediocre because of the wishes of a few people at the top, be it my own country Australia with our tremendously stupid Prime Minister, Mr. Abbott, or the Tea Party douchebags who wouldn't just shut the fuck up and deal with the fact that they can't have everything their way. (they're both practically the same thing, right wing extremists who are just re-hashing the same old shitty conservative policy from 30 years ago).
I mean, Tony Abbott is practically trying to make Trickle Down Economics work here... although you will NEVER hear anybody characterize it as that, personally I think my fellow Australians are too stupid to know what that even means. It would be hilarious if he wasn't so hell bent on achieving it.
It comes down to this: You can't shit on other human beings and expect to get away with it all the time, sometimes people will get fed up, sometimes people get tired of the arrangements they have. Look what happened in your country 13 years ago, a small faction of Radical Islamists basically got fed up with America, what they did was horrible, I can only imagine the pain and anguish of those people who lost somebody because of that event, but your government did a deal with them many years previous, your country helped them get into power in their region all just to make things difficult for the Soviets, and what was the point? They fucking collapsed under their own weight during the early 90's!
Ultimately, America is responsible for what happens to America, don't fuck with people if you can't handle the retaliation.
I mean you guys are so mixed up, you want to all be good righteous people who treat eachother right according to your constitution, yet as soon as someone blows up some buildings you all lose your fucking minds and practically tear the same piece of paper to pieces AND THEN ON TOP OF THAT go to some shithole country that the vast majority of Americans had not even heard of and can't even find on a map and then rain down fire and death upon anybody who even resembles a Taliban supporter, to the point where you have drones killing civilians over there for looking suspicious.
It's very simple, all humans should be treated the same, with respect and courtesy, but if you fuck other people over, don't expect to get away with it forever. The TSA is something I would definitely class as fucking people over, there's just no justification for touching other people's genitals, I don't care what some paranoid pol or military official says, they all have proven track records of lying to the public at this point, anybody who is still supporting all this security bullshit in it's current form is suspect, mainly because it's been proven time and time again that even with all of this TSA crap, there's still GAPING holes in the security. If the average American can see them, you can bet your ass that the Taliban can.