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TSA's Precheck Registration Program Causing Longer Security Lines (usatoday.com)
McGruber writes: The Associated Press is reporting that TSA's PreCheck program is causing maddening long security lines at U.S. airports. TSA's PreCheck security lanes can screen 300 passengers an hour, twice that of its standard security lanes. Based on that and other increased efficiencies, the TSA's front-line screeners were cut from 47,147 three years ago to 42,525 currently. At the same time, the number of annual fliers passing through checkpoints has grown from 643 million to more than 700 million. The TSA told Congress its goal was to have 25 million fliers enrolled in the PreCheck registration program, but as of March 1, only 9.3 million people had registered for PreCheck. TSA first tried to make up for that shortfall by randomly placing passengers into the express Precheck lanes, but scaled back that effort for fear dangerous passengers were being let through. That's when the regular security lines started growing -- up to 90 minutes in some cases. The TSA is now shifting some resources to tackle lines at the nation's biggest airports, but it claims there is no easy solution to the problem with a record number of fliers expected this summer. To enroll in TSA's Precheck registration program, travelers must pay $85 to $100 every five years, then submit to a background check, in-person interview at an airport, and to being fingerprinted. Unsurprisingly, getting once-a-year fliers to spend the time or the money to register has been a challenge. While 250,000 to 300,000 people are registering for Precheck every month, it will take more than four years at that pace to reach the TSA's target enrollment.
Just a small correction: the interviews don't have to happen at the airport. I was able to go through the interview process about a half our away from the airport, about 5 minutes away from my house. The interview process was painless. The entire thing is handled online, and then in person you just say "yes"/"confirm" to all the information on the form, that's it. The fingerprints are also taken electronically, so nothing messy there. They do the whole hand at once. I was in and out of the place in maybe 10 minutes? I can understand why infrequent travelers wouldn't want to pay the fee, but if you travel regularly it is more than worth it! (especially in airports with super wonky security, like San Diego where you have to leave and re-enter security to switch between gates sometimes)
Airport security does suck everywhere. Australia's is pretty bad. Germany's is pretty terrible too, but the worst, by far, out of any country I have every flow through, is Americas. I have never had more confrontations with security than in the US. Most other countries don't require ID for flying domestically (and fun fact: America doesn't either. Next time, refuse. It takes a little longer, but it's worth it. The US government has no right to restrict transit if you don't have papers. In most EU countries you are required to have ID on you at all time. Not in the US).
Airport security is a joke. It's not security, it's security theatre. They've never stopped a single damn person intending harm ever in the history of their existence. Fuck them, fuck airports and fuck the TSA.
Not to mention, the TSA searches are totally and completely illegal and unconstitutional. Back when airport security was private, it was the airlines getting together to set the standards and searches were part of their terms of service. When the federal government starts doing it, it now becomes a 4th amendment violation. Texas tried to return airports to private security and was bullied by the federal government and gave up the fight. The new mm-wave body scanners have a massive false positive rate and are effectively useless.
This is a misleading report. Attributing long lines to TSA pre-check is false; attributing long lines to mismanagement would be more accurate. Problem with TSA precheck enrollment? Drop the price. Recently; in 75% of the airports I've traveled - the TSA Precheck line was closed. This article is completely bogus; and everyone should do their own due diligence than blindly believing these reports and redistributing these articles. Please - due your own diligence; mainstream media has a long track record of misleading people.
If you travel overseas, go for Global Entry. It costs the same ($100), and it includes PreCheck as a perk. As an added bonus, you get to use kiosks for passport control (never a wait) and the crew line for customs.
I routinely take 8-10 minutes total from deplaning at LAX (Bradley Terminal) to the terminal exit. A bit longer if I have to wait for checked luggage. Worth every cent.
I tried every decent and legal way I could think of to resolve the issue w/the business before I rented the chicken suit
Active duty military are automatically enrolled in TSA pre-check without any additional effort or payment on the member's part. That is probably a good percentage of the claimed 9.3 million registered persons.
I fly a lot, and routinely notice that the body scanners take about 5x as long as the metal detectors (and probably cause cancer). I regularly watch the TSA agents clear their backed-up lines by opening the metal detector for 30 seconds, sending 10 people through, and then closing it again (making the value of the scanner clearly questionable).
They've dissuaded *countless* terrorists. Countless, as in, we can't count them because we made them up and you have no proof they don't exist
No point in bombing the airplanes anymore, just bomb the TSA checkpoint.
No, their policy of making people take off their shoes is causing long lines.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it dissolve.
Although I travel often I am against the pre-check because it seems like a scam to have to pay $85 to be treated like a citizen again.
I've traveled internationally multiple and the customs lines were never more than a few minutes coming back. Did you have a different experience?
My main issue with Customs is when they ask you what you did while out of the country. None of their business, that's what, but I usually answer (truthfully, of course, as lying would be illegal) to avoid hassle. At some point when no one's picking me up I might just assert my 5th Amendment right not to answer and let them hold me until they have to let me go (which is what
vi ~/.emacs # I'm probably going to Hell for this.
This is very wrong on so many levels. I met a former TSA and she explained how working there is hell made by those at the helm. They are all former Military with military training and mentality, enforcing military discipline onto the TSA workers and onto us, the citizen. She also mentioned that TSA workers send a lot of feedback to their superior but are met with either disciplinary measure or contempt.
seems like a scam to have to pay $85 to be treated like a citizen again.
Citizens don't get fingerprinted, interviewed and have to have a background check to fly.
Attractive women are quite dangerous, it turns out.
Prosthetic devices and the people who wear them are also quite dangerous.
These systems that require payment for favorable treatment and faster pass-through security checkpoints are akin to soft-corruption since they cost money to attain such elevated status. Their value is questionable and the procedure and process to pass-through is a bureaucratic joke without elevating security in any way. My in-person interview was getting a glace by a TSA employee and being asked my name. (Speaking as a Global Entry and TSA PreCheck holder.)
He is not alone. From my height of over 100 flights a year, I am now averaging one flight every two years. And I still travel quite a bit. But I drive. It is amazing that a 5 hour drive is still faster then a one hour flight...
I'm going to suggest that healthcare was not a problem until recently because it wasn't very expensive. Not long ago, you didn't have to worry about hip replacements because they didn't exist. You didn't have to worry about expensive treatments for cancer, because you just died. Even surgery was rather primitive in the 50s. Healthcare wasn't very expensive, but as treatments have gotten better, care costs have increased.
Why it matters: if healthcare cost $100 a year for everyone, it wouldn't be a huge issue. Privately, you could pay for it, or publicly you could pay for it. If it were a government thing, then there would probably be some corruption, but not a big deal. But now as it's costing up around $12k a person, the cost becomes a major issue. Even in the last 15 years treatments have improved quite a bit, but also gotten more expensive.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
...Osama is laughing his ass off.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
I fly a lot. Not as much as the tech sales guys I work with, but enough to get Alaska's MVP75K top-level status in just the last half of last year. A few years back I had top-tier status on United and Alaska in the same year. So I have one of those nice little cards that lets me go thru the "premier/first class" lines at every airport. AND STILL the process sucks, and remains a constant source of despair for the state of business, security, and the country.
To wit:
1. Orwellian PRE bureaucracy: I cannot get a PRE approval, because my state ID (DL) doesn't list my middle initial, while my passport does. I would have to produce a certified copy of my birth certificate to correct the state ID, and my original birth certificate has a one-letter misspelling of one of my parents' names. It is a clusterfuck. And why the hell should I have to pay a private company for what amounts to a national ID card anyway?
2. The nakey microwave: The goddamn "millimeter wave" (high frequency microwave) xray machines are STILL NOT TESTED OR CERTIFIED as medically safe for xray exposure, only that they're safe from a heat damage perspective. It would be a federal crime to use one in a hospital, because there have been "no human tests or studies to prove scanner safety." And yet the TSA video playing at top volume above the line makes baseless claims that it's perfectly safe...
3. False positives: Even when I resign myself to go through the untested scanner, for me it gives a false positive about 75% of the time. Apparently I have oddly shaped legs. So I have to wait or step to the aide and get a patdown, which often takes as long as the opt-out groping (without the RF exposure).
4. The intentional delays: When I opt-out, the procedure is to let me stand there for at at least 5 minutes before calling a screener to come grope me. Not joking about this -- I had about 60 TSA pat-downs last year all across the US, and often the gate agent would just call "MALE ASSIST" off into the void to no one (literally calling out to an empty area). A few minutes later, they would say it again to the agent on the other side of the microwave box, and then someone would come up and walk me back. It was consistent enough to wonder if there's a policy to make sure that opt-out takes long enough to discourage others.
5. Nonexistent training for TSA: The opt-out manual screening procedure is passed on through oral tradition. I'm supposed to be read a statement about the procedure, asked if I want a screening in private, asked if I have medical devices (I do, so it matters), or if I have any sensitive or painful areas. Only 1 in 4 TSA agents remember to ask all of these, and I've frequently had to remind agents of what they're supposed to ask me. On 4 different occasions in the last quarter, I've had a newly hired TSA agaent being instructed on how to do the procedure by a slightly less inexperienced agent -- with no written instructions, no consistency to the procedure, and the instructor omitted one of the key points EVERY TIME. It's clown school.
6. Total failure to detect: They have no idea what to look for -- through some unintentional testing. I found an unsubtle pocketknife (a kershaw switchblade my teenager had bought) stuck between the frame and outer covering of one of the rolly bags I use -- after I'd used it half a dozen times as a carry-on, and TSA had missed it EVERY time. I can carry on a bag full of a dozen lithium-ion battery packs, and they don't even blink. A ziplock baggie full of random powder? No problem, as long as it's not a liquid or gel... But god forbid my girlfriend use a Lush product with too much glycerine in the lotion, and they're calling the explosives expert.
I could go on. A lot. But there's no point; there's already way way too much money invested into this security theater, enough that it has become its own ecosystem. Stopping now would mean publicly acknowledging the total lack of success or value. Not gonna happen... And
I think not...(*poof*)
More like the terrorists were dissuaded because they already won the airplane battle. Now they're moving on to different targets.
Depends on the model of plane.
For the price of 45,000 FTE's and 30-90 minute lines to board every airport in the country, you could move the damn axe and install a steel door with a manual release from the cockpit. Now all a terrorist can do is blow the plane up, and he can blow up a bus--so the rest is just stupid theater.
Unfortunately, people care more about stupid theater than they do about having a pleasant flight or making their travel efficient or encouraging tourism.
>"To enroll in TSA's Precheck registration program, travelers must pay $85 to $100 every five years, then submit to a background check, in-person interview at an airport, and to being fingerprinted. "
Yeah, because I am really going to submit to being FINGERPRINTED so I can be searched without probable cause EVERY single time they run anybody's prints for ANY reason from ANY agency. I think not. Totally unacceptable.
Fingerprints should not be used for biometrics. Period. Once you give this data to the government (or big business), it will NEVER be erased or restricted, regardless of claims or laws- it will go into huge databases and shared between all agencies and used however they want for as long as they want.
If they really need a biometric for this "feature" of security, there is only one safer and practical biometric I know of- that is deep vein palm scan. That registration data cannot be readily abused. It can't be latently collected like DNA, fingerprints, and face recognition can. You have to know you are registering/enrolling when it happens. You don't leave evidence of it all over the place. When you go to use it, you know you are using it every time. And on top of all that, it is accurate, fast, reliable, unchanging, live-sensing, and cheap. If you must participate in a biometric, this is the one you should insist on using.
Example: http://www.m2sys.com/palm-vein...
But we also need to realize that IT IS NOT EVERYONE'S BUSINESS WHAT WE ALL DO. The first step in securing freedom is privacy. When you are tracked, you are losing your freedom, whether you realize it or not. And the whole TSA security theater is a scam on everyone.
Let's get a similar image which includes the US, shall we?
http://fm.cnbc.com/application...
I can't speak for the other airports in your list having never flown through them but MSP is one giant cluster fuck of an airport. Why they went from 6 security check points down to 2 is beyond me. The TSA claims that they have the same number of security lanes open just fewer check points. I can only assume that this is to make us less secure as instead of having 6 spread out checkpoints with fewer people in each they have 2 with a giant pile of waiting targets, I mean people, in them. For a long while there they had TSA agents who would walk around outside the security line explaining that if you wanted to get through the line faster you should put your liquids less than 3 oz in a ziplock bag of if larger pitch them in the trash. Being the smart ass I am I responded that if they really wanted to get us through the line faster they would instead go and open that other lane that was closed.
Time to offend someone
I'm going to suggest that healthcare was not a problem until recently because it wasn't very expensive.
Partially true, sure. Medical practice was also quite different. As was the amount of Government requirements for all of the above.
You didn't have to worry about expensive treatments for cancer, because you just died.
You are making two very frightening implications. First, the only reason Medical treatment has improved is because "Government", which is verifiably false. You are further implying that Government made the system economically viable for all people to participate and all people to receive the same care. Which is also verifiably false./p
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
You hit it on the head - the real reason for TSA is to increase airline profits.
The existence of the TSA has nothing to do with airline profit. TSA is a part of the federal government. As a general proposition they are indifferent to the amount of profit the airlines make. Speaking as an accountant I can tell you that you would have a very hard time showing that TSA has any sort of tangible positive effect on the bottom line of any airline company.
The reason for the TSA is so that politicians don't have the answer the question of why the federal government allowed airline security to be (literally) managed by a bunch of rent-a-cops. TSA was created after 9/11 because there was the perception (true or not) that the companies in charge of airline security previously were doing an inadequate job - which was almost certainly true. The problem is that TSA hasn't done any better as far as anyone can tell and is certainly more obnoxious than ever before. But the politicians get to claim that they did something about the problem, conveniently ignoring the fact that their "solution" didn't solve anything.
Eliminate payroll direct deposits for all TSA and DOT employees, including the Sec. of Transportation. Hand the checks to the security screeners at one of the Reagan Airport security lines. If an employee want to be paid he or she just has to get in line every two weeks, wait the usual 45 minutes and show an ID to get the paycheck.
Then extend the system to Congressmen, Senators and Supreme Court Justices, all of whom get to use a special parking lot for free at Reagan and to use a "courtesy" checkin system- quite private with no lines, no xrays, no shoe removal and best of all, no waiting. If this sounds vaguely like the old Soviet system... can't help that.