
Confessions of an ex-TSA agent - dsr12
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/01/tsa-screener-confession-102912_full.html
======
nostromo
On The Media has been running an initiative to get lawmakers to answer basic
questions about TSA and DHS policy. The agency has been stonewalling reporters
so they've asked that citizens call lawmakers directly and ask a series of
questions.

[http://project.wnyc.org/otm-detain/](http://project.wnyc.org/otm-detain/)

~~~
tptacek
Cool! Has anyone here done this?

~~~
larrys
I'm normally not a fan of that type of thing. To me it's like a ddos attack on
the phone system.

Edit: ddos attack on the phone system of the legislators. Nothing wrong with
calling. But enabling people to call en masse without even the friction of
having to look up a phone number (which is easy for sure) for the purpose of
helping the media do their job just doesn't work for me.

Has nothing to do with whether the questions need to be answered or not. But
potentially overloading a representatives phone system is not the way I think
it should be done. (5 people calling a day is not overloading so of course I'm
assuming that this would result in more activity).

Now of course considering how much people don't like spam and junk mail (which
are really way less intrusive en masse than the phone ringing) I'm curious why
people are disagreeing with my basic point.

~~~
ryguytilidie
Shouldn't you be a little more worried about the fact that politicians refuse
to talk to their constituents more than you should worry about their phone
lines being tied up while their constituents call them?

~~~
larrys
Explain the connection between this:

"a little more worried about the fact that politicians refuse to talk to their
constituents"

and this:

"The agency has been stonewalling reporters"

While reporters are also constituents stonewalling reporters is different that
stonewalling constituents.

~~~
1457389
For the vast majority of people and issues, the media is the primary source
the populace can rely upon to gain information about an issue. Obstructing,
impeding, suppressing or in any other way hindering the access of the press is
tantamount to doing the same to the population at large. This is why the
Fourth Estate is critical to any democracy.

------
avalaunch
One of my favorite stories came from one of the linked articles that he wrote
while still on the job.

[http://takingsenseaway.wordpress.com/2012/11/12/confession-x...](http://takingsenseaway.wordpress.com/2012/11/12/confession-
x-the-things-they-ran-through-the-xray/)

 _I recall one time I did a bag check on a man from Detroit, once the auto-
making capital of the world. Having been informed by the x-ray operator that
there was a bottle of water in the bag, I pulled it out and quickly sensed
that something was slightly off. Then, I realized what it was: there was an
enormous dildo rubber-banded to it. I then had an epiphany, spreading over me
like a sunrise, beautiful and exhilarating: he wanted me to have to deal with
the dildo. He did it on purpose. In rubber-banding that dildo to the water
bottle he knew we would target, he seemed to say:

“Yes, I have a dildo, federal officer. Even after the horrors of 9/11, I am
still alive; full of vitality, love, sex and, later tonight, that large dildo
rubber-banded to the water you are about to confiscate from me. That bottle of
water, bought with hard-earned American dollars to relinquish my bodily
fluids, so as to make me strong and keep the wheels of commerce of this great
nation turning. In taking my water, I want you, federal officer, to know that
the terrorists have won, and that you are complicit. I want you to see my
dildo. To hold it in your hand; to know that I, as well as my fellow
passengers and countrymen, are strong and resilient.

That we, the people of this great nation, can, and will, snap back, like that
rubber band.”_

~~~
alistairSH
On the way to my bachelor party, my friends snuck a foil-wrapped dildo into my
luggage in the hopes of eliciting a TSA response. Thankfully, it didn't work.

~~~
pavel_lishin
How did it fail? Did the TSA not find it, or did it just not elicit a
response?

~~~
alistairSH
Either they didn't see it, or they did, but didn't care.

Either way, we all got a good laugh about it when I unpacked at our
destination.

------
EpicEng
Why we don't take a page out of the Israeli's book is beyond me. They have
been dealing with this for much longer, have made the mistakes we are
currently making, and have learned from them.

Their airports don't have long lines and pat downs by ill-trained employees
(lines of course exist, but they are shorter and not what we in the US are
used to). Instead they hire fewer, educated and skilled persons, many of whom
are, behaviorists to determine potential threats. It works; the last
successful airport attack in Israel was in 1986, and they have prevented many
since.

I remember reading about this in an interview with an ex Israeli defense
minister years ago, but I couldn't find that article. This one sums it up
though:
[http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/01/11/yeffet.air.security.is...](http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/01/11/yeffet.air.security.israel/)

~~~
chmullig
While I think the TSA is largely a sack of shit, Israel's solution is hardly a
panacea.

Israel has basically 1 major airport, and 2 minor airports. They further are
based heavily on profiling. I don't expect the Israeli model would fit well to
the US, which has 19 airports with more traffic than Ben Gurion, and a much
more dynamic set of threats.

~~~
Consultant32452
Israeli security is based on profiling, but not racial or religious profiling.
They profile primarily on the nations you have passport stamps for. If you've
been in a country that is known to harbor and train terrorists, you're gonna
get the microscope. I feel like this is healthy profiling.

~~~
malandrew
What about Oklahoma City? Does this put the US on that list?

~~~
wonderyak
What amount of security screening is going to stop a truck full of explosives
from going off?

~~~
malandrew
None. Screening is not the only tool out there. What happened to good old
fashioned detective work?

In both law enforcement and journalism, we are no longer willing to fund
proper investigative work.

------
rosser
_“I’m not trying to tread upon your First Amendment rights,” she said. “All
I’m saying is: Couldn’t you have run those First Amendment rights past the
legal department first?”_

Welcome to modern America.

~~~
anigbrowl
As usual, the issue is quite a bit more complex than presented here. In modern
America, government employees' free-speech rights are _broader_ than they used
to be, not narrower. The underlying principle here is that when you identify
yourself as a government employee, you are in some sense speaking on behalf of
the government, and as your employer the government has an interest in
regulating the speech of its officers, not least to ensure an accurate
reflection of its legal position. The author would [edit: probably - I haven't
checked] have been perfectly at liberty to express the same viewpoint without
self-identifying as a TSA official. A century ago this would have been an
open-and-shut case...in favor of the government.

[http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/publice...](http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/publicemployees.htm)

~~~
jarrett
I tend to think Pickering v Board of Education makes the speech protected
_even if the speaker identifies himself /herself as a government employee._ At
least, I would argue that such self-identification is so crucial to the
speaker's message and so valuable to the public as to be protected.

I suspect that Garcetti v. Ceballos doesn't invalidate this position. In
Garcetti, the issue was statements _made pursuant to professional duties._ I
don't believe a letter to the editor criticizing your employer could be
considered an action taken pursuant to your duties.

I'm just speculating, though. I can't be sure a given court would agree with
me. So any government employees reading this shouldn't take my word for it.

~~~
anigbrowl
It's easy to think of edge cases where it's a problem though, and then you get
into tricky political questions about how to regulate the content of speech.
For example, imagine a disgruntled TSA employee pens an article excoriating
Muslims and suggesting that they be forbidden to travel (Constitutional
impediments to such a policy notwithstanding). This would be very problematic
for reasons that I hope are obvious; but all speech were constitutionally
protected how would you _legally_ distinguish between that critical of the TSA
and that critical of some other class of people without privileging one set of
political opinions over another?

I'm no expert on the Constitutional law in this area - it just seems like a
very obvious can of worms, of the sort that the courts prefer to punt on.

 _I don 't believe a letter to the editor criticizing your employer could be
considered an action taken pursuant to your duties._

I think you could easily say you took an oath to the United States as opposed
to your immediate supervisor, although in cases where people have made such
arguments courts often seem to take the position that one should exhaust one's
administrative remedies first - ie make complaints through channels, escalate
to appropriate Congressional committees if necessary, etc. etc. Given the
purpose of the TSA, national security issues could also come into play but I
have no idea how those shake out.

~~~
rosser
_For example, imagine a disgruntled TSA employee pens an article excoriating
Muslims and suggesting that they be forbidden to travel._

They _should_ be allowed to do that. And any publication willing to try to
sell ad space flanking such drivel should be allowed to as well.

Freedom of speech is specifically and ultimately for _the speech that you don
't like_. I find the ideas behind your hypothetical article abhorrent, but I
absolutely and unwaveringly think _people should be able to say those things_.
My main motivations for this stance are two-fold:

1\. Preventing speech we don't like invites a slippery slope. If today we say
you can't write articles excoriating Muslims, what's to stop us from barring
editorials espousing atheism tomorrow? Or any religious stance but the
current, socially dominant one the day after that? Better to allow distasteful
discourse today than to risk dissenting discourse tomorrow.

2\. I find it convenient when noxious assholes out themselves as such. It
makes my life so much easier when people who think these kinds of things fly
their flag loudly and proudly, _so I know whom to avoid_.

 _how would you legally distinguish between that critical of the TSA and that
critical of some other class of people without privileging one set of
political opinions over another?_

Easy: _you don 't_. Speech is speech is speech. Allow it all, or risk it all.

Now, a critical caveat here is that we're talking about _speech_ , and not
_incitement_. Expressing an opinion, however vile, should be sacrosanct.
Encouraging people who might share your opinion to visit violence (and I don't
just mean _physical_ violence) upon the targets of your noisome nonsense is
something entirely other. And I think that's a reasonably easy distinction to
draw, as well, without privileging some opinions over others.

~~~
anigbrowl
I don't agree with your position.

Look at the balance of harms in this example. On the one side, a TSA employee
whose expression of sincere opinion is restrained by his employer, the
government. On the other side, millions of innocent people who feel dissuaded
from air travel on the grounds of national origin (see below) because they
don't believe they'll be properly treated at airports and because they fear
assaults , even if only verbal, from passengers emboldened by the slight
imprimateur of official support for their prejudice.

(I say national origin rather than religion because most people seem to be in
the habit of making judgments based on the former. Post 9/11 people like Sikhs
were attacked because they were foreign-seeming and from a part of the world
that has a lot of Muslims, even though Sikhism is a wholly different religion.
a woman named Fatima Mubarak might be a Christian but most people are going to
assume Islamic affiliation based on her name. Likewise, it's easy to imagine
or identify people who are Islamic but statistically unlikely to be identified
as such. In the aggregate, we're pretty superficial).

You have a balance of harms here, and I think ultimately courts would choose
the harm that affects the fewest number of people, especially given the
existence of numerous avenues for dissatisfied TSA employees to raise
grievances through administrative channels rather than by trying to whip up
public sentiment in favor of their political view.

Please note that it's not the speech excoriating someone else that I'm saying
should be regulated - it's the publicity by the angry person of their official
position with a government agency in connection with that speech, which shI
say should be restrainable by the agency. If the TSA agent in this example
thinks the agency so wrong-headed, s/he could resign from the TSA and then
write things like 'I quit the TSA because they don't recognize the threat
posed by Muslims' \- to which the TSA could reply 'We are required by law to
treat everyone equally and it is our policy to do so, which is why we parted
ways with this employee.'

Now I totally agree that it's convenient when 'assholes out themselves as
such.' The thing is that when they're in uniform (so to speak) what's
convenient to you or me may be intimidating to someone else; things look quite
different when you're a spectator rather than the target of someone's bias,
and the appearance of official sanction for that bias amplifies the
intimidatory effect. I'm saying that the interests of the agency in being seen
to serve the public fairly and in accordance with law outweigh the interests
of the individual agency employee who feels constrained by the agency's code
of conduct.

~~~
elohesra
I disagree with your position.

When we regulate free speech -- in any way whatsoever -- we open ourselves up
to greater regulation of free speech. Free speech is a special privilege in
that only unrestricted free speech can argue against restrictions on free
speech. Once you grant restrictions against free speech, you open yourself up
to a position where your speech becomes so restricted that you become unable
to even argue why it should be less restricted.

Furthermore I strongly disagree that restrictions on speech should be relative
to either the social position of the speaker, or the harms posed by the
speaker. If our justification for preventing speech is that the speaker's
speech could be mistaken as the official position of some group (in this case
the TSA), then this gives us a legitimation to shut down _all_ speech, as we
can simply twist the speaker's position as being representative of some group
to which they're tenuously related. A woman wants to speak out unpopularly
against x? Well, we can claim she represents all women, and her speaking out
would sour the position of the public towards women. A black man wants to
speak out against unpopular y? Same argument. Jewish? Same argument. And so
on. This is why speech is an _individual_ right, regardless of circumstance.

As for the (in my opinion, unpersuasive) argument that the harm caused by
speech should be legitimation to close down certain speech, no speech in-and-
of itself is harmful. Speech is just speech, and _cannot_ itself be harmful.
It is people's reactions to speech which causes harm. Even if we claim certain
classes of speech (say, yelling fire) have predictable outcomes that can cause
harm, we also have to accept that harmful speech can sometimes be necessary.
When the founding fathers spoke out against the tyranny of the British (or so
I hear; I'm British!), this lead to a civil war which cost hundreds of
thousands of people their lives. Same again when Lincoln spoke out against the
separatist south. Same again when Churchill spoke out against the Nazi threat.
Yet few would argue the harms caused by these pieces of speech should cause
them to be banned, even though these pieces of speech resulted in the deaths
of millions.

This means that we cannot be logically consistent when we claim to ban speech
based upon harm, so we either have to change our justification (i.e. admit
that it's not really harm we're avoiding, but specific types of harm), or
admit that we're being illogical in selecting lesser harms (discomfort felt by
non-Americans, in your example) as justification to shut down speech, and
greater harms (the deaths of millions, as above) as protected speech.

Honestly, free speech is simply too fundamental to both democracy and
philosophical/scientific progress to tamper with. No matter what lesser right
you put up against it, you'd have a hard time convincing me that it should
trump free speech, the right which underlies our very society.

~~~
anigbrowl
I'm not proposing to regulate speech. I'm proposing to regulate people's
ability to leverage their position as government officials to emphasize their
speech. When you speak in uniform or publicize the fact of your position as a
public employee, you're no longer speaking solely for yourself, but wrapping
yourself in the mantle of authority.

Why is this such a difficult concept to grasp?

 _Furthermore I strongly disagree that restrictions on speech should be
relative to either the social position of the speaker, or the harms posed by
the speaker. If our justification for preventing speech is that the speaker 's
speech could be mistaken as the official position of some group (in this case
the TSA), then this gives us a legitimation to shut down all speech, as we can
simply twist the speaker's position as being representative of some group to
which they're tenuously related. A woman wants to speak out unpopularly
against x? Well, we can claim she represents all women, and her speaking out
would sour the position of the public towards women. A black man wants to
speak out against unpopular y? Same argument. Jewish? Same argument. And so
on. This is why speech is an individual right, regardless of circumstance._

No, that's bollocks because employment is a bilateral contractual
relationship. I don't choose to be a man nor is the fact of my masculinity
subject to the agreement of the male community, therefore it's meaningless for
me to say that I speak for all mean by virtue of happening to be one. Someone
in a position of authority in an organization by definition stands in an
agency relationship to that organization. The very word _authority_ implies an
ability to act as the of author of that organization's decisions.

 _As for the (in my opinion, unpersuasive) argument that the harm caused by
speech should be legitimation to close down certain speech_

I'm not making any such argument. If you think that, you have wholly
misunderstood my position and I apologize for my lack of clarity in
explaining.

------
jarrett
Do government employees enjoy full protection from the First Amendment? It's
not a simple yes or no answer. Whether a given utterance is protected depends
on a variety of factors, but probably the most important one for low-ranking
TSA employees is that the speech must be of public concern to be protected. I
suspect that a front-lines TSA officer who writes a letter to the editor about
the TSA would be entitled to First Amendment protection, per Pickering v Board
of Education.

Here's a bit more info, with summaries of relevant cases:

[http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/publice...](http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/publicemployees.htm)

~~~
anigbrowl
Oh snap, I just posted that same link ;)

I do urge participants to look into this, because the 'bill of rights >
everything else' viewpoint frequently expressed on HN (and the US internet in
general) is both fairly recent and misguided in that it implicitly assumes a
two-tier constitution.

------
beloch
The bit about racial profiling is spot on, but heavily understated. People who
are clearly U.S. citizens are merely inconvenienced and embarrassed by the
TSA's shenanigans. If you know somebody from either the middle-east or a
country noted for supplying narcotics (e.g. Mexico) who has flown through the
U.S., even just to transfer to a connecting flight, ask them what their
experience was like. The TSA treats U.S. citizens like Hollywood celebrities
by comparison! The stories I've heard frequently cross the line into what any
reasonable person would define as outright abuse. Obviously, few victims stand
up for themselves.

The terrorists didn't win. The TSA became the terrorists.

------
thorntonbf
This quote has had me thinking all morning:

 _" The thought nagged at me that I was enabling the same government-
sanctioned bigotry my father had fought so hard to escape."_

------
malandrew
I really wish more people in government had the gumption that this agent has
to speak out about how public trust is being abused.

On a different not, I'm certain that I'm not the only one who read the
Selectee Passport List in the voice of Yakko, Wakko and Dot.

------
ck2
It's interesting how they mostly got a pass this past holiday travel season.

Barely saw anything about them. So even the media is looking the other way
now.

~~~
silencio
I feel like TSA is relaxing some of the security measures, just a bit -
perhaps so there is no major media outrage so people will still trust them.
Here and there there have been times my fiancé has not been made to take
everything off and get a patdown. Scanners feel like they're decreasing in
number so you can at least try to pick the metal detector lines again.

That might just be me with my TSA PreCheck and recent international non-US-
destined flying talking though. Protip: fly business/first class or be part of
PreCheck and revel in the pre-9/11 style of security. You know, the one where
I wore all my jewelry, a sweater, and my boots through the metal detector, set
it off, and the TSA agent just waved me through with a smile. Where I also
didn't empty my water bottle or unpack anything at all - in fact, told not to
even think about unpacking. Oh I feel so safe!

~~~
jonhohle
My typical airports have completely eliminated metal detector only lines
except for Pre✓™.

Pre✓™ seems like extortion - I have a passport, DHS has my fingerprints (for
unrelated reasons). Why should I jump through additional hoops, and give them
more money for something that they've already collected from me? If they
really wanted to know if I was a flight risk, wouldn't they have already used
all of the information they already know about me? If not, why!?

------
hisabness
i went through the airport yesterday on my way to watch the Broncos win the
super bowl. TSA had a new procedure which required travelers to touch a screen
and give up their fingerprints then get their hands swabbed in order to
collect DNA. later in the procedure travelers are asked to show their ids,
which are then placed under 'infrared' scanners. given all the recent
discussion about the pseudo anonymity of our interactions with various
software services i found this to be more almost as intrusive as body scans.
essentially, the tsa could be doing the following:

1\. touch screen so we have a fingerprint 2\. touch again if it didn't work
the first time so we potentially have 2 fingerprints 3\. swab finger for DNA
sample that we'll link to step 1 and/or 2 4\. place id under scanner which
we'll link to steps 1-3 5\. triangulate all these data points over many years
until the TSA has a complete database with everyone's unique identifying
info...

------
btbuildem
Really, nobody's gonna say it? Okay, fine. YOU ARE THE PROBLEM. You, guy
wearing the uniform, you the mindless meat puppet acting out nonsensical
policy directives. Without you, there is no system, yet you choose to
participate in it, you enable it, you make it real.

I understand some people have no choice, family to support, made bad choices
in the past that limit their opportunities now.. but you, good sir? You get no
pass whatsoever. Young, male, educated -- one would expect you'd try harder
than to settle into a TSA job.

------
lucb1e
Thought this was a great website with great content, reading this interesting
article without annoying pagination (though the option was there if I had
wanted it) at a comfortable font size.

Clicking through to the homepage, it turns out they also feature a call to
censor Snowden: [http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/01/edward-
snowde...](http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/01/edward-snowden-nsa-
snow-job-102740.html?ml=m_b7_1)

Never mind. This makes me doubt what I just read.

~~~
harryh
Lolz. I really wish I could figure out a way to fit this comment into a
#ShitHNSays tweet.

~~~
lucb1e
Try a blog. They seem to work with posts of more than one sms.

------
deadfall
I started questioning all the TSA security after I recently watched a
demonstration on how you could make dangerous weapons with items you can
purchase after you go through security. It is quite scary. The people that
want to cause harm will always find a way.

I have not been outside the US, I am curious on the security around the world.
Namely, flights headed towards US airports. Do they have to go through body
scanners?

~~~
ojii
I fly to the US a few times a year. Until a year ago from Switzerland either
direct or London, now from Tokyo. Never seen a full body scanner outside the
US. There is a bit of security theater though, which might pale in comparison
to the TSA, like a security officer at ZRH giving me a 'old school' (read: no
private areas) pat down because, as he told me, "I was the 12th guy in a row".
At NRT they check your ID or passport prior to entering the airport and may
glance at your bag, due to the troubles when they opened the airport. HND
doesn't have that IIRC. TL;DR, this seems mostly limited to the US from my
experiences.

~~~
eatmyshorts
I do believe the first deployment of these scanners was at Amsterdam's Schipol
airport. They were deployed at the time of the infamous Underwear Bomber that
supposedly led to the US deploying them. This is the same Schipol airport
where the Underwear Bomber went through security before boarding his flight to
the US.

------
nowigetit
Anyone else think "Rapiscan" is a perfect name for those machines?

~~~
geophile
Paging Dr. Funke.

------
rmchugh
new hero! and his book seems like it will be good:
[http://playbooknovel.com/](http://playbooknovel.com/)

~~~
gavinpc
A bad job is never wasted on a good writer.

------
smsm42
I always opt out from the body scanners, and I have yet to see another person
do it (which implies very small number do, otherwise by pure chance I'd see
somebody do it by now). Looks like most of the Americans just don't care. BTW,
never took me excessive time and I've never been harassed or inconvenienced in
any unusual (as opposed to usual for TSA) ways for opting out.

Also, from this article, next time TSA employee tries to feel my ass looking
for a bomb, it would be interesting to think about him as an aspiring satire
writer. I wonder if that would change the experience.

------
stretchwithme
Its all been lies all along. What a shock.

Our government does so much propaganda in collusion with the media. Every time
anything happens, we are treated to news stories about how security is being
beefed up. The reality is that there reality isn't much they can do except
show more security on TV and hope you'll conclude "ah, they are on top of
things."

------
Intlrnt
I wasn't a bit surprised to read any of this. Even the candor with which the
author shows himself to actively and tacitly promote and sustain the
unprofessional and compromising conduct in which he and his colleagues
engaged.

I'm not sure if that transparency is due to his arrogance, or ignorance of how
much he contributed to the problems we all deal with. No matter. Business as
usual.

Ballsy? Maybe. 'Hey everybody! I'm a self-identified slacker, unqualified to
be entrusted with responsibility. Here's my name. Here's my picture.'

Still, very disappointing.

------
siculars
From the why-anonymity-is-important department.

Truth will out.

------
dror
In a funny way I find this reassuring.

After all the worries, posting from various places, TOR, and in the end from
home, no one went after him even though he clearly ridiculed the TSA. It's
kind of sad that we even have to consider that, but in these days of NSA
abuses it's nice to see democracy at work.

------
yogo
Code red alfalfa. Ok that was a little redundant :)

~~~
RationPhantoms
Code red alfalfa hot papa. THAT was the as redundant as full body scanner pat
down security check anal probe passport sweep.

------
dmourati
This reads as if the author considers himself in league with Edward Snowden.

------
pstack
All you need to know about those performing the TSA roles can be learned from
one trip through a security line, where some fat obnoxious woman screams at
paying customers and american citizens like they're children and berate and
segregate (for further humiliation or harassment) anyone who dares question
anything or do anything but be blindly and unwaveringly obedient.

~~~
zachrose
I didn't think it was necessary to call her fat.

