After 2 Decades of Pat-Downs & Shoe Removal, Are We Safer?
Excerpts taken from The Verge
There’s no evidence that two decades of pat-downs and shoe removal have made travelers any safer — so why does the theater of airport security persist?
Some things to consider -
- OFFICERS ARE OFTEN REFERRED TO ON THE CHECKPOINT AS TRAITORS, NAZIS, OR CHILD MOLESTERS, EVEN TO THEIR FACES.
- TSA EMPLOYEES HAVE THE LOWEST JOB SATISFACTION OF ANY FEDERAL AGENCY. IT CAN BARELY RECRUIT FAST ENOUGH TO KEEP UP WITH ATTRITION.
- TSA HAS PLAYED NEXT TO NO ROLE IN THE BIGGEST COUNTERTERRORISM STORIES OF THE PAST TWO DECADES.
Scott Becker, worked for the TSA at Chicago O’Hare between 2002 and 2015 and wrote a memoir about his experiences. He was one of the more than 40,000 new Transportation Security Officers (TSOs) that the agency hired in its first year of existence. But many new TSOs like Becker found themselves with little to actually do — hence the “joke” that the agency’s acronym was really short for “Thousands Standing Around.”
The TSA claims that it doesn’t “discriminate against travelers on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, religion, age, disability, genetic information, sexual orientation and parental status.” The statistics don’t support that claim, however. A 2019 Government Accountability Office study found that TSOs were responsible for more than 1,000 incidents of “potential discrimination and unprofessional conduct that involved race” over a two-year period.
