[JYO] Security Without Sense

from the POST...
 
_http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/17/AR20060217017
37.html_ 
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/17/AR2006021701737.html)
 
 
Ed
 
- - - -
 
 
Security Without Sense
Airport screening may make it seem safer to take to the air, but  appearances 
can be deceiving.
Sunday, February 19, 2006; Page B08
 
 
It has been almost two months since I resigned from the Department of  
Homeland Security's Transportation Security Administration (TSA). I had served  
as a 
security screener at Dulles International Airport for more than three  years.
 
Even now, I can scarcely believe some of the absurdities I experienced as a  
screener. Not long before I quit, for example, a teenage girl was flying to  
Australia for a field hockey tournament. She was stopped at my checkpoint and  
told that she could not carry her stick onto the aircraft.
 
I believe in prudent security, but the field hockey stick presented no  
realistic threat to passengers or crew. It was too late for the stick to be  
checked, so the girl had to send it Federal Express to Australia and hope for  
the 
best.
 
Ironically, less than an hour later, a rather large man with a cane passed  
through my checkpoint without a problem. The cane had a heavy brass grip, I  
remember, because I had to hand it back to the man after he passed through the  
metal detector.
 
I'm not saying that the TSA should have confiscated the man's cane; it  
shouldn't have. What I am saying is that the TSA's policies regarding what is  
acceptable to carry onto an airplane mock security rather than enhance it.
 
Cigarette lighters were another issue for screeners. Congress passed  
legislation banning lighters from aircraft last year, but the TSA uses no 
common  
sense in applying the policy. It bans all lighters from aircraft -- even if 
they  
are inside checked baggage.
 
I saw World War II veterans returning from anniversary observances in  Europe 
with commemorative lighters -- in unopened, wrapped packages without  lighter 
fluid -- have their lighters taken away. For the record, matches are  allowed 
on aircraft.
 
In a memorandum that marked the third anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001,  
attacks, the federal security director lauded the screening force at Dulles for 
 
intercepting 12.4 million "prohibited items" since the TSA's inception. But 
how  many of those items were field hockey sticks, cigarette lighters and 
cuticle  scissors?
 
The TSA makes passengers who are carrying clear plastic bottles of drinking  
water place their bottles on the X-ray belt, even though it is easier to 
eyeball  the bottle than to examine it through the machine. The TSA also has 
been  
employing something it calls a "spot team"; teams of uniformed screeners stand 
 idle during busy times at the checkpoint, observing from a distance the same 
 passengers who will pass through the checkpoints and be observed up close by 
 other screeners.
 
The agency's management, in an effort to stop so many screeners from  
quitting, has embarked on a campaign called "I am TSA." Management changed the  
screener's job title from Transportation Security Screener to Transportation  
Security Officer and plans to distribute "I am TSA" pins to screeners, I mean,  
officers. This initiative, however, seems unlikely to lower attrition  rates.
 
Visitors to Dulles see posters at the checkpoints with the word "WARNING"  in 
large red letters, followed by the information that "passengers are advised  
that the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security has determined that  
Bandara Ngurah Rai International Airport, Denpasar, Bali, Indonesia, and Port 
au  Prince International Airport, Haiti, do not maintain and administer 
effective  aviation security measures." That's good to know, but what about 
Washington  Dulles International Airport?
 
At Dulles, an entry point to the "sterile" area, the part of the airport  
supposedly restricted to those who have gone through a security check, is known 
 
as the SIDA door (SIDA stands for Security Identification Display Area). 
Workers  with airport badges can pass through this door with knapsacks, book 
bags, 
you  name it, without going through the TSA checkpoints upstairs. But pilots, 
flight  attendants and TSA employees -- all of whom have passed background 
checks before  being hired -- are not permitted to access the sterile area 
through the SIDA  door. They must go through the same TSA checkpoints used by 
passengers.
 
The Department of Homeland Security might want to address an issue such as  
the SIDA door at Dulles before warning travelers about Bali and Port au  Prince.
 
At the TSA, truth indeed is stranger than fiction.
 
-- Scott Wallace

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