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“How Do TSA Employees Feel About Working For a Despised Agency?”

147 points by raju 14y ago

asmithmd1 14y ago
TSA Budget in 2011: $8.1 Billion [1] US air travelers in 2011: 730 million [2] Cost per screening $11.09 [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_Security_Administration http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_Security_Adminis... [2] http://www.nbcnews.com/travel/number-air-passengers-increased-2011-523879 http://www.nbcnews.com/travel/number-air-passengers-increase...
- kevin_morrill 14y ago
  Not counting the opportunity cost of what those 58,0000 employees could be doing elsewhere in the economy, not to mention the tax money out doing real work.
  - thetrb 14y ago
    Hmmm? With a unemployment rate at ~8% why would you factor that in?
    - white_devil 14y ago
      Because that 8% is bullshit propaganda and things are actually much worse?
      - lostlogin 14y ago
        How on earth does one calculate unemployment? On social welfare cheque? Easy. Medical doctor forced to work as a taxi driver for 4 days a week as he/she can't get work as a doctor 5 days a week? Student who wants holiday work but can't find it? Stay at home mother who had a child a few years earlier as the plan to work for 2 years then have a child didn't work out as there was no work? Not so easy.
        white_devil 14y ago
        Your examples and much more have been swept under the rug of "Not In The Workforce". The more people you disregard, the lower your unemployment percentage becomes.
  - bo1024 14y ago
    Don't forget the passengers waiting in line. Suppose each person being screened waits 15 minutes, and makes $5 per hour at their job. That would be one billion dollars in lost productivity per year.
    - codex 14y ago
      Interestingly, given that the US has a fifteen trillion dollar economy, that's only 0.006% (or 6e-05) of U.S. GDP. I suspect that the economic cost of an successful terrorist attack on a U.S. aircraft would cost the U.S. economy more than one part in fifteen thousand.
      - jlgreco 14y ago
        > I suspect that the economic cost of an successful terrorist attack on a U.S. aircraft would cost the U.S. economy more than one part in fifteen thousand. Now include the probability of such an event actually taking place, and the probability that the TSA could prevent it... A comet strike would cause many trillions of dollars worth of damages. How much money are we spending right now on a pea-shooter based comet defense system?
        mctx 14y ago
        > pea-shooter based comet defense system? I'm pretty sure the state of art of this field is deep core drilling (as of 1998, anyway)
        dredmorbius 14y ago
        The point isn't "pea shooter" as a description of state of the art, but of its effectiveness. There's nothing we have available to us in technology that would be able to divert a mass-extinction class meteor (or even just a really-bad-day meteor) on short notice. Given a decade or more we might be able to launch a mission to moderately divert an orbit, but at very high expense. It's the cost-to-effectiveness ratio I believe TSA is being compared.
      - 14y ago
  - gizmo686 14y ago
    As it is, we have a surplus in our labor force, so I suspect the opportunity cost is minor, and outweighed by the benefits of having 58,000 jobs. Of course, I suspect that those jobs do not justify the opportunity cost of their paycheck.
- thetrb 14y ago
  Your second link doesn't show the total number of US air travelers, only passengers on US airlines. There are also non-US airlines serving the US. I'm not saying that this makes a very big difference, but it probably brings down the cost per screening to something around $10. Edit: Found this number: "803.5 million scheduled passengers" From: http://www.travelpulse.com/dot-reports-17-percent-increase-in-us-airline-passengers.html http://www.travelpulse.com/dot-reports-17-percent-increase-i... 2nd Edit: Your first source already shows that "Aviation Security" only makes up 71% of the TSA budget, so that brings the cost per screening down further.
- codex 14y ago
  The cost is a little higher than that, because many passengers don't fly non-stop--they may take two flights though a hub, for example, but there's only been one screening. However, if you assume one screening per flight, and a one-way flight cost of $200, that's 5% of the flight's cost. As TSA employees only make $12-15 an hour, I presume that most of that cost goes into paying for expensive screening machines and bomb-detection sensors, but that's pure speculation.
  - jes 14y ago
    Well, you have a whole bureaucracy on top of the TSA employees that you actually see at the airport. I'd expect that consumes a bunch of our money too.
mattmaroon 14y ago
That's not so much an answer to the question as a rant against the TSA. I've asked one something like that once and she said she was just glad to have a stable job. I have a feeling that's the answer for most of them.
ImprovedSilence 14y ago
For some people, jobs are hard to come by, I would wager the majority of TSA screeners do not have any better paying options, so to criticize them for being a part of a faulty system, or to paint them as being "from a sixth grade mentality", or "trying to get employed with border patrol asap" when they are just trying to provide for themselves and their families, who may not have better options, is pretty unfair. To criticize the people at the top, that may be fair argument. But for the higher ups and policy makers in the TSA, don't forget the old adage: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it"
- smsm42 14y ago
  This kind of argument can lead us to very bad place. People that work for the mob breaking people's kneecaps if they refuse to pay probably don't have better paying options too. But that doesn't excuse them. Participating in immoral activity for money isn't any better than doing it just because you are evil. Actually, I would venture to guess overwhelming majority of evil is done just because it puts food on someone's table. That does not excuse the ones who is doing it. Everyone who is participating in it shares the blame. And so does everyone who votes for it, too.
- slowpoke 14y ago
  >For some people, jobs are hard to come by, I would wager the majority of TSA screeners do not have any better paying options, so to criticize them for being a part of a faulty system, or to paint them as being "from a sixth grade mentality", or "trying to get employed with border patrol asap" when they are just trying to provide for themselves and their families, who may not have better options, is pretty unfair. I don't think so. It's very valid to criticize someone who works for a morally corrupt, unneeded and socially harmful agency, no matter the reason. Your argument is basically a sophisticated "but think of the children!!11oneone" appeal to emotion, ie not a valid argument. If there aren't any better job options (which I highly doubt), then it's another gigantic fucking failure of the government that needs to be fixed ASAP.
  - DanBC 14y ago
luu 14y ago
Objection. Assumes facts not in evidence [1]. I don't like the TSA, and I'm not friends with anyone who does, but that's because I live in a strange bubble, surrounded by academics and engineers. Most people don't have a problem with the TSA. Here's what happened to me the last time I went through a TSA checkpoint: I opted out. The TSA agent made a snide remark about about me being separated from my belongings, which I'd already put on the X-ray conveyor belt [2]. Then, I was forced to wait about half an hour until an agent was free [3]. There were TSA agents standing around, not doing anything, but, those people, apparently, can't do pat downs. When an approved agent was finally free, instead of cordially walking me over to the pat down area, he shoved and body checked me to get me to move. After the perfunctory patdown, he pointed to my luggage and said I could go get it. He then stepped in front of me as I started walking towards it and gave me one last shove, away from my luggage. So, do I like the TSA? Of course not. I have practical and philosophical objections to their process, and perhaps 20% of the time when I opt out, I'm treated like human garbage [4]. But, most people don't have any weirdo academic objections, so they go through the regular process and everything is fine, 99% of the time. Sure, they have to to the airport half an hour earlier now, but that's a small price to pay for what they see as protection from terrorists. [1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/tedreed/2012/08/09/surprise-gallup-poll-people-think-tsa-does-a-good-job/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/tedreed/2012/08/09/surprise-gall... [2] It's a bit like being threatened by the mafia: those are some nice things you have there. It would be such a shame if anything happened to them while you're away. This was sufficient to keep two couples, who initially decided to opt-out, from actually opting out. [3] https://twitter.com/someben/status/274976070271377409 https://twitter.com/someben/status/274976070271377409 [4] It's like walking into a random replication of the Stanford Prison experimenter [5]. Will the guards be aggressively unpleasant? Maybe! [5] http://www.lucifereffect.com/about_content_extensions.htm http://www.lucifereffect.com/about_content_extensions.htm
- graeme 14y ago
  But what did the poll say? Liking an agency and thinking its effective are two different things. It's like asking: is abstinence effective for preventing stds? And then inferring that people prefer abstinence to condoms.
Irregardless 14y ago
*Slightly non work-safe image at the top of the linked page (full body scans of men and women). Also, one category of TSA agents not mentioned in this piece: Those who seem to revel in the public's disdain because they can easily make a traveler's life hell if the mood strikes them. For example, the agents in this breast milk incident: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XhnZlmLGK8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XhnZlmLGK8 Any job that grants authority over other people probably attracts this type of employee.
- ImprovedSilence 14y ago
  >>"Any job that grants authority over other people probably attracts this type of employee" Ah, but is it the employee seeks out this position because they are predisposed to exert control over others, or do they exert control because of the position they are put in, ala the stanford prison experiment[1] (situational attribution v. dispositional attribution) [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment
  - Kliment 14y ago
    Does it really make a difference? The two are indistinguishable from the POV of the victim.
- nthj 14y ago
  What kind of country do we live in where a link to images that are taken by the government of its own citizens have to be labeled "NSFW?" It's surreal.
  - dllthomas 14y ago
    Well, anywhere with a nationalized pornography network would qualify, though that might well be nowhere. Some places with a nationalized health service could qualify...
    - lostlogin 14y ago
Zenst 14y ago
They probably feel better about what people think about them than traffic wardens feel about public attitude towards them. You can bet more people dispise traffic wardens than they do TSA, though as a non driver I like them. I have also dealt with the TSA when I traveled to America and it was a fast, most plesant experience. Not everybody has a bad experience with them, they just don't do massive blogs about there experience oddly enough. Though I was not impressed with British Airways at all, but thats another topic. But if you remove them and one plane has a problem as there was not enough checks and you can bet everybody will demand that the TSA is brought back. If you remove traffic wardens and one car gets parked illegaly then you can bet there would not be a sudden demand from the public to reinstate them. With that think of the traffic wardens and say hello, they are people as well. Though most think you are some kind of crazy for even saying hello to them as they have a installed fear of all members of the public due to intereactions with angry drivers. With that they see all people as angry drivers out to linch them; So the TSA has a long way to go to be truely dispised. More a case of misunderstood and apprecieated in some regards, but that often gets overlooked by the cry's of foul. Now
- jlgreco 14y ago
  "But if you remove them and one plane has a problem as there was not enough checks and you can bet everybody will demand that the TSA is brought back." This is a phenomenon that can be seen in other areas too, particularly technology. I fully expect an uproar the first time a robotic car kills a family, no matter how much safer robotic cars are statistically. It is ultimately combination of two problems I think: the inability to deal with unlikely events rationally, and the strong desire to see someone in control and responsible. How do we fix these problems? Beats me. Education is tiring and ineffective, it's statistics vs emotion.
hnriot 14y ago
You could substitute any number of employers in there, it's not just the TSA that's despised. Tax collectors, politicians, financial analysts that nearly bring down the US economy, traffic cops, the list goes on. I don't concern myself too much with empathizing with TSA employees, it seems like an odd thing to do. There are more important things to worry about in this world.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- marquis 14y ago
  There's one difference with many of these examples: unlike experiencing a mean TSA officer going through security you can get someone to help you (family member, attorney), or request another representative. If you don't like your pat-down officer at the airport you would have extreme difficulty in requesting another persons assists you. One of the reasons we hate the TSA so much is that you lose all control between the gates. If things go badly for you you must comply regardless or face genuine time-sensitive consequences.
jpxxx 14y ago
Not badly enough, apparently.
dllthomas 14y ago
Walking through new fancy scanner with nothing unusual on my person? Several complaints on the display and I'm groped as they make sure I'm not smuggling whatever. Carry-on full of hand-soldered electronics and military hardware? Completely ignored. I really appreciate how they're spending billions of our money. HEY - GUYS TRYING TO FIX THE BUDGET: I THINK I FOUND SOMETHING YOU CAN CUT!
- RandallBrown 14y ago
  I saw a girl walk through security with an open water bottle in the side pocket of her backpack. She was foreign too, so it's even a little more surprising nobody noticed it.
rayiner 14y ago
I'm quite wary of blaming employees for the perceived faults of their employers. Too much of our economy depends on morally debatable activity for me to be comfortable tossing around the "what you do for a living is bad for America" line willy-nilly. For example, here on HN people seem very cool with the advertising industry. But I remember in engineering school, the popular refrain was that advertisers and marketing people were leaches sucking out the marrow of American industry. Yet, lots of engineers now happily work for companies in bed with the advertising industry. If you work for Facebook, you work for a company that depends heavily on an industry (advertising) that exists mostly because of government granted monopolies (trademarks), and whose business model depends on getting teenagers (who aren't competent to enter into contracts and don't really understand the ramifications) to give away their personal information in order for advertisers to try and sell them things they don't need. I think you can make a credible argument that what Facebook and similar companies do is morally objectionable, and that "I'm just doing my job" is no excuse for people who work in Silicon Valley figuring out how to maximally exploit these kids. But I don't really want to go there (glass houses, etc). I think there is too much complexity in the underlying moral calculus for it to be reasonable to go there.
- pdonis 14y ago
  It looks like other people have already gone there; you're just pointing out that the viewpoint they have stated is not applicable just to the TSA. That seems like a valid observation to me.
DanBC 14y ago
There are other despised professions. Journalists (at least in the UK); politicians (especially when voting wage rises for them and wage cuts for nurses); estate agents (US realtors, not sure if the US feels the same way); and bailiffs. TSA employee is probably low wage with minimal entry requirements, so it's a good thing that people without work are taking work. It's lousy for them that the only thing available is for an agency of dubious effectiveness and vast expense.
downandout 14y ago
The kinds of people that take these jobs generally lack power over their personal lives and seem to enjoy abusing the power they have in their professional lives. Like traffic cops, prison guards, IRS auditors, and others in similar fields, I think many of these people actually revel in being hated and in many cases that mentality contributes to the behavior. It's cyclical.
arbuge 14y ago
Maybe they console themselves by thinking that at least it beats working for the IRS? :-) Seriously, "despised" is a bit of a strong word... inconvenient sure, despised probably not, for most people at least.
jpdoctor 14y ago
We really need to subject congressmen and congresswomen to these searches. They should not be exempt. My guess is that is the only way the problem gets taken care of quickly.
- codex 14y ago
  They are mostly not exempt, see: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/22/AR2010112207450.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11... The exception are the rare members travelling with a security detail, i.e. when the security detail is armed.
- chadillac83 14y ago
  Not sure if you've ever flown on a private jet but you just drive up to it, there is no TSA or security measures in place, you literally take your car onto the tarmac and walk onto a jet, it's marvelous. With that said I don't know how many of these congressmen/women travel via mass commuter air transit (RFK died in a private jet, Sen. Ted Stevens died in a private plane, etc.) but I'm willing to bet a large majority of them don't, and therefore don't get to encounter the standard procedure or are ushered through unabated. Imagine some geek in a blue shirt telling John McCain he has to take off his shoes and belt to come though the check point... very unlikely.
  - philwelch 14y ago
    There's a bit of a false equivalency between JFK Junior's private jet (RFK was assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan) and Ted Stevens' death aboard an Alaska bush plane. Small propeller planes are not an uncommon way to travel in Alaska since much of the state is still wilderness. On a less important note: "you literally take your car onto the tarmac and walk onto a jet, it's marvelous" Wait, do you just leave your car parked at the tarmac for the whole trip?
    - Crake 14y ago
      I'd imagine most people able to afford a private jet (or to let a friend borrow it or whatever) can similarly afford some sort of valet service. That, or maybe there's some sort of parking space right by (or even inside?) the hangar for the private jet where you could leave the car. I'm a bit curious now too as to standard protocol on it.
homosaur 14y ago
I've seen this article to be 100% correct in practice. There's a small minority of agents, who when I opt out, laugh and say "yeah, I don't blame you, I wouldn't go through these either." There's a majority who are simply trying to do whatever they can do reduce conflict without getting in trouble. And there's a small population of middle management douchebags that are trying their best to use their tiny bit of authority as a club to bludgeon the public and tell people what to do. These people make the experience miserable, because they tend to be the equivalent of "shift leaders" on the floor. Overall, what TSA does is a huge waste of money. It's a lot to spend for security theater.
aneth4 14y ago
Geeks love to hate the TSA. I travel a LOT - all year - and I find the TSA to be professional and cordial in carrying out their job, more so than any similar agency I've dealt with in other countries. Some TSA policies are ridiculous, but hardly a reason to waste time to "despise" them. If the TSA were the worst the government can throw at us, the country would be in much better shape.
rurounijones 14y ago
Any time I hear about polls being used as "evidence" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0ZZJXw4MTA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0ZZJXw4MTA

147 points by raju 14y ago

TSA Budget in 2011: $8.1 Billion [1] US air travelers in 2011: 730 million [2] Cost per screening $11.09 [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_Security_Administration http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_Security_Adminis... [2] http://www.nbcnews.com/travel/number-air-passengers-increased-2011-523879 http://www.nbcnews.com/travel/number-air-passengers-increase...

kevin_morrill 14y ago
Not counting the opportunity cost of what those 58,0000 employees could be doing elsewhere in the economy, not to mention the tax money out doing real work.
- thetrb 14y ago
  Hmmm? With a unemployment rate at ~8% why would you factor that in?
  - white_devil 14y ago
    Because that 8% is bullshit propaganda and things are actually much worse?
    - lostlogin 14y ago
      How on earth does one calculate unemployment? On social welfare cheque? Easy. Medical doctor forced to work as a taxi driver for 4 days a week as he/she can't get work as a doctor 5 days a week? Student who wants holiday work but can't find it? Stay at home mother who had a child a few years earlier as the plan to work for 2 years then have a child didn't work out as there was no work? Not so easy.
      - white_devil 14y ago
        Your examples and much more have been swept under the rug of "Not In The Workforce". The more people you disregard, the lower your unemployment percentage becomes.
- bo1024 14y ago
  Don't forget the passengers waiting in line. Suppose each person being screened waits 15 minutes, and makes $5 per hour at their job. That would be one billion dollars in lost productivity per year.
  - codex 14y ago
    Interestingly, given that the US has a fifteen trillion dollar economy, that's only 0.006% (or 6e-05) of U.S. GDP. I suspect that the economic cost of an successful terrorist attack on a U.S. aircraft would cost the U.S. economy more than one part in fifteen thousand.
    - jlgreco 14y ago
      > I suspect that the economic cost of an successful terrorist attack on a U.S. aircraft would cost the U.S. economy more than one part in fifteen thousand. Now include the probability of such an event actually taking place, and the probability that the TSA could prevent it... A comet strike would cause many trillions of dollars worth of damages. How much money are we spending right now on a pea-shooter based comet defense system?
      - mctx 14y ago
        > pea-shooter based comet defense system? I'm pretty sure the state of art of this field is deep core drilling (as of 1998, anyway)
        dredmorbius 14y ago
        The point isn't "pea shooter" as a description of state of the art, but of its effectiveness. There's nothing we have available to us in technology that would be able to divert a mass-extinction class meteor (or even just a really-bad-day meteor) on short notice. Given a decade or more we might be able to launch a mission to moderately divert an orbit, but at very high expense. It's the cost-to-effectiveness ratio I believe TSA is being compared.
    - 14y ago
- gizmo686 14y ago
  As it is, we have a surplus in our labor force, so I suspect the opportunity cost is minor, and outweighed by the benefits of having 58,000 jobs. Of course, I suspect that those jobs do not justify the opportunity cost of their paycheck.
thetrb 14y ago
Your second link doesn't show the total number of US air travelers, only passengers on US airlines. There are also non-US airlines serving the US. I'm not saying that this makes a very big difference, but it probably brings down the cost per screening to something around $10. Edit: Found this number: "803.5 million scheduled passengers" From: http://www.travelpulse.com/dot-reports-17-percent-increase-in-us-airline-passengers.html http://www.travelpulse.com/dot-reports-17-percent-increase-i... 2nd Edit: Your first source already shows that "Aviation Security" only makes up 71% of the TSA budget, so that brings the cost per screening down further.
codex 14y ago
The cost is a little higher than that, because many passengers don't fly non-stop--they may take two flights though a hub, for example, but there's only been one screening. However, if you assume one screening per flight, and a one-way flight cost of $200, that's 5% of the flight's cost. As TSA employees only make $12-15 an hour, I presume that most of that cost goes into paying for expensive screening machines and bomb-detection sensors, but that's pure speculation.
- jes 14y ago
  Well, you have a whole bureaucracy on top of the TSA employees that you actually see at the airport. I'd expect that consumes a bunch of our money too.

mattmaroon 14y ago

That's not so much an answer to the question as a rant against the TSA. I've asked one something like that once and she said she was just glad to have a stable job. I have a feeling that's the answer for most of them.

ImprovedSilence 14y ago

For some people, jobs are hard to come by, I would wager the majority of TSA screeners do not have any better paying options, so to criticize them for being a part of a faulty system, or to paint them as being "from a sixth grade mentality", or "trying to get employed with border patrol asap" when they are just trying to provide for themselves and their families, who may not have better options, is pretty unfair. To criticize the people at the top, that may be fair argument. But for the higher ups and policy makers in the TSA, don't forget the old adage: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it"

smsm42 14y ago
This kind of argument can lead us to very bad place. People that work for the mob breaking people's kneecaps if they refuse to pay probably don't have better paying options too. But that doesn't excuse them. Participating in immoral activity for money isn't any better than doing it just because you are evil. Actually, I would venture to guess overwhelming majority of evil is done just because it puts food on someone's table. That does not excuse the ones who is doing it. Everyone who is participating in it shares the blame. And so does everyone who votes for it, too.
slowpoke 14y ago
>For some people, jobs are hard to come by, I would wager the majority of TSA screeners do not have any better paying options, so to criticize them for being a part of a faulty system, or to paint them as being "from a sixth grade mentality", or "trying to get employed with border patrol asap" when they are just trying to provide for themselves and their families, who may not have better options, is pretty unfair. I don't think so. It's very valid to criticize someone who works for a morally corrupt, unneeded and socially harmful agency, no matter the reason. Your argument is basically a sophisticated "but think of the children!!11oneone" appeal to emotion, ie not a valid argument. If there aren't any better job options (which I highly doubt), then it's another gigantic fucking failure of the government that needs to be fixed ASAP.
- DanBC 14y ago

luu 14y ago

Objection. Assumes facts not in evidence [1]. I don't like the TSA, and I'm not friends with anyone who does, but that's because I live in a strange bubble, surrounded by academics and engineers. Most people don't have a problem with the TSA. Here's what happened to me the last time I went through a TSA checkpoint: I opted out. The TSA agent made a snide remark about about me being separated from my belongings, which I'd already put on the X-ray conveyor belt [2]. Then, I was forced to wait about half an hour until an agent was free [3]. There were TSA agents standing around, not doing anything, but, those people, apparently, can't do pat downs. When an approved agent was finally free, instead of cordially walking me over to the pat down area, he shoved and body checked me to get me to move. After the perfunctory patdown, he pointed to my luggage and said I could go get it. He then stepped in front of me as I started walking towards it and gave me one last shove, away from my luggage. So, do I like the TSA? Of course not. I have practical and philosophical objections to their process, and perhaps 20% of the time when I opt out, I'm treated like human garbage [4]. But, most people don't have any weirdo academic objections, so they go through the regular process and everything is fine, 99% of the time. Sure, they have to to the airport half an hour earlier now, but that's a small price to pay for what they see as protection from terrorists. [1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/tedreed/2012/08/09/surprise-gallup-poll-people-think-tsa-does-a-good-job/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/tedreed/2012/08/09/surprise-gall... [2] It's a bit like being threatened by the mafia: those are some nice things you have there. It would be such a shame if anything happened to them while you're away. This was sufficient to keep two couples, who initially decided to opt-out, from actually opting out. [3] https://twitter.com/someben/status/274976070271377409 https://twitter.com/someben/status/274976070271377409 [4] It's like walking into a random replication of the Stanford Prison experimenter [5]. Will the guards be aggressively unpleasant? Maybe! [5] http://www.lucifereffect.com/about_content_extensions.htm http://www.lucifereffect.com/about_content_extensions.htm

graeme 14y ago
But what did the poll say? Liking an agency and thinking its effective are two different things. It's like asking: is abstinence effective for preventing stds? And then inferring that people prefer abstinence to condoms.

Irregardless 14y ago

*Slightly non work-safe image at the top of the linked page (full body scans of men and women). Also, one category of TSA agents not mentioned in this piece: Those who seem to revel in the public's disdain because they can easily make a traveler's life hell if the mood strikes them. For example, the agents in this breast milk incident: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XhnZlmLGK8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XhnZlmLGK8 Any job that grants authority over other people probably attracts this type of employee.

ImprovedSilence 14y ago
>>"Any job that grants authority over other people probably attracts this type of employee" Ah, but is it the employee seeks out this position because they are predisposed to exert control over others, or do they exert control because of the position they are put in, ala the stanford prison experiment[1] (situational attribution v. dispositional attribution) [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment
- Kliment 14y ago
  Does it really make a difference? The two are indistinguishable from the POV of the victim.
nthj 14y ago
What kind of country do we live in where a link to images that are taken by the government of its own citizens have to be labeled "NSFW?" It's surreal.
- dllthomas 14y ago
  Well, anywhere with a nationalized pornography network would qualify, though that might well be nowhere. Some places with a nationalized health service could qualify...
  - lostlogin 14y ago

Zenst 14y ago

They probably feel better about what people think about them than traffic wardens feel about public attitude towards them. You can bet more people dispise traffic wardens than they do TSA, though as a non driver I like them. I have also dealt with the TSA when I traveled to America and it was a fast, most plesant experience. Not everybody has a bad experience with them, they just don't do massive blogs about there experience oddly enough. Though I was not impressed with British Airways at all, but thats another topic. But if you remove them and one plane has a problem as there was not enough checks and you can bet everybody will demand that the TSA is brought back. If you remove traffic wardens and one car gets parked illegaly then you can bet there would not be a sudden demand from the public to reinstate them. With that think of the traffic wardens and say hello, they are people as well. Though most think you are some kind of crazy for even saying hello to them as they have a installed fear of all members of the public due to intereactions with angry drivers. With that they see all people as angry drivers out to linch them; So the TSA has a long way to go to be truely dispised. More a case of misunderstood and apprecieated in some regards, but that often gets overlooked by the cry's of foul. Now

jlgreco 14y ago
"But if you remove them and one plane has a problem as there was not enough checks and you can bet everybody will demand that the TSA is brought back." This is a phenomenon that can be seen in other areas too, particularly technology. I fully expect an uproar the first time a robotic car kills a family, no matter how much safer robotic cars are statistically. It is ultimately combination of two problems I think: the inability to deal with unlikely events rationally, and the strong desire to see someone in control and responsible. How do we fix these problems? Beats me. Education is tiring and ineffective, it's statistics vs emotion.

hnriot 14y ago

You could substitute any number of employers in there, it's not just the TSA that's despised. Tax collectors, politicians, financial analysts that nearly bring down the US economy, traffic cops, the list goes on. I don't concern myself too much with empathizing with TSA employees, it seems like an odd thing to do. There are more important things to worry about in this world.

deleted 14y ago
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marquis 14y ago
There's one difference with many of these examples: unlike experiencing a mean TSA officer going through security you can get someone to help you (family member, attorney), or request another representative. If you don't like your pat-down officer at the airport you would have extreme difficulty in requesting another persons assists you. One of the reasons we hate the TSA so much is that you lose all control between the gates. If things go badly for you you must comply regardless or face genuine time-sensitive consequences.

jpxxx 14y ago

Not badly enough, apparently.

dllthomas 14y ago

Walking through new fancy scanner with nothing unusual on my person? Several complaints on the display and I'm groped as they make sure I'm not smuggling whatever. Carry-on full of hand-soldered electronics and military hardware? Completely ignored. I really appreciate how they're spending billions of our money. HEY - GUYS TRYING TO FIX THE BUDGET: I THINK I FOUND SOMETHING YOU CAN CUT!

RandallBrown 14y ago
I saw a girl walk through security with an open water bottle in the side pocket of her backpack. She was foreign too, so it's even a little more surprising nobody noticed it.

rayiner 14y ago

I'm quite wary of blaming employees for the perceived faults of their employers. Too much of our economy depends on morally debatable activity for me to be comfortable tossing around the "what you do for a living is bad for America" line willy-nilly. For example, here on HN people seem very cool with the advertising industry. But I remember in engineering school, the popular refrain was that advertisers and marketing people were leaches sucking out the marrow of American industry. Yet, lots of engineers now happily work for companies in bed with the advertising industry. If you work for Facebook, you work for a company that depends heavily on an industry (advertising) that exists mostly because of government granted monopolies (trademarks), and whose business model depends on getting teenagers (who aren't competent to enter into contracts and don't really understand the ramifications) to give away their personal information in order for advertisers to try and sell them things they don't need. I think you can make a credible argument that what Facebook and similar companies do is morally objectionable, and that "I'm just doing my job" is no excuse for people who work in Silicon Valley figuring out how to maximally exploit these kids. But I don't really want to go there (glass houses, etc). I think there is too much complexity in the underlying moral calculus for it to be reasonable to go there.

pdonis 14y ago
It looks like other people have already gone there; you're just pointing out that the viewpoint they have stated is not applicable just to the TSA. That seems like a valid observation to me.

DanBC 14y ago

There are other despised professions. Journalists (at least in the UK); politicians (especially when voting wage rises for them and wage cuts for nurses); estate agents (US realtors, not sure if the US feels the same way); and bailiffs. TSA employee is probably low wage with minimal entry requirements, so it's a good thing that people without work are taking work. It's lousy for them that the only thing available is for an agency of dubious effectiveness and vast expense.

downandout 14y ago

The kinds of people that take these jobs generally lack power over their personal lives and seem to enjoy abusing the power they have in their professional lives. Like traffic cops, prison guards, IRS auditors, and others in similar fields, I think many of these people actually revel in being hated and in many cases that mentality contributes to the behavior. It's cyclical.

arbuge 14y ago

Maybe they console themselves by thinking that at least it beats working for the IRS? :-) Seriously, "despised" is a bit of a strong word... inconvenient sure, despised probably not, for most people at least.

jpdoctor 14y ago

We really need to subject congressmen and congresswomen to these searches. They should not be exempt. My guess is that is the only way the problem gets taken care of quickly.

codex 14y ago
They are mostly not exempt, see: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/22/AR2010112207450.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11... The exception are the rare members travelling with a security detail, i.e. when the security detail is armed.
chadillac83 14y ago
Not sure if you've ever flown on a private jet but you just drive up to it, there is no TSA or security measures in place, you literally take your car onto the tarmac and walk onto a jet, it's marvelous. With that said I don't know how many of these congressmen/women travel via mass commuter air transit (RFK died in a private jet, Sen. Ted Stevens died in a private plane, etc.) but I'm willing to bet a large majority of them don't, and therefore don't get to encounter the standard procedure or are ushered through unabated. Imagine some geek in a blue shirt telling John McCain he has to take off his shoes and belt to come though the check point... very unlikely.
- philwelch 14y ago
  There's a bit of a false equivalency between JFK Junior's private jet (RFK was assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan) and Ted Stevens' death aboard an Alaska bush plane. Small propeller planes are not an uncommon way to travel in Alaska since much of the state is still wilderness. On a less important note: "you literally take your car onto the tarmac and walk onto a jet, it's marvelous" Wait, do you just leave your car parked at the tarmac for the whole trip?
  - Crake 14y ago
    I'd imagine most people able to afford a private jet (or to let a friend borrow it or whatever) can similarly afford some sort of valet service. That, or maybe there's some sort of parking space right by (or even inside?) the hangar for the private jet where you could leave the car. I'm a bit curious now too as to standard protocol on it.

homosaur 14y ago

I've seen this article to be 100% correct in practice. There's a small minority of agents, who when I opt out, laugh and say "yeah, I don't blame you, I wouldn't go through these either." There's a majority who are simply trying to do whatever they can do reduce conflict without getting in trouble. And there's a small population of middle management douchebags that are trying their best to use their tiny bit of authority as a club to bludgeon the public and tell people what to do. These people make the experience miserable, because they tend to be the equivalent of "shift leaders" on the floor. Overall, what TSA does is a huge waste of money. It's a lot to spend for security theater.

aneth4 14y ago

Geeks love to hate the TSA. I travel a LOT - all year - and I find the TSA to be professional and cordial in carrying out their job, more so than any similar agency I've dealt with in other countries. Some TSA policies are ridiculous, but hardly a reason to waste time to "despise" them. If the TSA were the worst the government can throw at us, the country would be in much better shape.

rurounijones 14y ago

Any time I hear about polls being used as "evidence" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0ZZJXw4MTA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0ZZJXw4MTA