Does that mean that no one outside the current 3 to 4 common terrorist parameters will NEVER show up with malice in their shrunken little hard hearts? Of course not. Sooner or later that will happen; so a base line of good screening practice that dynamicly changes in anticipation of changing terrorist technique is an absolute requirement.

Security policy, procedure, and practice all need constant review and modification to accomodate changing circumstance and lessons learned.

SHARE THE INFORMATION, STUPID! Complemented by religious follow up to ensure the proper responses and reactions to the information HAS ACTUALLY BEEN TAKEN!

Stop wasitng valuable limited security staff time on target/victim groups so it doesn’t look like were picking on high threat suspect groups.

I actually do sympathize with their task, and I suspect that a lot of them, maybe even nearly all of them, are hard-working and dedicated to a pretty thankless duty.

I don’t have a big problem with the security measures, to be honest. Sure, they’re a complete hassle and hard to appreciate when you’re going through them. But I am willing to put up with anything that is required to get the job done, and I think most people would agree.

What I have trouble with is that so much of what they get press for is seems outlandishly political. Going after these bloggers? That’s crazy. The absolute head-in-the-sand stand against profiling? Stupid.

I think it’s the political side of the business that’s making all the trouble. If they’re making an honest effort to do their job, that’s fine. But the political grandstanding is unacceptable. And the direction they seem to be getting from the nation’s upper management is making them look even worse. Maybe it’s a case of politicians trying to do the generals’ jobs, in which case the TSA looks bad, performs badly, and fails through no fault of their own.

For all my ranting about the TSA or militarized police and such, I am quite supportive of our law enforcement agencies in principle and hope they succeed. But just like when the local PD does boneheaded things that seem opposed to personal safety or privacy, I’m fed up with the petty things we’ve been seeing from the TSA and DHS with so little in the way of apparent security improvement.

But your point that just flat out calling them all idiots is wrong is a good one.

It’s easy to think that when you’re standing in an hour-long queue at the airport and taking off your shoes and belt and doing all the rest of that stuff. I know I sure think that.

But TSA is made up of reasonably smart guys at the decision making level.

- Their incentives suck. They can’t help that, they are a government agency.

- The job they are stuck with is pretty much impossible: the bad guys only have to get lucky once. They have to be lucky all the time.