Is Eight Really Enough? When It's TSAFails, Yes- Yes It Is

How is the general screening process conducted by the TSA working out? According to the Full Story below- not very well. The TSA's parent organization, (Dept of Homeland Security- DHS) sent their own inspectors to 8 of the 16 airports that had, at the time of the audit, received the new advanced imaging technology systems (full body scanners are one example).
Checkpoint vulnerabilities were found at all 8.
Not terribly surprising really. Could the failures have been passengers lost on their way to secondary screening? Prohibited items missed during screening? TSA Officers who step away from their post? Sniffer dog handlers who don't know how to handle their dog? Public relations skills of TSA officers that make Rainman look well adjusted?
We'll never know what the specific fails in the report cited in the Full Story below are because they are being smartly kept secret. But they surely must read like a greatest hits version of TSAFail. The inspector generals recommendations are also being kept secret. We can only speculate that the results of this audit are:
1) smarten up
2) get your shit together
3) get your shit together
4) get your shit together
5) get your.... ... ..

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How to Spot a TSA Air Marshal...

Badge- check.
Gun- check.
Shaved genitals- ummm... check??
Raping an escort- What?!!
It's the TSA's best of the best of the best hard at work again. The mind boggles just contemplating the sort of tests the TSA actually conducts on fresh hires who are given guns and badges and put on airplanes to protect the flying public. It is clear from the Full Story below that this air marshal, staying in a hotel outside of SeaTac, had some sort of training. He claims to have known enough not to use a firearm after drinking alcohol. Although the coercion, rape and theft are all clearly ok.
The TSA has fired this particular air marshal, which obviously leaves a vacancy in the program.
No word yet on whether the TSA plans to fill the vacancy with the ShamWow spokesman.

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Failback Position: Southwest Shinobi

It's time again for a Failback Position. This is the feature where we go back into the eight quadjillion past fails of the TSA and select one at random to reflect upon. Perhaps we laugh, perhaps we cry, most likely we vomit in our mouths a bit at the ongoing pattern of failure.
Today's Failback Position comes from just before Halloween, 2003. The eagle eyed TSA screeners at the Oakland International Airport overlooked the contents of the violin case of one particular passenger. A passenger who was packing... what else... nunchuks. How do we know that said passenger boarded the flight with nunchuks (other than reading the details in the Full Story below)? He started waving them around the plane until he was tackled and restrained- of course.
Clearly, the OAK TSA can be forgiven for not spotting the weapon in the passengers luggage- they were up against a freakin' ninja! That's the whole point of ninjas... you just can't stop them!! Although, you would think that the mask, turtle shell and passport simply reading 'Michelangelo' might have been a tip off.

Full Story

Applesauce Slapfight- With Video!!!

Thursday night fun at the roadhouse? No, just the Burbank TSA.
A woman and her 93 year old mother tried to take food through the TSA checkpoint at the Bob Hope Airport. As one would expect, anyone who thinks that they are going to get a cooler of applesauce and cottage cheese past the BUR TSA, is the type of person to get themselves a bit worked up- impolitely so.
So how do the professional men and woman of the TSA deal with the situation? Talk her down? Professionally impose authority? Nope- as we can see in the Full Story below (video on the upper right of the page), by trying to snatch her cooler away while two other agents stand by watching. Eventually they get around to handcuffing and arresting her for misdemeanor battery. What other organization that deals face to face, one on one with the public on a daily basis could take an apparently stressed person and start something worthy of a elementary school playground fight.
A playground fight that ends in a trial. Expect the prosecution for the TSA to cite as precedent 'I know you are but what am I?'.

Full Story

When You Work for the TSA- It's What You Crave

If you are thinking White Castle, you are half right. If you are thinking airport screening by day and robbing White Castle by night, then award yourself a full point. Once again the crack HR department of the TSA has found the best of the best of the best to keep the traveling public safe. It isn't yet clear which airport the fast food bandit is stationed at, although DFW seems likely. After being arrested for knocking over a White Castle, a McDonalds and being a suspect in 5 other holdups, the TSA notes (in the Full Story below) that "The individual has been removed from screening passengers and property". Good to know, since his sitting in a holding cell would otherwise lead to a conspicuous absense at a security checkpoint
For extra fun, take a look at the mugshots of the suspect and his accomplices in the Full Story below and see if you can guess which one is the TSA Officer. If you picked the guy striking the gangsta pose, award yourself another point.

Full Story

Houston Hobby? Oh Come On!!

The TSA just doesn't seem to understand that a good comedy bit can be overworked. Oh sure there are classics out there- pie in the face, slipping on a banana peel or unexpected hit to the crotch. But pulling someone aside for additional screening, losing them, declaring a security breach and delaying passengers and planes has jumped the shark.
It's like a knock knock joke... told by a 6 year old... for an entire day.
This time it is the highly qualified men and women of the Houston Hobby TSA who lost their man. Other than that the story is pretty much sixth verse same as the first. Or, in this case, sixth verse same as the third, since it was only back in late February that HOU TSAFailed in the exact same way.
All of us at TSAFail are tempted to create a spin off blog just to cover this increasingly stinky joke. Unfortunately, TSAlostapersonforsecondaryscreeningandshutdownanairport-again.blogspot.com doesn't have the same cachet.
In case you missed the previous five incidents from this year that we have covered, please see: LAX,LAX, HOU,PHX, EWR. As always, the details of todays TSAFail are in the Full Story below:

Full Story

Deja Vu is the Uncanny Sense of Having Experienced Deja Vu Before

This weeks story of the TSA losing a passenger whose luggage required additional screening comes from LAX- again.
Blah Blah Blah- security breach...
Yadda Yadda Yadda- passenger and flight delays...
It has been less than a month since the last such incident at Los Angeles International and one has to wonder what TSA spokesperson Suzanne Trevino means in the Full Story below when she states "Had all of our procedures been followed this morning, we would not have had to call for a security breach.". What procedures could she be referring too that allow the same thing to happen twice in less than a month at one airport and previously at EWR, PHX, HOU since February.
A Senate Joint Economic Committee determined in 2008 that flights delayed for any reason cost $40B in 2007. That money was partly airline costs, partly extra jet fuel for idling planes, partly extra manpower... no word on whether it included the cost of all the eggs that the TSA needs to continuously apply to its own face.

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Am I More Crockett or More Tubbs?

This is the question that TSA 'Acting Administrator' must have surely been asking herself when she wrote the latest blog post on the TSA's very own blog.
Why else would the person-in-charge-by-default of an organization with a mandate from congress to search airline passengers for weapons or explosives, care about whether or not the fancy new airport scanners can detect 'small packages of powder-based drugs...smaller than a thumb print'?
The appeal of the Miami Vice lifestyle must be so overpowering to Acting Administrator Gale Rossides, that she is willing to ignore previous federal judges decisions. These decisions threw out cases based on the TSA overstepping their bounds by using their searches to uncover criminal acts.

Is it the 80s style clothes? The cars? The fancy speedboats? Or is it that Ms. Rossides is in charge of running, overseeing and providing guidance to an organization that she doesn't fully understand the mandate of?

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Failback Position: It's Dangerous 'Cause We Say So.

Things have been a little quiet recently at TSAFail. Too quiet. To hold you over until the fresh fails start rolling in like dirty socks after a marathon... here's a Failback Position- a classic fail from the past.

We all know that there are some things that you can't take through TSA screening... fireworks, compressed gas, snowglobes, a container with more than 3.6oz of liquid, or a mostly empty container of liquid with labeling that says it once held more than 3.6oz of liquid, etc. The guidelines are clearly laid out on the TSA's website. Boomerangs aren't on the list. According to the the fine TSA folks working the line at Bradley International in CT- boomerangs should be on the list. Apparently it is up to the discretion of the TSA officer what does and doesn't constitute a danger on board an airplane.
Perhaps the BDL TSA Officer felt that a boomerang on it's own isn't a danger, but that a boomerang in the hands of a competitive boomerang champion, if wielded in the cramped quarters of an airline cabin could be.
At TSAFail we wonder if the Python classic 'self defense against fresh fruit' isn't part of the training regimen.

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