You'll Never Believe Who's Shilling For The TSA

TSA thing does not make sense, 99 percent of the world airports does not have TSA doing any checking, 1 have they proven to be less secure? 2 have they experienced terrorist attacks? Now the odd thing, has TSA ever think about the thousands of planes getting into US airspace where the passengers have not gone through a TSA clearing because the flights are from abroad, but are still able to hit potential target?

The reality is the TSA is little more than a public relations scheme designed to do two things: 1) make the public believe we need ever more government to "keep us safe," even if it means giving up more and more of our rights, and 2) condition the public to accept anything the government wants to do to us in the name of "national security." If you check the facts, the TSA has been a failure. It has yet to stop a single potential terrorist threat, and in fact, it has failed to catch a number of "test" breaches of security with both weapons and explosives carried aboard planes by government agents testing the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of the system. The TSA, along with Homeland Security, is a huge boondoggle wasting taxpayer money while it ushers in a police state.

Christopher, You also totally missed the point of the demonstration. The facts: TSA provided a demonstration of what the consequences are of an improvised explosive device composed of materials a terrorist could try to get past a checkpoint. This is the type of demonstration the military and law enforcement have provided for years to train personnel of the consequences of not doing something. As an Army officer and later as a civilian intelligence analyst I sat in bleachers and watched such demonstrations - even watched chemical weapons and nuclear weapons get detonated on movies to learn their effects - was a real incentive in some of my assignments. (Sort of like those gruesome movies of car wrecks they showed us in driver education.) These demonstrations are incentives to be alert for the types of materials used in the demonstrations - and you can be sure the instructors are experts or they wouldn't be handling that stuff. You write on how this is somewhat deceptive because TSA is not in the EOD business and doesn't have the job of explosives disarming. Yeah, that's the job of law enforcement as is any penetration of screening of the TSA. So what? How is that reporter being a "shill" for the TSA? You then say that no bomber has ever been caught by the TSA and then point out that all the bombers who have gotten through have done so via European checkpoints: "Instead, wannabe terrorists like the shoe bomber and the underwear bomber looked for vulnerabilities overseas, where the TSA has little or no jurisdiction. If you're going to demonstrate America's security prowess, maybe a foreign airport is a good place to start." Isn't that a compliment to TSA? Terrorists (those that were caught were not lone wolves and were caught in the act of terrorism- hardly "wannabes") assess that TSA check points provide enough screening that they might get caught so they go to foreign check points. That speaks pretty highly for the TSA. You state: "The agents watching from the bleachers are screeners, not law enforcement officials. In the sense that they're helping air travelers through the security process, they are primarily in the customer-service business." Christopher, you are so very wrong on that. TSA like Customs and Border Protection and the private entities that might screen you in entering a building are engaged in security, not customer service. Even so the thought that TSA is deterring terrorists to try other countries for penetrating security sounds like great customer service to me. They should be courteous and polite and every TSA official that I've encountered in my many years of frequent flying has been. Aviation Security is primarily about securing aviation from threats; customer service is for the airlines and you do a fine job of exposing the many faults in customer service in the travel industry and are really one of the best out there. But where is the customer service angle to this story? An "expose" of TSA training techniques? I think not. You state: "Few news outlets have a full-time national security reporter." Christopher, you are certainly not a "national security reporter." but are an outstanding travel consumer reporter and advocate.

Could someone please explain to me what is meant by 'shilling'? And what the initials TSA stand for. I am afraid that I speak only English so I am at an obvious disadvantage!