I’ve ranted a number of times about the TSA, so I’ve decided to offer the TSA some suggestions on how to handle airport security. I ask for nothing in return, even though I’m sure my ideas would be worth millions if I was contracted to do an overhaul of it.
In no particular order:
- Redeploy military personnel to patrol the airports with M-16 machine guns. The wars overseas are not winnable, so put the soldiers in our all volunteer military (not the national guard troops) to work at the airports. The machine guns and troops in fatigues is at a minimum an excellent deterrent. Having flown within the months after 9/11, it was almost comforting to see the military there. The TSA officers at the checkpoints are not very menacing and aren’t even armed.
- Bring in bomb sniffing dogs. They’ll likely be able to detect explosives more efficiently than the full body scanners or the random swap testing. In addition, if someone is nervous, dogs will make them even more nervous.
- Profile people. This seems obvious, but train personnel to be more observant and watch people that fit certain profiles.
- Watch behaviors. Train all the personnel to watch passengers’ behaviors.
- Get rid of the full body scanners. They’re a waste of time and money. Return them and get our taxpayer money back.
- Stop the 3-1-1 rule for liquids. Confiscating a bottle of hair spray is ridiculous.
- Do the full body pat downs on people that show signs of being uncomfortable or are acting in a way out of the ordinary; don’t do a full pat down on a child that doesn’t fit a profile.
- Stop confiscating nail clippers, nail files, etc. If you can get a knife inside of security like I had used for dinner last week, nail clippers aren’t going to hurt anyone. Also, look at maintenance workers that have all kinds of tools that could be used as weapons.
- Tighten up perimeter security. There was a story the other day about a castaway in a wheel well that got onto the tarmac.
There are a few things that I don’t mind that have been done:
- Reinforcing the cabin doors.
- Prohibiting lines from forming outside the cabin door.
- Taking off shoes; while a little inconvenient, I can handle it.
Let’s get real TSA and start being smarter about how the billions of dollars are being spent. The costs can be cut tremendously if we didn’t waste it on useless screening techniques.