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

https://takingsenseaway.wordpress.com/2012/12/20/letter-from-a-passenger-how-do-tsa-employees-feel-about-working-for-a-despised-agency/

by raju • 14 years ago

147 91 14 years ago

takingsenseaway.wordpress.com

ImprovedSilence2• 14 years 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"

slowpoke• 14 years 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.

DanBC2• 14 years ago

> Your argument is basically a sophisticated "but think of the children!!11oneone" appeal to emotion, ie not a valid argument.

No. Criticising someone for engaging in lawful employment because you think that job is immoral is fine, but don't pretend there are no valid arguments for having that legal job.

> If there aren't any better job options (which I highly doubt),

We could have a look at job ads for TSA, and the requirements of the job, and then have a look for similar jobs; and then somehow find out how many people are applying for those jobs.

And we don't know the churn rate of TSA. Perhaps people take work there and leave after 3 months because they realise it's "evil" or a waste of money or whatever.

clobber• 14 years ago

This sounds like a "just doing our duty" argument.

If you work for the TSA you're not just contributing to the problem, you are the problem.

jlgreco9• 14 years ago

I don't think it is quite a Superior Orders defense, but it certainly does seem morally equivalent to me. "I did it for my starving family" and "I did it because my commanding officer would shoot me otherwise" are probably pretty related (some regimes do their best to blur the line between these), but I feel there should be another name for it.

jlgreco9• 14 years ago

I empathize with the people who have no other choice but to work for the TSA, that is a shitty place to be in life, but I reserve the right to at the same time criticize their job and them for doing it.

The extension of your argument (and I have seen this said here many times before) is basically that we should not criticize Rhinoceros hunters because said hunters may just be trying to etch out a place for themselves and their starving family in this world. Yeah, it would suck to be in that position, but hunting Rhinos is still reprehensible. I understand why they do it, but I cannot condone it and I cannot withhold my criticism.

smsm42• 14 years 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.

luu• 14 years 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-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

[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

graeme• 14 years 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.

crusso• 14 years ago

Liking an agency and thinking its effective are two different things.

Efficacy isn't as useful as how an issue plays on the emotions of voters.

bishnu• 14 years ago

Really? A single Gallup poll is "evidence" now? [1,2,3]

[1]http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/18/gallup-v...

[2] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/17/gallup-poll-race-ba...

[3] http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/10/rasmussen-an...

mtgx• 14 years ago

What wasn't a surprise is that the poll appeared just before Congress has to decide TSA's budget for next year. I've seen a few other highly complimentary articles on TSA these past few days, too - all appearing all of the sudden. A little suspicious, isn't it?

codex6• 14 years ago

I'm a bit confused: the poll was released in August. That said, the final budget negotiations for the first half of 2013 (which included the DoHS) weren't concluded until September. Is that what you mean?

MartinCron2• 14 years ago

Someone shoves you? That's assault. Did you think of reporting the incident or pressing charges? Serious question.

mistermann2• 14 years ago

The problem with that is if you run into the wrong guy it might get you killed.

tptacek• 14 years ago

When we think about statistics about support for the TSA, it's important to note that the majority of Americans don't travel by air at all in any given year.

js2• 14 years ago

Counterpoint: I have opted out over a dozen times at a variety of airports (RDU, SJC, SFO, BUR). I've never been treated with anything but professionalism, and I dare say, politeness. I was asked why I was opting out by the TSA officer performing my pat-down at BUR who seemed personally curious more than anything, but otherwise it's been perfunctory. I've never had to wait more than a minute or two at most.

jamesbritt• 14 years ago

That's been my experience, more or less. Worst I could say is that mostly they don't seem enthusiastic, and on one occasion one guy seemed annoyed that I did not understand some vague instruction about either staying put or not.

But each time they ask me if there are any sensitive areas, each time I tell them, "Yes, my nuts", and each time they been respectful of my junk.

They really could do better about keeping people with their stuff that's been passed through the X-ray machine, but overall they seem to appreciate that you want to keep an eye on it.

jvrossb• 14 years ago

My experience as well. I travel a lot and never had an issue with the TSA.

driverdan2• 14 years ago

What airport was this at? Did you report this incident to his supervisor? Did you complain when it took more than 2 minutes to get someone to do the pat down?

I've had about 20 pat downs in many different airports. I've never had to wait more than three minutes for someone and everyone has always been professional and courteous. As much as I hate the TSA and complain about them, the airport staff has been nice and helpful. In two or three cases they went out of their way to help me, beyond what I expected.

Edit: I should also add that I'm a middle class white male who looks "respectable". I'm not going to experience the discrimination some minorities may endure so take that for what it's worth.

lostlogin6• 14 years ago

You say that 99% of the time it's fine. If you go through the back scatter thingy, I'd say that 99% is a hopeful assumption. They are likely unsafe, and some small subset of people scanned may end up quite sick.

robbiep3• 14 years ago

Are you making this up, ill-informed or do you not understand physics and radiation? I do not mean this as offensively as it will ultimately be read, so apologies

These scanners exposé you to less than 1/200th the radiation dose of a standard plane flight, and between 1/200th and 1/400th of a standard chest X-ray.

Yes, ionising radiation can cause cancer. But your chance of getting cancer anyway is 1 in 2.4.

I have no love of excessive security measures, and I personally don't think that we should ever unnecessarily cause people to be exposed to radiation, especially when other methods can do the same job without radiation, and even moreso when the efficacy of the scanners is unproven.

But I have a particular dislike of the psychogenic claims that arise around technologies that posit to do this or that, when the action of the machine or technology in question is noninvasive and especially when the action is not substantively different from normal daily exposures that every human receives anyway

Refs:

standard CXR 2.4x background radiation

Backscatter Imaging 6-7% of a days background radiation (0.25 microsiverts per 'scan =1.5hrs @ background radiation or 2 minutes of an airplane at altitude)

Abdo CT: 2.7 years BG radiation

- http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/219970.php

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backscatter_X-ray

grecy• 14 years ago

> 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.

Sounds like you're describing the dystopian future we read about and see in movies.

Irregardless• 14 years 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

Any job that grants authority over other people probably attracts this type of employee.

ImprovedSilence2• 14 years 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

Kliment• 14 years ago

Does it really make a difference? The two are indistinguishable from the POV of the victim.

nthj• 14 years 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.

jff• 14 years ago

Although the police may take photographs of murder victims, it is generally not appropriate to view mutilated bodies while at work (unless you're a cop, etc).

I do think it is a bit silly to want to call the pictures from the scanner NSFW, because they're clearly in the context of speaking about the TSA rather than for any prurient reasons. If I wanted to see fuzzy outlines of genitals, I'd grab a pencil and sketch them myself.

dllthomas3• 14 years 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...

Zenst• 14 years 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

jlgreco9• 14 years 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• 14 years 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.

marquis• 14 years 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• 14 years ago

Not badly enough, apparently.

dllthomas3• 14 years 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• 14 years 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.

mattmaroon• 14 years 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.

asmithmd1• 14 years 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_Adminis...

[2] http://www.nbcnews.com/travel/number-air-passengers-increase...

kevin_morrill• 14 years 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.

thetrb2• 14 years ago

Hmmm? With a unemployment rate at ~8% why would you factor that in?

bo1024• 14 years 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.

gizmo686• 14 years 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.

thetrb2• 14 years 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-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.

codex6• 14 years 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• 14 years 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.

rayiner• 14 years 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• 14 years 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.

DanBC2• 14 years 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• 14 years 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• 14 years 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• 14 years 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.

codex6• 14 years ago

They are mostly not exempt, see: 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.

chadillac833• 14 years 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• 14 years 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?

homosaur• 14 years 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• 14 years 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• 14 years ago

Any time I hear about polls being used as "evidence"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0ZZJXw4MTA

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

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