Based on some messages I’ve received, I’ve learned the following:
- Many TSA employees hate their job, often due to management treating them poorly.
- Many screeners hate using the nude body scanners, often because they are worried about the radiation.
- Many screeners hate giving pat-downs, because the procedures require them to do ridiculous things (example: pat down someone’s hair even if it is short and obviously not concealing something) or simply because they don’t like touching other people’s junk.
- Many TSA employees actually care about security and TSA abuse and want to see things fixed.
If you know a TSA employee, frequent a message board that has TSA employees, happen to meet a TSA employee, or have any other way of sharing this article with TSA employees, please do so. If you are a TSA employee, please e-mail me at jon@fourtentech.com with your story. We can talk for attribution (with your name behind it), on camera, or completely anonymously. (I won’t disclose your name without your consent unless required to by court order. If you’re worried about court orders, simply take a laptop to any free WiFi location [airport, coffee shop, etc.] and create a new Gmail account without using your real info just for this purpose… but remember to check it for my reply!)
Things I’m particularly interested in hearing about include:
- Body scanners not detecting things they should have detected
- Being asked to work on equipment that you were not trained/certified to work on
- Management knowingly ignoring security risks
- Any kind of malfeasance (accepting bribes, giving positions/promotions to unqualified friends/family, lying in paperwork, etc.
If you know that the TSA is doing the wrong thing, be a whistleblower. Again, whether you want to remain unnamed or want your face in the news, please contact me at the e-mail address above.
While I cannot prevent you from sending me Sensitive Security Information (SSI), nothing in this post should be construed as asking you for SSI. Please follow the law. 🙂
Professional Troublemaker ® 
Yes, if only the TSA would ‘fplease ollow the law’, especially the FOURTH AMENDMENT.
Yes, if only the TSA would ‘please follow the law’, especially the FOURTH AMENDMENT. 🙂
Jon, for a radically different viewpoint on whether TSA employees “like” their jobs, suggest you read:
http://www.caseyresearch.com/articles/ascendence-sociopaths-us-governance
but only when you haven’t eaten in several hours and have the stomach to do so. 😦
Second suggestion. Interview Bill Forster of http://www.homelandsecuritytheater.com . An hour with him standing on a street corner last Thanksgiving morning outside LAX holding up protest signs was eye opening, he told me EXACTLY what you have proven with your trip through the scanners and also described how to hide plastic explosives. One of the events triggering his decision to quit – besides being nauseated over the stupidity and inhumanity of it all – when they went for scanner training, he was “punished” for refusing to be the guinea pig that all the others practiced scanning.