Discussion on:

The Morning Briefing: Airport security, scanners

Boarding passes: Any child with a copy of a real boarding pass combined with 15 minutes with any publishing package should be able to produce an authentic-looking fake. And they're just figuring this out? This problem was obvious the first time I printed out one of these a decade ago. Until there's some sort of electronic scanning at the checkpoints that's linked with the reservation databases, this will be a problem.

Funding cuts: This is a story from Canada, but I'd expect the same problem to happen in the US. The airlines are really regretting their acquiescence of security to the government.

Minimum Wage screeners: Never been to Hong Kong, so I don't know how smoothly it works there. (Will need to ask my friends that live there) But it's hardly a surprise that low wages mean high turnover.

TSA Union: Tom Daschle's dream being realized. Can't wait until they all decide to strike. Will Obama have the balls that Reagan did in dealing with that?

TSA is nothing but a scam.
1. Almost all TSA employees look dopey. They seem to have failed high school or have never reached that high. They are discourteous, arrogant and outright stupid.
2. The whole exercise is futile. If someone is determined, he/she will get into the "secured" area of the airport. Recent incidents of the pilot trying to take off in a plane ending up destroying that plane,and the guy who got lost in New York while in the river ended up in the secured area of the airport just by climbing the river bank.
3. This whole thing appears as a "job creation'. These people have absolutely no common sense -- seen the incidents of women with Chemotherapy or feeding tubes being "groped" and asked to undress!

...if the entire point of the TSA was never really airport security at all, but to beat down the citizens of this country so that they'll eventually accept and take for granted literally any level of personal invasion, no matter how absurd or pointless.

That, and to create another 20,000 government-union jobs.

the idea of groping or even touching/feeling the clothes on private persons, as if they were cattle or property to be inspected is a great moral evil. It is un unholy and unclean practice inviting unwanted looks, touching, etc. Even the forcing people to remove shoes is an evil, because socks are underwear and shoes are clothes, and asking anyone to remove a piece of clothing that exposes their underwear or flesh is wrong in many ways. It is also unclean to allow oneself to be publicly humiliated (remove clothing) when one has done nothing unlawful. The day I am ordered by one of the TSA goons to the side for the government-paid molestation and pervert-petting session will be the day I just say no. There are rental cars, busses, etc. It's against my beliefs to be touched by strangers or to remove clothes in public places.