Get in line! Keep your hands where I can see ‘em! No talking!
Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission
Airline passengers who get frustrated and kick a wall, throw a suitcase or make a pithy comment to a screener could find themselves in a little-known Homeland Security database.
The Transportation Security Administration says it is keeping records of people who make its screeners feel threatened as part of an effort to prevent workplace violence.
Privacy advocates fear the database could feed government watch lists and subject innocent people to extra airport screening…
A TSA report says the database can include names, birth dates, Social Security numbers, home addresses and phone numbers of people involved in airport incidents, including aggressors, victims and witnesses.
Incidents in the database include threats, bullying or verbal abuse, remarks about death or violence, brandishing a real or fake weapon, intentionally scaring workers or excessive displays of anger such as punching a wall or kicking equipment, the report says…
A TSA document published in February says database information can be given to government agencies and to airports, airlines and rail and bus systems in cases involving their workers or job applicants. “They may be contacted by the TSA if an incident involves their employee,” Lee said.
I guess someone should revise the TSA mission statement to include identifying folks who are disagreeable – or cranky?
How about setting up a publicly accessible, and updatable database of TSA agents (there must be name tags or badge numbers surely) that have made members of the public feel threatened, if threatening behaviour.
How about letting the passengers take ownership of airline security? Passengers stopped Richard Reid, the Panty Bomber, and prevented Flight 93 from hitting its intended target.
Where was the TSA then? They stopped none of those problems. Passengers did it. TSA just frisks granny and steals your toiletries, pocket knives, and knitting needles.
Wouldn’t it be easier to just throw the passenger list in their database and call it a day? Anybody that travels and has to go through a TSA checkpoint is going to be pissy and disagreeable.
OK, so there was a typically half-assed report on this so-called “baby watch list” in USA Today. But where is the source? Where is the actual document describing this list? All of the react stories, like yours, simply refer to a very poorly reported USA Today story.
# 24 gus444,
“OK, so there was a typically half-assed report”
For me and many others, given the Governments lack of public forthcoming or accountability, unnecessary secrecy solely to avoid public accountability, I am inclined to believe the press.
We don’t have a “Government for the people by the people” any more, instead; we have “people for the government by the government” or your name goes on a threat list.
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