“Just when I thought I was out of the Transportation Security Administration business for a few columns, they pull me back in.
Did you hear about the Camden cop whose disabled son wasn’t allowed to pass through airport security unless he took off his leg braces?
“
(Daniel Rubin: Another case of TSA overkill | Philadelphia Inquirer | [...]
As fears about swine flu spread, the airline industry is bracing for the worst, worried that travelers will cancel their plans to fly to or from not only Mexico, but also almost anywhere else in the world. (NY Times)
A government list of “cleared” fliers, developed to cut airport hassles for people whose names are confused with suspects on the terrorist watch list, has grown to 80,000 names, records show.
The additions to the Transportation Security Administration’s “cleared list” reflect an influx of requests from people asking to be removed from the watch list. The [...]
You may have been patted down at airports or suffered the indignity of having your dirty laundry from a vacation searched at screening checkpoints. Now prepare yourself for security to get a little more personal.
Passengers making airline reservations soon will be required to provide their birth date and their sex in addition to their names [...]
Fewer domestic passengers left the nation’s airports through the first seven months of 2008, with fewer flights filling the friendly skies.
But while a bleak economic outlook may not perk up those numbers in the short term, the federal guardian of the gates says it has no intentions of trimming its workforce in this region of [...]
Air travelers who can prove they don’t belong on terrorist watch lists could be spared extra scrutiny under a new program that addresses the public’s biggest complaint about aviation safety, the nation’s Homeland Security chief said. (USA Today)
“Airport screeners are about to get new security training designed to help them think creatively about possible threats _ including those they have never thought of.
“We have to prepare for attacks that don’t fit our procedures,” such as the traveler who stuffed a block of cheese wrapped in wire into a checked bag, Transportation Security [...]
“The Homeland Security Department plans to begin a controversial airline passenger screening program as early as January — as long as it can win over skeptical lawmakers.
The department’s Transportation Security Administration plans to take over the responsibility for screening passengers against government terrorist watch lists beginning in 2009, TSA Administrator Kip Hawley told the House [...]
“Equipment in two trailers sniffed out nuclear materials today on cars and trucks boarding the Bolivar Ferry in the first field test of the device in a maritime setting, a Homeland Security official said.
The transportable radiation monitoring system, or TRMS, began screening cars entering the ferry from Galveston Island for the first full-day of an [...]
“Last week, in one of the most damaging reports on the TSA to date, ABC News revealed that in the program’s first year under TSA control, there were “some 8,000 foreign students in the FAA database who got their pilot licenses without ever being approved by the TSA.”
“Thousands of aliens, some of whom may very [...]