The subcommittee, which is under the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and is scheduled to hold a hearing today on TSA oversight, totaled the breaches after reviewing Department of Homeland Security documents on travel starting two months after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks. “

Source: 25,000 TSA Security Breaches Since 2001: Government Report – ABC News

With the busiest holiday travel season nearing, fliers face long security lines and new rigorous patdown checks begun in recent weeks aimed at discovering hidden explosives. As a result, some travelers are questioning whether to fly at all.

The Transportation Security Administration has ramped up airport security after two plots by al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. A Nigerian man hid a bomb in his underwear last Christmas and the group tried to send package bombs via U.S. cargo carriers but none of the explosives detonated.”

(Source: Pilots and passengers rail at new airport patdowns | Reuters)

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?

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(Daniel Rubin: Another case of TSA overkill | Philadelphia Inquirer | 02/15/2010)

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 watch list database has expanded 32% since 2007, to more than 1 million entries. The cleared list has grown because about 99% of the fliers seeking to be removed from the watch list were never on it, according to the Department of Homeland Security, which runs the TSA. (USA Today)

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 as part of aviation security enhancements the 9/11 Commission recommended. The information provided at the time seats are booked must exactly match the data on each traveler’s ID.

The new program, called Secure Flight, shifts responsibility for checking passenger names against “watch lists” from the airlines to the Transportation Security Administration. Only passengers who are cleared to fly by the TSA will be given boarding passes. (Chicago Tribune)

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 the country any time soon.

“There are no plans for reducing our staff,” said Sari Koshetz, a spokeswoman in the Miami office of the Transportation Security Administration, a division of the Department of Homeland Security.

Koshetz said TSA employs about 50,000 — including about 45,000 officers — with responsibilities that range from patrol and control over transportation access to training programs and grant supervision. (USA Today)

“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 Administration Kip Hawley told reporters Friday.” (Washington Post)

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 Homeland Security Transportation Subcommittee Tuesday.” (GovExec)