Fasten Your Seatbelts
TSA lets loose with blog permitting passenger gripes
- By Megan Weadock
- May 01, 2008
Everyone’s been there: the maddening
situation that is modern airport
security. The inconveniences—
and absurdities—that travelers face
just to get through that checkpoint line
seem to increase each year. But now,
seven years after Sept. 11, 2001, forever
changed the flying process, the
Transportation Security Administration is
letting travelers vent their frustrations
like never before.
The Evolution of Security blog, written
by a group of TSA’s own employees,
went live in January as a forum for fliers
to rant about and question the group’s airport
security restrictions and requirements.
The Web site, www.tsa.gov/blog,
carries an ominous slogan that encourages
passengers to become active participants
in the security process: “Terrorists
evolve. Threats evolve. Security must
stay ahead. You play a part.”
Just Asking For It
Within the first 24 hours of the blog’s
existence, more than 700 people posted
comments. Kip Hawley, TSA administrator,
got the ball rolling with a welcome
message to readers.
“There isn’t much opportunity for our
security officers to explain the ‘why’ of
what we ask you to do at the checkpoint,
just the ‘what’ needs to be done to clear
security,” he said. “The result is that the
feedback and venting ends up circulating
among passengers with no real opportunity
for us to learn from you or vice
versa. ... The opportunity is that we will
incorporate what we learn in this forum
in our checkpoint process evolution. We
will not only give you straight answers to
your questions, but we will challenge you
with new ideas and involve you in
upcoming changes.”
Hawley’s hope that the blog will
change people’s perceptions of TSA
is obvious.
“One of my major goals of 2008 is to
get TSA and passengers back on the same
side, working together,” he said. “We
need your help to get the checkpoint to be
a better environment for us to do our
security job and for you to get through
quickly and onto your flight.”
A Hot Topic
Among the site’s five main bloggers are
Bob, a behavior detection officer and
songwriter who has worked with TSA for
five years; Jay, a federal security director
who used to coach high school football;
and Ethel, an enthusiastic TSA employee
who apparently loves ice cream—a lot.
The blog team posts new entries every
few days, with topics ranging from fluffy
(e.g., the role specially trained dogs play
in airport security) to downright defensive
(see “Why We Do What We Do:
When Security Officers Find Illegal
Items at the Checkpoint”).
A quick glance at the blog and its writers’
sugary autobiographies may cause a
reader to see the project as little more
than an attempt to steer public opinion of
TSA workers from abysmal to slightly
less than abysmal. However, delve deeper
into its pages. There may be some actual
debate, and action, going on here.
The blog’s Hot Topics sections, which
include “shoes,” “liquids” and “lighters,
nail clippers and lithium batteries,” allow
readers to comment about common
issues with checkpoint security. Sure, the
topic headings sound dry, but the heated
debates they are causing are anything
but. And while many comments are simply
angry, ridiculous or funny—“Ever
since you started X-raying our shoes,
I’ve been forced to carry all my plastic
explosives in my pants, which I find
most inconvenient”—others are sincere
and foster an actual conversation with
TSA’s bloggers.
Not surprisingly, the blog receives its
fair share of unpublishable comments.
Hence the Delete-o-Meter, which, in the
“spirit of transparency,” displays the
number of comments TSA has deleted
each week due to profanity, personal
attacks, threats, sensitive information and
other unpleasantries.
Change You Can See?
OK, maybe TSA launched Evolution of
Security as a way to placate members of
the traveling public who are itching for an
outlet for all that built-up rage caused by
hours spent in checkpoint lines, shuffling
forward in their bare feet while they juggle
their jackets, shoes and unpacked laptops.
But maybe Hawley and his crew
genuinely saw it as a chance to get to the
bottom of some of TSA’s problems and
inconsistencies.
In one case, the blog has already succeeded
at the latter. In the first week of
the Web site, TSA bloggers were bombarded
with complaints about certain
airports that were requiring passengers
to remove all electronics from carry-on
bags, including cell phones, iPods
and even cords. The group discovered
that this requirement was set up by
local TSA offices—and admitted it
“was not part of any grand plan across
the country.”
So, in early February, TSA advised
all airports to allow those smaller electronics
to stay packed, letting the lines
move a little quicker than before. One
TSA blogger, Christopher, saw this as
vindication for the blog and its readers.
“Our hope is that examples like this
validate our forum and show the solid
partnerships we can form with our customers—
the traveling public—in not
only increasing security but in making
all of our lives just a little easier,”
he said.