Airport security

National Opt-Out Day a dud

Air Travel, Security, , , ,

Sea-Tac security line

I spent Wednesday hanging around Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SEA) wandering from one security checkpoint to another in case there was any interesting mass opt-out action I could report on for a story being put together by msnbc.com.

But, as you can tell from the headline of the story – Planned airport protests fail to take off – there was no mass opt-out action.

In fact, on what is traditionally one of the busiest travel days of the year, Sea-Tac, like a lot of other airports around the country, was remarkably empty.  According to a police officer riding by on a Segway, the biggest problem at the airport was the 40-minute line at the Starbucks outlet just beyond security.

The checkpoint  lines I was monitoring were so empty that the TSA employees on duty had plenty of time to be jolly. They were showering travelers with courtesy (“Step right up. We’ve been waiting for you. What a nice jacket!”) and waving at folks passing by.

Even the planned opt-out demonstration was a fizzle. Less than a half dozen people showed up to hand out pamphlets (“What the Transportation Security Administration isn’t telling you…”) and there were few takers.

Opt-out a fizzle

Of course, not everyone flies somewhere for Thanksgiving. A lot of folks stay home and plenty of people take to the roads.

If you do drive somewhere this weekend, here’s a handy map with information about the state-by-state distracted driving laws.  The map was put together by the folks at iZUP using information published by the Governors Highway Safety Administration.

Tales of the TSA: Pistole apologizes, screeners scorned

Air Travel, Airports, Complaints, , , , ,

First, an update on a story I wrote about here on Saturday: Pat-down leaves bladder cancer survivor covered in urine.

A few days ago I chatted with and wrote a story about Tom Sawyer, a retired special education teach and bladder cancer survivor from Michigan who ended up humiliated and covered in urine after a botched enhanced pat-down at Detroit Metropolitan Airport.

You can read the full story here, but here’s the update:

Today Sawyer got a call phone call from Transportation Security Administration chief John Pistole. “First he apologized,” Sawyer told me. “And I thanked him. Then I told him off a bit. He said, ‘Tell me more. What do you think needs to be done?’ ”

Sawyer suggested that TSA screeners undergo training to help them better understand travelers with medical conditions. He even offered to attend a meeting to show the staff what an ostomy bag looks like. “Pistole said he just may take me up on that.”

That’s an encouraging sign. And even some of the Transportation Security Officers I spoke with today while putting together a story for msnbc.com about the stresses of being a TSA worker said they thought Pistole did the right thing.

Here’s that story: TSA workers face verbal abuse from travelers.

Airline passengers aren’t the only ones complaining about the Transportation Security Administration’s new enhanced security procedures. Many TSA employees aren’t too happy, either.

The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the union that represents TSA workers, is urging the TSA to do more to protect its employees from abuse from airline passengers angry over the new security methods. The union reports that some members “have reported instances in which passengers have become angry, belligerent and even physical with TSOs (transportation security officers). In Indianapolis, for example, a TSO was punched by a passenger who didn’t like the new screening process,” the union said in a Nov. 17 statement posted on its website.

Union President John Gage called on TSA to provide an educational pamphlet to each passenger describing both their rights and the details of the new procedures, which include full-body scans and enhanced pat-downs.

“This absence of information has resulted in a backlash against the character and professionalism of TSOs,” said Gage in a statement. “TSA must act now — before the Thanksgiving rush — to ensure that TSOs are not being left to fend for themselves.”

“Our concern is that the public not confuse the people implementing the policies with the people who developed the policies,” said Sharon Pinnock, the union’s director of membership and organization.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Monday the government will take into account the public’s concerns and complaints as it evaluates airport security measures. He says TSA procedures will continue to evolve.

Some travelers have vowed to disrupt airport security Wednesday in a protest timed for the busiest travel day of the year, as millions of Americans fly off for annual family feasts.

“TSOs are trained security professionals,” Pinnock said. “Despite this call for chaos and disruption, it’s our belief that our members and people we represent will respond as the security professionals that they are.”

Valyria Lewis, local president of AFGE Local 555, which represents TSA screeners in Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina, said TSOs are trained to screen passengers who opt out of full-body scans.

“But we’d like TSA to hand out pamphlets detailing what opt out means. When someone opts out of the X-ray scanners, they’re opting in for the pat-down,” Lewis said. “And once we explain what the pat-down is, you can’t go back and change your mind and say ‘OK, I’ll go through the scanner.’ We’d like that explained so officers aren’t caught in that crossfire.”

The National Treasury Employees Union, the largest independent federal union, has launched a campaign in support of the TSA to educate the public about the critical role played by TSA officers in helping secure the safety of air travel.

“We stand by them this holiday season and ask the American public to stand by them as well and respect the difficult job they perform to protect our skies and our country,” said NTEU President Colleen M. Kelley in a statement.

Complaints of verbal abuse


Full-body scanners are now in place at close to 70 airports and send virtually naked images of passengers to a TSA screener at a remote location. Those who wish to avoid the scanners must instead undergo a new, open-palmed pat-down that many travelers, and even some security officers, feel is too personally invasive.

TSA chief John Pistole said Monday on NBC’s TODAY show that the agency is reviewing its passenger screening methods to ensure they are as minimally invasive as possible. “We’re going to look at how can we do the most effective screening in the least invasive way knowing that there’s always a trade-off between security and privacy,” Pistole said.

Pistole noted that those getting body searches constitute “a very small percent” of the 34 million people who have flown since the new policy went into effect.

“Obviously our work force has received the brunt of the frustration from passengers but seem to be dealing with it quite well, as they have been reassured they are doing a critical job at a critical time,” said TSA spokesman Nico Melendez.

“The thing to keep in mind is that stress affects screeners as much as it does travelers,” said Tom Murphy, director of the Human Resiliency Institute at Fordham University. Murphy has provided customer-service training to screeners at many U.S. airports. “While senior government officials explore how to achieve optimum security in less intrusive, and therefore less stressful, ways my recommendation to travelers is to try to see this from the screeners’ point of view.”

A stressful job

Guy Winch, an expert on the psychology of complaining and customer service and the author of a forthcoming book, “The Squeaky Wheel,” is concerned with the stress levels TSA employees may be experiencing this week on the job.

He explains that the “emotional labor” TSA workers must do — “processing people regardless of hostile exchanges … and looking for explosives and weapons” — makes the stakes for performing their duties correctly “as high as they get.” Winch says the best thing TSA administrators can do for employees doing enhanced pat-downs is to provide an extra layer of managerial and supervisory support. “They need to convey the message that superiors are aware of the stresses the employees are under and are there to support them.”

Winch says having a mental health professional on staff or available as a referral “can be crucial in helping the people who did not make these rules but are charged with enforcing and implementing them nonetheless.”

Stewart Baker, who worked at the Department of Homeland Security as its first secretary of policy under President George W. Bush, suspects the new security protocols and the aggressive reaction of some passengers is hurting TSA morale.

“TSA has made a lot of progress in training its officers to be professional even in the face of unhappy passengers, but the latest protocols — and press coverage of the most inflammatory stories — have led to a much higher level of hostility,” said Baker.

“Instead of making this Wednesday National Opt-Out Day in which a bunch of self-appointed guardians of liberty slow down the line for everyone by asking for pat-downs,” said Baker, “maybe what we need is a day when everyone who goes through the line says, ‘Thanks for what you do.’ ”

TSA BACKSCATTER

Have a comment or a story to share about your ecurity checkpoint experience? Please leave your comments below.

And if you have

Airport pat-downs, body-scanners, x-rays and you

Air Travel, Airports, Security, Terrorism, , , ,

TSA BACKSCATTER

There’s been a flurry of news – some real, some fussed-up – about concerns and confrontations about body-scanners and enhanced pat-downs at airports.

Need to catch up?

This Reuters article explains the concerns pilots have about stepped up screening at U.S. airports.

On his NPR blog, Shots, Richard Knox does a great job of laying out the difference between, and the debate about, the safety of the new scanners.

The TSA blog posted video – and the original radio interview – concerning a young woman who claims she was cuffed to a chair at the Fort Lauderdale International Airport.

This fellow caused a hubbub at San Diego International Airport by refusing the pat-down after deciding to opt-out of the scanning machine.

And there’s a group trying to organize Opt Out Day at airports nationwide on November 24, 2010.

Study up. Things are just going to get curiouser from here…

Paperless boarding passes: benefit or bother?

Air Travel, Airline policies, Airports, Cell Phones, Rules, Safety, Security, , , ,

We’ve all become accustomed to checking in for our flights on-line and printing out our boarding passes at home or at an airport kiosk on our way to the security checkpoint.

Now the TSA is working with five airlines and 70 airports to test paperless boarding passes.

Here’s how it works: When a traveler checks in on-line the airline emails a boarding pass in the form of a 2-D barcode that can be downloaded to a smartphone. The barcode on the phone can be scanned at the security checkpoint and by the airline gate agent; just like a paper pass.

It’s sound great, doesn’t it?

. But as I wrote in my most recent msnbc.com column – Going paperless: Tech-savvy air travelers on board – it’s probably not a good idea to disconnect your printer just yet. Electronic passes aren’t accepted everywhere. And they’re not fool-proof. “One of the first times I used one, my phone browser refreshed and I lost the boarding pass 30 seconds before boarding,” recalls Walter Hopgood, a frequent business traveler from Damascus, Oregon.

Path to paperless

Some airlines in Europe, Canada and Asia have been using paperless boarding passes since early 2007, but the United States has been behind the curve on adopting the new technology.

Why?

“We were slower to get Internet access on cell phones, slower to get affordable data plans on cell phones and slower than Europeans to start using cell phones for accessing data,” said Henry Harteveldt, a travel industry analyst for Forrester Research.  But it’s also because the TSA has been very cautious, says Catherine Mayer, vice president of airport services at SITA, an information technology company serving the aviation industry. “The agency had additional security requirements it wanted airlines to meet before it would allow paperless boarding to be introduced here.”

Continental, the first airline to work up software to meet TSA’s authentication standards, kicked off the TSA’s pilot program for paperless boarding in December, 2007. Now the test program includes five U.S. airlines (Alaska, American, Continental, Delta and United), 71 domestic airports and Frankfurt Airport in Germany.

“Airlines are able to streamline the airport experience for passengers,” said Justin Taubman, the program manager for TSA’s mobile boarding pass program. “And the TSA is able to enhance the security of the boarding passes.”

Good to go?

While electronic boarding passes do save paper and time while heightening the TSA’s ability to detect fraudulent boarding passes, the pilot program is not glitch-free.

Some passengers encounter scanners with spent batteries or security-checkpoint staffers untrained or uninterested in the mobile pass pilot program.  When Justin Meyer of Kansas City showed up at 5 a.m. at a Fort Lauderdale, Fla., security checkpoint armed with his electronic boarding pass, a TSA employee pressed him for paper. “I didn’t have it,” Meyer recalled, “so I had to wait about 10 minutes while they found the scanner and plugged it in.”

Other travelers have stored a paperless pass on a smartphone that has lost its charge. Or they’ve sailed through the TSA checkpoint paper-free, only to discover that an airline is using a gate without a scanner. Or they’ve discovered some airlines only deliver one paperless pass per smartphone — and that won’t work if you’re traveling with a family of four.

“Like any new technology or service, there needs to be a transition period when everyone is learning the way to proceed,” said Steve Lott of International Air Transport Association, an industry trade group.  And so for now, notes Shashank Nigam of the airline consulting firm, Simpliflying, “Paperless boarding may very well remain an early adopter thing until all airlines and airports fall in line.”

That may not be too far off. TSA’s Justin Taubman says the agency is currently working with vendors to develop equipment for a new boarding pass scanning system. “Once the new Credential Authenticating Boarding Pass Scanning System, or CAT/BPSS, is in place,” he said, “the pilot project will become an official TSA program.”

And we’ll have to learn a new acronym.

You can read my original column – Going paperless: Tech-savvy air travelers on board – and see some reader comments – on msnbc.com.

Chocolate balls on the “No Fly” list. Really??

Air Travel, Airports, Celebrities, Entertainment, Food, Fun Stuff, Profiling, Security, , , ,

In the spirit of Snack Saturday, here are two short videos that feature Lindt chocolate, tennis star Roger Federer and a pair of  take charge TSA officers who get exactly what they want. Be sure to watch the longer, behind the scenes version as well.

Here’s the “making of” version. Officers claim chocolate balls are on the “No Fly” list.

Airport body scanners: invading your personal space & the terminal space

Architecture, Security, Terrorism, ,

I spent much of the day yesterday writing a column for MSNBC.com about the pros and cons of airport body scanners.

That column, which posts Thursday, January 14th, 2010, focuses on some of the privacy issues surrounding the “virtual strip search” aspect of these machines.

I didn’t have room for in the story for the comments of airport terminal planner and designer, Pat Askew, from Perkins+Will.

We don’t think of it right away, but Askew points out that these big, expensive body scanner machines will not only change the TSA procedures, but also have an impact on the look and layout of present – and future – airport terminals.

Askew says:

  • Body scanning machines take more space, especially width-wise, than do the current magnetometers (or walk-through metal detectors).  It’s already hard to find space in existing terminals for all the necessary equipment they needs to be there;
  • Processing rates are greater with body scanners than with metal detectors. This means longer lines, more machines – and more required space;
  • Explosive detection devices for carry-ons will soon be required. This equipment will be smaller, but similar to the technology currently used for checked luggage. It will replace the current x-ray machines used to examine carry-ons and operate in much the same way, but may be larger and slower….and need more space.

So next time you’re Stuck at the Airport, take a good look around. That great piece of public art in the terminal may soon need to make way for a hulking piece of security equipment.