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?
I am just glad I have no reason to fly anywhere anymore. I haven’t traveled more than a couple of hundred miles away from home in years.
That’s one big list! Whoever invested in hard-drive makers is laughing all the way to the bank on this one!
That guy is Hispanic looking, someone should report him immediately! Call the mayor of Arizona quickly and get some type of law issue!
Oh good, another database. Eventually all law-abiding Americans will be on all the government watch lists.
Anyone not on a watch list must be a terrorist.
Glad I have no reason to fly. If you got undereducated police academy dropouts stealing your toiletries, it might give anyone a reason to get angry.
For confused foreigners, “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”, are not normal behaviour in American airports.
Gov Deval Patrick, aka Obama 1.0, said Republican opposition to Obama is ‘almost at the level of sedition.’
Makes you wonder when the shit is going to hit the fan doesn’t it. All we need is a false flag op to set it off.
Just get the name of any TSA agent you don’t like, and then write a polite, but firm, letter to his boss (head of TSA) and CC your federal representaves is appropriate.
If 10% of the traveling public did this every day, the bad TSA actors would be afraid for their jobs!!!!!!
I wish #9 were right, but I can’t say this comes as a shock. The TSA and the bag of civil rights violations keep me out of the airports.
I’m sure I’m on their shit list database if they started it three years ago.
I once inadvertently passed a concealed 4oz bottle of moisturizer (go ahead with the jokes) and had no less than 5 TSA people make a big stink about it.
When I pointed out it was half empty they had a fucking cow. They demanded my ID to enter into ‘a book’ and did the ‘extra checking’.
From now on, I just give them a nice smile and say nothing like you would with a crazy person on the street.
Awful system we have in place. We need an Israeli style process and send these goons back to being Walmart greeters.
#9, report them as bad employees? hell i’d report them as a potential terrorist. ya know this list thing can work both ways!!!
Reporting bad TSA agents will put the fear of God in them. Take back the power…
I’m really confused. Didn’t someone come up with the idea to make it impossible to access the cockpit during flight decades ago? If that had been implemented, 9-11 would’ve been averted. Why hasn’t anyone pushed for this now? It would solve half the problem. Of course, those on the plane would still be subject to a terrorist attack. Why not allow stewards/stewardesses to get trained with plane-safe weaponry? I’m sure they’d do a better job than the air marshals – they are actually employed in a real job…and we could skip all this airport tyranny.
Just because the TSA has never gotten past just putting names on the no fly list so they can’t even tell a kid in a diaper from a 40 year old why would somebody think this list would be abused?
This is the same data base that “E-Harmony” uses to make matches. Wall Punchers matched with submissives and so forth.
For every Jerk, there is a jerkette.
Love is beautiful, it really is!
Bloody hell!! I get less hassle flying into and out of Manchester Intl than I do in the US at Atlanta and Memphis. Of course in Memphis I’m just glad I don’t get shot…….
You know, the Nazi SS and Gestapo used to love to keep Dossier on all the people they felt threatened by.
Some things just never change.
What this list is really a reflection of is the TSA agent. A TSA agent that “feels” more often threatened (adds more names to the list then other) should really be re-evaluated if they are a fit for the job!
Well, I am about to join the UK’s equivelant of the TSA, so I am intrigued to see how things compare to the stories that I hear from the USA.
Here’s hoping that things aren’t as unreasonable as that!
It does start getting worrying when you start thinking of all of the lists your details can be kept on.
“keep records of people who make its screeners feel threatened ” – Hey, who is felt threatened??? TSA scares the bejezes of most, screaming and demanding with guns on their hips, uniforms and shields. The mastering techniques are all over. Been to LAX int’l Tom Bradley terminal lately…??? Welcome to the home of the brave and the free. It is disgusting!
BTW – same at Heathrow, London, The Netherlands (Schiphol is a real shit hole!), Oslo, Norway… Everyone is mimicking US Homeland Security and TSA. It is a unpleasant to move around by commercial airlines.
I lean towards Adam’s rant about the ‘high speed rail’ initiative. And, trust me – works brilliantly here in Taiwan. But we are 23 million on the a 1/4 size of California, straigh Nort-South… well, another issue. BTW, making money on this monopoly is not possible.. 🙂
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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