Public Matters blog

Yet again the TSA is in trouble with privacy groups. I just read this article from the Boston Herald that the ACLU is upset about an “enhanced” patdown search technique being used by the Transportation Security Administration.
The TSA launched a more aggressive “palms-first, slide-down body search technique.” This procedure replaces the agency’s previous technique [...]

I blogged not long ago about the possible implications for the Transportation Security Administration’s effort to install body scanning technology in airports after the U.S. Marshals admitted to storing more than 35,000 images from such machines in a Florida courthouse.
Nobody is happy about this situation and now Senators from the Homeland Security and Governmental [...]

Today, CNET News reported that despite numerous public declarations that the government does not store or save images from body image technology, approximately 35,000 images have been discovered:
U.S. Marshals Service admitted this week that it had surreptitiously saved tens of thousands of images recorded with a millimeter wave system at the security checkpoint of a [...]

Securing our nation’s mass transit systems seems like a nearly impossible task and there’s certainly no silver bullet for protecting the traveling public. A new report issued by the Government Accountability Office in July found that there are a number of promising explosives detection technologies out there, but also noted there are serious limitations that [...]

I had to laugh when I read this blog post from the Washington Post today. Apparently, the Transportation Security Administration is getting creative in its recruiting efforts and has started advertising jobs on … get this … pizza boxes.
Yep, no kidding.

A TSA spokesperson wouldn’t specify which pizza places deliver the boxes and in [...]

On the day that John Pistole gets sworn in as the head of the Transportation Security Administration, the Government Accountability Office issued a report that the agency may have considerable difficulties meeting the August 2010 deadline for 100 percent cargo screening.
The report cites that shipper participation in the voluntary screening program has been lower [...]

Tomorrow John Pistole will be sworn in by Secretary Napolitano as the administrator of the Transportation Security Administration. The swearing in will take place at Penn Station in New York City during a rail security event. I consider this a rather symbolic gesture of the TSA’s effort to shift some of the attention to protecting [...]

Tomorrow is the first of two Senate confirmation hearings for the third (yes, THIRD) nominee to head the Transportation Security Administration. On June 10, FBI Deputy Director John Pistole is likely to face some of the same scrutiny that his failed predecessors faced and will have to answer the same questions that led to their [...]

A report released by the Transportation Security Administration found that the number of flights forced to land prematurely because of security alerts doubled in the first three months of this year compared with the same period in 2009, according to an article in USA Today.
There were 35 U.S. flights diverted from their destination to a [...]

One of the immediate “knee-jerk” reactions following the Christmas Day bomber attack was to conduct secondary, enhanced screening procedures for all U.S.-bound passengers traveling from 14 “state sponsors of terrorism or other countries of interest,” according to this Jan. 3 article from CNN.
Well, today the Transportation Security Associated changed its tune again and [...]