Stopping passengers for having an attitude, confiscating snow globes from children, and profiling passengers based on their nationality are some criticisms that are regularly thrown at TSA officers. Turns out, all of them are true.
And yes, they do see travelers naked in the X-ray photos, UK MailOnline reported.
Jason Harrington, former TSA agent-turned-writer, shared details about the ways that the security workers pass the time during their long shifts in a confession piece for Politico.
"I confiscated jars of homemade apple butter on the pretense that they could pose threats to national security. I was even required to confiscate nail clippers from airline pilots-the implied logic being that pilots could use the nail clippers to hijack the very planes they were flying," he wrote.
According to UK MailOnline, while Harrington made coveted rotations at Chicago's O'Hare airport from 2007 through 2013, he also worked inside the secretive Image Operator room. It is here that guards took turns sitting in the windowless room- that also lacked security cameras- viewing the pictures of passengers that the x-ray machines took.
"Many of the images we gawked at were of overweight people, their every fold and dimple on full awful display. Piercings of every kind were visible. Women who'd had mastectomies were easy to discern-their chests showed up on our screens as dull, pixelated regions. Hernias appeared as bulging, blistery growths in the crotch area," he wrote in the Politico article.
He continued, "All the old, crass stereotypes about race and genitalia size thrived on our secure government radio channels."
Since the lack of security cameras kept them from being busted, agents would use it as a secret meeting point for mid-work rendezvous, UK MailOnline reported.
The TSA issued a statement in response to UK MailOnline, saying, "Many of the TSA procedures and policies referenced in this article are no longer in place or are characterized inaccurately."
"Every passenger deserves to be treated with dignity and respect and Transportation Security Administration policy upholds this standard. TSA does not tolerate any form of unethical or unlawful behavior by its employees and takes swift disciplinary action if discovered," the statement said. "Since November 2011, TSA has aggressively implemented risk-based security procedures to move away from a 'one-size-fits-all' approach. TSA has installed Automated Target Recognition software on every Advanced Imaging Technology (AIT) unit in use, eliminating the analyzed images referenced in the article."
It concluded by reporting that the agency "has instituted one-step removal procedures in many cases for employees behaving unethically or unlawfully."
Harrington, who went on to take a graduate course in creative writing after leaving the TSA, even translated the underhanded code-words used by the agents to alert their friends to an attractive passenger approaching the line, UK MailOnline reported.
If an attractive woman is headed towards the agents, Fanny Pack Lane 2 and Alfalfa are used to alert other officers. Depending on the color of her shirt, Code Red and Code Yellow are also used in the same manner.
"While the overly-detailed pictures provided entertainment for the screeners, Harrington writes that the expensive machines did little else," UK MailOnline reported. "Even when a representative from the machine manufacturer came to give the TSA agents a tutorial on the $150,000 machines, he admitted that they barely worked."
"He said we wouldn't be able to distinguish plastic explosives from body fat and that guns were practically invisible if they were turned sideways in a pocket," Harrington wrote.
One of his code words listed on the blog that he started, called Taking Sense Away, to vent about life behind the TSA shield was the "baby-shower-opt-out": when a woman opts out and explains that she is pregnant to the surprise of the friends she is traveling with, who shriek and yell and have an impromptu celebration, UK MailOnline reported.
Talking about the description of the not-so-random security checks of "suspicious" passengers, Harrington also made some serious allegations.
A number of boarding passes have a code- SSSS- printed on them based on the passenger's name, indicating that they are on a watch list or have been flagged up for whatever reason, according to UK MailOnline.
An extra-thorough check can be done for a passenger's nationality. Syria, Algeria, Afghanistan, Cuba, Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, and Sudan are some countries that TSA agents are asked to memorize.
Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, two countries with a history of harboring terrorists are conspicuously absent from the list. The slip was not accidental but political, Harrington said.
Political posturing and possible security threats were not the only reasons that you could be selected for an extra search, however, as he also explained that "retaliatory wait time" was a common practice, as agents regularly made the process more difficult when they simply didn't like your attitude, UK MailOnline reported.
"Pretending that something in your bag or on your full body image needs to be resolved- the punitive possibilities are endless, and there are many tricks in the screener's bag," he wrote.
In 2013, Harrington started voicing concerns about TSA practices when he wrote a letter that was published in the New York Times.
His supervisor had "a chat" with him about it, but didn't fire him, and so he continued to write about his complaints but this time on an anonymous blog, UK MailOnline reported.
He is now working on a book about his time in uniform.
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