TSA blog contributors influence policy

February 8, 2008

The TSA recently (a week or so ago) put up a blog soliciting input on its operations. Within hours, there were hundreds of posts, mostly accusing the agency of either being incompetent or malicious, or of using the blog as a PR smokescreen. While all may be true accusations, the TSA responded today that they’ve made a change to policy based on feedback from blog contributors. Apparently the recent policy requirement to remove *all* electronics (mp3 players, cables, etc.) from carry-on baggage during screening is not official policy. The TSA has stated this procedure is being eliminated, and that it was just some field offices which created the procedure more or less on their own.

Expectedly this caused a number of replies along the lines of “don’t you know what’s going on in the field?” I had this reaction myself, and I just experienced this requirement to remove all electronics from carry-on luggage. This was in San Francisco just last week. Having flown through there in December, and not having to remove gear then, I figured this was a new procedure. I don’t necessarily *mind* the request - well, yes I do, but I’d rather not have the procedures at all - but *not* having any sort of written and posted guidelines about these changes was what really bugged me. Now I find out it wasn’t official policy. However, what *is* official policy is that you have to comply with all TSA officials’ demands, so in some sense it doesn’t really matter what the head office says - if random TSA employee #49152 in Dallas demands that everyone empty their bags, there better be empty bags or else.

I’d like to see a couple of changes to how the TSA handles its interactions with passengers:

• Uniform posted signs indicating what’s expected of passengers. The signs should be clearly visible and standard at all TSA posts. The signs should also have the TSA’s blog address to remind the TSA workers that passengers can report violations immediately.
• A web-based customer feedback system, like a software bug tracker. Let all issues be visible and searchable by the public, filterable by location. The TSA should use this as another measure of the efficiency of the TSA employees in the field. While I applaud the blog effort, it’s not a standard uniform way of collecting and tracking information about complaints/experiences.

What do you think?

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Posted in Blogging, Ideas, Travel