Speaker 1: I'm Manny, I'm Noah, and this is Devin and this
Speaker 1: is no such thing. The show where we settle our
Speaker 1: dumb arguments and yours by actually doing the research. On
Speaker 1: today's episode, we figure out what is actually going on
Speaker 1: with the TSA.
Speaker 2: I think the TSA's blanket response is always either we're
Speaker 2: following the procedure exactly or we're preventing the next nine
Speaker 2: to eleven.
Speaker 3: So just deal with it.
Speaker 4: There's no no such thing, no such thing such.
Speaker 1: So we're all about to take our first trip together
Speaker 1: to an undisclosed location.
Speaker 4: First trip, Yeah, first flight. We've never been on a trip.
Speaker 1: We're all three of us.
Speaker 4: WHOA, I don't know.
Speaker 1: You're right, done like day trips, but we haven't done
Speaker 1: New Jersey overnight these New Jersey out.
Speaker 4: Of state actually to that's actually shocking.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so this is gonna be well. By time this
Speaker 1: comes out, we would have been on this trip. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true. So you know, got me thinking about the TSA,
Speaker 1: which got me thinking about this is a core memory.
Speaker 1: It was twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen, it just come out
Speaker 1: that you could look at all your Google data and
Speaker 1: see like all the information that Google had about you.
Speaker 4: Oh my god. So we were all.
Speaker 1: Looking to say, like, all right, how old is Google think?
Speaker 1: I am all that sort of stuff. And then we
Speaker 1: also realized that you can get your voice recordings if
Speaker 1: you have like a Google Home. So none of us
Speaker 1: had a Google Home except Manny at the time, That's right,
Speaker 1: So we were curious what was on Manny's Google Home
Speaker 1: home recordings, which.
Speaker 4: Is an immediate violation of privacy. But continue, we all.
Speaker 1: Gathered around your computer. You were about to go on
Speaker 1: a trip, yeah, and you had asked the Google Home
Speaker 1: maybe a dozen times, can I bring X on a plane?
Speaker 4: I remember this instance because I think I was literally packing,
Speaker 4: and as I was packing, I just kept saying, you know,
Speaker 4: I would pick something up and be like, hey Google,
Speaker 4: and I take this, Well, SA, let me bring this.
Speaker 4: And so when we when we looked at the the
Speaker 4: like the saved responses, it was just like twelve in
Speaker 4: a row, like back to back to back. Can I
Speaker 4: bring like a razor? Can I bring my portable battery?
Speaker 4: But I will say I had a great reason to
Speaker 4: keep asking those questions because I still to this day
Speaker 4: don't know what I can bring and what I can't bring.
Speaker 1: You know what That's what I was going to say.
Speaker 1: You know, we're a little bit older now near you know,
Speaker 1: nearly ten years later, like to apologize. I think we
Speaker 1: were clowning you at the time. But Manny is not uniqueness. Now.
Speaker 1: Every time I travel, I don't you know, I'm not
Speaker 1: asking my goal a home, but I do. And you
Speaker 1: sit and think, like, wait, how you know how much
Speaker 1: liquid am I allowed to bring? Do I actually have
Speaker 1: to put them in a plastic bag? You know, I
Speaker 1: travel a few times a year. I'm not like someone
Speaker 1: who's traveling like every other week. But I travel, I
Speaker 1: guess not often enough to have to have that moment
Speaker 1: where I have to stop and think about what I
Speaker 1: can bring. Same here, this group is not alone and
Speaker 1: being confused by the TSA rules. It is the sort
Speaker 1: of thing that every time I think, okay, there's going
Speaker 1: to be the time I get it right, and every
Speaker 1: time I'm more and more confused. Every time I go.
Speaker 1: The signs are different than what the TSA agents are
Speaker 1: telling me to do. Yep, And half the things I'm like,
Speaker 1: do I actually have to do that? Like now I
Speaker 1: don't actually put my liquids in a large classic bag.
Speaker 4: Don't do that?
Speaker 1: Anymore.
Speaker 4: I mean, the laptop is another one. Like, I'm flying
Speaker 4: way more often this year than I usually am, and
Speaker 4: so I'm starting to track this stuff anecdotally. But I
Speaker 4: was on my way from Atlanta to New York and
Speaker 4: the sign says take your laptop out or any device
Speaker 4: that's bigger than your phone. So I start to do that,
Speaker 4: and then the TSA agent says, stop, you don't have
Speaker 4: to take your laptop out. He's like yelling at me.
Speaker 1: Are you why it's confusing?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 4: And I guess in my head, I'm like, Okay, maybe
Speaker 4: there are some shifts where they can be more lax,
Speaker 4: but why don't you just say, hey, you don't have
Speaker 4: to take it out? Why are you screaming at it?
Speaker 5: Well, that's it's frustrating. All due respect to though hard
Speaker 5: work is a TSA, but it's like, I don't live
Speaker 5: I don't live here. I'm not here every day like you,
Speaker 5: So why should I be expected to understand this, especially
Speaker 5: when signage and history has told me to do this?
Speaker 5: It doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 4: I have respect because they see a billion people every day,
Speaker 4: But what I don't have respect for is that I, like,
Speaker 4: I can't expect what to do. Now, if the rule
Speaker 4: was the same every time and I was still fucking
Speaker 4: up every that's on, you go off on me. I
Speaker 4: deserve it, you know, lock him up. But if it
Speaker 4: says take your laptop out and I'm trying to do
Speaker 4: it and you're yelling at me, where do we go
Speaker 4: from here?
Speaker 1: Shoes crazy? I mean is that the rules are different.
Speaker 1: They don't match the signs, they don't match what you
Speaker 1: look up online, and it's not even the same, like
Speaker 1: you know, it's not even like every time I go
Speaker 1: to JFK, it's it's like, okay, this part of JFK
Speaker 1: is different than this part of JFK. So it's like,
Speaker 1: all right, it's confusing. So what I get? If you're
Speaker 1: gonna tell me something different, sure I could follow that.
Speaker 1: You just don't have to yell at me like I'm
Speaker 1: a fucking idiot because the thing right here is telling
Speaker 1: me to do something different and what you're telling me.
Speaker 4: And God forbid, if you point that out like I have,
Speaker 4: I'll be like, I'm like, oh, that's interesting because look
Speaker 4: at the sign that's literally right behind you. And then
Speaker 4: they'll just get even more pissed.
Speaker 1: So this creator redecues did this TikTok. It's almost three
Speaker 1: years old now, but I think it perfectly captures sort
Speaker 1: of what we're talking about, taking laptops and electronics out
Speaker 1: the bag.
Speaker 4: If you gotta hold it, you want to take it all,
Speaker 4: take it all of traumatized. Listening to this feels like
Speaker 4: like drill sergeants.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, And there's like a level of anxiety that
Speaker 1: like going through security, I just have at all times.
Speaker 1: And I'm someone who's very fucking good at following directions. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, like I am one of those okay that
Speaker 1: says that I'm ready. I got my ship ready to go.
Speaker 1: My shoes are a little bit slipped off.
Speaker 4: Like oh yeah, I read in shoes that are easy
Speaker 4: to take off. I don't even wear a belt to
Speaker 4: the airport. Got my laptop separate from others, make it
Speaker 4: easy to come out. And now you know, we're younger too, exactly,
Speaker 4: We're not young, but we're younger. And like sometimes I'll
Speaker 4: go through the line and see old people getting screamed,
Speaker 4: yelled at, no fucking mercy.
Speaker 1: Granny is getting like, like you fucking idiot, granny, figure
Speaker 1: it out. You know, I guess she doesn't have to
Speaker 1: take our shoes off. Oh then they yell at granny
Speaker 1: because she's old, so she doesn't have to take our
Speaker 1: shoes off. She doesn't know that. Yeah, and it's just.
Speaker 4: Like meanwhile, planes weren't even around when this woman was war.
Speaker 4: She's learning with the rest of the world.
Speaker 1: Her last flight was with the right brothers. This is
Speaker 1: Amelia Earhart, and y'all are screaming at her. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is it seems like there there could be a
Speaker 1: better way to do this.
Speaker 5: I mean, I'm curious, like how TSA does decide if
Speaker 5: it does decide the differences between airports. Is it domestic
Speaker 5: for international? Is their system in place.
Speaker 1: Airport at the airport? Yea, Well I'm curious, like we
Speaker 1: haven't even touched on this yet, but we go through
Speaker 1: all this bullshit. Does this actually even work? Why can't
Speaker 1: I bring a water bottle on a plane? Like come on,
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, I know one guy tried to do
Speaker 1: one water one time, but it's water.
Speaker 5: The universal solvent, and I can't carry it.
Speaker 1: You can bring water everywhere else.
Speaker 4: Now, you know. I'm okay if they ban dasani, my
Speaker 4: regular water bottle should be fine.
Speaker 1: No, alright, so we'll get some answers to some of
Speaker 1: those questions. After the break, and I chat with a
Speaker 1: reporter who tells me the darkest you say story I
Speaker 1: have ever heard. All Right, we're back. This is no
Speaker 1: such thing. Have you been? So you're in Texas?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 3: I am in Texas, Dallas.
Speaker 1: So I appreciate you taking the time to hop on.
Speaker 1: Can I just have you introduce yourselves name and sort
Speaker 1: of what you do.
Speaker 3: Sure.
Speaker 2: My name is Darryl Campbell. I'm an aviation safety writer
Speaker 2: for the tech website The Verge, and I've also got
Speaker 2: a book coming out. It's called Fatal Abstraction, Why the
Speaker 2: Managerial Class Loses Control of Software.
Speaker 1: So a few years ago there I wrote this deep
Speaker 1: dive for The Verge called The Humiliating History of the TSA.
Speaker 1: I loved your article. I thought it was like so
Speaker 1: much of the writing around TSA I feel like sort
Speaker 1: of really walks around the fact that, like it's such
Speaker 1: a bizarre experience.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I really did want to capture the weirdness of it.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think the key to it was that first anecdote.
Speaker 2: So this person, her name is Jay Cooper. She's a
Speaker 2: former ts SO who used to work at LaGuardia, and
Speaker 2: the story she told me was, in a lot of
Speaker 2: ways the perfect encapsulation of just how strange and bizarre
Speaker 2: the TSA experience can be. So she was working at
Speaker 2: her checkpoint she noticed someone was crying in the line,
Speaker 2: and it's an airport that happens. But when the person
Speaker 2: came through to her station, so she was the document
Speaker 2: checker at the front of the line, someone was pushing
Speaker 2: someone in a wheelchair and the person in the wheelchair
Speaker 2: was supposed to hand over their ticket and she wasn't
Speaker 2: really being responsive, so Jay asked her, Hey, can I
Speaker 2: have your documents? Can you stand up to do the
Speaker 2: security check? The person pushing her was crying and she said,
Speaker 2: but she can't. She can't because it turns out the
Speaker 2: person in the wheelchair was dead. What happened was they
Speaker 2: had checked in a couple hours before, and it was
Speaker 2: an international flight, so they were just being safe, and
Speaker 2: the person in the wheelchair had died at some point
Speaker 2: between check in and the time that they were going
Speaker 2: through security. The problem is, once you've checked in, you
Speaker 2: are entitled to go through security unless a doctor pronounces
Speaker 2: you dead, and so at that point, airport rules being
Speaker 2: what they are. There wasn't a doctor on station, so
Speaker 2: they had to let the person through security. So Jay
Speaker 2: asked her, Okay, well, here's what we have to do.
Speaker 2: We actually have to take them physically out of the wheelchair,
Speaker 2: do a pat down on them in a private room,
Speaker 2: you know, put on the gloves. But they treated her
Speaker 2: as if she was just another person going through security,
Speaker 2: even though.
Speaker 3: They were a corpse at that point.
Speaker 2: It really is just kind of an example of how
Speaker 2: the TSA has to do its job without question, no
Speaker 2: matter what, even if the person isn't alive.
Speaker 4: Was it clear to TSA that the person passed away?
Speaker 1: They knew, they all knew, everyone knew, everyone knew the
Speaker 1: person was dead.
Speaker 5: There just wasn't a doctor to officially say that.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 1: Wow, but it, you know, it sort of points to
Speaker 1: this thing of like the TSA has their rules, yeah,
Speaker 1: and everyone has to go through security even if you
Speaker 1: are dead.
Speaker 4: That is the darkest ts Yeah, it's pretty you know,
Speaker 4: you're right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I'm going to take a step back, and
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people take for granted that
Speaker 1: the TSA is just, you know, the way we do
Speaker 1: airport security. But that hasn't always been the case, So
Speaker 1: can you tell us a bit about how and why
Speaker 1: the TSA was formed.
Speaker 2: So I'm old enough to remember a time before TSA.
Speaker 2: My parents used to work for the airlines, so I
Speaker 2: remember being little and actually being able to go up
Speaker 2: to the gate when my dad had a flight and
Speaker 2: meet him right at the gate side. After nine to eleven.
Speaker 2: The TSA was formed first as part of the Department
Speaker 2: of Transportation and then was kind of moved over to
Speaker 2: the Department of Homeland Security once that was formed. But
Speaker 2: it was really a response specifically to the nine to
Speaker 2: eleven attacks and kind of an overreaction in my view
Speaker 2: of what you really need to do to sort of
Speaker 2: stop the next nine to eleven, which is the TSA's
Speaker 2: primary goal.
Speaker 7: Today, we take permanent and aggressive steps to improve the
Speaker 7: security of our airways, and a new team of federal
Speaker 7: security managers, supervisor, law enforcement officers, and screeners. We'll ensure
Speaker 7: all passengers and carry on bags are inspected thoroughly and effectively.
Speaker 1: The new security force.
Speaker 7: Will be well trained, made up of US citizens, and
Speaker 7: if any of its members do not perform, the new
Speaker 7: Undersecretary will have full authority to discipline or remove them.
Speaker 2: Before nine to eleven, though airport security was relatively uninvasive.
Speaker 2: You had your metal detectors, you had just private security
Speaker 2: guards at the checkpoints, just saying okay, if you've got
Speaker 2: a gun or if you've got a big knife, then
Speaker 2: you obviously can't take that. But otherwise you didn't need
Speaker 2: a ticket to pass through security. And that was because
Speaker 2: what we think of as hijacking today was actually very
Speaker 2: different in kind of the nineteen fifties, nineteen sixties, nineteen seventies,
Speaker 2: where people were hijacking airplanes, not to use them the
Speaker 2: as suicide weapons, but really as political statements.
Speaker 1: Between nineteen sixty eight in nineteen seventy two, there were
Speaker 1: over one hundred and thirty American planes that were hijacked,
Speaker 1: with most of those hijackers wanting to go to Cuba.
Speaker 6: There was a man up in the cockpit with a
Speaker 6: gun that we were going to Havana, that there was
Speaker 6: nothing to panic about.
Speaker 7: Messengers calm during most of it.
Speaker 8: They were come.
Speaker 3: Most of them were totally come.
Speaker 1: During most of this.
Speaker 3: They were very nice.
Speaker 1: We had a nice dinner over there in the airport,
Speaker 1: a couple of drinks, all on the house. It's hard
Speaker 1: to complain of Potte where you're frightened at any point. Oh,
Speaker 1: I don't think anybody was.
Speaker 4: You find out you're on a hijacksplane, You're like, oh,
Speaker 4: gotta get a different city.
Speaker 1: Now, let it killed me. And then you know, getting
Speaker 1: to the seventies, it got a lot out of hand.
Speaker 1: And then Nixon came through and I was like, all right,
Speaker 1: like we need to have a little bit more security.
Speaker 2: And so that's where installed the private security guards and
Speaker 2: the metal detectors.
Speaker 6: President nexton there is an out several steps designed to
Speaker 6: counter hijacking. The White House Anti hijacking plan is in
Speaker 6: three parts. Starting tomorrow, armed guards will ride shotgun on
Speaker 6: some domestic and international flights, Electronic surveillance at the airports
Speaker 6: will be increased, and pressures will be brought on the
Speaker 6: international community to ostracize those countries that do not punish
Speaker 6: their hijackers.
Speaker 1: So, in this security system that you're talking about, pre
Speaker 1: TSA really primarily just looking for weapons or is that
Speaker 1: like the primary you know, now we're talking about liquids
Speaker 1: and taking off our shoes and all.
Speaker 2: These Yeah, yeah, it's gotten crazy, but no, it was
Speaker 2: two main things that they were looking out for. Number
Speaker 2: one was bombs that could harm an airplane, so like
Speaker 2: the lockerbie terrorist example, that happens in check baggage, So
Speaker 2: that's something outside of the airport security that we see
Speaker 2: every day. And then just individual armed hijackers who could
Speaker 2: pose the threats. But looking for individual being the operative
Speaker 2: thing like individual small groups, not you know, five or
Speaker 2: six people at a time with box cutters. So it
Speaker 2: was very specific to the threat that they saw it
Speaker 2: in sort of the sixties and seventies.
Speaker 4: Good Morning America may never be the same. And this
Speaker 4: is why a beautiful Tuesday turned tragic when American Airlines
Speaker 4: Flight eleven crashed into the North Tower of the World
Speaker 4: Trade Center. And that was just the beginning.
Speaker 2: The nine to eleven attacks are almost like the trojan Horse.
Speaker 2: It's so successful but also so infamous that it's never
Speaker 2: going to work again. And if you think about the
Speaker 2: things that are preventing the next nine to eleven quote unquote,
Speaker 2: there's really three things. Number one, reinforced cockpit doors. You
Speaker 2: can't just walk your way up into a cockpit anymore.
Speaker 2: You have to have the pilot's key you in, and
Speaker 2: there's a whole system in place. The second isilot training.
Speaker 2: Previous forms of hijacking were really just about making a
Speaker 2: political statement, So pilots were trained to obey and basically
Speaker 2: do whatever the hijackers wanted. That doesn't happen anymore, and
Speaker 2: pilots are trained to get the airplane on the ground
Speaker 2: as quickly as possible and let law enforcement take over.
Speaker 2: And really the third thing is passengers are aware of
Speaker 2: the threat now. And we've seen this in the case
Speaker 2: of the shoe bomber, the underwear bomber, and I'm sure
Speaker 2: you've seen all the videos. Are just people acting weird
Speaker 2: on airplanes now and passengers are really on top of them,
Speaker 2: restraining them and so on. So I think the whole
Speaker 2: idea that the TSA was designed to respond to nine
Speaker 2: to eleven is almost outdated from the moment that it
Speaker 2: was created. Now there's obviously a kind of public relations
Speaker 2: aspect to it, too, and that the government needed to
Speaker 2: seem like it was doing something to respond. And the
Speaker 2: best way to get people to give them credit, if
Speaker 2: you like, is to invent a new security apparatus, invent
Speaker 2: a new processes that touches everybody that wants to fly,
Speaker 2: so that it looks like people are doing things, even
Speaker 2: if what they're actually doing is not so effective. There's
Speaker 2: a term that someone coined. It's called security theater. It's,
Speaker 2: you know, the whole big show about it, even if
Speaker 2: there's no kind of metrics that you can track. And
Speaker 2: actually that's part of the problem is that there's really
Speaker 2: no transparency around how TSA is effective. If you go
Speaker 2: to the FBI or if you go to the Department
Speaker 2: of Transportation and say, okay, how do you measure if
Speaker 2: what you're doing is successful? Then they've got a list
Speaker 2: of on time departures, arrests, whatever, whatever. For the TSA.
Speaker 2: It's like, well, we haven't had another nine to eleven,
Speaker 2: But how much of that is really because of the TSA.
Speaker 1: Darryl told me, when you go through a security checkpoint,
Speaker 1: they're eight tasks the TSO might be performing.
Speaker 2: It's a very regimented process, and in part it's because
Speaker 2: when you first become a transportation security officer, that's what
Speaker 2: you're doing. So there's the ticket checking where you hand
Speaker 2: your ticket to get scanned. There's the security they call
Speaker 2: it divestiture, which is a fancy way of saying take
Speaker 2: off your shoes, in your jacket and put it in
Speaker 2: the bin. There's the person at the actual scanner, there's
Speaker 2: the person who's operating the personal scanner, the baggage scanner,
Speaker 2: and there's a bunch of different ones as supervisor. So
Speaker 2: it's really kind of like you're Catholics, like the Stations
Speaker 2: of the Cross. You kind of move around to each
Speaker 2: individual one throughout your shifts, but you're supposed to be
Speaker 2: trained on all of them, and each one has like
Speaker 2: five hours of training for every station, so it's not
Speaker 2: just a question of people yelling ask you to say,
Speaker 2: take your shoes off, but they are actual steps that
Speaker 2: they're supposed to follow.
Speaker 4: Real quick. He uh, he mentioned the stations of the Cross.
Speaker 4: Do you guys know what that is? That's such an
Speaker 4: obscure Catholic reference that now you break this, it's just
Speaker 4: it's like, uh, it's in every Catholic church you have
Speaker 4: like the Stations of the Cross around the room. It's
Speaker 4: like the twelve or fourteen like little steps that Jesus
Speaker 4: took on his way to get crucified. So it's like, Okay,
Speaker 4: it makes number three, he kissed this woman on the cheek.
Speaker 4: Number four, he fell down number five. It's like, but
Speaker 4: I just thought that was so funny that I don't
Speaker 4: think that people.
Speaker 5: Next time you watch Passion of the Christ, you know,
Speaker 5: I'm sure you will be on Easter.
Speaker 1: Keep that in mind.
Speaker 5: It's like he's like going through tsa think.
Speaker 1: About what he did. And you also talk about like
Speaker 1: the compliance factor of it, right of like constantly monitoring
Speaker 1: these employees to making sure that you're saying they're following
Speaker 1: the exact steps that they're taught, and how that bruise
Speaker 1: a lot of anxiety within the workers, and then you
Speaker 1: know with the travelers as well.
Speaker 2: Speaks yeah today, Yeah, it's I call it a complain
Speaker 2: clients fetish. But you remember this whole thing a couple
Speaker 2: of weeks ago about Doge firing a bunch of probationary workers.
Speaker 2: So every time new TSO is hired, they're a probationary
Speaker 2: worker for two years, which means they can get fired
Speaker 2: for any reason. They don't need cause they don't need
Speaker 2: to write up. I mean, if they just don't like
Speaker 2: the look of you, if you get crossways with the supervisor,
Speaker 2: you can get fired. So there's this huge fear and
Speaker 2: anxiety about I don't want to mess up. I don't
Speaker 2: even want to be perceived to mess up, which probably
Speaker 2: makes them well, which does make them in my interviews anyway,
Speaker 2: really just focused on going as much by the book
Speaker 2: or getting on the good side of their supervisor as possible.
Speaker 2: So that's one part of it, and then the second
Speaker 2: part of it is there's a lot of ways to
Speaker 2: screw up and only one way to be right. But
Speaker 2: there's also a lack of standardization of processes, of equipment,
Speaker 2: even of personnel training, which makes it difficult for the
Speaker 2: average flyer to know is this the airport where I
Speaker 2: take off my shoes and I put my jacket in,
Speaker 2: or is this the one where I keep my laptop in.
Speaker 2: There's no incentive for them to make it more traveler friendly.
Speaker 2: There's a huge disincentive to make a mistake, and so
Speaker 2: you're always going to get it to the point where
Speaker 2: they're just like making it worse for the traveler because
Speaker 2: that's how they keep their jobs, and so they're kind
Speaker 2: of in an impossible position.
Speaker 1: But you see, like there's just a ton of incentive
Speaker 1: for them to just, yeah, do what's right, right. There's
Speaker 1: not a lot of flexibility. Yeah, even though it's confusing
Speaker 1: to us, to them and they're like, let me just
Speaker 1: say and do what I need to to make sure
Speaker 1: my supervisor and yell at me or I don't get
Speaker 1: in trouble.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it makes sense. Like they're obviously, at the end
Speaker 5: of the day, just trying to do their job, and
Speaker 5: obviously airport's going to be a super regimented sort of thing.
Speaker 5: It's not like, yeah, it's not like a little mom
Speaker 5: and pop.
Speaker 1: The operation where yeah, it's like all right, this guy's good,
Speaker 1: Like yeah, let them bring about it. What's the big deal?
Speaker 5: And obviously makes sense, especially with the security element, like
Speaker 5: they're going to be uptight in that way, and like
Speaker 5: they just want to keep their job exactly.
Speaker 1: So Dara told me a story too that really exemplifies
Speaker 1: it's like how strict they are.
Speaker 2: There is one story where a guy confronted someone who's
Speaker 2: trying to smuggle a bag of cocaine through there, and
Speaker 2: in order to try and get rid of the evidence,
Speaker 2: this guy through the bag of cocaine in the TSO's face.
Speaker 2: But the problem is if that guy gets picked for
Speaker 2: a tok screen that same day and he has residual
Speaker 2: cocaine in a system, he gets fired on the spot
Speaker 2: and there's no appeal, there's no nothing, it's just like, Okay,
Speaker 2: you fail the test, you're fired, And that's the kind
Speaker 2: of environment that they have to deal.
Speaker 1: With, you know. I think this anxiety plays a big
Speaker 1: part obviously in the fear they're going to get fired,
Speaker 1: but they're also just like not paid, well, they're wanting
Speaker 1: they'll always paid.
Speaker 2: Federal workers TSO's start at a lower pay scale than
Speaker 2: anybody else in the government. They start at something like
Speaker 2: thirty five thousand dollars a year, and then after their
Speaker 2: probationary period they can get up to forty two thousand,
Speaker 2: whereas most other government jobs start at that forty two
Speaker 2: thousand stage and then they work their way up.
Speaker 1: So, like, what is the turnover rate for TSA agents?
Speaker 2: It's incredibly high. So for every four officers that it hires,
Speaker 2: three of them are just backfills. So they're basically hiring
Speaker 2: a twenty five percent faster than they can retain people.
Speaker 2: And of those people who eventually do get hired, about
Speaker 2: twenty percent of them quit in six months. So it's
Speaker 2: just a massive turnover. And I think that's part of
Speaker 2: the problem around lack of standardization and just how confusing
Speaker 2: it is because a lot of these people are relatively
Speaker 2: new to the.
Speaker 4: Job thirty k years insane for this sense why they're
Speaker 4: screaming at meals?
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, you know.
Speaker 1: You're getting McDonald's energy because that's the you know, that's
Speaker 1: that's the pay that they're getting.
Speaker 4: Yeah, fun, and you don't even get McDonald's.
Speaker 5: No, at least get happy meals.
Speaker 1: So you know, we've been I think a little sympathetic
Speaker 1: to the officers so far. But TSA is often accused
Speaker 1: of profiling and discrimination. Don't support that. I'll be the
Speaker 1: first to say it. Let it be known that the
Speaker 1: white man on the podcast was the first to stand
Speaker 1: up and say discrimination.
Speaker 5: Wait, god, you guys to say something like that.
Speaker 4: We really needed to hear this. No, I've seen it before.
Speaker 4: My dad gets crazy searches. Yeah, just for being an older,
Speaker 4: vaguely middle Eastern looking guy. He's always getting taken to
Speaker 4: some room. You see him like fifteen minutes later.
Speaker 1: You also spent a lot of time talking to passengers, right,
Speaker 1: and a lot of them have alleged profiling and discrimination.
Speaker 1: Obviously TSAA denies these claims, But can you just walk
Speaker 1: us through some of the reporting you did and some
Speaker 1: of the stories that you heard from passengers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think the TSA's blanket response is always either
Speaker 2: we're following the procedure exactly or we're preventing the next
Speaker 2: nine to eleven, So just deal with it. And it's
Speaker 2: been consistent in the twenty twenty three years that they've
Speaker 2: been around. But we know that the TSA gets hundreds
Speaker 2: of complaints every month for things as varied as civil
Speaker 2: rights complaints to violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Speaker 2: And that's probably a small sliver of it, because it's
Speaker 2: actually very difficult to make a complaint to the TSA.
Speaker 2: So a couple of people that I profiled in my article,
Speaker 2: there is one person named Katie Abdu who when she
Speaker 2: was fourteen, she was pulled off an airplane and she
Speaker 2: was traveling by herself, so she didn't really understand what
Speaker 2: was going on. But she's of partial Arab descent, and
Speaker 2: some random security guy takes her off the airplane, submits
Speaker 2: her to a search, and then she tries to understand
Speaker 2: exactly what's going on, and as soon as she asks
Speaker 2: the question, this guy starts patting her down and putting
Speaker 2: his hand up up her skirt and all of these
Speaker 2: things that really would make anyone uncomfortable let alone a
Speaker 2: fourteen year old woman traveling alone.
Speaker 1: And then you also had the game developer Ronnie Ismail.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Rommy me is half Egyptian, half Dutch. He's from
Speaker 2: the Netherlands. He says he has seven Islamic names. And
Speaker 2: it's not just that he gets stopped, but the way
Speaker 2: in which he gets stopped. For example, he was saying
Speaker 2: that he gets pulled aside at the gate to do
Speaker 2: a security check, not in a private room like you
Speaker 2: might be able to do at a security checkpoint, but
Speaker 2: just at that like the little plastic folding table by
Speaker 2: the gate, he gets padded down in full view of everyone.
Speaker 2: And it is almost this humiliation ritual that he has
Speaker 2: to endure. It's not because he's done anything wrong. It's
Speaker 2: really just, oh, there's a guy who looks like the
Speaker 2: people that everybody says are terrorists, so thank goodness, they're
Speaker 2: patting him down.
Speaker 4: At the gate at the game. It's humiliating.
Speaker 1: I just don't understand why you would need to check
Speaker 1: someone after they went through security.
Speaker 3: That's more.
Speaker 4: That seems like more of the theater of it.
Speaker 1: The security.
Speaker 4: Yeah, definitely, they're putting on a little show for people.
Speaker 4: That's nuts.
Speaker 1: So even if you're not harassed by TSA, going to
Speaker 1: airport security sucks. So I wanted to know is this
Speaker 1: even worth it? You know, like, how effective aready actually?
Speaker 2: So if you ask the TSA directly, they will always
Speaker 2: just point to one thing, which is that we haven't
Speaker 2: had another nine to eleven. There's no other real good
Speaker 2: measure that they say exists to do that. But I
Speaker 2: don't think that's true. And in fact, there are security
Speaker 2: researchers whose livelihood this is who also think that that's
Speaker 2: not true. So going back to actuarial science, there's a
Speaker 2: measure that governments use all the time to say is
Speaker 2: this cost effective?
Speaker 3: Is this worth doing?
Speaker 2: It's called the cost per life saved metric, and it
Speaker 2: essentially says, here's the amount of money that society has
Speaker 2: to put in to create an intervention, and here's how
Speaker 2: much it costs to actually save a life. So a
Speaker 2: couple examples here enforcing mandatory seat belt laws. It's really cheap.
Speaker 2: It's about one hundred and forty dollars per life save.
Speaker 2: Paying for someone to have an impatient visit to a hospital,
Speaker 2: even if they're not insured, it's about a million dollars
Speaker 2: per intervention. But the government's threshold is around ten million
Speaker 2: dollars per life saved, so that's kind of the metric
Speaker 2: that they're they're sort of curving around. For the TSA,
Speaker 2: the most generous estimate is that it costs about fifteen
Speaker 2: million dollars per life saved. And that makes two really
Speaker 2: big assumptions. Number one that the TSA is solely responsible
Speaker 2: for stopping every terrorist attack against the air transport system,
Speaker 2: and number two that there's a nine to eleven style
Speaker 2: attack planned about once a decade.
Speaker 1: And unsurprisingly, the price goes way up once you remove
Speaker 1: those assumptions.
Speaker 2: The cost per life saved really gets north of about
Speaker 2: five hundred million dollars, which is, you know, fifty times
Speaker 2: what the government's normal limit is. So I think that's
Speaker 2: really that's probably closer to the ballpark of how effective
Speaker 2: really is.
Speaker 1: So back to the question we started with, right, I
Speaker 1: know we've touched on it here and there throughout the interview,
Speaker 1: but I want to know why are the TSA rules
Speaker 1: so confusing?
Speaker 3: So there's three reasons.
Speaker 2: The first one is just operationally, the TSA has to
Speaker 2: deal with a huge amount of turnover. Their training takes
Speaker 2: a long time, and you know, they're getting people who
Speaker 2: are looking at the TSA as a stepping stone for
Speaker 2: another law enforcement career, so not a lot of reason
Speaker 2: for them to stick around. So the people in the
Speaker 2: front line aren't super motivated to kind of be correct
Speaker 2: versus pleasing their boss, and the procedures themselves are always
Speaker 2: in flux, so I think that's number one. Number two
Speaker 2: is equipment, so not every airport has the same equipment.
Speaker 2: Your big ones like DFW, like JFK are always going
Speaker 2: to have more of the top of the line stuff.
Speaker 2: Some smaller ones, like if you ever fly out of
Speaker 2: I don't know, Lubbuck or South Bend or whatever, they
Speaker 2: may not have the fancy body scanner, so you may
Speaker 2: have to go through an old school metal detector where
Speaker 2: they have specific processes. So that's number two. And then
Speaker 2: number three is there are actually some airports where they've
Speaker 2: subcontracted it out to private security and so they have
Speaker 2: their own types of requirements. They have to be TSA compliant,
Speaker 2: but there's a lot of leeway and what exactly that
Speaker 2: means as long as they hit some basic stuff. San
Speaker 2: Francisco being the main example of that.
Speaker 1: And you're reporting, did TSA give you any reasoning on
Speaker 1: why they don't just like make it clear even when
Speaker 1: you're like on the line for it, right, I get
Speaker 1: not knowing ahead of time, right, Like my experience has
Speaker 1: been even when you're at the airport, the signage is
Speaker 1: telling you different things than the TSA agents are telling you.
Speaker 1: Or I've even had instances where two different TSA agents
Speaker 1: in the same line are telling me conflicting information, where
Speaker 1: one is saying take your hoodie off, I'm going to
Speaker 1: take my hoodie off, and the other one is yelling
Speaker 1: at me for taking off my hoodie, where it's like.
Speaker 4: What am I?
Speaker 8: Like?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it feels like how do I win my mind? Exactly?
Speaker 1: Because every time I go I'm like, this is going
Speaker 1: to be the time that I do everything right, Right,
Speaker 1: I'm going to be You're going to get your gold
Speaker 1: star exactly. But every single time I'm like this feels
Speaker 1: like they're just making it up as it goes along, right.
Speaker 1: There's no consistency to it, and there's no messaging. I
Speaker 1: get like you're saying, sometimes there's different machines, right, But
Speaker 1: I'm just sort of like, why it would it not
Speaker 1: be better for the TSA for people to know what
Speaker 1: to do like, you know, even if the rules were
Speaker 1: the same everywhere, Like people kind of suck at following directions,
Speaker 1: especially adults, like don't isn't it more annoying for them
Speaker 1: that we don't know what we're supposed to be doing
Speaker 1: when we go to the lines.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's no good answer, first of all, but I
Speaker 2: think there's two reasons why. The first one is the
Speaker 2: TSA just doesn't have any incentive to make the passenger
Speaker 2: experience better their KPIs or things like, you know, when
Speaker 2: they have someone coming through to test the quality of
Speaker 2: the security systems, like percent of fake gun smuggled through,
Speaker 2: which by the way, is still also unacceptably high. It's
Speaker 2: like ninety percent of them get through, but that's what
Speaker 2: they actually get measured on.
Speaker 1: So I looked into this, and after that reporting of
Speaker 1: ninety five percent of weapons getting through on these tests,
Speaker 1: a few years later, TSA made some huge improvements, uh,
Speaker 1: and only seventy percent of the weapons were able to
Speaker 1: get through with these tests.
Speaker 2: There's no incentive for them to make people five percent
Speaker 2: happier just because they don't care. And the second thing
Speaker 2: is there's no pressure from Congress or any elected official
Speaker 2: to do it because you don't want to be the
Speaker 2: guy who voted to defund the TSA and then there's
Speaker 2: a terrorist attack and you're the guy who you know
Speaker 2: voted to do it and you're out of there.
Speaker 4: Basically, the way to fix the TSAs by introducing tip culture.
Speaker 4: They were working for tips. Things might be a lot
Speaker 4: nicer in there.
Speaker 1: It is like the.
Speaker 5: Most power you have is like when you go through
Speaker 5: and then there's a little smiley faces at the end,
Speaker 5: but how do we do today? And you can press
Speaker 5: that and that probably doesn't even do anything out it's
Speaker 5: probably it's not.
Speaker 1: Even on It's just like it's like what you hand
Speaker 1: the controller to a kid and it's not plus.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly, it's not saving anything.
Speaker 5: Yeah, all those points make sense, like on the politics
Speaker 5: side of it, where like, yeah, you wouldn't want to
Speaker 5: be the guy who's like campaigning on defunding TSA or
Speaker 5: fixing it and then you know, however many people die
Speaker 5: because of something, Yeah, and yeah it makes sense like
Speaker 5: ultimately it is just an inconvenience more than anything else.
Speaker 5: And it's like, yeah, it sucks, we'll complain about on
Speaker 5: this podcast, but we're all gonna we're not gonna not
Speaker 5: fly because of it, you know, yeah, just sad, sad sucks.
Speaker 1: So actually just this week through Republican senators Okay Center
Speaker 1: and Mike lay In Center, Tommy Tupper Base, Mike Lee. Yeah,
Speaker 1: sounds like they have introduced the bill to abolish the
Speaker 1: TSA okay and have airports just go back to the
Speaker 1: private security apparatus that happened before not eleve And you know,
Speaker 1: it's only two centers sign on to it right now,
Speaker 1: so I don't know how much momentum it has.
Speaker 5: Interesting, but being.
Speaker 1: More realistic, I wanted to ask there are like do
Speaker 1: your reporting have you talked to people who have just
Speaker 1: like ideas on how to make if not TSA version
Speaker 1: of airport security better?
Speaker 8: Is there?
Speaker 1: You know, do people have like better ideas of how
Speaker 1: we should be doing this.
Speaker 2: There's kind of two schools of thought. I think there's
Speaker 2: the fairness objection and then there's the effectiveness objection. So
Speaker 2: the fairness objection would be to remove all of the
Speaker 2: things that unfairly burdened people who you know aren't your
Speaker 2: standard rich business traveler. On the other side, there's the
Speaker 2: efficiency argument, and you can actually see this in practice
Speaker 2: in places like Europe, Canada, where they don't have TSA
Speaker 2: type regimes, but their record of anti terrorism is pretty
Speaker 2: much the same. You can do things like replacing these
Speaker 2: expensive and unreliable machines. You can replace them with things
Speaker 2: like dog sniffers where you can walk them up and
Speaker 2: down the way they'll sniff for explosives. It's less intrusive. Obviously,
Speaker 2: it doesn't you know, reward your big defense contractor donors,
Speaker 2: but it's more efficient. You can remove some of these
Speaker 2: absurd pat downs and security checks, keep the things that
Speaker 2: are actually keeping us safe, like the explosive scanners in
Speaker 2: check baggage, but don't go through all of this rigormarole
Speaker 2: at the security line because we just know that a
Speaker 2: lot of it's for show. But again, who's going to
Speaker 2: have the electoral capital to really be able to do that,
Speaker 2: especially if you know you've got all these people who
Speaker 2: are just waiting to pounce on the minor security labs.
Speaker 1: So after hearing all this, do you all feel better
Speaker 1: or worse about TSA? And I'll start by saying I
Speaker 1: feel more forgiving of the agents in the attitudes because
Speaker 1: they're not paid any money. Yep, they're like shit, So
Speaker 1: therefore they are treating me like, shit, so you know what,
Speaker 1: maybe I just got to take more for the team.
Speaker 1: Let it go. Yeah yeah, but it just seems like
Speaker 1: it's just so dumb to me. And this is like
Speaker 1: so many things in this country that we are spending
Speaker 1: so much money on the thing that we know is
Speaker 1: not effective, but no one wants to do anything about.
Speaker 4: It because there's always a what if? Yeah, what if
Speaker 4: you stop and then you.
Speaker 1: Know, but if yeah, but if there's another nine to
Speaker 1: eleven because they didn't take our water bottles.
Speaker 4: It makes me think about what am I actually worried
Speaker 4: about on a flight as security wise? It's a bomb?
Speaker 4: So like if I go to the airport and a
Speaker 4: dog comes up and smells me for two seconds, knows
Speaker 4: I don't.
Speaker 3: Have a bomb.
Speaker 4: You know, I'm pretty happy. I'm pretty comfortable knowing, you know,
Speaker 4: bring whatever the hell you want on the plane. If
Speaker 4: it's not a bomb, I think we're going to be fine.
Speaker 1: Like the liquid stuff that takes off the shoes.
Speaker 5: The liquid stuff we need to get rid of that. Yeah,
Speaker 5: I think I think a politician can.
Speaker 1: Bravely Yeah, let's do one thing.
Speaker 5: Like, yeah, let's focus in that we should all be
Speaker 5: able to do. I should take any size shampoo on there,
Speaker 5: no problem. Yep.
Speaker 1: Can you imagine how different out lives would be? Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can just spring any It's crazy.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Every time I go somewhere, I go to Walgreens
Speaker 4: and I get the little fucking travel kid.
Speaker 1: And it costs the same as the big.
Speaker 5: Sunscreen things like.
Speaker 4: It's like because they know it's for convenience.
Speaker 1: All right, that's our show this week. I was really
Speaker 1: hoping by the time this came out that we would
Speaker 1: hear from TSA, but they said they were not interested
Speaker 1: in talking to us. If you want to figure out
Speaker 1: a sneakyway to get around TSA, Darryl gave me some
Speaker 1: insight during our interview that I'm going to include in
Speaker 1: our newsletter. So if you want to hear the answers
Speaker 1: to that, go to No Such Thing that show. We'll
Speaker 1: also link to it in our show notes. No Such
Speaker 1: Things produced by Manny Fidel Nor Friedman and me Devin Joseph.
Speaker 1: The theme song is by Many. Original music for this
Speaker 1: episode provided by Zeno Piorelli. Darryl Campbell was our guest.
Speaker 1: His new book, Fatal Abstraction, is out now. If you
Speaker 1: like No Such Thing, please rate us five stars. It
Speaker 1: really does help share it on social tag us. We're
Speaker 1: trying to get the word out, working hard on this.
Speaker 1: As always, if you guys have a question you want
Speaker 1: us to get to the bottom of, or if you
Speaker 1: just got feedback for us, hit us up at Manny
Speaker 1: Noah Devin at gmail dot com. We do read every
Speaker 1: single email, uh and we'll see you guys next week.
Speaker 8: To what if We the Linux are s the elements cast,
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