US Government Abuse of the Citizens...Airport Version

have TSA screeners ever actually prevented a terrorist attack?

It's hard to say. The TSA was unable to provide any comprehensive data covering all nine years of its existence on short notice, but it does publicize incidents on a weekly basis: From Nov. 8 to Nov. 14, for example, agents found six "artfully concealed prohibited items" and 11 firearms at checkpoints, and they arrested six passengers after investigations of suspicious behavior or fraudulent travel documents. (Those figures are close to the weekly average.) It's not clear, however, whether any of these incidents represent attempted acts of terrorism or whether they were honest accidents. (Whoops, forgot I had that meat cleaver on me! Or, I had no idea flares weren't allowed!)

Citing national-security concerns, the TSA will not point to any specific cases in which a screener stopped a would-be terrorist at a checkpoint. Nonaffiliated security experts, such as Bruce Schneier (who coined the term "security theater") argue that that's because this has never happened. It's true the TSA doesn't make a habit of keeping success stories a secret. In April 2008, the TSA touted the arrest of U.S. Army veteran Kevin Brown at Orlando International Airport as a victory for its behavioral detection program. Brown was arrested after trying to check luggage containing pipe-bomb-making materials. Airline officials insisted passengers were never in danger, since Brown didn't intend to assemble the bomb on the plane. Moreover, he did not have ties to organized terrorism, and it's not apparent what he wanted to do with the hazardous materials after arriving at his destination. Brown fits into the category of troublemakers that Schneier says the TSA does catch: random nut jobs. (Not professional terrorists with thought-out plans.)

OK, so he won't tell us what the pat-down entails. But at least we know we can avoid it, right? All we have to do is go through the body scanner. That's what Pistole said on Hardball last week: "If you want to go through the [scanner] or walk-through metal detector and there is no alarms, no alerts, then there's no pat-down."

Except—oops!—apparently that isn't what happened to Sen. Mike Johanns. At last week's hearing, Johanns, a Nebraska Republican, asked Pistole why he'd recently been scanned and patted down at an airport. Pistole assured him: "In almost all instances, you would not be subject to a pat-down. There is a very, very small percentage that is done at random … so it can be unpredictable to the terrorists."

Ah, unpredictability. Go through the scanner, and we won't grope you, unless we will.

We get it, TSA. To keep terrorists uncertain and anxious, you're going to keep the rest of us uncertain and anxious. You're going to touch us in new ways, but you won't tell us where or how. So stop talking about "educating," "communicating," and "partnering" with us. You aren't communicating. You're concealing. You want to surprise us. In return, you can expect us to react the way you'd react to an unexpected groping.

I understand your objectives. You want to be unpredictable. And sometimes, you need to pat people down. But combining these two things, in the form of surprise molestation, is a really bad idea. It's a recipe for trauma and confrontation.

Tell us what you're going to do so we can brace ourselves for it. Or maybe we'll choose not to fly. We can't make an informed decision unless you level with us. You owe us that much. This is America.