TSA poking their noses beyond airports

Uh,oh. The often-controversial Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is looking beyond airports. TSA teams are increasingly conducting searches and screenings at train stations, subways, ferry terminals and other mass transit locations around the country, reports McClatchy-Tribune newspapers.

"We are not the Airport Security Administration," said Ray Dineen, the air marshal in charge of the TSA office in Charlotte. 

The TSA's 25 "viper" teams — for Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response — have run more than 9,300 unannounced checkpoints and other search operations in the last year.

Department of Homeland Security officials have asked Congress for funding to add 12 more teams next year.

According to budget documents from the Tribune, the department spent $110 million in fiscal 2011 for "surface transportation security," including the TSA's viper program. The department is asking for an additional $24 million next year.

That compares with more than $5 billion for aviation security.

The newspaper reports that TSA officials say they have no proof that the roving viper teams have foiled any terrorist plots or thwarted any major threat to public safety.

But they argue that the random nature of the searches and the presence of armed officers serve as a deterrent and bolster public confidence.

Critics say, however, that without a clear threat, the TSA checkpoints are merely political theater. Critics also complain of the ever-bloated bureaucracy at the agency.

"It's a great way to make the public think you are doing something," said Fred H. Cate, a professor at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law, who writes on privacy and security. "It's a little like saying, 'If we start throwing things up in the air, will they hit terrorists?' "

Such criticism is nothing new to the TSA.

“The TSA has been accused (or caught in the act) of everything from stealing to assaulting, irradiating and groping Americans,” writes Independent Traveler, which adds:

“Personally, I have no doubt that the unpredictable mess at the security checkpoints likely discouraged at least a few bad guys (not necessarily ideologically motivated terrorists, but perhaps instead just some very unstable people), but often at the cost of harassing regular folk to an extent that doesn't seem to fit our sense of who we are as Americans.”

A US congressional report released earlier this year on the 10^th anniversary of its creation found many problems, including:

• A bloated bureaucracy with 65,000 workers.
• An ineffective agency with 25,000 security breaches in the last decade.
• A buyer of inadequate technology, including 500 advanced-imaging technology machines that are "easily thwarted."

The agency came under more criticism when three elderly women with medical devices complained that TSA agents had strip-searched them in separate incidents at John F. Kennedy International Airport.

Lenore Zimmerman, 84, said she was ordered to pull down her pants after she refused to pass through a full-body scanner because she was afraid the machine would interfere with her heart defibrillator.

By David Wilkening