TSA Petition Update

The letter to be sent to the TSA administrator and the Chairman of the House Committee on Transportation Security can be read at the petition web page https://www.change.org/p/peter-neffenger-bring-efficiency-to-the-tsa We have still been unable to obtain an email address for Administrator Neffenger but are making efforts through our Congressional Constituent Service office to obtain it. Signatories to the petition are triggering the letter (re-posted below) to be emailed immediately to the Chairman of the House Committee on Transportation Security, Rep John Katko (R) - NY. Thank you for your support of efficient government. Steve Fowler Letter to your government officials Bring Efficiency to the TSA. The tax money expended and inconvenience imposed on the American traveling public by TSA does not meet any "means" or "logic" test. It is time that realistic measures replace the "knee jerk" policies and procedures imposed after 911. Specific examples of "gross" waste of time and money are: 1. Using TSA agents to stand among passengers waiting in line barking orders for those passengers to remove items from their pockets. Since many of those same passengers don't speak English, signage would be more effective and cheaper. In any event, a highly paid, entitled government employee should not be barking orders to passengers. 2. TSA agents are used to collect item bins from one end of the line and physically move them to the other end of the line. Other countries have, for years, used a simple passive conveyor to do this task. 3. TSA agents who check boarding card vs ID documents are a waste of time and produce one of the worst uses of manpower which creates the first useless bottle neck in the screening process. Any college student knows that for a small sum, you can have a convincing ID made to show you are anyone and of proper age. Only the most stupid persons with nefarious intent would allow their plan to be foiled by failing to have ID that matched a boarding card. 4. Now in light of the Brussels and Istanbul bombings, we see that screening checkpoints and the tightly congregated persons waiting in line are ideal places for the commission of a criminal act. 5. Finally, how many billions of dollars have been spent confiscating water and expensive cosmetics? If there is a threat, does TSA check the contents of these confiscated items? If not, does it not set up the scenario that someone with nefarious intent tries to smuggle prohibited items on an airplane until he finds a checkpoint that over looks those items? You have a fiduciary responsibility to us and to your own family to use American money wisely and to place the least inconvenience on American air passengers. Persons with the minimum of common sense can survey a typical airport TSA screening area and find numerous, gross misappropriations of money and needless inconveniences. It is time to use means-tested principles to provide security rather than try to impress the traveling public with insulting "eye wash". As our economic and sovereign debt conditions continue to deteriorate, Americans are going to be less and less tolerant of disastrous policies that only make things worse. That impatience will begin to show itself at the polls. Political parties and individual politicians and appointees will begin to see support drying up. Do something pro-active and honest. Call clearly useless expenditures and policies what they are - "useless" and make intelligent changes that give Americans what is effective and boldly remove those procedures that are clearly not. Sincerely, Your Name