Why is the TSA unable to get employees to enforce simple rules consistently?

By ANN Associate Editor Juan Jimenez

On my way back home after S-N-F 2004 ended, I experienced a situation at Orlando International Airport that made me realize, with utter clarity, why it is that terrorists will once again find a way to attack us deep inside our borders. It is not a question of "if," but rather a question of "when." When it happens, we will only have ourselves to blame for it.

In the past few months I have travelled nationally and internationally -- Texas, Wisconsin, Florida, California, Puerto Rico, Canada, Holland, Switzerland... The one common denominator in all the trips was the presence of TSA employees.

During every one of those trips I carried a little plastic case. Inside the case was one of my most trusted companions: six different screwdriver tips and a two-inch extension one quarter inch in diameter. This harmless tool set saved my butt more than once in situations where I would normally have to either wait hours for someone to show up with a screwdriver, or find myself unable to do my job because I forgot to bring one. The plastic case was maybe two inches wide by three inches long and fit perfectly in my fanny pack.

During all but one leg of those trips, my trust toolbox caused the TSA to inspect my fanny pack, find the case, open it, look at it, and realize the obvious -- it was a harmless gadget that presented no danger to anyone.

That is, until I passed through Orlando International Airport (MCO) on April 19 at 7:00pm on my way to catching an American Airlines flight to Miami. All of a sudden, lo and behold, tools were not allowed, and nobody cared what any other TSA employee had done in the past. Never mind that the little toolbox was still as harmless as ever, or that there were other "tools" in the pack, such as my set of jeweler's loupes.

Now it wasn't just tools, it was "the tools we think are 'tools.'" Of course, the words "web site" were invoked in a place where no one could check any such claim, and that seemed to justify everything, no matter how ridiculous.

Just then it dawned on me... More than two years and seven months after 9/11, our government has been completely unable to enforce consistency within its own ranks on simple things like this. If this is the case, and given the universal rule that governmental incompetency increases at an exponential rate as the complexity and importance of the task grows (see Google:intelligence/CIA/Saudis/Flight Training), what else is the government unable to do? What doors are they leaving wide open for terrorists to exploit the next time they want to get their point across to the tune of thousands of innocent lives?

Is the security of our country truly "rocket science"? Is anything approaching a semblance of consistency in the application of rules governing the funnels that all commercial air travellers in this country must squeeze through an impossibility?

Why in the world is the TSA and the Department of Homeland Security spending money on creating secret lists of people banned from flying comercially, when they have yet to accomplish the simple task of publishing a set of rules and teaching their employees how to enforce them the same way every single time they are called upon to do so?

FMI: www.tsa.gov