Southwest's response changes a little

Southwest responded to JC Warren's message. Note that it's a little different from earlier responses.

Dear Jc,
Thank you for contacting us in regard to the recent changes to the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) screening procedures.  Without a doubt, we fully acknowledge how vital your feedback is to our operation, and can assure you that your dissatisfaction has been taken to heart.
Although we do not have any direct influence over these Federal directives, we have made very careful notations of your feedback which will be summarized and indexed for additional review by our Senior Leaders.

If you would like to share your concerns directly with the TSA, please utilize the hyperlink below:
https://contact.tsa.dhs.gov/DynaForm.aspx?FormID=10

We wish you all the best over the coming months, and sincerely hope to have an opportunity to welcome you on board in the near future.

Sincerely, Charity, Southwest Airlines

The file reference number for your e-mail is 1126815811.

More TSA humor

A friend sent me this video. Enjoy!

Lawsuits

One in Denver Federal Court, filed by Gary Fielder, and another in Massachusetts, filed by two Harvard Law students. The second article says that there are also lawsuits in Florida and Arkansas from passengers, and two lawsuits from pilots. And, of course, EPIC's motions are still underway.

I think it is unlikely that any of these lawsuits will find against TSA/DHS, and there are some high-profile law professors who agree, but I'll root for them anyway!

Which side will Orbitz and US Air choose?

Will these companies stay on the side of those who are wrong - violating privacy and basic human rights - or the side of the angels, so to speak?

Orbitz Scanner Letter 3

Read the letter to US Air, as well:

Our Helpful MSM

From the TSA twitter account, I found this propaganda from CBS showing how benign TSA scanners are to our health. As I've said before, this is a secondary issue, but CBS's reporting here is abhorrent. I also found similar news stories titled "Body Scanners Don't Pose Health Risk." The doctor in the video should have his medical license revoked (if he is a medical doctor). There's just no medical data on this, and, I believe that most doctors feel that unnecessary radiation exposure is never warranted.

(I must say that I like the title of this report from an Australian news source: Full-body airport scanners 'as likely to kill you as terrorist bombs')

TSA's response to Opt-Out Day

It's been hard to find confirmation of the reports that the scanners were turned off. However, typical Thanksgiving eve wait times at airports are long, and the news was reporting very short waits at all airports. I expected the TSA to schedule an abundance of screeners on Wednesday to get ready for the opt-outs. It seems that they did do that and also limited the number of scanners in use.

Aside from the anecdotal tweets, this article states that there were a lot of screeners and not many scanners at Newark. However, this article from Wired cites many airports with the scanners in use, but commenters note that there were two obvious lines so that passengers could choose whether to go through the scanner or metal detector. I wouldn't be surprised if the TSA reacted in this way to the protest to be able to claim that there is widespread public support for their security methods, but it's impossible to tell if this is what actually happened.

By the way, I'd love if some disgruntled TSOs would start becoming whistle-blowers. I, for one, promise to protect anyone's identity who requests it. But, if you don't trust me, there's always Julian Assange.

UPDATE: NY Times has a good critique of the data.