Writer Becky Akers scored one for liberty by taking TSA Union Astroturfer “Ron” up on his interview offer with these questions:
Hi, Ron—
Thanks for your offer; I’d like to ask a few questions and either publish your answers as a straight interview or incorporate them in an article. I have written for Barron’s, the Christian Science Monitor, the Washington, New York, and Denver Posts, the Ottawa Citizen, and many other publications and websites.
1) How did you begin working for the TSA? Did you wake up one morning and say, “Ah, I’d like to make little kids cry by stealing their teddy bears and grope pilots until they puke”? Or was Wal-Mart not hiring that week?
2) Have you ever read the US Constitution? Does the Fourth Amendment mean anything to you? Or do you figure it no longer applies to pervs in your exalted line of “work”?
3) Do you ever feel badly when you see your neighbors losing their homes to foreclosure while you sponge off their taxes?
4) Could you share with us exactly what it feels like to squeeze another guy’s junk? Readers want to know. Did it take you a while to adapt to these new “duties,” or did you take to them naturally? If the latter, does that worry you?
5) Along those same lines, if screeners are such great folks, why haven’t we read of mass resignations over management’s orders to sexually assault passengers?
6) How many of your co-”workers” have kicked the magnetometers when attractive women walk through them? How many times have you done that? What opportunities do you foresee with the new carcinogenic scanners?
7) The TSA has so far slaughtered one man (Rigoberto Alpizar, Dec 2005) and is morally culpable for the death of a woman (Carol Anne Gotbaum, Oct 2007). How would you suggest passengers best protect themselves from you and your accomplices, especially now that you are sexually assaulting them?
8 ) Do you agree with your co-”worker” in LA who proclaimed after work one day, “I am god”? On the other hand, the TSA tied with the IRS in a poll a few years ago as America’s most hated bureaucracy. How do you and other screeners reconcile these disparate positions?
9) Given the public’s mood at the moment, do you fear Congress will abolish the TSA? What are your plans for employment in that case? Does the thought of honest work scare you?
10) Do you feel at all guilty for helping push America towards a police state? If not, why not?
I’d appreciate a response ASAP as I’m on deadline. I may also have additional questions and follow-ups.
For liberty,
Becky
Hilarious. “Ron”, whom I’ve seen posing as a TSA critic elsewhere, could not be bothered to respond. Read the full article here.
30 Responses to TSA Union Astroturfer “Ron” Called Out by Becky Akers
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This level of hyperbole feels good to the fully engaged… and turns off everybody else.
It doesn’t feel good to me, and I’m fully engaged. I think WWF should take this post down, actually. Frankly, I care a lot about this issue but I don’t like the company (sometimes). All I see in this post is a lot of insults, and I think we need to try to get a lot of people a little bit angry rather than trying to get those of us who are angry to be angrier. We need the breadth and this doesn’t help.
No punches will ever be pulled for thugs and goons on my watch (on this blog).
George, the goons are all wearing suits. Attacking the blue shirts is as immoral as anything that you accuse the TSA of doing.
These are people trying to keep jobs in 20+ percent unemployment.
Maybe you have a fairy godmother who handles all your needs, or have the perfect job, bully for you. No one wearing TSA blue has either.
I fully support, agree and understand your anger. I hope you will point it at President Obama, Secretary Napolitano and Director Pistole, where it can actually do some good. No one in a TSA uniform can change a damn thing that is happening.
You’re wrong, Mark. The blueshirts can change what is happening by refusing to continue their attacks, against which we lowly folk can just barely start to defend ourselves.
No George, they can’t.
All they can do is lose their jobs. I have been working with and around those poor folks since TSA started, and the ONLY difference between a TSA agent and a flat out slave is that the TSA agent can quit or be fired.
They have NO rights, TSA is entirely unique as a federal agency because no laws apply. President Bush made very sure of that. They can do exactly what they are told or they can be out of work.
Would you choose financial death to help people who treated you the way you treat them?
Exactly. They can stop receiving stolen loot in return for their willing participation in an unlawful scam any time they like. Their choice. Thanks for confirming my point.
Quitting a scam is not financial death. I’m laughing at your hyperbole.
What happened to all the good people who put principles before money? Clearly they are working somewhere other than the TSA.
You are being silly. You can see the people with your ‘principles before money’ every day holding cardboard signs on the side of the road. However, I’m sure that if you can find (or create) a bank or mortgage company who will accept principles in lieu of money, there are many of us who would be better able to pay.
I hope that you do understand, I believe that DHS/TSA needs massive and far reaching changes. I believe that they are tasked with entirely too many things that are entirely outside the scope of transportation safety, like illegal searches for drugs and tracking the movement of cash on aircraft.
I do not believe that everyone who holds a job at TSA deserves (or should suffer) widespread scorn for no reason other than who prints their paycheck.
The only people who can modify systemic abuses by the Department of Homeland Security and TSA are Obama, Napolitano and Pistole. They break their vows to support the US Constitution each and every day, and each deserves whatever scorn, pressure and derision that we can all bring to bear.
That guy or gal in the blue uniform does not.
Maybe we should add a ‘principle’ (as we agree that they are very important) to work for change with those who can make it; and to not attack those who cannot change it.
I’m silly? If that’s what your argument is reduced to, I need say no more.
The blueshirts are breaking their oaths (if they even take one) by violating the constitutional restriction against unreasonable searches and seizures.
Then I think you’re hurting the movement and we need to do better. I note that the comment from someone saying how they can’t take us seriously in response to this post was removed.
I think you need to think seriously about how to increase support for this movement and not damage it. Or will you silence me, too?
I dare you to do a better job than us. Seriously. If you can do it better than we at We Won’t Fly are doing, then that’s one less project I need to work on, more time with my family and less stress for me. I do not profit from this in any way.
Put up or shut up. (Choose one.)
P.S. You, however, are posting from a computer at a corporation that receives contracts from the department of homeland security. So you can not say the same thing, i.e., that you don’t have a financial stake in this issue. Clearly, your livelihood depends in full or in part from federal contracts related to homeland security.
I have to say that as much as I despise the TSA, I wouldn’t have been bothered to respond to these questions either. In my opinion, they are hostile, bias and unprofessional, forming more of an attack than a potential interview.
If you honestly want people to respond to things, try making nice rather than insult them from the get go. Regardless of how laughable this guy may be, he was right to feel the questions were not serious and to not answer them.
But that’s just my two cents.
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I would have to disagree with “The TSA has so far slaughtered one man (Rigoberto Alpizar, Dec 2005) and is morally culpable for the death of a woman (Carol Anne Gotbaum, Oct 2007).”
Both of these were referring people that were belligerent and Gotbaum was under the watch of the Phoenix PD.
I think that even some passengers might have opened up a can of whoop ass if they felt threatened by these two individuals.
Great letter, Becky!
You forgot to ask him about previous sexual assault survivors being re-traumatized. Does he get his jollies that way? Does he feel as ultra-powerful as the original assailant?
Does he enjoy playing the “game” with his junior flyers? “It’s all just a game,” is exactly what my assailant called it when I was only 4 years old!
These TSA people are very, very sick to engage in this behaviour! They must all be sexual deviants to willfully conduct such invasive and personal searches on anyone! However, if they were to gather, en masse, and refused to molest the public, what would happen to the TSA’s molestation policy?
Great. We are becoming our own worst enemy by engaging in shallow, ad hominem attacks and irrelevant side issues. Can we keep our focus on rebutting what Ron actually says instead of implying that he is a closet homosexual on a power trip? If this is the best we have in response to the TSA’s party-line, we’re pretty much screwed. All we are going to do by being smarmy is drive away the people on the fence who *might* have listened if we had offered something meaningful rather than simply sounding like spoiled brats on an elementary school playground.
Regarding Carol Anne Gothbaum…I remember reading about her case when that story broke. I was all prepared to be indignant, until I got the full story. I have *NO* love for TSA but even I can’t fault them for her death. She made a number of really poor decisions that day, and while the Phoenix PD probably could have handled her detainment better, that wasn’t TSA’s fault.
I agree that there are many, many problems and violations at TSA, where we seem to disagree is in who should suffer for those abuses. It is not the person scanning the bags or doing the pat down.
If you have a problem with a specific TSA Agent, by all means you should address it with that agent, their supervisor, their management, and as far and high as you can reach.
If you have a problem with TSA policies, procedures, training or implementation, you need to address these to President Obama, Secretary Napolitano, or Director Pistole. The person doing the inspections, whatever those are, has exactly no control over the policies they must follow.
Obama, Napolitano, and Pistole are the only ones who can fix this.
TSA agents almost universally disagree with the procedures they are required to follow, and they have exactly ZERO protections against workplace abuses by their supervisors, managers or any other person.
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I do not, and have never, worked for the TSA or any federal agency. I did meet and learn a lot about the TSA while working at PDX (airport) for ten years, and I also volunteered (as in working without pay or any compensation) with the AFGE union to try and obtain civil rights protections for TSA employees.
While your letter had some entertainment value, it was also a silly, pointless, troll letter Becky. If you ask real questions you might get real answers, and actually trying to understand the situation of the TSA agents would provide you much illumination. Your attacks on TSA agents are more pointless than attacks on parking enforcement officers, specifically because the TSA agent is not allowed any discretion in their actions. They can be terminated at any time if they do not follow procedure exactly.
The TSA agent (TSO) has no more control over the policies and proceedures formed by their management or the Obama-controlled Department of Homeland Security and the TSA than an electrician has over the National Electrical Code. They are simply, like the electrician, required to follow the code and tested/inspected on their individual compliance with the code.
That testing is constant and on-going. It consists of everything from false images projected in to the scanned bags to check that the operator is watching to ‘pretend’ passengers who are actually TSA contractors or employees (from other airports) who report on every step of the screening process. The TSA Agent never knows who is testing him, so he is forced to treat everyone exactly according to policy, without regard to the legality or morality of those policies.
Try to translate that to your job. Imagine a writer who is not allowed to write a ‘draft’, but is evaluated, in real time, for every keystroke. Imagine a photographer who is rated, and subject to termination, for every single image that his camera takes. Imagine a driver who can be fired, instantly, for any unexpected detour or missed turn. That is the pressure the TSA agent has every minute of their work day.
The single thing that the TSO controls is his or her own attitude. If you find a TSO with a bad attitude, then address that problem at the source, but it is no more a agency problem than a pissed off lettuce picker or a rude plumber.
The TSA agent (in general) has exactly ZERO control over what they are required to do according to TSA policy. Those decisions are made outside the airport by people who do not, and usually do not want to, ever see a traveler. The decisions, and all local policy, are made by the Federal Security Director and his office-staff-minions.
These positions are often political appointments having little or nothing to do with knowledge or intelligence. The FSD for Oregon is Mike Irwin, and from experience, the man is not fit for the position.
While quitting the TSA sounds wonderful, it is simply fantasy. The job pays OK, not particularly well, but trying to replace even a $14.00/hr job is pretty damn tough today.
That poor person behind the x-ray or inside the blue gloves is not the one you should abuse. You should, as I do, direct your anger and scorn to Obama, Napolitano, and Pistole. Those are the only people who can change these illegal, immoral and outrageous policies.
The ‘i’m just doing my job” excuse is only going to carry you so far. I draw the line on that when a three-year-old child is hysterically screaming “stop touching me!” and the agent does not have the common sense to stop and let the mother calm the child. The line is crossed right there by that agent and this became an assault. THIS is why people are blaming the agents and people hate the TSA.
Frankly, Walmart would be too good for that agent.
If the agent was ‘wrong’, address the agent, but are you or your husband/partner/whatever going to get fired TODAY because of a difficult task?
I think we both know that the agent did not want to deal with a screaming child.
Backing off for a moment to let the mother calm the child should not have cost anybody their job. It was just common sense.
I agree completely! The problem is that there is no guarantee that it would not anyway.
Just like any job, some employees are loved by managers, others are hated. One girl (and I am completely serious) in PDX, was fired because she complained about another TSA girl hugging her all the time.
Until there are actual workplace rules forced on TSA management, the workers have no protections at all.
Personally, I think Becky Ackers blew it. She had a chance to ask some hard questions of a TSA agent who is willing to speak. Sexual assault IS a very serious matter and we owe it to those who may suffer it to do a good job in uncovering the truth about what it is like inside the TSA. Here’s what I would have asked:
* What happens to complaints the TSA receives? Have you heard of officers being disciplined or dismissed for acting inappropriately? What does it take to get fired?
* How rapidly do the screening procedures change? When a change happens, how are officers re-trained? Do they have the chance to ask questions?
* When a passenger disputes TSA policy, how is that handled? Is there actually a clear and complete policy somewhere, or is it a mish-mash of memos?
Those are some things I don’t know about the TSA (or rather, I don’t know what a TSA officer would say, I have my opinions about them..)
@Mark – using your reasoning, Nazi soldiers were only following orders – they didn’t make the policies. Should they have been held responsible for the atrocities of their leaders?
If TSA agents are as unhappy as you claim, they should react en masse. Mistreating their fellow Americans under the guise of “doing what they are told” is immoral and wrong. They should be ashamed of themselves and treated as sex offenders by the public.
Pat, I understand your point but it is not really correct.
The Nazi soldiers that you want to compare them with were KILLING PEOPLE, the folks in blue at $14.00 an hour are not. This difficulty that we are in is not a war, unless you want to call it a war on the US government. And, by the way, the German soldiers were not held responsible unless their PERSONAL CONDUCT warranted it. There were very, very few.
As far as ‘reacting en masse’, I agree that would be a wonderful response. The difficulties are numerous however.
First, TSA agents are not allowed the union representation that the vast majority of federal agencies have. That allows for systemic abuses of the employees that would not occur at any other federal agency, and that goal is clearly stated in the documents forbidding collective bargaining.
Second, absent a formal association that sits outside of the federal government (a union, for example) there is no coherent method of reliably reaching or coordinating the efforts of 60,000 plus employees at locations all over the world.
Third, while the action might be ‘en masse’, the punishments would be individualized and targeted at those agents who management wants to be rid of. Who is to say that it won’t be agents who are the least harmful to us and our rights?
Again, please, even if you want to try and compare the TSA to the SS, attacking the leadership is still the most effective course. Attacking a soldier ALWAYS leads to getting more soldiers with the same exact orders. Changing leadership (Obama, Napolitano, Pistole) or getting them to change the orders causes wide spread change.
Obama, Napolitano, Pistole forced this outrage on us with the tinkle of a keyboard and the swipe of a pen. Any of those three could fix the problem just as quickly.
Actually the blueshirts are killing people:
- by discouraging people from flying, they push more into automobile transportation, which results in many, many more deaths than air travel.
- the threatened civil suit and $11,000 fine, if one does not submit, can result in police tracking you down. The police have a track record of killing people who don’t submit to them.
- blueshirts get paid for income tax loot, which, if you don’t submit, will result in the theft of all you possess and potentially your death or imprisonment as well.
Tyranny in 2010 is more subtle than the 1941 version, yet tyranny it remains.
1. The policy is what’s doing that. The TSA as an organization. And yes, it’s made up of individuals but you’ll have a hard time selling anyone on the idea that any individual officer is actually culpable in death.
2. Um, I think the decision to seek such fines is definitely NOT in the hands of the “blueshirts.” Besides, as for the police “hunting you down” that only becomes dangerous if you run.
3. Now anyone receiving tax dollars is killing people? So I guess my daughter’s kindergarten teacher is killing people, and so is her lunch lady, not to mention our fireman, our mailman, the librarian, the professor of math at the state school…
George, seriously, try to come down to earth a little bit. The TSA is tyrannical but there IS actually a difference between the TSA’s policy makers and the front line workers. I don’t like the blueshirts especially but I revile comments like “Was Walmart just not hiring that week?” and “Does the prospect of honest work scare you?” because all they do is act superior. I mean, I don’t see what good it does to deride them for their lack of skills, or to imply that they don’t deserve to be paid for this kind of work.
Ok so the argument is down to “there’s a difference between policy-makers and blueshirts”? That’s really vague and watered-down.
TSA blueshirts treat people like DIRT – every day. I hear story after story after story. What they do is qualitatively orders of magnitude WORSE than a few insulting questions.
Come down to earth and recognize the difference.
“TSA blueshirts treat people like DIRT – every day. I hear story after story after story. What they do is qualitatively orders of magnitude WORSE than a few insulting questions.”
See, now that’s down to earth. Saying the TSA officers are actually “killing people” is ridiculous hyperbole and would be alienating to people who are vacillating about this movement.
I understand what you are saying George, and I am fully engaged in trying to fix the problem. I just want to see blame where blame is due, and not spammed at everyone in blue.
WWF has become something of a clearing house for TSA complaints and information, so I would like to understand the scope of the problem that you are seeing.
From memory, TSA has over 60,000 people at over 500 airports. How many incidents do you hear about each day?
Actually, to me, one is too many but since the whole blue gang is being beaten up over this, I would really like to know how many are simply ‘guilty by association’ as opposed to how many are actively … problems.
Back in the late 1980s, before the US military was openly torturing its prisoners, I was a sergeant in the military. My “career field” was a subset of military police that would be difficult to equate to a non-military position.
About one year before my enlistment was up, I started questioning why I should mindlessly consider someone to be “a bad guy” just because I was told they were “a bad guy”. My supervisor’s position was to “just follow orders and file a complaint after the fact if I thought those orders were improper”.
I didn’t buy that… somewhere, somehow, I acquired some sort of primordial sense of ethics and morality. I probably wouldn’t have had a problem initiating force against someone I considered to be a legitimate “bad guy”, I just had a problem going on someone else’s assessment rather than my own.
They pushed me into an office position for the remainder of my enlistment, I lost my security clearance, and my last year in the military was a bit weird, I was considered by some others as a sinner/saint hybrid.
Screw it, if the TSA guys choose to “just follow orders” then they are absolutely 100% responsible and accountable for their actions and the consequences thereof. When I started thinking for myself and growing a set of ethics and morality in the military, I took a bigger risk than the TSA guys ever will if they start thinking and applying morality to their jobs.