Jaunted

Jaunted writers posted over 100 articles on the TSA in 2010, including two on the very first day of business. The Christmas terrorist attack had put the agency into a full-blown panic, resulting in a series of literally nonsensical regulations that painted them as focused on yesterday's attacks instead of tomorrow's threats—and failing even there.

Over the New Years holiday, the TSA then reraised with more new security rules even as they shut down Newark because one of their employees left his post, allowing a lovesick kid to give his girlfriend a goodbye kiss on the wrong side of security, a "defiant" crime which they huffed about for two months. This combination of incompetence and "it's your fault" officiousness would set the tone for the rest of the year.

In mid-January 2010, the TSA demanded that passangers start paying more fees for the privilege of interacting with their agents. Fast forward to November/December, when they were lashing out against concerned passengers for being too dense to notice the awesomeness of TSA's gropey security theater, a sentiment echoed when White House officials vented their "frustration" over public complaints.

In between, there was a full year of bad apple TSA agents abusing passengers, which is what you'd expect from an employee pool partially recruited via ads on pizza boxes. There were agents who sold drugs, agents who planted fake drugs as pranks, and agents who harassed the fans of out-of-town sports teams. But there were no agents competent enough to catch the vast majority of undercover agents running fake guns and bombs through security. "Total failure."

Now given that the agency seems unable to control their employees and unwilling to create regulations that actually increase flyer safety, you'd think they would at least refrain from giving their agents more power. If they're going to alternate between misbehaving and being useless, let's at least limit the scope of their mischief, right? Wrong.

The end of the year brought the controversy over full-body scanning and enhanced pat-downs, both of which were ripe for potential abuse. TSA agents actively bragged about how they designed their pat-downs to be so unpleasant people would choose full-body scanners. Not surprisingly, the increased scope for abuse led to concrete incidents, like this one involving a cancer survivor. All of which might have been excusable if TSA's newer more abrasive procedures had improved performance. But knives seemingly remain as easy as ever to slip through.

So congrats to TSA agents everywhere. It's an honor just to be nominated for the Jauntys, but it takes real dedication to win two years in a row.

[Photo: TSA]

Related Stories:
· Jaunted Awards 2010 [Jaunted]
· The Jauntys [Jaunted]