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A New Supreme Court Case Will Determine How Airlines Talk to the TSA

The Supreme Court announced today that it will hear a case over whether the law that created TSA means that an airline can't be sued for reporting that a soon-to-be ex-employee on a different airline's flight had a gun when in fact he didn't. Confused yet? So are most of the reporters that have been covering the case, from what we can tell.

The USA Today writeup is probably one of the cleaner accounts we've seen, and even it takes 6 paragraphs before getting to the legal issue at stake. The case is actually kind of important for airline security—it goes to the heart of how lawmakers encourage airlines to report suspicious behavior—so let's see if we can't unpack it below.

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TSA Caves to Pressure, Will Reverse Reversal on Pocket Knives

Sigh. Under pressure from flight attendants, victims' families, airlines, and outrageously outraged members of Congress, TSA is reversing a decision first announced in March under which the agency would allow small pocket knives and sports equipment as carry ons.

In retrospect this was kind of inevitable. It took less than a week for the objections to start. The decision became increasingly expensive for TSA to push through, and there was really no incentive for the agency to deal with the headache. All they wanted to do was speed up security lines a bit to make it easier for fliers to travel. If fliers weren't going to stand up for themselves in the face of political objections, the agency heads weren't going to take the hits.

Which brings us to what has frustrated us about this debate since the beginning.

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Amended Congress Immigration Bill Will Annoy the Heck Out of Out-Bound Tourists

Washington, D.C. is rife with scandals over how various branches of the government have been violating people's privacy and security. Whether it's the IRS targeting conservative groups or the Department of Justice monitoring journalists, it appears that federal agencies have been given vast powers to collect information and they're not very good at holding on to that information.

So naturally, Congress has chosen this week to add a provision to the new immigration bill that requires all non-U.S. citizens to be fingerprinted when flying out of the U.S.'s 30 busiest airports.

Because if there's anything that American politicians are good at generating, it's irony.

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When Bomb-Sniffing Dogs Bite Back

Sigh.This happened two weeks ago, broke earlier this week, and is now winding its way through the usual blogs and forums run by the usual mix of well-meaning libertarians and conspiracy theory nutjobs.

An Italian woman was making her way through Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson airport and was standing in the baggage claim area. The airport's bomb-sniffing dog apparently decided that the woman needed to be bitten, so it bit her.

How hard the dog actually bit her has been a subject of open debate. EMS personnel on the scene said it "looked like a scratch." She says that there was bleeding and the bruise afterward was the size of her hand. You can judge for yourself who's telling the truth by looking at the picture here. Try not to be eating food when you look at it though, because it's actually kind of horrific.

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So a Guy Stripped Totally Naked at a TSA Checkpoint...

This is without a doubt the least sexy naked travel post that we've ever blogged. John Brennan is a Portlander with what appears to be a libertarian streak. Last April he was going through a TSA checkpoint when officers detected nitrates on his clothing. In order to demonstrate that he was not in fact carrying explosives, Brennan got totally naked. Problem? Solution.

He was of course immediately charged with violating local indecency laws, because seriously, he got really naked (NSFW, obviously). Those charges were promptly slapped down by a judge. We have a Constitution in this country, and that Constitution entitles you to protest against the government in all kinds of interesting ways, and those ways apparently include being naked.

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TSA's Request for Comments Goes About How You'd Expect

In 2011 TSA was ordered by a judge to follow the law and solicit public comments on full body scanners. They kind of sort of ignored that order. Since that's not a thing that people are allowed to do with court orders, in 2012 the agency was again ordered to solicit comments. Now it's May 2013, and finally TSA has opened up a webpage to get the public's input. So the next time it takes you an hour to get through an airport security line, you can feel better knowing that it's not just security. They're slow at everything.

Anyway, there have already been 3,000 comments about the scanners. You can add your own. They are... oh, let's go with entertaining.

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TSA Holds Back on Allowing Pocket Knives on Planes, After All

Last March the TSA created a media firestorm by announcing that it was changing its policies and letting passengers carry small knives - along with some sporting equipment - aboard airplanes. The people who routinely scream that TSA should loosen its restrictions became very quiet for some reason. Instead all the people who support stringent TSA restrictions began screaming. And they screamed a lot. We used the entire episode as a case study in why we can't have nice things.

Fast forward to yesterday. TSA declared a take back. They're not going to loosen the restrictions until after they hold some hearings. How long those will take is unknown. And to think: some people actually believe that TSA is incompetently stumbling from one short-sighted policy to another without any sense of overall strategy.

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What to Know as Pocket Knives Return to the Skies This Week

We’ll try not to take a side in this debate, but we did want to chime in to remind you that your pocket knife can go on vacation again, beginning this week. April 25 is the big day in which the TSA loosens up some of their rules, and small pocket knives are no longer a big deal. You're again welcome to carry them onboard the plane with you, rather than stick them in your checked bag. The metal detector may beep, but upon closer examination you’ll be waived right through the security line.

We’ve mentioned this a couple times before, but it sounds like the lifting of the rule is still happening, despite complaints and comments from a number of different groups.

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TSA Causes Traveler to Miss Flight After He Calls Sandwich 'The Bomb'

The Sydney Morning Herald wrote yesterday that "the dreaded [TSA]... has gained a reputation as part authoritarian goon squad and part crime syndicate." We thought was unfair. In the first place, it seems a little bit sweeping to say that "authoritarian goon squad" is part of TSA's official reputation. How many people actually go that far? Like real people.

More importantly, the SMH forgot to include how any description of TSA's actual reputation involves being really, really stupid.

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Texas Lawmakers Again Move to Criminalize TSA Patdowns

As they'll be more than glad to tell you (at length) Texans are a freedom loving people. However sometimes however ardor for personal liberty goes a little farther than what good sense, or political reality, or federal law might advise. This is one of those times.

You'll recall that in March 2011 we openly ridiculed Texas lawmakers for introducing a series of bills that would have criminalized various TSA measures, from invasive pat-downs to full-body scans. We called the entire spectacle a "publicity stunt" and predicted that it would quickly die. Within a few weeks, and for a wide range of reasons, it had indeed died. Then a year later Rep. David Simpson of Longview introduced a bill that would have merely criminalized "inappropriate touching" by TSA. It too, predictably, failed to become a real thing.

Apparently now it's back. Rep. Simpson seems to believe that travel politics bloggers don't have enough easy content, and he's eager to help. God bless Rep. Simpson. The rest of you should be following his example and hooking us up, rather than scoffing and rolling your eyes like you're obviously doing right now.

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TSA Manager Fired for Negligence is Rehired. Again.

Remember a few years ago when TSA officials moved to unionize their workers, and then we expressed concerns to the effect that unions might protect deadbeat screeners, then TSA said of course that wouldn't be allowed to happen, then we debunked their logic, then TSA unionized anyway? And then remember that other time a little later, when 36 TSA workers got fired from Honolulu International Airport because they failed to scan bags for explosives, and then unions rushed in to protect them?

You'll be happy to know that one of those employees - a manager named Raymond Ware - was reinstated after a lengthy challenge. He's getting his job back plus back pay.

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Sequester Hits Small Airports in Ways Pilots May or May Not Notice

This can't still be going on. There's no way this is still going on, right? There can't still be debates taking place over whether sequestrations will crush airline security—with the sides being yes and no and why the hell is this even a thing—can there be?

Come on. The latest news involves having the FAA shut down 149 "federal contract" air traffic control towers on April 7. The agency was originally going to shut down 189 towers but was convinced to spare an addition 40 due to of safety considerations (read: the airports were in districts represented by powerful members of Congress or the towers were staffed by government union employees).

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