Politico has a great article up about the experience of Jason Edward Harrington as an employee of the TSA. Some choice bits below:

"It was May 2007. I was living with a bohemian set on Chicago’s north side, a crowd ranging from Foucault-fixated college kids to middle-aged Bukowski-bred alcoholics. We drank and talked politics on the balcony in the evenings, pausing only to sneer at hipsters strumming back-porch Beatles sing-a-longs. By night, I took part in barbed criticism of U.S foreign policy; by day, I spent eight hours at O’Hare in a federal uniform, solemnly carrying out orders passed down from headquarters."

Let me be the first to say that this is probably not the guy that should be an employee of the TSA, which makes me question their hiring practices.

"Once, in 2008, I had to confiscate a bottle of alcohol from a group of Marines coming home from Afghanistan. It was celebration champagne intended for one of the men in the group—a young, decorated soldier. He was in a wheelchair, both legs lost to an I.E.D., and it fell to me to tell this kid who would never walk again that his homecoming champagne had to be taken away in the name of national security.
There I was, an aspiring satire writer, earnestly acting on orders straight out of Catch-22."

Blanket rules applied without situational awareness are problematic, to say the least. At least the irony of the situation is not lost on the author (nor the opportunity).

"In private, most TSA officers I talked to told me they felt the agency’s day-to-day operations represented an abuse of public trust and funds."

While anecdotal, it's still more than a small issue when the employees find (almost) as much fault in the agency as the people who are subjected to its invasive practices.

I'm just left wondering when this little experiment can finally be called off. The TSA is an absolute waste of both time and money.