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(AP) -  How did an agency created to protect the public become the
target of so much public scorn?


      After nine years of funneling travelers into ever longer lines
with orders to have shoes off, sippy cups empty and laptops out for
inspection, the most surprising thing about increasingly heated
frustration with the federal Transportation Security Administration
may be that it took so long to boil over.


      Even Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is not
subjected to security pat-downs when she travels, understands the
public's irritation. She, for one, wouldn't want to go through such
scrutiny.


      "Not if I could avoid it. No. I mean, who would?" Clinton told
CBS' "Face the Nation" in an interview broadcast Sunday.


      The agency, a marvel of nearly instant government when it was
launched in the fearful months following the 9/11 terror attacks,
started out with a strong measure of public goodwill. Americans
wanted the assurance of safety when they boarded planes and
entrusted the government with the responsibility.


      But in episode after episode since then, the TSA has
demonstrated a knack for ignoring the basics of customer relations,
while struggling with what experts say is an all but impossible
task. It must stand as the last line against unknown terror, yet
somehow do so without treating everyone from frequent business
travelers to the family heading home to visit grandma as a
potential terrorist.


      The TSA "is not a flier-centered system. It's a
terrorist-centered system and the travelers get caught in it,"
said Paul Light, a professor of public service at New York
University who has tracked the agency's effectiveness since it's
creation.


      That built-in conflict is at the heart of a growing backlash
against the TSA for ordering travelers to step before a full-body
scanner that sees through their clothing, undergo a potentially
invasive pat-down or not fly at all.


      "After 9/11 people were scared and when people are scared
they'll do anything for someone who will make them less scared,"
said Bruce Schneier, a Minneapolis security technology expert who
has long been critical of the TSA. "But ... this is particularly
invasive. It's strip-searching. It's body groping. As abhorrent
goes, this pegs it."


      A traveler in San Diego, John Tyner, has become an Internet hero
after resisting both the scan and the pat-down, telling a TSA
screener: "If you touch my junk, I'm gonna have you arrested."
That has helped ignite a campaign urging people to refuse such
searches on Nov. 24, which immediately precedes Thanksgiving and is
one of the year's busiest travel days.


      The outcry, though, "is symptomatic of a bigger issue," said
Geoff Freeman, executive vice president of the U.S. Travel
Association, an industry group that says it has received nearly
1,000 calls and e-mails from consumers about the new policy in the
last week.


      "It's almost as if it's a tipping point," Freeman said. "What
we've heard from travelers time and again is that there must be a
better way."


      Indeed, TSA has a history of stirring public irritation. There
was the time in 2004 when Sen. Ted Kennedy complained after being
stopped five times while trying to board planes because a name
similar to his appeared on the agency's no-fly list. And the time
in 2006 when a Maine woman went public with her tale of being
ordered by a TSA agent to dump the gel packs she was using to cool
bags of breast milk. And the time in 2007, when a Washington, D.C.
woman charged that another TSA agent threatened to have her
arrested for spilling water out of her child's sippy cup.


      TSA denied the last, releasing security camera footage to try
and prove its point. But that did little to offset the agency's
longtime struggle to explain itself and win traveler cooperation.


      It wasn't supposed to be this way. After Congress approved
creation of the agency in late 2001, the TSA grew quickly from just
13 employees in January 2002 to 65,000 a year later. In the first
year, agency workers confiscated more than 4.8 million firearms,
knives and other prohibited items, according to a report by the
U.S. Government Accountability Office.


      But even as the new agency mushroomed, officials at the top,
pressured by airlines worried that tighter security would
discourage people from flying, looked to the business world for
lessons on systems, efficiency and service.


      TSA set up "go teams" pairing government employees with
executives from companies including Marriott International Inc.,
The Walt Disney Co., and Intel Corp., to figure out how to move
lines of people through checkpoints efficiently and how to deal
with angry travelers.


      But the agency was working under what Freeman calls "an
unachievable mandate." Congress demanded an agency that eliminated
risk. But the risks are always changing, as terrorists devise new
methods and government parries. That has led to an agency that is
always in crisis mode, constantly adding new policies designed to
respond to the last terror plot.


      President Barack Obama says he has pushed the TSA to make sure
that it is always reviewing screening processes with actual people
in mind. "You have to constantly refine and measure whether what
we're doing is the only way to assure the American people's
safety," Obama said Saturday. "And you also have to think
through, are there ways of doing it that are less intrusive."


      Clinton, appearing on NBC's "Meet the Press," said Sunday she
thought "everyone, including our security experts, are looking for
ways to diminish the impact on the traveling public."


      But John Pistole of the Transportation Security Administration
said on CNN's "State of the Union" that the current threat level
is too high to lessen the use of full body scans and intimate
pat-downs. He said the ingenuity and determination of terrorists
trying to bring down an airplane ruled out changes in screening
policies.


      TSA operates on the belief that a key to foiling terrorists is
to keep them guessing, agency watchers say. But it has never really
explained that to a flying public that sees never-ending changes in
policies covering carry-on liquids, shoes, and printer cartridges
as maddening and pointless inconsistency.


      "If you ask what its procedures are, how you screen people, its
'I can't tell you that because if the bad guys find out they'll be
able to work around the system'," said Christopher Elliott, an
Orlando, Fla.-based consumer advocate specializing in travel.
"That's why a lot of what they've done has not really gone over
well with air travelers. They perceive it as being heavy-handed and
often the screeners come across as being very authoritarian."


      Over time, TSA has settled into a pattern of issuing directives
with little explanation and expecting they be followed. But
increasingly fed-up travelers don't understand the agency's sense
of urgency and aren't buying it.


      "I don't think the law enforcement approach is going to work
with the American public. You've got to explain yourself and
reassure people. And they're not doing it," Light said.


      That goes beyond public relations, experts say. As more and more
layers are added to air travel security efforts, it creates
difficult and potentially unpopular choices. But the TSA has been
unwilling to openly discuss how it arrives at policies or to
justify the trade-offs, highlighted by its insistence over the need
for the scanners.


      "They're very expensive and what they (TSA officials) should be
able to do is answer if it does reduce the risk, how much does it
reduce the risk and is it worth it?" said John Mueller, a
professor of political science at Ohio State, who has researched
the way society reacts to terrorism.


      The pushback against the body scanners and pat-downs shows the
agency at its worst, Elliott said, issuing a policy that wasn't
properly vetted or explained, but determined to defend it.


      Growing dissatisfaction with TSA has even led some airports to
consider replacing the agency with private screeners. Such a change
is allowed by law, but the contractor must follow all the security
procedures mandated by the TSA, including body scans and pat-downs.


      But frustration with the TSA was building even before the latest
furor. In a December 2007 Associated Press-Ipsos poll asking
Americans to rank government agencies, it was as unpopular as the
Internal Revenue Service. Even so, a poll earlier this month by CBS
News found 81 percent of Americans support the TSA's use of
full-body scanners at airports. The poll, conducted Nov. 7-10, had
a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.


      Elliott said that better communication would probably win the
TSA more cooperation. But the public irritation suggests that a
growing number of consumers, particularly frequent travelers, are
questioning the premise at the heart of the agency's existence.


      "I think at some point Americans said to themselves, maybe in
their collective subconscious...there's a line here where it's not
just worth it anymore," he said. "There's a growing sense that
that line has been crossed."
      

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