Procedures were followed. We did nothing wrong.

[Andara Bledin]

The issue here isn't regarding the rules or their being upheld. It's the manner in which the agents chose to go about it. Chasing a terrified 4-year-old girl around the screening area while yelling at her and then trying to drag her away from her mother, all the while not informing the legal guardian of what the issue was would be the problem.

^-.-^

[Nekojin]

The TSA rules and regulations are a mess. They're not really protecting people, and by no fault of the agents. What we're working with is still the same basic PROCESS that we had in 2000. They just tag bits and doodads onto it to make it 'safer' every time something goes wrong.

More rules don't make things easier, though. More rules make things more complicated. More rules = More loopholes.

What we really need to do is scrap it and build it back up from the bottom up.

No, they just need to scrap it, period. The circumstances of 9/11 can never happen again. Cockpits are sealed for the duration of flights, and far fewer passengers are going to be passive about an assailant waving a knife. It's nearly impossible for someone to use a commercial airliner as a guided missile ever again, short of actually being the pilot.

Metal detectors and chem-sniffers built into a gate are more than good enough to stop the kind of weapons that would-be terrorists would try to get on-board on their person. Luggage scanners already eliminate the possibility of luggage bombs and weapons stowed in carry-on baggage.

All of the added hassle that the TSA implements is exactly that - hassle. It's a needless expense for the sake of security theater - looking like they're doing something.