You Don't Need Suicidal Zealots To Shut Down America's Airports. All You Need Are Handfuls Of Opt-Out Activists. Or Attention-Getting Jerks.

The Achilles Heel of America's new airport security measures is finally becoming transparent. The system now looks remarkably vulnerable to disruption, and it's all self-inflicted:

Xeni Jardin flags this from Flying With Fish travel blog:

The new clarified policy for those who refuse pat downs by a TSA Transportation Security Officer (TSO), any pat down, is that the person who is refusing the pat down will be advised that they will be denied entry into the airport, and be escorted from the security screening area by TSA TSOs or police officers. If the person refuses the pat down again, they will be approached by a Supervisor TSO (STSO), who will again explain that a refusal of the pat down will result in the immediate removal from the security area by police officers. Following an escort out of the security area to the pre-security area the person will be informed that that they are being denied entry and that they may not attempt to reenter security.

If any person who has refused a pat down makes any attempt to go towards the gate area the TSA security checkpoint will be immediately shut down. The shutting down of a security checkpoint may result in a passenger evacuation of a terminal due to a security breach. Any evacuation of passengers would be based on a threat assessment at the discretion of the TSA and law enforcement at the terminal.

Once a Checkpoint has been shut down due to a person that has refused a pat down attempting to head towards the gate area, that person will then be deemed to be disruptive and interfering with airport screening and may be subject to both criminal and civil penalties.

So let me get this straight. John Pistole doesn’t want to detail what the patdown procedures are for fear the terrorists will exploit them, as said when he testified before the Science and Transportation Committee (video above). Then he didn’t tell the public that they were implementing the procedures because he didn’t want the terrorists to know.

And now in order to discourage “opt-out” day, they give advanced notice that a handful of people can easily bring every major airport in the country to a grinding halt with very little effort.

Genius