Americans have come to know the presence of the Transportation Security Administration at airports.

We don't say that like it's a good thing. To offer a mini-opinion within this larger scope, we think the TSA is an example of post-9/11 panic that should never have been created. We believe airlines would find it in their best interests to follow federal guidelines with their own security personnel in place, rather than an outside bureaucracy with no profit motive providing "service" and trampling the rights of the airline's customers.

As celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain once said while sampling street food on one of his many forays, (and we paraphrase): Why worry? It's not good for business for them to poison their customers.

It's not good business for one's planes to be taken over by hijackers; and it's not good for business for travelers to be harassed by government officials before boarding an airliner. The airline is bound to take some of the heat generated by the government workers.

So, while the TSA still stands, and the pat-downs and full-body scans are no less intrusive, we've accepted the security gauntlet - even the routine of taking off belts and shoes - as an unavoidable part of air travel.

Increased security in an age of tiny bombs and zealots may be a fact of life, regardless of who is providing the security.

But wait, as they say on infomercials, there's more. It's the government. There always is.


An increasing number of roving TSA teams in recent years has been quietly expanding the agency's reach with patrols of train terminals, highway weigh stations and other venues.

We want nothing to do with any of that.

Unfortunately, a still-panicky Congress passed legislation in 2007 allowing TSA security squads jurisdiction over "any mode of transportation at any location within the United States - a remarkably broad mandate by a remarkable senseless Congress.

There must, immediately, be a fuller public discussion about the proliferation of these squads.

That discussion should focus primarily on their elimination - from trains, planes and (we shudder to imagine) automobiles.

Without swift debate, there's a real possibility that the TSA presence will continue to grow beyone the confines of airports, and this nation will end up with a far more ubiquitous security agency than anyone dreamed back in 2001.

We don't want it. Repeat after us: We don't want it. It is in no way in keeping with American traditions. This mad level of security is in no way justified when balanced against the vast and unsupportable loss of freedoms. Not now; not in 2001; not ever.

The New York Times, which recently published a story on the so-called Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response teams, quoted civil liberties advocates who take issue with what they maintain are the teams' warrantless searches in violation of the Constitution.

"The problem with TSA stopping and searching people in public places outside the airport is that there are no real legal standards or probable cause," Khaliah Barnes, administrative law counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, told The Times. "It's something that is easily abused because the reason that they are conducting the stops is shrouded in secrecy."

Typically, the teams move through areas with bomb-sniffing dogs and randomly stop and ask security questions of people in the crowd.

Civil libertarians aren't the only ones taking issue with some aspects of the expanded TSA operations. A 2012 Department of Homeland Security inspector general report raised questions about the training of the teams' personnel and whether they were assigned based on actual security threats.

These roving TSA squads are no pilot program, either. The Times reported the program has a $100 million annual budget and has expanded from 10 teams in 2008 to 37 last year.

We cannot accept an expansive TSA that routinely conducts unexplained security stops in public places. There must be clear-eyed, rational politicians who recognize, finally, that we took a bad hit a dozen years ago; we reacted poorly to it and did things well out of our established character.

It's time to put that - and perhaps the entire TSA - behind us. Either that, or practice handing over your "papers" when you're out walking your dog, riding the bus or hopping on a train.

Portions of a Denver Post editorial were used in this piece.