Wow! How dumb! Stupid TSA! Using a blockhead checklist to spot terrorists!
OK, well, I used to work for TSA, so I know there's a little more to it than that. In fact, there's a lot more to it than that. Yes, those behaviors may get you pulled aside for extra attention. And, if you look closely, you may see TSA officers with their hands behind their backs, counting points on their fingers as they watch someone. But they don't rely on that checklist exclusively. If they did, it would be easy to sail right through, just by not exhibiting any of the behaviors on the list. But it's not as easy as that. There are other behaviors that are subconscious, and much harder to control. You make certain cues with gestures, facial expressions, body language, etc. that you don't even know you're making. TSA officers can recognize these.
I know it's fun to pick on TSA. The job is low paying and low status. I think a janitor in a federal office building makes more than a beginning TSA officer. I see all sorts of "libertarian" guys making video recordings of TSA officers and pointing out how stupid they are. Fun to pick on the little people, isn't it? The punch line is usually (1) this proves the government can't do anything right and we should do this via private enterprise, (2) we need to do racial and religious profiling, or (3) it's a useless waste of tax dollars and we should just forget about screening airline passengers and return to the good old days of individual liberty. Wrong on all counts, for a variety of reasons. Yes, some of it is "security theater," but security theater has a deterrent effect because criminals and terrorists have a hard time distinguishing between what measures might actually get them caught, and which are mostly window dressing.
I'm not criticizing people for thinking TSA is populated by a bunch of uneducated losers who couldn't get jobs flipping burgers. At some airports, that's absolutely accurate. But it's interesting to note how everybody is a "security expert" when it comes to critiquing TSA. If I walked into your workplace and started pointing out all the things you were doing wrong, what reaction would you have? If you think TSA is doing many things wrong, you are correct. If you think you know exactly what they're doing right, and exactly what they're doing wrong, you're nowhere near as smart as you think you are.
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