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I will 100% disagree with you on this one. At the checkpoint they have no way to know if that person dressed in a pilots uniform is still employed. He/She might have gotten fired yesterday. And not every pilot going through is flying the plane out of that city. It's very common for them to live in one city, but be based out of another. So they commute to work, and often times sit in the cockpit jumpseat.
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Jetliner,
I think your logic is flawed. First, any airline which provides credentials to any employee MUST withdraw them immediately if the employee is fired. Therefore, if the TSA required all pilots to swipe their credentials, they would indeed know that the pilot had been fired the day before. The pilot has no need smuggle in a box cutter. If you need evidence of this read up about the EgyptAir crash off the coast of NYC. (Or the SilkAir crash). The same applies to pilots who are deadheading... there was an infamous attempt at murder/suicide by a FedEx pilot in exactly these circumstances. It is utterly illogical to confiscate the pilots bottle of water or his shaver, and then allow him through to sit in control of a flying missile, tanked up with fuel. If you don't trust your pilot, searching him to make sure he is not carrying a box cutter is not going to make you any safer. Indeed, your argument that the TSA don't even know if he has been fired, means that it is the exact opposite. If the TSA invested in live credentialling systems which would reveal this, we would perhaps at least be marginally safer.
On the question of searching... the new system raises questions of principle. The TSA say following the "underpants" bomber, a more intimate style of "pat down" is necessary. The question is, therefore, what is the limit of what is acceptable to expose millions of people to? If a bomber hides weapons or elements of weapons in their rectum or vagina, does that legitimise the TSA undertaking random rectal or vaginal examinations in the name of security?
I don't think so, and I strongly feel that a more radical, wholesale evaluation of security procedures needs to be undertaken, including using some of the profiling techniques utilised by Israeli security for example. What we have now amounts to nothing more than an employment programme for failed "police" wannabe's and frankly some of them appear so stupid, I fear having them in charge of our security.