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Yesterday, TSA Administrator John Pistole announced the first step in what is hopefully a lengthy process to reorient TSA’s airport checkpoint screening in a more risk-based manner. He announced a limited partnership with two airlines and four airports where travelers selected by the airlines will be asked to opt-in to a new screening program. This “proof of concept” is mainly designed to ascertain the changes that need to be made at airports to provide a more risk-based approach to aviation security.

At an airport security checkpoint last week, a TSA officer guided a 95-year-old cancer patient to a private room to investigate “something suspicious on her leg.” It turned out to be a wet adult diaper, which she was asked to remove. TSA offered no apology and stood by protocol. This was another missed opportunity. Sometimes, even when we do the “right” thing, we should apologize. Instead, we now have a “viral” episode that places another brick on the wall between the public and the security agencies charged with protecting them.

Here is a piece I wrote for the Defense Media Network on the recent TSA incident involving a 95-year-old leukemia patient. This instance, like some of the other eye-popping and jaw-dropping cases of the past few months and years raises a lot of questions – I’d like to know where this woman, in her obvious feeble condition, ranked on the risk scale that warranted such a search?

Seven months ago, intelligence organizations uncovered an attempt to bomb airliners by putting explosives in cargo. The cargo bombing plot highlighted the absence of effective cargo screening systems for air cargo being flown into the United States. The U.S. government should move expeditiously towards risk-based screening before al Qaeda strikes again.

House Republicans just unveiled their lean budget for the Department of Homeland Security. Asking DHS to make do with less is reasonable, but precluding DHS from buying more passenger scanning machines – as the new budget makes a point of doing – is foolish.

The congressional mandate to screen not only domestic U.S. air cargo but now also screen 100 percent of all international inbound cargo continues to confound cargo carriers, freight forwarders and shippers. A recent article in Air Cargo World summed up U.S. and international views of different parties in the aviation supply chain — the consensus, in a nutshell, being confusion. I had the opportunity to offer a few comments

In this April Fools Edition, we’ve collected some stories the rest of the media somehow missed.

Seizing on the spirit of change spreading around the globe, the U.S. Travel Association recently issued its recommendations for overhauling the security screening experience for passengers in a report titled “A Better Way.” Improvements to our aviation security need few new ideas. Rather, as the report implies, wholesale change requires intrepid leadership.

An industry group released a report advocating for major changes in how the federal government tackles its aviation security mission. In addition to 14 primary recommendations is a broader theme that the political climate in which DHS and TSA operate needs to change. aFormer DHS Secretary Tom Ridge, former Democratic Congressman Jim Turner, and Sabre Holdings CEO Sam Gililland served as co-chairs of a panel of external experts advising the U.S. Travel Association on the report, which I helped research and develop over the past year.

The TSA is still engaged in a game of intellectual Twister, bending every which way to meet an impossible congressional mandate that it enforce the screening of 100 percent of all cargo — domestic as well as international. The new suggested deadline shoots for all inbound cargo to be screened by December. God bless the TSA for continuing in its creative efforts to meet the mandate without undermining security, provoking allies and clogging commerce.

Congressman John Mica used a recently updated GAO report to claim that TSA has “cooked the books” when it comes to comparing costs under the Screening Partnership Program. When Administrator Pistole is testifies before the House Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee, members should ask Pistole some questions to clarify his decision on SPP.

With all of the Reagan Centennial activities starting to get underway, it is completely understandable for public officials – regardless of their political ideologies – to embrace “the Great Communicator.” In a hearing before the Transportation Security Subcommittee of the House Homeland Security Committee on “Terrorism and Transportation Security,” TSA Administrator, John Pistole shared that he would fire any TSA employee if they were to go on strike, fail to show up for work or engage in work slow down behavior. That’s something the Gipper would be proud of.

With TSA’s Administrator John Pistole’s recent go-ahead for TSA workers to vote on collective bargaining, there have been questions about how this decision will affect the security and the agency. Here is piece from the Washington Post’s Federal Eye, where Pistole makes clear his thoughts on collective bargaining at TSA.

There’s a long standing rule that if you want to bury a news story, release it on a Friday afternoon. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) announced today its answered to the long-drawn out question over TSA screeners and collective bargaining rights. The answer is yes but with very firm barriers – more like electrified barb-wired jersey walls.

On a teleconference today at 3:45 EST, the administrator for the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), John Pistole, will announce a framework allowing Transportation Security Officers (TSOs) to vote on union representation.

The Transportation Security Administration now holds a monopoly on airport security screening. If you want to fly, you must pass through TSA. Thing is, not many people were aware there was an alternative. There was, but no longer. A program that replaced government security screeners at airports with private screeners has been stopped. Decisions like these had better be made on the basis of safety and security, but something stinks of non-security related influence.

What is going on in this country? I see that TSA and Secretary Napolitano are being sued for doing their jobs. One-time wrestler and former-Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura has filed a law suit for screening him at airports as a violation of his Fourth Amendment rights. Funny, for a person who made a living running around without a shirt on TV and in movies, why would he be so concerned about someone screening him?

George Washington University’s Homeland Security Policy Institute (HSPI) had the honor of hosting DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano for what was billed as the First Annual Homeland Security Address. It was clear the Secretary has a new passion for delivering her remarks, but as polished as she may have been in presenting new material, her remarks were remarkably devoid of anything groundbreaking.

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is informing industry that the requirement to screen 100 percent of cargo on passenger planes inbound to the United States will be met by December 31, 2011. Did I miss something? What has happened over the last six months that makes TSA think inbound cargo will be 100 percent screened by the end of the year? There’s aggressive action and then there’s unrealistic optimism.

This is the second video from the US Chamber’s forum on supply chains and cargo security. Officials from TSA and CBP join representatives from the private sector to discuss where policy might be going.