Since its inception, the agency has been subject to criticism and controversy regarding the effectiveness of various procedures, as well as incidents of baggage theft, data security, and allegations of prejudicial treatment towards certain ethnic groups.

[7] Proponents of placing the government in charge of airport security, including Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta, argued that only a single federal agency could best protect passenger aviation.

The new agency's effort to hire screeners to begin operating security checkpoints at airports represents a case of a large-scale staffing project completed over a short period.

In addition, the TSA benefits from the expertise and leadership of several Deputy Assistant Administrators and other executive officers, who contribute their knowledge and skills to various aspects of the agency's operations.

[34] They examine passengers and their baggage, and perform other security duties within airports, including controlling entry and exit points, and monitoring the areas near their checkpoints.

Officers are issued badges and shoulder boards after completing a trainee period including 3-week academy at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC) in Glynco, Georgia.

It also directed that TSOs be offered expanded collective bargaining rights mirroring Title 5 of the United States Code, and appeals of adverse actions to the Merit Systems Protection Board.

[80] In 2010 an anonymous source told ABC News that undercover agents managed to bring weapons through security nearly 70 percent of the time at some major airports.

[114][115] George Washington University law professor Jeffrey Rosen has supported this view, saying "there's a strong argument that the TSA's measures violate the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures.

Critics sometimes refer to them as "naked scanners," though operators no longer see images of the actual passenger, which has been replaced by a stick figure with boxes indicating areas of concern identified by the machine.

[120][121] In 2022, TSA announced it will allow passengers to select the gender marker of their choice and alter algorithms used by the machines to be inclusive of transgender, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming individuals.

[123] If the machine indicates an anomaly to the operator, or if other problems occur, the passenger is required to receive a pat-down of that area.Full-body scanners have also proven controversial due to privacy and health concerns.

"[125] Female passengers have complained that they are often singled out for scanning, and a review of TSA records by a local CBS affiliate in Dallas found "a pattern of women who believe that there was nothing random about the way they were selected for extra screening.

[131] In February 2011, the TSA began testing new software on the millimeter-wave machines already used at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport that automatically detects potential threats on a passenger without the need for having an officer review actual images.

[121] The TSA announced in 2013 that the Rapiscan's backscatter scanners would no longer be used since the manufacturer of the machines could not produce "privacy software" to abstract the near-nude images that agents view and turn them into stick-like figures.

[140][141][142] In May 2011, the Texas House of Representatives passed a bill that would make it illegal for Transportation Security Administration officials to touch a person's genitals when carrying out a patdown.

Circuit court of appeals ruled that the TSA did violate the Administrative Procedure Act by failing to allow a public notice and comment rule-making period.

The order cited intelligence that "indicates that terrorist groups continue to target commercial aviation and are aggressively pursuing innovative methods to undertake their attacks, to include smuggling explosive devices in various consumer items".

As of August 2022, they issued revised cybersecurity directives for oil and gas providers more focused on performance-based measures, following extensive input from federal regulators and private industry stakeholders.

[176] In March 2012, American attorney Jonathan Corbett published video demonstrating a vulnerability in TSA's body scanners that would allow metallic objects to pass undetected.

[187] Extrapolating this rate of fatalities, New York Times contributor Nate Silver remarked that this is equivalent to "four fully loaded Boeing 737s crashing each year.

[207] in September 2023, NBC Miami ran a story regarding 3 TSA employees who were arrested for grand theft after being filmed on security cameras stealing cash, and goods from handbags.

[210] In 2007, an unencrypted computer hard drive containing Social Security numbers, bank data, and payroll information for about 100,000 employees was lost or stolen from TSA headquarters.

[246] The TSA was accused of having performed poorly at the 2009 Presidential Inauguration viewing areas, which left thousands of ticket holders excluded from the event in overcrowded conditions, while those who had arrived before the checkpoints were in place avoided screening altogether.

[250] Another GAO report said that there is no evidence that the Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques (SPOT) behavioral detection program, with an annual budget of hundreds of millions of dollars, is effective.

[251] A 2013 report by the Homeland Security Department Inspector General's Office charged that TSA was using criminal investigators to do the job of lower-paid employees, wasting millions of dollars a year.

An April 2013 report from the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General indicated that the TSA had 17,000 items with an estimated cost of $185.7 million stored in its warehouses on May 31, 2012.

"[255] In January 2014, Jason Edward Harrington, a former TSA screener at O'Hare International Airport, said that fellow staff members assigned to review body scan images of airline passengers routinely joked about fliers' weight, attractiveness, and penis and breast sizes.

[257] In July 2018, a case heard in the Third Circuit Appeals Court ruled that TSA agents are not "investigative or law enforcement officers" and thus are not liable under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA).

[260] An ABC/Washington Post poll conducted by Langer Associates and released November 22, 2010, found that 64% of Americans favored the full-body X-ray scanners, but that 50% think the "enhanced" pat-downs go too far; 37% felt so strongly.