Thanks :-). Restaffing the TSA may not be necessary though -- not radically; there seems to be a problem with the culture there and with how performance is measured. That's systemic and comes from higher in the hierarchy.
Specifically, I think good directions would be:
1. Driving away the "law enforcement" culture. Are members of the TSA staff registered as policemen, assigned to a station, going through police academy and under the rules and discipline of police training? If not, they aren't law enforcement and shouldn't be treated as such, and should either a) be disallowed from conducting any kind of search without the supervision of a policeman or b) covered by the same regulation as a regular policeman. You can't have people do police stuff with non-police discipline, eschewing the checks and balances law enforcement has in order to make sure it enforces, you know, the law.
2. Providing immediate legal counseling as soon as you step into a private room. Large crowds tend to be a good protection against abuse. Once you step into a room, anything more than searching through personal items should be covered by a lawyer, and people should particularly only be questioned only in the presence of a lawyer. This is because a) the lawyer would be able to assert the rights of the person being questioned and b) the lawyer would be able to explain what's happening in layman's terms. When a particularly uptight ex-postal employee who just discovered authority exceeds gets nasty, a third-party reminding him he's stepping outside the law works much better than the person on the receiving end of his newly-discovered authority asserting his rights -- risking to be regarded as "aggressive" and "overly-assertive" by someone whose most important previous responsibility had been making sure stamps are correctly positioned on the envelope.
3. Explicitly encouraging and rewarding correct behaviour from TSA personnel, while at the same time applying serious disciplinary action. Let's be honest here, there's a large enough supply of unemployed people who can search a bag that you can afford discharging abusers, and sufficient public frustration that you can afford offering the occasional bonus to people who go out of their way to clear up misunderstandings.
