As if standing in line for fifteen minutes, only to be briefly rendered shoeless before compartmentalizing your personal belongings into grey plastic recycled bins to feed to the x-ray machine isn't insulting enough, the TSA has decided to monetize our captive audience asses at airport security checkpoints.
DHS To Seize Eyeballs At U.S. Airports (Source: Peacock Report Blog)
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is ringing in the New Year with a plan to address the arguably unbearable time it takes for airline passengers to traverse their way through screening checkpoints, The Peacock Report has discovered. TSA will achieve this heightened scale of efficiency by joining hands with another hallowed U.S. institution: the advertising industry.
According to a presolicitation notice that TPR located via a routine search of the FedBizOpps contracting database, TSA and the Dept. of Homeland Security (DHS) soon will launch a pilot project that seeks to turn airport checkpoints into bombardment centers of commercial offerings. TSA's stated short-term goal for the one-year experiment is an assessment of "industry interest in advertising on available spaces within Passenger Screening Checkpoints," the Dec. 21 document says.
The agency's unstated, implicit goal is to generate additional revenue for the federal government, a task it will accomplish by seizing a captive audience of eyeballs, 24/7, "in select airports throughout the [U.S.] and its territories."
An official "Industry Day" for the "Advertisements Within Security Checkpoints Pilot Program," as it is formally known, is slated for Jan. 11 at TSA Headquarters in Arlington, Virginia.
