TSA has a message for those who thought PreCheck was their ticket to sanity: Screw you! Nobody will be safe from the Gropenfrauen. Seattle Times: It's a no-go for some hoping to join TSA fast lane Assuming you make the 50% cut, your more decent treatment will still be denied arbitrarily on a per-flight basis.
So FliesWayTooMuch's fears of the TSA dividing and conquering by extending favors and exemptions to favored classes is perhaps unfounded. The TSA can't even get that right. Getting treated like cr*p and groped even 20% of the time has the psychological impact that you're getting groped/treated like cr*p ALL the time because of the uncertainty. If it's 50% or higher, then this whole exemption thing is completely useless from POV of passengers, and no improvement whatsoever. Our best ally continues to be the TSA...
Let's see, how do you say in English? Ha ha! What we've been trying to tell people for months -- Pre-Check doesn't guarantee anything. I can point to TSA News posts I did last year saying this.
I thought the elixir piece last week characterized the program pretty well. Talk about bait and switch. This is literally extortion; paying protection to avoid being violated without any assurance that you will be spared. It does illustrate how desperate some travelers are to avoid TSA security. Very sad.