Hate is a pretty strong word. But not strong enough to express how I feel about the TSA - the Transportation Security Administration or Thousands Standing Around, depending on your point of view - which runs those security checkpoints at American airports. I may fear the IRS, and I may dread the DMV - but for sheer bureaucratic stupidity and its affront to personal liberties, the TSA has earned a special place of loathing in my heart.
And apparently I’m not alone. An Associated Press story this past December on MSNBC’s website is titled, “TSA draws travelers’ complaints: Security screeners are the most familiar - and hated - face of government.” The story notes that TSA receives about a thousand complaints about its operations every month - which doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of the number of Americans who quietly seethe at security checkpoints but don’t waste their time filing a formal complaint. Deaf ears and all that.
TSA spokeswoman Ellen Howe, however, bristles at the criticisms leveled at her agency, insisting her screeners “are on the front lines and they deserve our respect.”
No, they aren’t, and no they don’t. From a December 2007 story by Reuters:
“Airport security lines can annoy passengers, but there is no evidence that they make flying any safer, U.S. researchers reported on Thursday. A team at the Harvard School of Public Health could not find any studies showing whether the time-consuming process of X-raying carry-on luggage prevents hijackings or attacks. They also found no evidence to suggest that making passengers take off their shoes and confiscating small items prevented any incidents.”
The story notes that over $5 BILLION a year is being spent on airport security operations and that the vast majority of items confiscated by screeners are cigarette lighters - which at one time were deemed by the TSA to be extremely dangerous, but now are OK. Toothpaste and deodorant are apparently the new weapons of choice by the world’s most vicious, cold-hearted terrorists.
Meanwhile, TSA chief Kip Hawley says his agency is deploying new screening techniques to make the sheep…er, people…in those long lines “calmer” and not “so tense.” The AP reports that Hawley claims new “behavioral observation and document checking are proving to be the most successful in rooting out would-be terrorists.”
Oh, puh-lease.
“Behavioral observation” is nothing more than a cover-your-butt smokescreen to deflect criticism by human “rights” goofballs that TSA agents are “profiling” someone. When a 23-year-old named Mohammed is pulled out of line for additional screening, the screeners can claim he was “acting suspicious,” a totally subjective assessment, rather than note that he looked just like the 19 guys who flew planes into the World Trade Center. Let’s get real here.
But I can now attest from personal experience that these new “behavioral observation and document checking” procedures to root out would-be terrorists are a crock.
My family and I – which means all three kids, including the baby - were returning home from vacation last week and dutifully filed in line for the ol’ “Papers, please” routine at the Honolulu airport. I handed our five boarding passes and our ID to the lone TSA guy who gets paid to look at boarding documents and, according to TSA chief Hawley, use them to root out would-be terrorists every day. But this genius couldn’t find any of our names on the boarding passes and handed them back to me, demanding that I show him where the names were. Heck, I didn’t know. It’s not my yob, man.
In the meantime, the line behind us was getting longer and longer and the folks in that line were getting tenser and less calm by the minute. Finally, I find where the names are located on the boarding passes and hand them back to Deputy Dawg (I’m sorry; was that not respectful, Ms. Howe?).
We’re finally approved to move to Phase Two of the front-line against terrorists, much to the collective relief of those behind us. Off with the shoes and belts. Out with the laptop. Oops, almost forgot to remove my keys from my pants.
One-by-one we dutifully file through the metal detector, miraculously not setting off any bells or sirens. Whew! At least we can now put our clothes back on, head for the gate and grab something to eat before the flight, right? Not.
Apparently there was something in our “behavior” and/or our “documents” which triggered the crackerjack TSA security guards’ suspicions. Yes, a middle-class white family with three young children, including a 16-month-old baby, returning from vacation set off alarm bells in some bureaucrat’s mind. So we were instructed to move to the side for “enhanced” screening while all of our carry-on bags, including the baby’s stroller, were hand-inspected.
Out of morbid curiosity, I asked if this was simply a “random check” that we’d been so lucky to be honored with. The terse reply from the agent on the front-lines of the war against terrorists was a simple, “No.” So our selection couldn’t even be explained away by the stupidity of random selection; these people intentionally singled us out as a potential security threat.
Barney Fife then proceeded to get a female agent to pat down my wife and two daughters before feeling me up-and-down himself. At which point my wife was instructed to hold the baby out with outstretched arms like Rafiki did with Simba on the rock ledge in “The Lion King” for a pat-down.
In the meantime, another crackerjack TSA agent was busy rifling through our carry-on bags, and lo and behold, he caught my wife trying to smuggle onboard a tube of skin cream which exceeded the federally-mandated 3-ounce limit. Goober informed us he was confiscating the potentially lethal tube of Lubriderm, much to the relief of the other passengers standing in line who clearly were worried it might be used to send us all to a watery grave in Davy Jones’ Locker somewhere over the Pacific.
With one of our bags now 5 ounces lighter, we finally were allowed to leave Checkpoint Charlie and proceed to the gate. Now for the kicker.
When we finally get home and unpack, I discover that the girls had inadvertently packed a pair of metal scissors they found at the condo where we stayed in their carry-on knapsack. Neither the TSA’s expensive, super-sensitive X-ray machine nor hand-inspection of the bag detected this pair a metal scissors - but they did find the Lubriderm! Don’t you feel safer now?
I’ll leave you and this topic (for now) with the following CNN story, which came out on the exact same day of our latest thrilling experience with the TSA:
“A passenger who went through an airport security checkpoint — before remembering that he had a loaded gun — is facing charges after going back to report his error, authorities said.”
So a LOADED GUN and a pair of metal scissors can make it past professional airport screeners, but not a tube of skin cream? And once the guy realizes his mistake, HE gets charged with a crime for reporting it? Unbelievable.
The real crime here was perpetrated by President Bush and the idiots in Congress who foisted this asinine airport security regime on the land of the free and home of the brave. And for all the dolts out there who mistakenly think this ludicrous and ludicrously expensive TSA crud is needed to make Americans safer, I can only refer to you the immortal words of founding father Ben Franklin: “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”
Case closed. Next. Papers, please…
Posted on January 27th, 2008 by Chuck Muth
Filed under: National
Time to wake up it’s not the 1950’s you morrons it’s 2008 . We don’t have people watching roadrunners cartoons they goto M.I.T, Oxford, an have Phd. Etc…So Wake up an take off your rose colored glasses.
Chuck,
The column today, Sunday, Jan. 27, 2008, about your experience with TSA evokes unpleasant memories of a similar situation that I had back in mid-December, when flying out of Reno to Las Vegas.
I was pulled aside for “too many quart-size baggies” containing my toiletries. The agent was obviously intent on impressing her fellow workers with her diligence and no-nonsense approach to her “duties”. She had a badge indicating that she was some kind of training supervisor.
When I questioned why she made such a statement, she told me to open my carry-on bags to be inspected. I began to open my bags to remove the contents for inspection and she literally yelled at me to “not touch the contents” that she had just finished telling me to remove from my bags.
She then explained to me that I was a complete fool for trying to get the excess baggies past her. I asked when such a rule was put in place and she told me that “everybody knows these rules”. I explained that I was sorry for not being informed and was subsequently “wanded” to verify, I suppose, that I didn’t have any more baggies on my person.
Realizing that you probably have many such responses, I won’t bore you with the 2 hour wait at the check point in Las Vegas and subsequent search for the deadly metal hidden in my chest (3 stents to keep my heart pumping blood). The list of atrocious actions continues to build.
All of that being said, is there any way to have your aforementioned column published as an ad in The Washington Post? I’ll contribute a fair share to the cost and hope that other concerned citizens will do likewise.
Respectfully,
Rick Jones
1115 Flint St.
Fernley, NV. 89408
Ditto on your column on the Thousands Standing Around. Just don’t mention Barney Fife in the same column, he does not deserve to be insulted. That crazy right wing nut Ben Franklin had it correct concerning Liberty and Safety. What would have been the outcome on Sept 11 if the crew and maybe even a passanger was armed? Did anyone say a few muslins would be waiting in line to meet some ugly virgins (?). BTW do you know how many pilots are now allowed to fly armed? Can anyone explain to me why the pliots have to go through screening? What are they going to do, hijak themselves.
The ones at fault here are the crooks and/or mental midgets in Washington. Why not adopt the security system Israel has been using successfully for many years. It is private firms and not the morons (oops, I should not insult morons) we have here.
The weekend before the elections in 2002 I was visiting my daughter in college. She had tickets from the college republican club to a speech Dubya was given. I think everyone in the hall heard me say “bovine manure” (that was not what I actually said) when Dubya said “Islam was a religion of peace”. I guess I was lucky I was not arrested
Howard,
Cheyenne, WY
Insightful column!
So a bunch of people, who couldn’t get hired in the private sector are busitn your b@#$;
Wasn’t it Dubya and our Republican Congress that made these otherwise unemployable citizens federal employees?;
and, Chuck, really, you know you are on all national watch lists what with the Postal Service issue concerning your dog and the child endangerment issue you have?;
glad to see you have the financial where-with-all to fly 5 round trip to Hawaii- NO TAX REFUND CHECK FOR YOU-NEXT!
You have to love the supreme irony of TSA’s cigarette lighter ban, which went into effect after the Richard “Shoe-bomber” Reid incident. Of course, Reid drew the attention and approbation of his fellow passengers by trying to ignite the fuse to his sneakers with MATCHES, which passengers would still be permitted to carry onboard after the TSA geniuses determined lighters are the terrorists’ preferred WMD. Go figure.
Before 9/11, I flew to Phoenix from OKC with my girlfriend, who was in the habit of carrying a butter knife for preparing Snackables, which the genius pre-TSA non-federalized screeners detected and dutifully confiscated. Once seated onboard, however, she was horrified to discover the little NAA .22 mini-revolver she normally carried for personal protection and neglected to leave at home was still discretely tucked inside her purse. My first thought was, “Hey, this could be a smoking flight!”
Now, don’t you feel safer? I know I do.
In Sydney, Australia, we breed the same kind of cleverness and its incredibly easy to get around it. Unwittingly, I left a small Victorinox pocket knife (including mini-scissors !) on my keychain which safely bypassed the airport scanner/security goons at both Sydney Airport and Melbourne on the return trip. Yep, these guys are nature’s sharpest, as you’d expect from the $8 per hour temporary resident class they’re recruited from.
In Shanghai, China, they used fully locally bred inteligentsia, and I found they were much more vigilant. I got held up and asked if I had any “tools” in my carry-on back-pack. I couldn’t think of any. After a careful search, I discovered it was a cheap pair of chiropody pliers I’d bought the day before. They tried to insist I go back and pack them in my in-the-hold baggage - but that had long disappeared down the big long shute to the baggage handlers. It took some time and the help of my interpreter to convince them it was okay to toss them in the bin - apparently they suspected I might have been trying to frame them for stealing them. The only thing that was absurd about this was that no sooner we’d boarded the plane, us at the front of the plane were presented with quite sharp knives and forks of far more use to a terrorist that any chiropody plier or pocket knife could be ! Admittedly, this was 2002, and I’m sure even the dining utensil threat has been thoroughly dealt with.