TSA blogging
Smith and Wesson tacpens go right through.
Check your bags if you’re over seventy.
Telling the tsa agent that if their ‘floor is going to be that cold, they need to hurry up and get me my shoes’ will get your laptop swabbed.
The three ounce limit is dumb because you can take all the bottles you want.
November 8th, 2010 at 5:57 pm
but what happened when you told them all guns are always loaded?
November 8th, 2010 at 5:59 pm
BTW, that takes balls of steel.
I’m flying out to Iowa with a shotgun and a muzzleloader tomorrow. But my nuts are tiny little brittle things compared to yours if you were really willing to risk TSA’s proctocological security fetishes for principle.
November 8th, 2010 at 7:01 pm
I’ve been with TSA for almost three years. I am a Lead Screener (two stripes) at a small New England airport. You’re painting my co-workers with a pretty broad brush. A lot of us are prior military, law enforcement, ect. We wanted to do something positive for our country in the wake of the Sept. 11th atrocity.
Some of the rules are silly, but taking it out on my screeners is not the answer. Headquarters determines policy, we follow orders.
You can only take as many 3 ounce bottles as will fit in that one quart ziplock, and there is a reason for it; google “Bojinka plot” The shoes, thank Richard Reid. At my airport we try very hard to make screening as painless as possible, and I don’t tolerate any of my screeners treating passengers like cattle. Just remember that airports hire form the local demographic, if you fly out of Detroit or Chicago, thats what you get.
November 8th, 2010 at 7:12 pm
My County Comm pen went right through American, French, Irish, and Slovenian screening without even a glance. My DSLR, however, damn near required dismantling in DeGaulle…
You might want to talk to those ex-military co-workers of yours about how that excuse tends not to work so well for those employing it…
November 8th, 2010 at 7:19 pm
“we were just following orders” has been the excuse of many the loser in the battle of freedom. You should keep that in mind. And prior law enforcement, why prior?
November 8th, 2010 at 7:57 pm
Your agency has stopped nothing and is only a pain in the ass. That’s how it is.
November 8th, 2010 at 8:57 pm
Those tac pens are not something I would like to try to take through TSA.
November 9th, 2010 at 12:06 am
The fact that TSA harass flight crew is the big clue that its a load of BS theatre not real security.
November 9th, 2010 at 12:10 am
RobA:
I hope you’re getting the clue that we don’t bloody care what you meant to do. Our security is meaningless without our liberty.
This is America, you uniformed thug. The idea that we cannot travel within our own country on our legitimate business without showing our papers, having our possessions searched, and now being x-rayed or strip searched, is intolerable.
You swore an oath to uphold the Constitution, right? Read it.
You violate your oath every single day you punch in, and what you mean to do, what your orders are, whether you are polite or not is irrelevant.
And we all remember every time you and your buddies treated us like prison inmates.
Now read your oath again: “I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic”.
Do you understand that by our lights, you are the domestic enemy of the Constitution?
Don’t like it?
Quit.
We won’t mind, honest.
(And those of you ex-military, ex-LEO? Your shame is triple. You damn well should know better. Look up “three percenters” You want to be on the right side? Join them.)
November 9th, 2010 at 12:26 am
One more thing:
I can’t tell whether or not you’re unionized yet.
Let me assume you’re not, and tell you what it means if you get unionized:
You will threaten us that if we do not let you rob us even more than you already do, you will pull off your blue gloves, turn off your machines, and stop getting in our way while you stand in front of the airport carrying picket signs.
Where, by the way, we will jeer and mock and spit, saying and doing all those things to you we’re forbidden under penalty of law to do when you’re on the job.
Because unlike teachers, firemen, EMTs, and police, we don’t want you on the job. We want you hanging from lamp-posts as a warning to others.
November 9th, 2010 at 1:56 am
DJMoore
Excellent!!!!
November 9th, 2010 at 10:02 am
“You can only take as many 3 ounce bottles as will fit in that one quart ziplock, and there is a reason for it”
So then you have 6 or 10 or more terrorists, all with their own quart ziplock. Or a diaper bag filled with formula, which is not counted, or any number of other possibilities. Focusing on one specific threat DOES NOT WORK.
November 9th, 2010 at 5:27 pm
“This is America, you uniformed thug. The idea that we cannot travel within our own country on our legitimate business without showing our papers, having our possessions searched, and now being x-rayed or strip searched, is intolerable. ”
I can do all of those things. I just refuse to fly…any where. Luckily I don’t have to fly for work. I just got back from a trip to Alabama from Oklahoma. 12 hour drive one way. Totally worth it not to have to deal with airports, the TSA, crappy airlines.
We have to do all of those things because we put up with it. If everyone went Gault on flying we’d get rid of the TSA PDQ. Heck, if everyone who flys for recreational purposes stopped, TSA would be toast.
Sheep fly and sheep like being watched over. The TSA aren’t sheepdogs, but the sheep can’t tell the difference.
November 10th, 2010 at 12:53 am
“I can do all of those things. I just refuse to fly”
Quite right. I also refuse to fly except for work, but have occasionally had to do that.
Even so: The idea that we cannot FLY about our own country without &etc is still intolerable.
Beyond that, I cannot help the feeling that left unchecked, TSA procedures will spread to buses, subways, trains, interstates, movie theaters…wherever the next attack takes place.
November 11th, 2010 at 11:06 am
I work at a defense installation. Awhile back I had to fly for a training gig and driving was out of the question. Had a bit of a verbal tiff with one TSA employee as I arrived at the airport (small, regional) about 45 minutes prior to takeoff. In response to his, “you should be here 90 minutes before takeoff” was met with my reply of “whatever”, he replied, “yeah, right, whatever” to which I replied, “what’s the point of being here 90 minutes prior to takeoff when you don’t open security screening until 25 minutes before flight time?”
He scowled and walked away. Imagine my surprise when I was paged back to the ticket counter as I was in the middle of going through screening. Repacked my stuff, went to ticketing and was informed my checked bag had triggered their scanner. I asked what that meant, they asked where I worked. I rattled off the acronym and as they were, at the time, a relatively recent addition to the airport weren’t hired local demographic but brought in from elsewhere until locals could be hired, they asked “where’s that” and I replied about “30 miles outside town”.
Then they asked, “what do you do there?” and I replied, “blow stuff up.” They repacked my bag in near record time and I made my flight.
Security Theater, nothing more, nothing less.
November 11th, 2010 at 1:28 pm
“Headquarters determines policy, we follow orders.”
Heh. The Nuremberg Defense strikes again.
November 12th, 2010 at 2:21 am
Oh, DjMoore? Do you know what PC “really” stands for?
I’ll tell you: Police Cunt.
November 12th, 2010 at 4:57 am
Oops, sorry! I addressed DjMoore when I meant to yell at RobA, the actual Police Cunt.
November 15th, 2010 at 1:06 am
We’re going to Quebec City on vacation next year. By car. Because we hate the airlines and the TSA.
And if gas prices go any higher, we won’t do that either. We’ll just go to the range…