Gigs

http://www.hlswatch.com/2009/10/15/%...arch%E2%80%9D/

The TSA always claims that any apparent randomness or lack of adherence to their own procedures is intentional and it's to throw the terrorists off. I don't know how much longer they can keep that excuse up.

I particularly identified when the author says:
I've been selected for additional screening several times. I think it's because I look like the kind of person who would be unlikely to give them any shit about it. I'm not black or mexican or some asshole business man wearing a high priced suit.

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Trout Recreant

I try not to bathe for about a week before I get on a plane. Then rub a mix of rotten fish and Limburger cheese into my hair. I could be carrying a stick of dynamite and a machine gun through security and they won't stop me for an additional search.

I don't get your last sentence. Why wouldn't they stop people who are black, Mexican or wearing an expensive suit?

Chantal

What exactly is a terrorist supposed to 'look like'?

Also, if the TSA or anybody else actually said how they selected people for checks... it would be even easier to slip through.

What do you WANT the TSA to say? Really? In a world where cocaine is strapped to the bodies of 3-year olds? Where a dead child was stuffed with cocaine and the mother carried it over a border. Because who wants to disturb a baby that seems to be asleep?

I have very little patience tonight. I've just spent 3 days hearing about terrorist / organised crime techniques. Not media-hype personal experience stories, but things your fellow human beings do: things that most people would probably prefer not to know about - much better to get huffy about violation of your personal privacy.

Random screening is... random. Live with it. If you think screening is violating your rights, then fine. Let's just let people carry anything they like, anywhere. Who cares about fighting crime anyway, if it means you can avoid being patted down.

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Archer Braun

I'd fly much more often if I got rewarded with oral sex by an attractive female screener that discovered for the ten-thousandth time that I was NOT a terrorist.

Sheesh. You think they'd be grateful, ya know? But nooooo.

Xero Static

I was pulled out of line once about 3 years ago and given one hell of an "extensive" search. However it my was my own dumb ass fault... I had a bullet hanging on my wallet chain. Where my keys hung... It was already shot off and contained no gun powder but of course they didn't know that when one of them noticed it hanging off my chain.

I had just won it in one of the game tournaments I was a part of and was heading home... it was just a novelty gift all the top 5 players received (FPS Event)... They were shot off rounds from Iraq that had been converted into little trinkets as a way to remember real soldiers were fighting for us everyday.

I just didn't think at all how it looked since it was just a novelty prize. Regardless TSA was not happy at all. You would think I walked in waving a gun around the way they treated me... I was detained and verbally abused for over 4 hours and ended up missing the plane. I Also never got it back...

I ended up just taking a dang bus.

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Cubey Terra

Every time I fly, I'm taken aside to remove my belt, shoes, get wanded and frisked. And not in the good way. Every time. I don't think I look like a terrorist, but maybe they're targeting nerds now.

... And this is just for Canadian domestic flights -- not TSA.

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Gigs

I know it bothers you when I say this, but this is exactly the sort of breathless propaganda technique that I was talking about last time I criticized you for it.

Chantal

Fine, think it's breathless propaganda. It isn't.

I would love to sit you down and show you some facts. Not going to happen, but please go ahead: you think I'm into 'breathless propaganda', and I think you're blinkered, biased and pretty unaware of what is really going on in the world.

Gigs

Gigs: "The TSA is unaccountable because they claim that all their procedures and policies are secrets"

Chantal: "ZOMG DEAD BABIES STUFFED WITH COCAINE"

Does this help?

You can't tell me that you think both are equally rational.

Gigs

To avoid claims of racism in the former case, and to avoid ego-inflated business people (yes and also lawyers, HAPPY NOW TROUT? hehe) in the latter case.

Trout Recreant

Got it.

I never travel in a suit. If I have to take one, I just check it in. They are uncomfortable. Maybe I should start doing so if it gets me through security more easily.

Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if they chose people to do additional screening on because of a perception that the person would not be a problem. You are talking about front line people schlepping it out every day just trying to do their job. they are underpaid, overworked and subject to a lot of abuse. If they have to do additional screening on people, it makes sense that they would pick the ones who would not give them any grief.

Of course, it means that they are failing in their jobs, because they are there to provide security (ostensibly) not take the path of least resistance.

I guess if I was going to try some sort of terrorism, I'd get a $5,000.00 suit (who cares about the credit cards, I'm going to die anyway, right?) and come in looking like an angry white male businessman who is used to causing trouble if he doesn't get his way. They would leave me alone and the next thing you know, I'm blowing up an airplane.

Chantal

Oh for crying out loud the fact that the TSA don't tell people what terrorists are supposed to look like is one thing - 'accountable' is another. They CANNOT say what they are looking for when they select people for screening. Don't be DUMB.

You seem to think that you, Mr Important Innocent NOT being screened is way, way more important than anything else.

What I was saying is that in order to stop things like dead babies stuffed with cocaine, screening is necessary. Yes, an emotional response. It's an illustration of how people avoid screening.

That's political? Sheesh. And insinuating that I'm lying by omission - just disgusts me.

What, precisely, am I supposed to be omitting? I'm sharing some things that I know because people like YOU seem to adore irrational editorials about poor darlings being frisked when they're innocent, without any idea of the bigger picture. And I do mean NO bloody idea.

No, people trying to protect the public aren't perfect. The TSA isn't perfect either. Maybe we indulge in 'propaganda', if you want to call it that. But basically, we are trying to make sure you're safer. Call me an idealist. Call me over-emotional (that does happen when you believe in something and you're exhausted). But not that I'm lying by omission.

Again, your accusation that I'm lying by omission disgusts me (quite apart from upsetting me but hey, we grunts who try and keep you safe aren't supposed to have feelings, right?). And heaven forbid we should come up with emotionally disturbing things to show what people DO smuggle, and how.

Go back to your cosy little world where you trash people trying to keep it that way. We're used to people like you.

I'm out of here. At least until I calm down.

Argent Stonecutter

Wow, the site has been SLUdotted.

Circle Widdershins

There are many, many people doing thankless and unknowable jobs that add to keeping us all safer and blissfully ignorant and I for one am incredibly grateful.

Thanks.

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Gigs

Actually Adam Savage posted it on his twitter... I believe that's what broke it.

Colette Meiji

more or less

Har Fairweather

No wonder they pick on harmless-looking, respectable former police-lady types.

Colette Meiji

Har Fairweather

OMG! That's my mother-in-law!

Argent Stonecutter

Who?

Chantal

Trouble is, 'most wanted terrorists' lists also contain guys looking like this (this one from the FBI). He likes to blow things up.

And this one? The sweet guy across the aisle, who looked so nice that nobody even checked his passport?

Just the world's most wanted pedophile, arrested in 2007.

Taco Rubio

I have my lucky hat. It's a canary yellow watchcap. If I wear it I get the triple inspection (standard + post detector wanding + final wanding at the gate), if I don't wear it, I get through no problem. Because you know, who would have a beard and a yellow hat? TERRORIST that's who.

Every time. So I usually wear it because I enjoy the physical attention.

I keep a dead baby full of coke in my pocket when I wear my hat, and nobody even checks there, it's great!

Colette Meiji

I dunno that second guy looks pretty creepy to me.

Of course pedophiles are not known for hijacking/blowing up airplanes.

Vivianne Draper

As a person who is *really* familiar with government contracts and how the conditions are fulfilled, it wouldn't surprise me to find out that TSA has a quota for extra screenings per day/week/month and that their front line people take the path of least resistance to fill that quota.

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Jesse Barnett

Looks? Nah people go off of "vibes" and this will get you checked, no matter how you look, faster then anything.

I have never, ever had a guilty conscience for anything I have ever done and never had problems. When I was young we went to Mexico every single weekend and I would carry back 5,000 Mandrax with me and every now and then an lb or so of pot. We would do our buisiness, go get drunk and come back across the border at 2-3 AM with the rest of the crowd. 20 years later, after a week of partying in Negril for a week I could not bear the thought of leaving an unsmoked oz of Jamaican Green so I strapped it to my leg and came home. Miami airport they waved me through and went through all of the luggage of the old woman 3 places back.

When I first moved to Ohio from Texas I could not bare the thought of a OH license plate, I was a Texas gal dammit! Drove on an expired tag for 1-1/2 years with nary a problem till I went back to Texas and renewed it again. My brother on the other hand gets pulled over for everything. For the first 30 years of his life he never even smoked pot and yet the one and only time he got within 20 miles of the Mexican border they field stripped his car, even took out the seats.

I am a good girl now and the only vice I have left is my high end caffeine addiction. To date, the only time I have ever been checked even though I traveled frequently worldwide for years was in Chicago because of a broken bomb detector.

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