Security and Flying

[shnozzola]

Screwtape and Nogods mentioned this in the gun fails thread.  I used to like flying also, although I'm still a "watch out the window" nerd that examines  everything about the planes. 

Tell your stories.

Here's mine:

We flew last week.  First plane was a 767.   TSA  - shoes off, laptop out of the bag, forgot to put  $9.00 suntan lotion in the luggage  - that was quickly tossed into the TSA garbage.  I know they don't have much food these days on the plane - cuts into the poor poor airline profits, so I put a honeybun in my pocket.  I thought the xray machine looks at everything, end of story.  Oh no.
   Young, cute TSA girl: Sir, what do you have in your Pocket?
   Me:  Uh, a hankie, and a honeybun.
   Young, cute TSA girl :  What?
   A honeybun.
   Young, cute TSA girl: Please take everything out.
   TSA guard:  Come over here sir.  Put your palms out, and spread eagle for pat down. Test palms for residue(honeybun or gunpowder?).
   TSA gaurd:  You had a honeybun in your pocket?
   Yes sir.
   Pat. Pat. Pat.  Ok sir, go ahead, you're holding up the line.
   Wife, scolding (went through w/o a hitch).  Why can't you be normal like everyone else?   

After all that we went to the Philadelphia Eagles Stadium (with 30,000 others) - walking 2 times the distance we had to because women could only enter with their purse contents reduced to a clear 6" X 8" ziplock baggy.   

[Nick]

So did you get to keep the honeybun?

[LoriPinkAngel]

Going through security somewhere in the south I jokingly (I thought) asked the TSA guy "Can that machine tell if I passed my kidney stone?"  His answer:  Very seriously, "No, honey it only sees through your clothes."

[ParkingPlaces]

When you buy an airline ticket today, you are freely admitting that you are guilty of every possible transgression on the planet, and accept that you will be punished accordingly when you get to the airport. However, it will be getting worse. By the year 2020, all airline passengers will fly completely nude, tied to their seats, and be blindfolded and gagged. And still people will fly.

The TSA wants to tie us up so they can steal more laptops, iPads, jewelry, money, medicine and honeybuns. Right now they are limited a little bit by the fact that passengers can see and stuff.

I applied to work for the TSA. I screwed up though. I used my real name. They accused me of being too honest and ended the interview early. They thought about pressing charges. But then they remembered another plane was about to load, and they ran off to fleece the passengers and forgot all about me. I lucked out.

Guess which goverment agency is my second least favorite? Hmmmm. My very least favorite, which is reading this post as I type it, already knows who they are.

[Traveler]

I had a terrible experience the last time I flew. In general, I love flying. But the idiotic security rules are really pissing me off. Most of you know by now that I'm a breast cancer survivor. Bilateral mastectomy with no reconstruction. Damn, I'm starting to cry just writing about this. 

I was visiting friends out west. One of them gave me a necklace with a stone on it "for luck" or "good vibes" or something. I don't remember her exact words. She's a good friend who helped me through my cancer experience, so I wore it. I didn't take it off when going through the "see through your clothes" machine because they said I didn't need to take off my jewelry. So, what happens? They see "something" on the scan. They ask me to step aside. Its the necklace. Will they let me take it off and go through again? No. They say that's against the rules. They made me go through a pat down. On my scarred chest. A place that no one has touched other than doctors since my diagnosis. Now, to make matters worse, this trip was triggered by another friend being diagnosed as stage 4 with bone mets, cancer in her kidney, and possible other complications, including a suspicious spot behind her eye. A not uncommon place for breast cancer mets.

Anyway, I was exhausted, sad, and vulnerable. As soon as they told me what they were going to do I burst into tears. It was awful. The poor women who did it were obviously embarrassed and didn't like what they had to do.

So, to protect ourselves from a bead necklace, that I could have taken off, they had to severely traumatize me. How is this making anyone safer???

I'm still pissed and upset. I really should write a letter.

[Mrjason]

I was going through security at heathrow passing my hand luggage through the scanner.
I got pulled to oneside and asked about the contents of my rucksack.
I was asked fairly politely if I had anything in my bag that I shouldn't have.
I couldn't think of anything, no water, lotion, toothpaste etc
This went on for about 5 mins until I asked them what they were looking for.
They told me the scanner had picked up a knife. Low and behold my penknife that I had taken on a fishing trip had slipped into the lining of the bag and I hadn't found it when I emptied it!
They took the knife out, measured the blade said "thats fine sir" and handed it back.
I got to take a sharp, albeit small, steel blade onto an international flight but not a bottle of water.
Nuts hu?
Glad that UKBA helped me find my knife though

[pianodwarf]

Next month, I'm going to Ireland for two weeks.  I've wanted this trip for a very long time, but I'm absolutely dreading the flying portion.  As it happens, PZ Myers was in Ireland recently and described some of the details of the process of boarding the flight from Dublin back to the United States -- I'm glad he did, because now I know I need to get to the airport that morning even earlier than I thought I would.  The security from there to here sounds like it's even more insane than it is from here to there, if that's even possible.

I keep forcing myself to focus on the reasons I'm enduring the flight.  I have to.  Otherwise, I might not go.   

[hickdive]

Some years ago, when flying back to the
UK from the US we had the whole rigmarole (shoes off, x-ray bagsetc.) twice as we entered one departure lounge and then transferred to another.

Fortunately, disaster was averted at the first check when a small tube of antiseptic cream was found at the bottom of my wife's handbag and confiscated with much scowling and telling off.

Unfortunately, neither check detected the live 9mm round that my middle son had brought as a souvenir from our visit to a gun range and not told anyone about.

[ParkingPlaces]

Funny how we don't have to go through security to get into a car, and since 9/11 over 400,000 people have died in auto accidents, while the terrorists have knocked off only 3,000 or so.

Go figure.

[Traveler]

Funny how we don't have to go through security to get into a car, and since 9/11 over 400,000 people have died in auto accidents, while the terrorists have knocked off only 3,000 or so.

Go figure.

Yes, and how many resources have we wasted doing this. I'd really like to see some evidence that its doing any good at all. As far as I can see, all its done is give some people a false sense of security, inconvenience travelers, traumatize the folks who get searched, and waste a boatload of money and time.

I'd rather those guys went out and built and/or maintained some roads and bridges. Our infrastructure is falling apart around us. The terrorists won't have to attack ... we will have wasted all our resources on war and "security" while our infrastructure gets further and further behind.

Who was it who said that those who sacrifice privacy for security loses both?

That's how I feel about the Patriot Act, CSA, and much of the other paranoid crap that's going on these days.

[screwtape]

I laugh at the idiots who blather about how "the terrorists won't win" and how tough and resilient Americans are.  The terrorists already won and Americans are the biggest wusses on the planet.  All this stupid stuff we do at airports, all the baloney, the NSA looking at every email and every phone call, all the militarized police force, all the laws that reduce freedom, drone bombing foreign countries - all that is what terrorist victory looks like.  We handed them victory on a silver platter because we were afraid.  We let fear dictate the rules. 

 

[Traveler]

I laugh at the idiots who blather about how "the terrorists won't win" and how tough and resilient Americans are.  The terrorists already won and Americans are the biggest wusses on the planet.  All this stupid stuff we do at airports, all the baloney, the NSA looking at every email and every phone call, all the militarized police force, all the laws that reduce freedom, drone bombing foreign countries - all that is what terrorist victory looks like.  We handed them victory on a silver platter because we were afraid.  We let fear dictate the rules.

Yes. This is exactly what I've been saying since the Patriot Act was put into force. The bad guys have won.

[Chronos]

The bad guys won by making our leaders stupidly promote and capitalize on fear and paranoia.

[nogodsforme]

You all are totally on my page. Flying is scary enough just by itself, and now they have made it miserable. I hate all the fake security of thinking that feeling up a fat black woman and looking under her dreadlocks is going to prevent terrorism. I have arthritis in my knees. How fast do they think I can move? What would I have to do if I wanted to take over the cockpit? I can barely get through the aisle to the lavatory. 

If not for my husband and daughter, there are several times when I would have just melted down, gone ghetto and cursed out the TSA so bad their naked machine would explode:

"No, I will not submit to enhanced effing scrutiny. You touch me and I'll break your goddamn arm! Eff you, your daddy and your mama. I was not planning any effing terrorism when I got here this morning, but now I'm about to change my goddamn mind. I wish I knew how to blow up a goddamn airplane with the multi-tool, the souvenir bar of soap, the large 6 dollar cup of coffee and the swiss army knife you confiscated from me. If I could figure that out, I'd get a Nobel Prize.

I'm hungry and cranky and my feet hurt. You don't give us no food on the plane, the sh!t you sell here costs a day's pay and if we bring our own you might take it away, 'cause you never know if a sandwich and drink from home might be made of plastique.

You mutha effers cut a piece out of the handmade basket I was taking to a friend for a wedding gift because you thought I was a drug smuggler. Well guess what, I am a goddamn drug smuggler! I have millions of dollars of drugs hiding in my body crevices. And I haven't had a bath in ten effing years! Have fun!

Tell you what, I don't need to get anywhere that effing bad, goddamn! Just leave me and my belongings the eff alone! Let me outta this effing airport. I'll walk to New York and then swim to Europe. Sheeeit."

If not for the fact that I would get an unplanned free trip to eastern Cuba, the standing ovation from the other passengers might just be worth it.

[ParkingPlaces]

When I was growing up in the 50's and 60's, we were told how terrible it was in the Soviet Union, with all the limits on movement, the spying amongst citizens, the need for "papers" everywhere you went.

Apparently is was out of envy. Because we're doing it here now.

Some time in the future the world will be celebrating the tearing down of the fence between the US and Mexico the same way they celebrated to tearing down of the Berlin Wall. And some day a group of passengers will walk down the corridor and get on a plane without having to be denuded or rectally probed or without being brain scanned for seditious thoughts and the world will celebrate that too. It'll feel like 1970 all over again. And again the world will celebrate.

In the meantime, we're not allowed to.

[Mrjason]

The bad guys won by making our leaders stupidly promote and capitalize on fear and paranoia.

...And we now have leaders that are quite possibly worse than the "bad guys" as they wield power, wealth and resources that make the terrorists look like the amateurs that they are.