TSA Expands War on Needles in Haystacks - Will Swab Random Hands

According to the TSA blog, Explosive Trace Detection at security checkpoints has proven so wildly successful at keeping people from getting on airplanes with panties made of TNT that they are taking the technology mobile.

That's right. As you sit at gate 34 munching on a $12 Au Bon Pain honey butter pecan bagel braid, you can expect steely-eyed TSA agents to swoop in and swab your fingers for explosives in an sophisticated expansion of the TSA's "Even A Blind Dog Can Find A Bone Once In A While" security program.

For a detailed look at what happens when you write scathing editorials about the TSA and then try to get on an airplane, see my post I'm So Glad The TSA Touched Me, Because I'm Special.

I'm So Glad the TSA Touched Me, Because I'm Special

As I went through the TSA checkpoint at 5 AM last Tuesday, bound for LaGuardia airport, I was pleased to learn that I had been "selected" for an extra-special pat-down of the lower half of my body.

Flying is such a miserable way to get from where I am to where I want to be that I accepted the pawing as if it was simply an extra slice of cheese on the shit sandwich that was my pre-flight meal.

Standing there in my navy pinstripe suit, starched white shirt, and silk tie, shoeless, bagless, and defenseless, I spread my legs as directed and allowed the uniformed man with the pale-blue Playtex living gloves pat the inside of my thighs and reconnoiter down to my ankles in a game of security cat-and-mouse.

I had left my laptop at home for this day trip, hoping to avoid the hassle of needing yet another gray plastic bin to transport it through the tunnel of looky-see along with my overcoat, suit jacket, leather portfolio, and pointy-toed designer loafers. Perhaps that's what triggered me for special treatment: I had taken great strides to demonstrate I had nothing to hide, so that's suspicious, right?

It couldn't have been my years spent wearing combat boots, defending this country against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Or my lengthy record of voting in every election while actively participating in democracy.

Terrorists come in all shapes and colors. I wonder if any research has been done on how many are short and white, with an inseam that's 6 inches less than the waistline? Suspects of my ilk obvious use the lower body to hatch their nefarious plans. Why else would the TSA agent ignore my crotch area and entire upper half?

Purchasing a round-trip ticket more than a month before my travel date, using a corporate credit card through a corporate travel agency, replicating an itinerary I've followed more than a dozen times - yeah, I'm the risky one.

Maybe it's an extension of the TSA's security theater. Let's take the guy who embodies truth, justice, and the American way, and feel him up a little in full view of the public. That will show anyone plotting to circumvent screening enroute to committing an act of unspeakable horror that it won't happen on the TSA's watch. No sir.

So America, you're welcome. It's not the same as getting shot at while wearing your country's uniform, but if getting dressed up and patted down by the TSA is the best way for me to serve my country these days, I'm happy to do it.

Next trip, I'm not wearing underwear.

TSA Special Agent Loses Notebook

This reminds of the time that I attended a talk on computer security by the FBI Assistant Director of Cyber Security the week after his agency admitted to losing 160 laptops in 44 months.

One of the TSA agents who visited a blogger during an investigation into the posting of a sensitive TSA security directive sent to airlines apparently left his notebook in a public place.

Here's a pic of the notebook in question:

Agents also couldn't burn a copy of the blogger's hard drive using technology acquired from Wal-Mart, so they took it with them and returned it to the blogger in a broken state.

But yeah, I feel safe knowing these guys are the tip of the spear when it comes to protecting us from terrorism. You betcha.

Via BoingBoing

Fire the TSA

After yet another failure to keep radical elements from trying to blow up a commercial airliner, it's time to fire the TSA.

So says Joel Johnson in a Gizmodo posting.

I want our government to prevent terrorism and to make flights safer. But we are spending billions of dollars and man-hours to fight a threat that is less likely to kill a traveler than being struck by lightning. In the last decade, according to statistician Nate Silver, there has been "one terrorist incident per 11,569,297,667 miles flown [the] equivalent to 1,459,664 trips around the diameter of the Earth, 24,218 round trips to the Moon, or two round trips to Neptune." (Sadly, this does mean that in the future we can expect one out of every two round-trip flights to Neptune to be hijacked.)

The TSA isn't saving lives. We, the passengers, are saving our own. Since its inception, the TSA has been structured in such a way as to prevent specific terror scenarios, attempting to disrupt a handful of insanely specific tactics, while continuing to disenfranchise and demoralize the citizens who are actually doing the work that a billion-dollar government agency—an agency that received an additional $128 million just this year for new checkpoint explosive screening technology—has failed to do.

Imagine if the billions of dollars spent on the TSA fallacy were used on competent intelligence gathering and hardening the actual flight infrastructure.

Dare to dream.

XKCD - Bag Check

Having just flown to Atlanta and back this weekend, I'm particularly sensitive to this.

TSA Stealing Laptops

Nothing demonstrates security theater more than the Transportation Security Administration, those re-labeled and higher-paid former airline employees who were basically incompetent when they worked directly for the airlines, but have since become better dressed and feckless in new and interesting ways since they were brought into the government fold post-9/11.

Between making people take off their shoes and empty their water bottles, and sip breast milk to prove it's not a liquid explosive, the TSA has found new way to annoy travelers - stealing your laptop out of your checked luggage.

This is partially the fault of stupid people who put their small, expensive electronic devices into bags that are tossed and smashed around before being placed in the underbelly of aircraft, where they are tossed and smashed around some more until you arrive at your destination, where they are removed from the plane, launched into a metal cart, and bounced into the terminal, where they are rocketed down a chute and spun in a circle until you either someone else walks away with them or you manage to find them, dragging them off the carousel and into your car.

The helpful TSA thief at JFK, working in cahoots with a baggage handler, even switched the luggage label so the bag would be purposely misdirected to buy them additional time and make it more difficult to ascertain exactly where the laptop and other items were stolen.

Thanks, TSA. Every day you give me another reason to feel safer in the air!

TSA officer caught stealing laptops at JFK , via BoingBoing

Fireworks on a Plane

Something humorous from the TSA blog - in case people are actually asking if they can take fireworks onto a commercial airliner.

The TSA gives a decent response, but I might have put it differently.

No, you can't take your motherfuckin' fireworks on the motherfuckin' plane, you fuckin' moron.

That is all.

The TSA Blog: Can I Take My Fireworks On A Plane?

Now That's Lazy

Remember the days when you dragged your suitcase or duffel bag through the airport, working up a rich lather as you pioneered between terminals at Chicago's O'Hare?

As some point, groups developed motivation to find a better way, since changing flights was not supposed to be as arduous as, say, riding a stagecoach. Presto, the wheeled luggage phenomena was born.

Wheels, and telescoping handles, ballistic nylon for lighter weights, and similar developments made traipsing through the airport so effortless that I'm relatively certain it's one of the secondary causes of obesity. Think about it - there were less of us fat people when we had to drag our bags everywhere.

Apparently we've now achieved a new height in laziness - a self-propelled suitcase. Long live ingenuity.

For only $1300, your carry-on will travel at speeds up to 3 miles per hour. Depending on how long my flight from LaGuardia has been delayed, there are nights I can't bring myself to travel 3 MPH.

I suppose the next step will be to put little foot pegs on the bottom and use it like a Samsonite Segway, zooming here and there while giving the TSA something new to factor into their threat matrix.

Toy TSA Checkpoint

This is funny, because it's true.

The Playmobil TSA Security Checkpoint, designed for little tykes, is a brightly-colored, playful representation of utter failure and security theater. It's just as effective to run a three-inch tall toy figure through the checkpoint as it is real life travelers.

From the Amazon comments: I was a little disappointed when I first bought this item, because the functionality is limited. My 5 year old son pointed out that the passenger's shoes cannot be removed. Then, we placed a deadly fingernail file underneath the passenger's scarf, and neither the detector doorway nor the security wand picked it up. My son said "that's the worst security ever!". But it turned out to be okay, because when the passenger got on the Playmobil B757 and tried to hijack it, she was mobbed by a couple of other heroic passengers, who only sustained minor injuries in the scuffle, which were treated at the Playmobil Hospital.

If you're interested, check out my posting on Airport Security Antics.