Thanks for linking your article to Bob Schneier's interview with the head of the TSA. Both of you, apparently, are more attuned to the traveler's viewpoint than the director of the agency, who obviously travels in private planes and doesn't have to deal with the lines at airport security.

I just came back from another trip, and realized again not only how annoying the process is, but how ignorant the average traveler is of the whole process. You refer to them as sheep. I prefer the word cattle. In either case, I think we do a disservice to those animals when we use them as examples because, if science is correct and both animals have smaller brains than their larger mammalian cousins -- MAN -- they don't know better. WE SHOULD! SOME OF US DO!

Both times my husband and I went through the security line on this trip (something that pisses me off every time I have to confess) we encountered stupidity and/or bigotry. One man, although professing the need for such security measures, clearly didn't travel much or recently. He didn't know about the shoes. Didn't know to empty his pockets--and then only emptied his pants pockets. Then he had to go back and empty his shirt pocket which contained his cell phone. Oops! Forgot the watch! The second security check on the way back resulted in "words" between a Texan and me, when he, too, didn't know he had to remove his shoes (a serious bone of contention with me, since the rule has changed more than once) and then spouted "We should just keep all of those Arabs out of this country!"

At least the officials at the airport in St. Louis were concientious enough to have a table set up with quart-sized plastic bags at the beginning of the security line, and a staff person making announcements as to their use, so that those who didn't know about the 3-3-1 (or is it 3-1-1 ?) could prepare at the beginning of the line.

What's ironic is that today's Salon.com's lead article is about how plastic bags are ruining our environment. And here we have the government requiring millions of air travels to use them and, obviously, add to the growing plastic bag disposal problem.

One might think that the TSA head honcho's facetious answer to Schneier's remark about the "Office for Annoying Air Travelers" that there is indeed an "Office for Annoying Air Travelers and vetted through the Directorate for Confusion and Complexity" is humorous. As I read the interview, I kept remembering the then-private conversations held among Enron executives as they were screwing the American public (specifically Californians, at that time) and how little regard they had for the way those decisions affected ordinary people. It was all a big joke to them!

Why do I automatically assume that TSA planning officials would be embarassed if or when similar conversations became public? Perhaps it's because I know in my very gut (the same place Mr. Chertoff "feels" threats) that a whole lot of yukking it up happens in those planning meetings! How can it not? After all, it's human nature.

As for me, I try to strike a blow against them each time I travel, reminding people in the lines that it's all a bunch of nonsense (and even have some folks agree with me). Lately, I've been citing your columns, too, Patrick. But my real revenge is still cooking. From the first day they made us put our stuff into those little plastic bags, I've used the same one over and over and over again. As you can imagine, it's getting pretty grubby now. It contains some dangerous "liquids" like hand lotion, mascara and lipstick, along with "edibles" like throat longezes. This plastic bag and its contents remain in the small suitcase I use as a carry-on between trips, so the contents are busy cooking away and a witch's blew of bacteria too gruesome to even think about.

If we all started a bag of "acceptably small" liquids and let them simmer in between trips, who knows how gross them will become, and then maybe the TSA workers themselves will rise up in protest against their own department's rules because they fear handling the disgusting things?!! Imagine thousands of TSA folks walking off the job in protest. And TSA supervisors having to handle all of the security line nonsense.......