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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
At Boston Logan airport this past June on a Thursday morning I was selected for special attention.
I got the most thorough search I've ever experienced, both bodily and through my carry-on bags. They also asked me about 1000 questions.
By the way, if a friendly TSA officer meandering up and down the checkpoint line asks you what your favorite candy bar is, apparently "Reese's Peanut Butter Cups" is the wrong answer.
I didn't get pissed off or anything... in fact I was kind of amused. I actually managed to get to the airport early enough that I had a few extra minutes. My good-natured amusement was not received well by the Protectors of Freedom. The guy who wanded and then patted my entire body thoroughly reprimanded me that I'd better "take this seriously."
The woman who went through both my carry on bags leafed through my journals with interest. When I asked her if that was part of the screening process she reprimanded me because she was "just doing her job" and I should refrain from making it any more difficult for her.
These people are supposed to be public servants, the TSA. Instead they act like the government stormtrooper stereotype you'd expect to see in anti-fascist dystopian speculative fiction. It's as if they're eagerly chomping at the bit at helping to inflict exactly the type of freedom-squashing backlash that terrorism is designed to elicit. You scare the people, the government cracks down, and the grass roots start to see the point in the terrorist's objections to power-hungry "imperialist" America. It's as if these TSA employees are hypnotized drones controlled by Al-Qaida and Bin Laden via mind control rays, and they do exactly what Osama was hoping they would do. Treat all air travelers like expendable, tormentable, dismissable cattle.
From now on I'm going to arrive two hours early for every flight so that if they pull me aside for a thorough body search I'll just strip nude right there in front of everyone. I wonder if they'll tase me.
I also happened to have a small camcorder in my carry-on. I wonder what they would have done if I'd turned it on during the baggage search and said "You don't mind if I videotape you searching my belongings, do you?"
A paranoid part of me wonders whether this search was truly random and, if not, what tipped them off. Part of me wonders about the post I made on LiveJournal a few days earlier about my flight out there which poked fun at the TSA. It was a "friends only" post but with the Total Data Awareness and warrantless wiretapping shit that's going on, maybe they're making a point to harass people who are critical of the TSA.
I'll probably be on the "no fly" list when this post hits their mainframe.
I was on the "watch" list from 2001-2005 but the only really thorough searches I got were in 2001 and maybe once or twice after that. Usually the "watch" list just meant that I couldn't check in using the automated kiosk without an "error" message popping up, which required them to take my ID and call HQ from the back room (while feeding me some lie about what they were doing for the first couple of years.)
I actually got really lucky in that I almost took along "Backyard Ballistics" in my carryon luggage, a book about making potato cannons and that sort of thing, to sift through for Burning Man ideas. I took it out and left it at home, though, and at the time I joked "I wouldn't want the TSA to catch me with this!" Good call.
My apologies to those who've tired of my harping on this subject in column after column...
Why apologize? We're the only ones who can do anything about it, and we don't seem to care enough to actually bother,
When American air travelers get over their precious distaste for activism and get organized, this entire charade will be finished in short order. And not until then.
So anyone who finds Patrick Smith's constant reminders that we live in Kafkaesque times more tiresome, repetitive, and discouraging than the actual state of affairs he describes, then you deserve it.
I am in the unfortunate position of having to fly into London semi-regularly. Things on the continent are still sane - they even smile! - but London has become Stalingrad, particularly at Stansted airport. Maybe it's because that's where the low cost flights go and they feel it's easier to intimidate people?
If you are carrying two pieces of hand luggage (e.g. handbag and one piece of luggage) they throw you out of the queue until you have put your handbag into your luggage. Then, once you're on the other side of customs, you take out your handbag again! Parents with screaming children are automatically thrown out of the queue, because they are always carrying unopened infant formula, just like the terrorists do.
Once I was thrown out of a queue and grumpily stumped over the other side of the rope and said "I'll do the damn re-packing here". I said this to my fellow passenger, NOT to the staff.
The bitch of a customs person had followed me and barked into my face: "what did you say?" and pointed at the sign that said harrassment of staff would be taken seriously. Basically, she was salivating at the thought of arresting me.
The kid behind me said he had been in the airport chapel all night, including when young officers with submachine guns had entered. The chaplain had complained and they answered by spreadeagling him across the wall.
The situation is completely different in Europe. You still get screened, but the customs officers seems more professional and not out to deliberately harrass the way they do in the US and UK.
I now avoid flying wherever I can, in favour of the luxurious intra-European trains, where you can stretch out in comfort and staff still come and offer you coffee and drinks. It's not just me - there's a spike in train travelling. All these dumb regulations are going to kill the airline industry, as if it wasn't in enough trouble already.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
