Columbus, Ohio USA
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TSA Follies
By Joel Knepp
May/June 2018 Issue
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In my travels far and wide I have availed myself of practically every form of transportation on the planet, including all the usual ones. Add to those the following: three trips on old-school ocean liners, extensive hitchhiking and backpacking, galloping on horseback (big fun!), whitewater rafting, the Demon Drop at Cedar Point, and three elephant rides, but so far no camel. Anyway, to travel over any kind of long distance in a reasonable time period, one generally needs to ride an airplane, or more likely several.
In the past year I’ve clambered on and off about eleven of ‘em. These improbable behemoths defy gravity and all reason by lifting huge loads of fuel, narrow seats, luggage, tiny booze bottles, and screaming babies up into the air and beyond the clouds. What’s more, they do it fast. Leaving Columbus in the morning and having lunch in Denver just makes no sense, but it happens.
Unfortunately, TSA also happens. We’re not talking about Theatrical Supplies of Australia, the Technology Student Association, or the Tampa Sports Authority. No, in our sad travel predicament, TSA stands for the Transportation Security Administration. This travesty of so-called national security is an abomination, a veritable plague on all who travel by air, a giant waste of our tax dollars, and a potential health danger. Granted, many folks choose to fly, in my case partly because there hasn’t been passenger-train service in Columbus for decades, thanks most recently to Governor Kasich. However, large numbers of people must fly for work, family issues, etc. Voluntarily or otherwise, we are all obliged to experience the same demeaning bottleneck before getting on a plane, namely the misbegotten debacle known as the TSA pre-boarding check. One knucklehead with a half-baked shoe bomb gets on a plane and every other passenger gets punished for eternity.
Hastily created after 9/11, the Transportation Security Administration does not do what it purports to do, that is, keep dangerous items and people off airplanes. What the TSA really does is spend huge amounts of our money on airport space, equipment, and personnel to inconvenience, harass, and even humiliate travelers, all in the name of theater. By that I mean it’s just a big, expensive show to give folks the impression of airline safety. The only positive thing I can report about the TSA is that it provides many jobs. I have nothing but sympathy for these workers and hope they will find more righteous employment in the near future.
In 2015, a damning TSA effectiveness study conducted by its parent entity, the Department of Homeland Security, was leaked to the press. The report revealed security failures at dozens of the nation’s busiest airports where undercover agents posing as passengers were able to carry weapons and fake explosives through security checkpoints without any trouble in 95 percent of trials. A former TSA administrator called the results an “abominable failure.” As a career public servant who believes that government can and should be a major force for good, it pains me to observe that this is a glaring example of government gone very, very bad.
To add to the idiocy, you can buy your way out of the full TSA strip-search routine by purchasing a pre-check exemption which puts you in the fast lane at the airport. Good thinking, right? Obviously, terrorists, like me, are too cheap to pay the $85 for five years of TSA Lite and too dumb to plan mayhem in advance. (Note the comma after “terrorists.” For further clarification, see one of my favorite books, Eats, Shoots, and Leaves by Lynne Truss. I am cheap, but not a terrorist. To prove it, I once signed an official State of Ohio form to that effect, perhaps one of the silliest forms ever created.)
Inexplicably, about half the time my wife and I, despite our dangerous looks, get shunted into the fast line along with theterroristsgood people who actually paid. In these instances, we are graciously awarded the privilege of keeping our footwear on. On other occasions, we go through the regular rigamarole which seems to vary by airport, time of day, or somebody’s whim. Take off belt and shoes? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Separate out all liquids? Perhaps, perhaps not. Get patted down? Ditto. Same goes for taking out my potentially fatal pocket hankie. Beside being a pain, these exercises and the weird machines, as previously pointed out, just don’t work.
Case in point: On a recent misadventure in the Tucson airport I was pulled aside following the hands-in-the-air scan and told to view an incriminating image of my skinny body on a screen. The screen clearly showed that I had potentially dangerous metal hidden in and around my crotch, requiring that I be patted down down there. The machine’s human assistant couldn’t find any metal and neither could I. According to the Christian Science Monitor, that state-of-the-art piece of AIT scanning equipment cost you and me around $170,000. Why so cheap, you might ask? The TSA got a deal when they bought 150 of them. That’s 25 million bucks they’ll probably have to take away from the food stamp program. By the way, AIT stands for Advanced Imaging Technology. Given its recent finding of my non-existent crotch metal, one can only ask of its name, “Is this a joke?”
On another occasion in Atlanta, I was returning from Costa Rica and until I reached the TSA line to get to my Columbus plane, I had forgotten about the bottles of tasty Costa Rican Lizano Salsa in my carry-on. There were two small bottles and one large one, each of which exceeded the three-ounce minimum posted in giant letters on a sign above the seemingly endless security line. After at least thirty minutes in line, I decided to rebel and not dump my bottles in the provided bin as required. My backpack with the contraband bottles of delicious brown liquid sailed right through the X-ray conveyor machine undetected. They could have contained sulfuric acid, nitroglycerin, or God knows what other nasty substance.
But I still wasn’t home free; an ever-vigilant TSA Keystone Cop grabbed my highly suspicious bottle of rotgut Costa Rican rum from the San José airport which was unopened, heat-sealed in plastic, and bore the internationally recognized duty-free sticker. He proceeded to give that bottle of cheap booze the third degree in a high-tech machine like the ones that Goth cutie Abby Sciuto uses on NCIS to solve crimes in ten seconds. Finally, after several minutes with no crime solved, he begrudgingly handed over my hooch without so much as a “Have a nice day.”
I have witnessed many other inept, ridiculous, and outrageous actions on the part of TSA staff, and if you fly regularly, I’ll bet you have, too. They treat every passenger as a likely criminal. I’ve seen old, decrepit ladies in wheelchairs pulled aside and searched. I’ve watched three people in a row go ahead of me through the x-ray gate without taking off their shoes and then been told to take off mine. When I asked to the TSA woman why I should take off my shoes when the passengers ahead of me didn’t have to, she gave me this stone-faced reply: “All passengers have to take off their shoes.” Inconsistency bugs me, not to mention flat-out lying. Soul-killing jobs can bring out the worst in people.
Who knows what exposure to those powerful screening machines does to our bodies, especially for frequent air travelers? The Rutherford Institute, a nonprofit civil-liberties organization working to protect our constitutional freedoms and human rights, has, along with other organizations, challenged the TSA’s screening protocols as ineffective, invasive, unlawful, and unhealthy. John W. Whitehead, the Institute’s president, writes, “Clearly, there are enough concerns about the health risks posed by these scanners to justify placing a moratorium on their use in airports. At a minimum, the DHS and the TSA need to find a better way to protect national security without sacrificing our health and our freedoms.” I haven’t seen a moratorium yet, have you? The TSA bought those fancy machines and, by God, they’re gonna use them, whether they actually work or not, and let the chips fall where they may!
In summary, the TSA is a colossal boondoggle which negatively affects passengers at every U.S. airport. It has been proven to be a failure at air security. It wastes our time and money and generally confuses, confounds, and pisses off everyone it touches, especially me. It’s just
another of many post-9/11 government infringements on our liberty in the all-hallowed name of national security. How much of this infringement can we stand? A whole lot, apparently.BOONDOGGLE: work or activity that is wasteful or pointless but gives the appearance of having value, e.g., the Transportation Security Administration pre-boarding check.
Joel Knepp lives in Victorian Village with his wife Lynda McClanahan, an artist.
They performed as the musical duo Nick & Polina for many years in the area.© 2018 Short North Gazette, Columbus, Ohio. All rights reserved.
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