TSA Theater: Dear America, I Saw You Naked

[Javaman]

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/01/tsa-screener-confession-102912.html

snip

I hated it from the beginning. It was a job that had me patting down the crotches of children, the elderly and even infants as part of the post-9/11 airport security show. I confiscated jars of homemade apple butter on the pretense that they could pose threats to national security. I was even required to confiscate nail clippers from airline pilots—the implied logic being that pilots could use the nail clippers to hijack the very planes they were flying.

Once, in 2008, I had to confiscate a bottle of alcohol from a group of Marines coming home from Afghanistan. It was celebration champagne intended for one of the men in the group—a young, decorated soldier. He was in a wheelchair, both legs lost to an I.E.D., and it fell to me to tell this kid who would never walk again that his homecoming champagne had to be taken away in the name of national security.

snip

People holding passports from the selectee countries were automatically pulled aside for full-body pat-downs and had their luggage examined with a fine-toothed comb. The selectee list was purely political, of course, with diplomacy playing its role as always: There was no Saudi Arabia or Pakistan on a list of states historically known to harbor, aid and abet terrorists. Besides, my co-workers at the airport didn’t know Algeria from a medical condition, we rarely came across Cubanos and no one’s ever seen a North Korean passport that didn’t include the words “Kim-Jong.” So it was mostly the Middle Easterners who got the special screening.

snip

Each day I had to look into the eyes of passengers in niqabs and thawbs undergoing full-body pat-downs, having been guilty of nothing besides holding passports from the wrong nations. As the son of a German-American mother and an African-American father who was born in the Jim Crow South, I can pass for Middle Eastern, so the glares directed at me felt particularly accusatory. The thought nagged at me that I was enabling the same government-sanctioned bigotry my father had fought so hard to escape.

Much more at link...

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this article confirms pretty much everything I believed regarding the TSA security political kabuki theater that goes on at the airports.

[jberryhill]

1. He confiscated nail clippers from pilots?

That's kinda odd. I have had nail clippers in my carry-on for every one of these flights, and nail clippers are expressly stated by the TSA to be permitted....

2/17/2013 02/19/13 PHL GCM 1090
2/21/2013 02/23/13 GCM PHL
4/3/2013 04/05/13 ORD PEK 0851
4/3/2013 04/05/13 PHL ORD 0407
4/12/2013 04/14/13 PEK SFO 0888
4/12/2013 04/14/13 SFO PHL 0658
4/28/2013 04/30/13 PHL SFO 0657
5/1/2013 05/03/13 SFO PHL 0648
5/5/2013 05/07/13 PHL DFW 3279
5/8/2013 05/10/13 DFW PHL 0546
6/9/2013 06/11/13 PHL GCM 1090
6/16/2013 06/18/13 GCM PHL 1091
7/9/2013 07/15/13 JFK JNB 0204
7/21/2013 07/23/13 JNB JFK 0203
7/29/2013 07/31/13 PWM PHL
9/1/2013 09/03/13 CLT GCM 0821
9/1/2013 09/03/13 PHL CLT 1927
9/8/2013 09/10/13 GCM CLT 0822
9/8/2013 09/10/13 CLT PHL 1798
10/26/2013 10/28/13 PHL CDG 0754
11/3/2013 11/05/13 MUC PHL 0717
11/3/2013 11/03/13 GVA MUC 2381
11/10/2013 11/12/13 PHL CLT 1729
11/10/2013 11/12/13 CLT GCM 0821
11/16/2013 11/18/13 GCM PHL 0861
1/12/2014 01/14/14 PHL LAS 2019
1/15/2014 01/17/14 LAS PHL 0431
1/26/2014 01/28/14 PHL GCM 0861
2/14/2014 02/16/14 GCM CLT 0820
2/14/2014 02/16/14 CLT PHL 0830

I guess I managed to miss "nail clipper guy" in 30 passes through TSA.

[RC]

2. Didn't used to be. You have nothing more than a year old.

You could stab someone with the included file. Really.
Anyway I was flying during the early and mid 2000's finger nail clippers were not allow in carry on.
But on one flight where they were confiscating finger nail clippers, they let on man keep his foot long knitting needles. I know because he took them out and started knitting during the flight.

[jberryhill]

3. I just pulled that down from my account as a quickie

It is representative of travel I've been doing for a while.

The only thing I ever had confiscated was a small penknife, which was taken by security in Bangkok.

I'm forever breaking fingernails getting luggage off the carousel or out of the bin, so I can't remember traveling without a nail clipper.

[2naSalit]

4. My 78 yo mom (at the time)

had her flimsy 4" fingernail file confiscated at Canadian border because they were afraid she might hold up the cruise ship she was on with it... in 2005.