Greg In The Desert

I am setting at PDX (Portland International Airport) near my gate for a flight that leaves later today. I arrived this morning for quick work related business. Somewhere at the security checkpoint at Phoenix International Airport and boarding the plane to PDX I lost my ID.

I didn’t find this out until I was in my Rental car getting everything ready to drive off. It turned out to be a very stressful day. Obviously rental car companies will not allow you to drive off without a drivers license. I have to thank my good friend Mustafa for coming down to the airport to get me and take me to where I needed to do my official business.

He brought me back and I approached the TSA officer and told them I lost my ID at Phoenix. They took me aside, teased that the rubber hoses were over there, and asked to look at what I did have.

I pulled out everything in my wallet with my name on it, he looked it over and then I found my Costco card that had a picture on it. A crappy picture but it was something. That was it. No further pat down, not special baggage checks. I supposed bad guys don’t walk around with worn out credit cards, Costco cards, voter and library cards. He also quizzed me on some items in my checkbook.Despite the bad reputation TSA gets, I have never had a bad experience with any of the officers.

If they didn’t find my drivers license in PHX, I have a real pain to go through to get a replacement. That’s a story for another blog post.

I’m shocked and amazed by the TSA blog. It doesn’t seem to be written by government robots, but by actual human beings who seem interested to address TSA issues. Take this latest entry.

On Monday afternoon we began receiving questions about airports that were requiring ALL electronics to be removed from carry-on bags (everything, including blackberrys, iPods and even cords). This practice was also mentioned on several other blogs and left us scratching our heads.

So…we checked with our security operations team to figure out what was going on. After some calls to our airports, we learned that this exercise was set up by local TSA offices and was not part of any grand plan across the country. These practices were stopped on Monday afternoon and blackberrys, cords and iPods began to flow through checkpoints like the booze was flowing on Bourbon Street Tuesday night. (Fat Tuesday of course).

How can The President allow this to continue. It must be shut down NOW!

Boing Boing had this today

I walked from the arrival gate towards baggage claim, and when I was about halfway there, all of a sudden about a dozen or more TSA personnel and private security staff appeared, shouting STOP WHERE YOU ARE. FREEZE. DO NOT MOVE. Not just at me, but all of the travelers who happened to be wandering through the hallway at that moment.

I made a comment on that post that the exact same thing happened to me.

This happened to me when i was in PDX a few weeks ago. I was leaving the secured area after getting off a plane, i was near the screeners but not yet through. The TSA people started yelling and did the same thing you described and had everyone freeze.

It only lasted a few minutes for me.

My tax dollars at work. Whatever.

No no, this is not out of control. Clearly robots are running things, because one would think humans would use common sense.

But Beaman says she couldn’t find a third knife. It was a 5 1/2 inch bread knife with a rounded tip and a serrated edge. She thought she might have lost or misplaced it during the trip.

On the trip home, screeners with the Transportation Security Administration at Los Angeles International Airport found it deep in the outside pocket of a carry-on cooler. Beaman apologized and told them it was a mistake.

“You’ve committed a felony,” Beaman says a security screener announced. “And you’re considered a terrorist.

“Beaman says she was told her name would go on a terrorist watch-list and that she would have to pay a $500 fine.

“I’m a 57-year-old woman who is taking care of 37 kids,” she told them. “I’m not gonna commit a terrorist act.” Beaman says they took information from her Washington drivers license and confiscated and photographed the knife according to standard operating procedure.

She says screeners refused to give her paperwork or documentation of her violation, documentation of the pending fine, or a copy of the photograph of the knife.

“They said ‘no’ and they said it’s a national security issue. And I said what about my constitutional rights? And they said ‘not at this point … you don’t have any’.”

I couldn’t agree more with Alton Brown when he says (June 10th, BTW).

“I?m just saying that people with authority should have to play by a set of rules…published rules. If as a nation we?re going to have to tolerate being probed, scanned, profiled and frisked before we can get on an airplane, so be it. But it seems to me that we deserve a little consistency. Otherwise we open ourselves up to a whole new brand of bully…bullies with badges…not to mention really nice omelet pans.”

(TSA = Transportation Security Administration)

In the year before September 11th, 2001 I was working away from home in California. I flew back and forth for 9 months and got quite familiar with the airport system. I was luck that my assignment was over just before those planes crashed into the towers. At the time I thought it a good idea to turn over security to the feds. I mean, they should be doing for the safety of the citizens instead of for the money (not that “for the money” is a bad thing). Having been through security since then I can think that it is nothing more than a joke. They have random searches of peoples shoes? Give me a break.