October 24, 2011
Duly Noted
On Saturday night, Jill, a blogger and founder of Feministe, flew from Newark airport to Dublin. After spending Sunday recovering from jetlag, she unpacked her bag on Monday morning and found a special message scrawled on the official form from the TSA. “GET YOUR FREAK ON GIRL,” it read.
“Guess they discovered a ‘personal item’ in my bag,” she tweeted. “Wow.”
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I don’t know why this, of all invasions of privacy by the TSA, gets me going, but I’m very angry about this. I think it’s the overt lack of professionalism coupled with the ridiculous disregard for personal privacy. It all feels like some kind of joke – a very sad, hand-written joke on an official “the TSA sifted through your shit, turned on your dildo and waved it in the body scan operator’s face before writing a snarky little note about it” notice.
i initially read this as “get your fear on girl.” and i did.
I kind of agree with you Josh. Except for “dildo” (giggle giggle), this just kind of made me mad. They know what they’re doing is a joke, and this acknowledges it.
I wish it was more acceptable to question TSA while they do their thing. Politely, of course. But perhaps if at their staff meetings they told their bosses that 500 people commented today on ridiculous rule #432 (e.g. twelve three ounce containers of shampoo is ok, one five ounce container is un-American), than maybe they’d get rid of foolish rules more quickly and focus on more real threats.
In related security anecdotes: when entering the Ronald Reagan building in DC by car, you show them your ID (quick mental scan against the terrorist watch list, I guess), let them take a cursory look in the trunk of your car, and then on you go with full access to the building from the parking garage. To get back to your car, though, the rules are a bit stricter. Entering on foot requires a full-on scanner (remove belt, empty pockets, dispose of beverages, etc.). This drives me absolutely nuts. I don’t bother to question it any more, but I’ll tell the story to anyone who will listen. Unfortunately, the security guards won’t listen.
I think if these happened to me, I probably wouldn’t care. TSA seems to never notice when my friends travel with cocaine or weed. Word to the wise, take your batteries out of your devices before sending them through the baggage check. Not that I would know or anything.
I’ll tell my pre-TSA airport security handcuff story some day.
Wait. Maybe I already did.