This time I tried being nice…eventually
By Thoreau
So the Fatherland Security guy asked me to show my papers at the checkpoint. As a good worker and peasant I took out my wallet with my driver’s license in it. He said I’d have to remove the driver’s license, so I did, and said that there’s nothing like showing your papers at a checkpoint. He could have ignored me, but he’s a good worker and peasant and loyal to the fatherland (yes, I mix my metaphors) so he said that the 9/11 hijackers were all here on fake paperwork. Um, yeah, whatever.
But then I get to another Fatherland Security person, and she has this little badge that says “I’m just a reflection of my work environment.” And I know it’s a lame excuse, but I thought it was kind of funny to see one who’s at least willing to admit that this is crappy, instead of getting her “I’m a good worker and peasant!” schtick going. So I complimented her on it, and said that she’s one of the few TSA people that I like. And she laughed and was nice.
See, I can be reasonable. All I ask is that the bureaucrats paid to harass me and violate my privacy do it with a bit of irony, and I’m willing to play ball. Irony about the crappitude of the situation gets me in a good mood. Giving orders and pulling the loyal citizen BS gets me in a bad mood.
Still, the good worker and peasant wasn’t as bad as the guy a few years ago who thought that he was apologizing when he said that it’s Richard Reid’s fault that I have to take off my shoes. Look, I’m not generally a fan of going batshit over terrorism, but even I would have to draw the line at letting Richard Reid give orders to the TSA. Yes, his IQ is well above that of most TSA employees, but I still think it sets a bad precedent to let him set policy.
Comment by wade —
April 18, 2008 @ 9:37 am
Perhaps you could cast your scientific eye over some of the reports coming out of the trial of the men who were allegedly plotting to blow up seven airliners simultaneuosly? I believe they are the chief reason the airport authorities are confiscating liquids and making flying such a drag.
“The liquid explosive, which can be made from commonly available items, was to be mixed with a powdered fruit drink called Tang.”
I was pretty sceptical when the liquids brouhaha kicked off, but it does now seem plausible, at least to my lay persons eye, that they had figured out some way of making viable liquid explosive devices. Personally, i am prepared to sacrifice a fair amount of liberty for the few times that i fly, to mitigate against the chances of performing a 30,000ft free dive, no parachute.
Comment by Jennifer —
April 18, 2008 @ 11:13 am
Perhaps you could cast your scientific eye over some of the reports coming out of the trial of the men who were allegedly plotting to blow up seven airliners simultaneuosly? I believe they are the chief reason the airport authorities are confiscating liquids and making flying such a drag.
And then Thoreau can post about Professor Chaos and his wicked plan to destroy all of South Park in a cataclysmic flood. I believe he is the chief reason Fatherland Security should have strict oversight over the buy, sale and use of garden hoses.
Comment by Brock —
April 18, 2008 @ 12:06 pm
The best quote from the article linked to by Wade:
Leaving little to chance, the alleged terrorists planned to pack pornographic magazines in their hand luggage to distract airport security staff, Wright said.
Comment by Keifus —
April 18, 2008 @ 1:10 pm
“Fatherland security” is pretty good.
One time I cracked up a security drone by smiling and winking at her as she suspiciously eyeballed my (unbearded) license. It made my day an iota less miserable, and it’s nice, in a broad sense, to think that some of them can still be humanized.
Comment by joe —
April 18, 2008 @ 1:30 pm
Does anyone else remember the MTV ad with the guy going through a Soviet-era airport security checkpoint?
“Byorst n’yf d’vorzhnyuf?”
“Do you have anything to declare?”
“Byorst n’yf d’vorzhnyuf!?!”
“Do you have anything to declare!?!?”
“In this sock, is other sock?”
Comment by bill —
April 18, 2008 @ 4:10 pm
hi nice post, i enjoyed it
Comment by Thoreau —
April 18, 2008 @ 8:06 pm
wade-
Is that a joke article? The part about Tang rings my bullshit detector.
Granted, I’m no explosives expert, so maybe I’m totally missing something here. Maybe this is all perfectly plausible. Still, the statement that Tang is “an energetic compound” just sounds meaningless to me. I could be wrong, of course.
Also, I have a suspicion that if it were easy to make bombs out of Tang then there’d be some folklore about it, at least some urban legends, and maybe even some YouTube videos of people making really small (but fun!) explosions with Tang.
Comment by y81 —
April 18, 2008 @ 9:57 pm
The TSA rules aren’t half as stupid as all that recycling nonsense. Total Bloombergian nanny-statism. I throw all the garbage into one bag. What about the rest of you sheep? Losers!
Comment by bad Jim —
April 19, 2008 @ 5:37 am
There’s a discussion of the whole Tang thing here, complete with links to the Register’s recipe for TATP.
I’d just like to reiterate, as someone who likes to travel and visit museums and thus is routinely treated as a possible terrorist or vandal, that it makes my life better, and that of my fellow tourists as well, I hope, to treat the people processing us as normal working people doing a difficult job, like cops or waitstaff.
I’m not being herded into a concentration camp, I’m flying to Milan, or visiting the Louvre. The precautions taken are certainly silly, the scrutiny I undergo is unquestionably unnecessary, and the people inflicting it upon me may even agree, but for them it’s a job, and there’s general, if not universal agreement, that it’s a job that has to be done.
Does it make anybody feel better to learn that despite my helpful obsequiousness I managed to smuggle a lighter onto an airplane, unintentionally, during the interval in which they were prohibited? You can be as careful as you want, but you’ll still do things that make you laugh at yourself.
Comment by Jennifer —
April 19, 2008 @ 7:42 am
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to insist it would be rude to complain about it.
Comment by Glen Raphael —
April 19, 2008 @ 12:40 pm
bad Jim: This process actively makes the world a less pleasant place to live. It makes me waste an extra hour with every plane trip I take. I can’t go out to the gate to see somebody off or watch their plane arrive and meet them right there when they come back. We collectively spend more time shuffling through lines and waiting in unpleasant places than we otherwise might.
And balanced against that, there is…nothing. No evidence it’s making anyone safer and much to suggest it’s making us less safe by (a) turning us into unthinking sheep who defer to authority when we shouldn’t and (b) causing us to drive instead of fly.
Were airlines allowed to compete on safety I’d go with the one that didn’t search at all and let you run right up to the gate and get on 5 minutes before they close the doors, like in the old days. Others who feel the need for security theater could then choose their preferred level of it.
But back in the here-and-now the people processing us are participating in a system which forcibly steals and pointlessly wastes our most precious resource: our time. This is not a job that needs to be done and they should be ashamed of doing it.
So let those who subscribe to that “general agreement” be obsequious; I prefer to mutter and scowl and shun.
Comment by Thoreau —
April 19, 2008 @ 12:56 pm
I would agree that some Ideal Platonic Search would be a great thing to have. I’m cool with keeping guns and large knives off the planes.
However, since 9/11 the focus has been on keeping anything that might be used as an improvised weapon off the plane. The problem is that a criminal’s capacity for improvisation in weaponry is nearly limitless. Look at the way that in conflicts around the world even poor and uneducated guerrillas can fashion homemade bombs, or the infinite variety of knives that prison inmates make despite constant inspections. Any serious effort to crack down on improvised weaponry is almost guaranteed to fail, but it will be expensive and intrusive.
Secure the cockpit doors and tell passengers to fight back and there goes your hijacking. For bombs, focus on chemical sensors rather than bottled water confiscation. Yes, it’s hard, but the potential payoff is better than for toothpaste inspections, and the level of intrusion if far less.
Comment by Avram —
April 19, 2008 @ 2:11 pm
It seems like this story refutes elements of the earlier story about this plot.
In the earlier version, the terrorists were supposed to have been planning to use drink bottles to smuggle onto the plane the ingredients for explosives, and mix the explosives in the airplane bathrooms. This was widely mocked as implausible by bloggers with some knowledge of chemistry.
In this version, the terrorists are supposed to have been planning to mix the explosives up ahead of time, and smuggle them onboard in drink containers. They would then attach detonators onboard. This seems more plausible to me.
I don’t know enough chemistry to verify or refute the possibility of making a useful (for terrorism purposes) explosive out of hydrogen peroxide and Tang, but I know that back in 1994, Ramzi Yousef assembled a bomb in the lavatory of Philippine Airlines Flight 434 and concealed it under a seat, where it went off on the next flight, killing the passenger whose seat it was under and blowing a hole down into the cargo region. (On older designs of that aircraft, the center wing fuel tank would have been under that seat.) The Flight 434 bomb used liquid nitroglycerine as an explosive, smuggled onboard as a bottle of contact lens solution.
This was the test run for a wider plot that would have placed bombs on ten or eleven plans, all set to go off simultaneously, but the plot was discovered and most of the plotters captured after a chemical fire broke out in the plotters’ apartment.