{"id":2674,"date":"2004-07-14T03:41:14","date_gmt":"2004-07-14T17:41:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2004\/07\/14\/the-tsa-security-or-petty-thieves\/"},"modified":"2019-12-10T16:47:02","modified_gmt":"2019-12-11T00:47:02","slug":"the-tsa-security-or-petty-thieves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2004\/07\/14\/the-tsa-security-or-petty-thieves\/","title":{"rendered":"The TSA: Security, or petty thieves?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' data-iawmlf-post-links='[{&quot;id&quot;:10573,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/john.hoke.org\\\/archive\\\/2004\\\/07\\\/my_experience_w.php&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20041011143812\\\/http:\\\/\\\/john.hoke.org:80\\\/archive\\\/2004\\\/07\\\/my_experience_w.php&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-11 06:32:55&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:404}],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-11 06:32:55&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:404},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;}]'><\/div>\n<p>Fellow weblogger John Hoke had <a href=\"http:\/\/john.hoke.org\/archive\/2004\/07\/my_experience_w.php\" title=\"John P. Hoke's Asylum: MY experience with a TSA screener\">an interesting experience with the TSA<\/a> yesterday while flying from LaGuardia to Dulles&#8230;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n  One screener asked to manually inspect one of my bags, <em>knowing that I had nothing in it that was prohibited based on the TSA&#8217;s own site<\/em> I allowed the search. This inspector found a lighter that I was given by my step daughter for our first Father&#8217;s Day together. It was a cigar lighter that did not run on Liquid Fuel, but gas. (Unabsorbed Liquid fueled lighters are prohibited based on the above PDF). He looked at it and exclaimed, &#8220;Wow I have always wanted one like this&#8221;. Then proceeded to tell me that he had to confiscate my lighter.<\/p>\n<p>  I calmly explained that it was <strong>not<\/strong> on the list of items that are prohibited on his own Department&#8217;s website. He replied he was allowed to use his judgement (what little of that there apparently is) and he was confiscating it. I requested to speak with his supervisor as he was <strong>not<\/strong> wearing any TSA identification, no name badge, not badge at all.<\/p>\n<p>  The supervisor came over and the screener was confiscating it, end of story. Tried to be helpful in that unhelpful supervisory way.<\/p>\n<p>  &#8230;I will be writing (and posting here) a letter to the TSA, even though I was told by the supervisor &#8220;Go ahead and complain, there is <em>nothing you can do to us<\/em>.&#8221;\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Seems to me that this is pretty simple &#8212; petty thievery, compounded with harassment and the overbearing attitude that any amount of power will instill upon the small-minded. More and more, the TSA seems to be less concerned with actually providing any amount of security, merely using the power they&#8217;ve been granted to harass, humiliate, and steal from anyone coming through the gates of the airports. Sad.<\/p>\n<p>And on a semi-related note, who comes up with these lists of what can and can&#8217;t be admitted on the airplanes? My mom came through Seattle on her way Florida from Anchorage a couple of months ago, and I was flabbergasted to see that she was allowed to bring her knitting needles on the airplane. Sure, &#8220;knitting needles&#8221; sounds innocuous enough &#8212; but these were two six-inch long metal spikes connected by an approximately eighteen inch metal wire. Two stabbing implements and a very effective garrote, in other words, should someone choose to use them as such. Yet these are allowed? Just bizarre.<\/p>\n<p>Just watch what you take on the planes these days, folks &#8212; and hope you arrive at your destination with everything you left with.<\/p>\n<p><strong>iTunes:<\/strong> &#8220;Genauso Wie Ich (Future Pop)&#8221; by Beborn Beton from the album <em>Tales From Another World<\/em> (1994, 5:55).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This inspector found a lighter that I was given by my step daughter for our first Father&#8217;s Day together. It was a cigar lighter that did not run on Liquid Fuel, but gas. He looked at it and exclaimed, &#8216;Wow I have always wanted one like this&#8217;. Then proceeded to tell me that he had to confiscate my lighter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2042],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2674"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2674\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}