airport security

When TSA Agents Attack

by Ryan Young on August 20, 2010

in Personal Liberty, Precaution & Risk

For most people, the TSA is merely an annoyance. We grudgingly play our part in security theater so we can get where we’re going. But for Kathy Parker, the TSA is something far more serious (via Steve Horwitz):

“Everything in my purse was out, including my wallet and my checkbook. I had two prescriptions in there. One was diet pills. This was embarrassing. A TSA officer said, ‘Hey, I’ve always been curious about these. Do they work?’

“I was just so taken aback, I said, ‘Yeah.’ ”

What happened next, she says, was more than embarrassing. It was infuriating.

That same screener started emptying her wallet. “He was taking out the receipts and looking at them,” she said.

“I understand that TSA is tasked with strengthening national security but [it] surely does not need to know what I purchased at Kohl’s or Wal-Mart,” she wrote in her complaint, which she sent me last week.

She says she asked what he was looking for and he replied, “Razor blades.” She wondered, “Wouldn’t that have shown up on the metal detector?”

In a side pocket she had tucked a deposit slip and seven checks made out to her and her husband, worth about $8,000.

Her thought: “Oh, my God, this is none of his business.”

Two Philadelphia police officers joined at least four TSA officers who had gathered around her. After conferring with the TSA screeners, one of the Philadelphia officers told her he was there because her checks were numbered sequentially, which she says they were not.

“It’s an indication you’ve embezzled these checks,” she says the police officer told her. He also told her she appeared nervous. She hadn’t before that moment, she says.

She protested when the officer started to walk away with the checks. “That’s my money,” she remembers saying. The officer’s reply? “It’s not your money.”

Read the whole thing. If the Fourth Amendment had any force anymore, the TSA would have been abolished years ago. It is well past time for President Obama and Congress to consider that step. It would certainly do wonders for them in the polls.

Regulation of the Day 124: Kissing Your Girlfriend Good-Bye

by Ryan Young on March 10, 2010 · 1 comment

in Nanny State, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Precaution & Risk, Regulation, Regulation of the Day, Sanctimony

How do we know the terrorists are winning? When a man kissing his girlfriend good-bye at Newark Liberty International Airport results in the evacuation of an entire terminal, 200 delayed or canceled flights, and re-screening for thousands of passengers.

There is a word for this: overreaction. If this how the government reacts to a threat that is 20 times scarcer than being struck lightning, we are doing something wrong.

Yes, the criminal kisser was wrong to sneak under a security rope to get one last peck from his girlfriend. But closing down an entire terminal at a major airport for six hours is overdoing it. Just take a look at the offender.

His name is Haisong Jiang. He is 28 years old and very much in love. He emigrated to the U.S. from China in 2004, and met his girlfriend at Rutgers University. She recently moved to California, though they remain together. Mr. Jiang remains in the New York area, pursuing a biology Ph.D. When he receives his degree later this year, he plans to move to California to be with her. He is clearly not a terrorist.

Mr. Jiang’s forbidden kiss was recorded by surveillance cameras. It was clear that he was sneaking a kiss, not a bomb. Even so, a five-day manhunt ensued. Mr. Jiang was arrested and tried. Fortunately, his sentence is a light one: “a $500 fine and $158 in costs and fees,” plus 100 hours of community service.

I was a bit worried that he would have been shipped to Guantanamo Bay, frankly. Hopefully retired Maj. Gen. Robert Harding, the new head of the TSA, will take steps to make airport security more rational and less driven by fear.

Thinking outside the box on security

by Fred Smith on January 7, 2010

in Mobility, Precaution & Risk, Regulation

The Washington Post editorial, “In the wake of Flight 253, the TSA must get more anti-terrorist tools” makes a short-sighted argument for increasing resources for the TSA.  Terrorists, as we’ve seen in Iraq and elsewhere, have diversified, wreaking havoc wherever individuals congregate.  Malls, mass transit systems, sports stadia, churches all represent targets.  To focus scarce taxpayer funds on the risks of air travel alone neglects the broader terrorist threat.

Why not encourage a more active anti-terrorist role for air travelers and airlines – and enact “Good Samaritan” laws to reduce their liability?  Unfortunately, current privacy laws and anti-discrimination lawsuits have restricted their ability to augment efforts of the TSA.  Consider how airlines might have responded to 9/11. A US Michael O’Leary might well have launched a “John Wayne” or a “Nervous Nelly” option.  The first would arm passengers (and crews) for self-defense (that approach might well have minimized the killing sprees at Virginia Tech and Fort Hood).  The latter might require passengers to strip and don strait jackets for the duration of the flight.  Competition would encourage a more careful balancing of security and privacy concerns with passengers playing a creative role.  Thank God the passenger on Northwest was not forced to remain in his seat!

Why should efforts to advance public safety exclude the public?  America’s history shows numerous ways in which the citizenry has played a critical security role.  Government should play a role in defending the citizenry but your focus on the role of bureaucracy alone risks losing the creativity of travelers and airlines.  Why not encourage their involvement too?

And, given the problems already observed with both the TSA and the HAS in their preemptive efforts to alone provide security, shouldn’t the possibility of enlisting business and the citizenry in this effort be considered?

Regulation of the Day 97: Full Body Scans and Child Protection Laws

by Ryan Young on January 7, 2010 · 1 comment

in International, Personal Liberty, Privacy, Regulation, Regulation of the Day, Tech & Telecom

Sometimes, when two regulations love each other very much, they get together and have little baby regulations. This is happening right now in Britain.

Full body scans are coming into use at many UK airport security checkpoints. Since screeners essentially see all passengers naked, the scans run afoul of child protection laws for passengers under 18.

The thought of pedophiles using the body scan images for their own sick ends is decidedly creepy. So the British government is taking steps to keep that from happening. Those steps include:

-Exempting everyone under 18 from being scanned. This defeats the security purpose of the scanners.

-Moving the scanner operators out of sight of passengers. That keeps the scanner images anonymous. But it doesn’t prevent perverts from seeing things they shouldn’t.

There is an easier way: don’t do full body scans. They do more to make people feel safe than to actually make them safe.

Reinforced cockpit doors, proactive passengers, and checked baggage screening are much more effective. And they’re already in place. Besides, terrorist attacks are rare. Full-body scans are an over-reaction. The resources spent on them have other, better uses.

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