A TSA public service announcement
Dec. 6th, 2010 10:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
goldkinFlying home to see my parents a few weeks back, I made sure to prepare for the possibility of TSA-related shenanigans. I'm a bit behind on reporting how that went here on journalspace, in part because I tweeted profusely about it and promptly forgot to mention it. I hope you don't mind; I really do love y'all.
On my trip back fromMiami Ft. Lauderdale, I had the misfortune of flying through Terminal C instead of my usual B-route with Southwest. And 'lo and behold, their shiny new backscatter X-ray machines were fully operational.
Now, I'd already prepared for this eventuality, having checked the status of local airport scanners in advance* to ensure I knew when to prepare and where I'd need to opt out. Even at the extremely minuscule projected risk (16 fatalities per billion people, versus 8 per hundred million from air travel itself), I still prefer to keep my 'nards radiation free. Personal choice, really.
So, given the relatively low number of passengers in line (practically none) and relative emptiness of the terminal, I exercised my right to opt out of the scanner in favor of the "standard pat-down" that's been so becried in the media. At this point, I was given the option to move to a private area (and presumptively could have requested a witness, exactly as described here), but chose to have the search conducted in public given the slow foot traffic.
To my surprise, it wasn't nearly as bad as the media plays it up to be. The TSA personnel performing the search walked me through my full rights while performing the search, calling out every procedure and required guideline. And as I had identified myself as someone cognizant of the procedure, the official was happy to answer my questions, including offering a relative figure of the number of people who actually opt out in general (per capita, very few) and his reaction to National Opt-out Day.
It was also clear that the official was homosexual, which is actually the right psychological profile for the role -- given the likelyhood of being thorough and correct regarding procedure, without skipping or speeding through steps due to embarrassment. The person was genuinely friendly, easy to talk to, and walked through the entire procedure professionally without the groping or abject stupidity reported in the media.
Now, I personally disagree that these procedures are making us safer. When faced with the decision to choose one of two evils, choosing the lesser is still choosing one specific form of evil over another. And given my general background in security research, the level of security theater at our airports pains me, despite knowing exactly why it exists and how it's processed psychologically by the general public.
I did get one amusement out of the endeavor, though. At the tail end of the procedure, I tweeted the following from the airport:
Well,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
klitaka called me on it:
And that makes the entire experience worthwhile.
--
* I'd like to point out that this link is freely available by searching Google, and is provided for informational purposes only. Please don't come after me for linking potential resources in some obscure, as-yet-to-be-defined elaborate plot. Thanks!
On my trip back from
Now, I'd already prepared for this eventuality, having checked the status of local airport scanners in advance* to ensure I knew when to prepare and where I'd need to opt out. Even at the extremely minuscule projected risk (16 fatalities per billion people, versus 8 per hundred million from air travel itself), I still prefer to keep my 'nards radiation free. Personal choice, really.
So, given the relatively low number of passengers in line (practically none) and relative emptiness of the terminal, I exercised my right to opt out of the scanner in favor of the "standard pat-down" that's been so becried in the media. At this point, I was given the option to move to a private area (and presumptively could have requested a witness, exactly as described here), but chose to have the search conducted in public given the slow foot traffic.
To my surprise, it wasn't nearly as bad as the media plays it up to be. The TSA personnel performing the search walked me through my full rights while performing the search, calling out every procedure and required guideline. And as I had identified myself as someone cognizant of the procedure, the official was happy to answer my questions, including offering a relative figure of the number of people who actually opt out in general (per capita, very few) and his reaction to National Opt-out Day.
It was also clear that the official was homosexual, which is actually the right psychological profile for the role -- given the likelyhood of being thorough and correct regarding procedure, without skipping or speeding through steps due to embarrassment. The person was genuinely friendly, easy to talk to, and walked through the entire procedure professionally without the groping or abject stupidity reported in the media.
Now, I personally disagree that these procedures are making us safer. When faced with the decision to choose one of two evils, choosing the lesser is still choosing one specific form of evil over another. And given my general background in security research, the level of security theater at our airports pains me, despite knowing exactly why it exists and how it's processed psychologically by the general public.
I did get one amusement out of the endeavor, though. At the tail end of the procedure, I tweeted the following from the airport:
> Not wanting to play backscatter cancer roulette, I opted for a security pat-down. It wasn't so terrible, despite being a lesser evil.
> Of course, I imagine this as TSA trying to pat down a dragon twice their size. Provide your own mental image here.
Well,
klitaka called me on it:And that makes the entire experience worthwhile.
--
* I'd like to point out that this link is freely available by searching Google, and is provided for informational purposes only. Please don't come after me for linking potential resources in some obscure, as-yet-to-be-defined elaborate plot. Thanks!
