Florida Professor Ognjen Milatovic was removed from a US Airways flight this week for transporting a “suspicious bagel.”
Okay, okay, that's not entirely accurate. One of Milatovic’s fellow passengers complained that his bag was emitting a “suspicious noise.” But he was arrested and handcuffed for "disorderly conduct" and "interfering with the operation of an aircraft." Those are the magic words, you know, no matter what you do, whether you behave like a dick or just have a hearing problem (Milatovic's father says he has a painful nerve condition and was trying to stand for as long as possible). If you don't love, honor, and obey every command aboard an aircraft, you're outta there.
Here are three stories of the incident, so you can take your pick:
Of those in attendance, several have been relentlessly outspoken in their opposition to the incompetence, not to mention the expense, of the TSA, including physicist and Congressional rep Rush Holt of New Jersey, who wrote this letter to TSA majordomo John Pistole back in November, objecting to the stripsearch scanners, health risk, and general lunacy of TSA procedures.
Bruce Schneier was also there, and god knows I've quoted him plenty of times.
Unfortunately, some Congress critters, such as Rep. John Mica of Florida, think that hiring private contractors to conduct security will solve the problem. I'd like to know how throwing gobs of money at private firms instead of at the TSA is going to help, given that the private goons will have just as much right to grope you as the government ones. If we're spending all this money on "security" -- our money -- shouldn't we get something decent out of it? Instead of just enriching yet more corporations? And Mica, no surprise, stands to gain because some of these security firms are in his district.
Then again, Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah, himself a recipient of the TSA's wrath, is on the Congressional committee with TSA oversight, and he's co-sponsoring a bill that would stop the TSA from forcing people into the scanners and make storing or transmitting the images illegal. Still way too little. Why should a citizen have to spend money and effort bringing a suit against the TSA someday because pictures of himself or his family members have been leaked? A lawsuit after the fact is cold comfort. And how is forcing people to get groped instead of scanned a step forward? Other than gumming up the works, which I'm all for, though I don't think that's what Chaffetz has in mind.
Meanwhile, the moronicity (? moronic-ness? moronomania? moroniddity?) of the TSA is demonstrated around the country all the time:
Meadows Field Airport in the central California city of Bakersfield, about 100 miles north of Los Angeles, was evacuated and closed to air traffic for hours, and two federal baggage screeners were taken to a local hospital after they encountered the suspect bag.
The nefarious substance? Honey.
Oh, and the passenger had traces of nitrates on his body -- hello, he's a gardener! A gardener. Fertilizer, anyone?? Ever heard of it? But the TSA held him for hours trying to figure out where that nasty nitrate could've come from (actually, I have no idea if they've let him go yet). After all, time is nothing to them. Just ask bikini woman.
The article goes on to say that in Minneapolis-St. Paul, the entire airport was shut down because a dog sniffed something funny.
Then on the East Coast, in DC and Newark, more shut-downs and re-screenings occurred. National Airport just had a brief power outtage, no biggie; but Newark had a "security breach," those other magic words that bring everything to a grinding halt. And they did.
Such is life in these United States, where, to paraphrase Garrison Keillor, all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and the TSA is below average.