Story? Ah yes. (to the friend that asked what the airport security comment was about - this is that story now).
As many of you know, I recently took a trip to North Carolina to visit some dear friends! The trip was amazing - and as Mom and I are going through the Charlotte NC airport security, one of the TSA officers grabs my bag and starts going through it. I'm busy tying my shoes and I didn't really notice her say that she had to run my bag through the X-Ray scanner again. She does that, then rifles through my bag again.... this happens about three times until she pulls a pocketknife out of my bag. ......yes, folks. A pocketknife. So she takes it away, I take my bag away, all is happy.
No, no, no. All is not happy. I was pretty upset - as my Mom can attest. It didn't help that I wasn't in a happy and bouncy state of mind since I just said good bye to all my lovely friends - but I was upset for a couple more reasons. 1) I actually didn't notice that there was a pocketknife in my bag when I was packing! Shame. On. Me.! 2) The Minneapolis airport security didn't notice my pocketknife in my bag on the flight from Minneapolis to Charlotte.
Those are the facts, folks. The Minneapolis TSA officers and all their fancy equipment let me take a pocketknife into their airport and on their airplane. I know for a fact that I didn't just pick the pocketknife up in Charlotte or anything like that - because - the knife had the name and address of my Dad's place of work engraved upon it. So I knew it was my knife.
Final thought: the TSA wants to look through your clothes to see if you have bombs on you - when they allowed a pocketknife to get through their security. To take a quote from National Treasure: "It's upside down."
Hopefully there will be a "In other news...." post coming later this weekend. :)
That's infuriating... my folks were talking and they said it's been shown that the whole scanner and pat-down business is a crock. Supposedly, these scans as well as the pat-downs in reality won't detect more than the typical metal detector. What I'd be willing to bet is that even if it becomes widely known, just like global warming, it will still be exercised and used despite it's obvious and proven flaws. It's sad...
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I'll try and find the link and share it here, but this journalist went through the post 9/11 'security' wearing Osama bin Laden clothing, carrying Muslim flags, weapons, suspicious liquids, etc, and didn't get stopped. He has done several things like that testing the limits and its pretty ridiculous
ReplyDeleteAn Iranian mistakenly carried his Baby Glock pistol through security recently . . . so the new scanners and pat downs haven't made a huge improvement :-P We need to learn from the experts (Israel comes to mind), stop being scared of political correctness, and implement strategies that work.
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