I’ll be his citation. I fly 30 - 40 weeks/ year, mostly in the US. All the big domestic airlines allow you to use your cellphone once the wheels hit the tarmac, while you are rolling to the gate. However, they ban all other electronic devices until you are inside the terminal (my Kindle poses a danger!). I have heard that speech far too many times.
I don’t think there’s any rhyme or reason to the rule, like many others. It’s just easy for cabin crew to enforce. It avoids judgment calls which could escalate into arguments with pax.
See, once they actually land, and you’re taxiing to the gate, they say you can use cell phones (because people tend to need to call folks for rides and crap), but they say you can’t use any other electronic devices.
I don’t know about electronic devices, but I do know that I seem to get frisked every time I go through security. I don’t know if it’s my caucasian good looks, wonderfully untoned 180 lbs, or my timid attitude (thanks to panic attacks), but it seems like every security schmuck just can’t wait to get his hands on me.
I think the TSA really does more harm then good. Then again, most of our responses after 9/11 have been nanny state ninnyish. The American people have done more harm to themselves then Osama ever could.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano yesterday hailed them as an important breakthrough for airport security and the fight against terrorism.
Yet when it came to testing the devices - which produce chalky, naked X-ray images of passengers - she turned the floor over to some brave volunteers.
Not particularly surprising. There are already reports of people being being harassed for not agreeing to being scanned by it, even though the DHS’s official line is to offer a pat down as an alternative… which is ALSO something you shouldn’t have to go through, just to fly in this country.
LRC has had a few articles about this lately. I didn’t realize how creepy the pat down was. They specifically mention they are going to lightly touch your crotch with the back of their hand. I’ve never felt pissed off at a standard police frisk but I wouldn’t be surprised if the TSA takes it to the next level of perversion. The author did acknowledge it wasn’t that bad.
After reading that, I couldn’t decide which I’d rather have my wife go through – the porno scanners or the crotch sweep. It’s sick when you think about it, but it’s just innocuous enough that I doubt I could stay riled up about it for very long. Hey, that sounds like federal government.
It’s a slippery slope. But we’re not gazing down in trepidation from the summit. No, we’re hurtling down the greased precipice into the abyss going Weeeee! like a squirrel from a 90s Internet video.
Every time some terrorist group spends $2,000 on a failed plot, harming nobody, the TSA will react by overspending on new gadgets and concocting new ways to harass, delay and generally inconvenience the flying public. Ludicrous overreaction is SOP.
Really? It’s been over ten years since I sampled the Bogota night life, but I don’t recall that. Perhaps I only went to tame places, or maybe pudgy Americans just look too harmless to pat down :)
Colombian bouncers know they will get their faces smacked off if they’re not courteous with the ladies. In America, touching a federal jobs-program employee gets you sent to the execution chamber.
In other words, people, when faced with a choice, will inevitably choose the Dick-Measuring Device over molestation? “That’s what we’re hoping for. We’re trying to get everyone into the machine.” He called over a colleague. “Tell him what you call the back-scatter,” he said. “The Dick-Measuring Device,” I said. “That’s the truth,” the other officer responded.
I’ve been patted down at an airport before (gotta love underwire bras that set off metal detectors) and they had a female TSA employee do it, so I didn’t feel at all uncomfortable. I would much rather a patdown than the body scan, personally.
He felt me up good, but not great. It was not in any way the best pat-down I’ve ever received. The most thorough search I’ve ever experienced was in the Bekaa Valley, by Hezbollah security officers. That took quite awhile, and the Resistance really manhandled my Resistance. There was no cavity search, of course – no magazine story, even one about Hezbollah terrorism – is worth that. But it was the fairly full Monty.
I’d love to hear him tell a TSA agent, “Your search doesn’t have shit on Hezbollah’s search.”
