In a fit of “Oh-my-God-If-I-don’t-run-from-this-job-right-now-I-am-going-to-start-screaming-and-may-never-stop” I booked a flight to Guadalajara for a weekend of binge drinking with a friend (great way to stave off burnout…I’m serious…). I made the decision on a Monday. I had a new, notarized copy of my birth certificate issued from my hometown (3,000 miles away – I didn’t have a passport and needed to be able to get back into the US) and Fed Ex’d to me. I reserved my ticket on a Wednesday, called in sick to work Friday and went to GDL with nothing but a duffel bag. Due to the haste, I had to purchase my ticket in cash at the counter on Friday.

I was stopped on the way through security, where the guard showed me how my ticket had been flagged. I laughed, said he could search whatever he wanted and gave him my bag, telling him I was simply on the verge of burnout and absolutely needed to do something that might seem completely insane to a rational person to keep myself rational. He searched the whole bag, and even re-packed it for me.

An agent stopped me as I handed in my boarding pass also. I had to walk the tarmac to get to my plane. An agent stopped me there.

Throughout the trip, I was stopped and searched a total of 6 times. Each time, I tried to be as understanding as possible. I didn’t take offense to the repeated stops. I didn’t take it as insinuations that I had sinister reasons. I just flat out tried not to take the searches the wrong way. As a result, each one was almost a pleasant experience. The agents empathetically listened to my tale of my job making me not-so-sane, laughing at the jokes I cracked about it. It was a little bit scary, being singled out like that (you try guiltily stepping forward as someone official looking people come out onto the tarmac yelling, “Is there a [insert name] in this line? Please come this way.” I wasn’t strip searched. I wasn’t abused. It was just humiliating, that’s all. One thing I’ve learned is that it’s perfectly OK for the government to completely humiliate you and desecrate your name. It’s one of those things about living in the United States, the greatest country on earth.

Crazy.

Yes to some its obvious, but these are the same people every whines about being as smart as a box of rocks.

cmon.

procedures are made so that the least intelligent person in a group can understand it, thats a proven fact.

personally I think homeland security is the biggest long con i’ve ever encountered. Lets point at the obvious effectiveness of the agency by the fact that nothing has happend.

Lets ignore the fact that there have only been 3 documented acts of terrorism in the united states where a large group or potentially large group of peopel have been harmed.

2x against world trade towers
1x Murrow building in Oklahoma City.

Lets ignore the fact that its easier to enter the country from canada than it is to fly from one state to another inside the united states

Lets ignore the fact that a fraction of the cargo from sea is inspected for anything whatsoever.

You cannot prove a negative and I’m getting tired of selling our country out to china so we can make the people who are trying to keep us afraid and in the dark rich.

The sad part isn’t that a nun got frisked; it’s that this is the point we’re at.

At first blush, it might seem that to check out a small child is simply beyond the pale, but that, too, withstands calm, logical scrutiny. As someone else observed, there have been instances of small children being used as “delivery systems” of explosives.

Neither a habit nor youth is a 100% assurance of innocence . . . sad to say.

And… children as selectees… makes sense. Kids don’t usually pack their own bags or pick out their own clothes. They’re parents could be crazy, so you can’t just trust them because they are children. It also helps to show that some of the SSSS designations are random. And, as many said above, anyone can dress as a nun. You can’t take anyone’s word for anything, you need to screen everyone as if they were a threat. A little old lady with a hip replacement could be a person disguised as a little old lady with a gun! You can’t just assume it is a hip replacement and be done with it!

Also, the airline made the 5-year-old a selectee, not the TSA. So, if you are going to question the people who flagged them for the name… it was the airline. The airline doesn’t tell the TSA why they flag people, they just do it and the TSA is responsible for patting them down. If you cooperate it only takes a couple minutes to pat you down (like 30 seconds there) and check your bags. Its minimally invasive and worth it for the extra layer of security.

Yet, those same people who beg and plead for government intervention can’t find one good experience (without recalling at least 10 bad ones) while trying to renew their drivers license, filing paperwork at the courthouse, and apparently now, flying. Let’s face it, any time the government steps in, it’s bad news. They’re the worst monopoly of all, because they have no true motivation to do their job right, exercise good judgment, and give you a better experience overall.

And why they’re targeting kids anyway, and not people who look and talk like Bin Laden and the other similar folks (yes, I’m implying middle easterners and muslims in general. If you don’t like it, be damned). Funny thing is, people are so wrapped up in not offending anyone, that if this little kid was holding a Koran (and his name was on the list), he probably wouldn’t have even been stopped in line.

Call me insensitive, call me racist, call me anti-muslim, I don’t care. At least I have the balls to call a spade a spade. Sure, we’ve had wackos (e.g., McVeigh) here, but you’ll always have a couple here and there in a country of 300 million people. It happens, but it’s not a trend or way of life for millions, like extremist muslim practices are.

And using children as suicide bombers? Yep. This is only one of many news sites that reported such, a baby girl strapped with explosives, in the first attempt on Bhutto’s life:
http://www.dailymuslims.com/ISSUES/Pakistan/525.html

We need to implement what the Israeli IDF does — serious profiling to find terrorists amongst us. It works for them.