On The Verge of Tears

I just got back from Philadelphia International to pick up Sam from Ohio, and it reminded me of the pitiful excuse for convenience that the airline industry has become.  Oh, and maybe the fact that some POS almost killed 300 people this past weekend, even after his father told the US embassy in Nigeria that his son was crazy and was planning on killing some people very soon.  Awesome security.

This is the problem I have, and I’m pretty sure most people will agree.  First of all, I always travel with my laptop.  In fact, most people who own a laptop these days travel with it.  Every time I go through security, at every airport within the US (but rarely out of the country), I’m forced to boot the damn thing up and show them it’s a working laptop..  Now excuse me if I’m underestimating our security intelligence, but I’m pretty sure that if a terrorist knows how to build a bomb inside of a laptop, they sure as hell know how to ALSO conceal it within a laptop that can boot windows once or twice to pass security.

And another thing.  I wouldn’t mind so much if they told me about the three laptops a month that the TSA manages to screen that actually do contain laptop bombs.  To date, I’ve heard of no such story.  I’m not saying I’d like to hear them because I really do hope that people are not trying to do such things.  But, if smuggling bombs in laptops is such a high concern, you’d really think that by now we would’ve heard about it by now instead of bombs being smuggled in …shoes?…really?…that’s how high tech they’ve managed to get?

Your also not allowed to bring in more that 2 ounces of liquids in your carry-on luggage.  First of all, I know nothing about explosives, so perhaps I’m ignorant, but what difference does it make whether your tube of toothpaste holds 2 or 3 or 6 ounces of toothpaste.  If you can blow up a plane with four ounces of mouthwash, we’re all completely screwed anyway.  And, this rule only applies to your carry-on luggage??  So, let me get this straight…you can’t bring too much shampoo and conditioner into the cabin of the plane, but pack a 60 pound bag full of C4 and you’re golden?

Okay, I know it’s not exactly that bad, but it is pretty ridiculous.  The last time I traveled internationally, I was coming home from Mexico.  At the airport, they managed to to lure us in with scotch and perfume.  Duty free is hard to resist.  Now, in Mexico, to secure your duty-free packages, they seal them in a bag with zip ties.  In Philadelphia, they don’t even let you carry the stuff onto the plane.  The store personally delivers the goods to your plane.

In any case, when you land, like we did, at a connecting flight, you’ve got to check those items.  Somehow, security assumes that, after boarding a flight with completely double-sealed, never-before-opened liquid goods, I somehow miraculously replace scotch with explosives ON THE PLANE MID-FLIGHT.

After all that, some moron manages to sew explosives into his pants and light himself on fire on a plane.  They confiscated my tweezers in Mexico, but you can walk on board in Europe with explosives?  I really hope that the current administration overhauls the security procedures that currently inconvenience obviously benign risks and instead focus attention on meaningless threats.  I have to boot my laptop, but when the US Embassy is told of a potential threat, they think it’s not credible enough to at least look into?  It’s certainly time that our assessment of security in this country needs a good injection of good old common sense.  That’s always the safest bet.

This entry was posted on December 28, 2009 at 11:45 PM and is filed under Grinds My Gears. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.