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TSA Thinks Pretend-Police Costumes Will Get Them Respect

The TSA gropes our crotches, paws through our stuff, makes us stand in long lines to get to our flights, and treats us like criminals. But the agency knows the real reason they're disliked is because they ain't stylin'. And they think realistic badges will be a solution to the problem.

Boing Boing has a discussion of the TSA version of What Not To Wear. The discussion drew the predictable scolding from WeightedCompanionCube, who defends the TSA:

I have never been treated like anything but a decent human being by TSA screeners, and so I treat them the same....

Grow up and stop thinking you have the right to consider all authority figures "pigs".

I suspect that, by WeightedCompanionCube's standards, I have been treated quite decently by the TSA. They speak to me respectfully, frequently call me "sir," and phrase every order as a request. Some of them even kid around and act friendly.

But, still, despite their deferential speech, they're not treating me decently: All I want to do is go to the gate and relax before my flight, bothering no one and staying out of people's way. Instead, I have to empty my pockets into my briefcase, take off my shoes, take out my laptop, put my carry-on bag and briefcase on the conveyer belt, take off my jacket and put it on the conveyer belt, and then push the three trays and my luggage through the X-ray machine, all the time keeping an eye on my things so they don't get stolen.

I almost always set off the metal detector, so then I have to get groped by a stranger, while standing in an undignified position with my arms outstretched like an idiot, in public.

That treatment is inherently indecent, even if the guy who's doing it to you says "sir."

Law-abiding people of good moral character should not have to put up with this kind of treatment. Like John Wayne said: "I won't be wronged. I won't be insulted. I won't be laid a-hand on. I don't do these things to other people, and I require the same from them." It's a good code to live by. Would the Duke have put up with this kind of nonsense?

If TSA screenings made us safer, we could discuss whether it's necessary, but they don't. As Bruce Schneier has demonstrated time and again: It's not security, it's security theater. It does not make us safer. Water is not a threat. Shampoo is not a threat.

deejayqueue notes that he recently attended an event where the vice president was speaking, and the Secret Service was able to screen "over 2,500 people with no appreciable slowdown."

And ceromonus points out that this TSA nonsense actually makes us more unsafe: Suicide bombers can target the lines of people queuing up for the security lines. Thanks, TSA!

I have sympathy for the front-line workers at the TSA. I've had friends and family who were so broke they worked as telemarketers and collection agents. When I look into the faces of many TSA workers, I see the same expression: They know what they're doing is stupid, it demeans them and the people they interact with, but they need the money and so they do it.

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