The TSA Metastasizes

While I’m perusing Henley’s blog, I see his co-blogger Thoreau touched on one of my pet issues:

Yesterday I flew from Maryland to Milwaukee, where my wife and I are visiting family for the week. I was surprised to discover that I now have to pass through two machines (the air blower as well as the metal detector), not just one, and that my belt buckle now sets off metal detectors. I don’t have one of those giant ornamental belt buckles beloved of Texans, just a normal belt buckle. Yet now I have to take my belt off, along with my shoes. It wasn’t always this way, so I assume they’ve upped the sensitivity of the metal detectors.

Another machine to pass through, and another article of clothing to remove. I’ve seen the air blowers before, but they used to be for special screening. Now they’re standard, at least at Reagan National Airport…

Seeing the way that the screening procedures multiply, and the way that the footprint of the TSA keeps growing, I wonder just how large this metastasizing tumor of the security state will grow to be. Will the metal button on my jeans eventually set off the metal detector? Will the zipper set it off? Will I have to take off my pants then?

Usually I grumble something about how the Russians used to have to pass through checkpoints and show their papers, and they knew that if they caused trouble their names could wind up on lists. But I don’t grumble too loudly, because I don’t want my name to wind up on the no-fly list.

The TSA may not be the most dangerous aspect of our new security state, but it is by far the most obnoxious, with an incredibly rude staff and metastasizing mass that acts as a choke-point for all of our travels.

Every time the TSA institutes some ridiculous new restriction—confiscating toenail clippers, mandatory shoe removal, restrictions on liquids—I think that this is the one that will finally cross the line into farce and spark a backlash among the general public. I mean, at some point it should become obvious that these rituals have nothing to do with making air travel safer, right? Yet so far, the vast majority of sheep people seem to shrug and go along with it.

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