Airport security ROCKS !
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New unwritten but nonetheless enforced TSA security directive to be aware of: Small rocks are a threat to security.
Geologist Robert M. Thorson, on his way to an academic conference, had a small chunk of gneiss confiscated at Bradley Airport, because it was deemed to be a “dual-use” item, i.e., a potential low-tech weapon.
By these low standards for weaponry, anything with a density greater than a gel (which as we know is prohibited in quantities greater than 3 oz.) is a potential weapon.
My laptop computer could be dual-use in this sense, too. I could close it and use one of the corners to beat someone’s temples in. Then I could finish the job with my power cord, like a member of SPECTRE battling British secret agents on a night train from Istanbul to Budapest.
Sigh.
(thanks to reader Paul for the article!)
(image: stephinary)
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October 6th, 2006 at 8:52 am |
Yeah, well, I lost my $80 cigar lighter a few years ago when they suddenly started enforcing the lighter rule. But I didn’t whinge about it.
So he lost his rock, which sounds pretty jagged. And the way he packed it sounds like the TSA guys might have thought he was hiding it. Red flag #1.
And if you read his editorial, you can easily imagine him being supercilious and snotty at the agent. Red flag #2.
So tough noogies to him, I say.
October 6th, 2006 at 2:07 pm |
Tough noogies? It’s okay with you that agents can make up rules? You lost your lighter because the rules — official, published rules — changed. You may not have been informed beforehand, but ignorance is no excuse. Rightly, you accepted the ruling. Though I’m sure you were frustrated at the loss of an $80 object.
But this guy packed something that wasn’t prohibited. Even if the rock was shaped like a “cake slice,” it’s legal according to the published rules. Want to see wedge-shaped rocks banned? Change the rules, officially.
You seem to want to punish him more because of his attitude after the fact than because of his “contraband.” You say he MAY have been “snotty” at the checkpoint. (We don’t know that he was.) But if anything, it sounds like he was standing up for his rights, not unnecessarily provoking the TSA agents to get a rise out of them.
You smoke cigars, presumably. Let’s say you were carrying a box of Davidoffs in your carry-on. If someone from TSA told you that your cigar box was prohibited because it had a sharp corner, wouldn’t you have protested?
Sounds like you are more willing to let an agent of the federal government exercise an inordinate amount of arbitrary power than I am.