toddlers plot to blow airliners up with sippy cups

[jrtom]

Or apparently so some employees of the TSA believe:

http://www.nowpublic.com/nightmare_at_reagan_national_airport_a_security_story_to_end_all_security_stories

Get a grip, guys. Try to remember what it is that you're meant to accomplish. Hint: it's not your personal aggrandizement via petty power trips.

(I have recently spoken, in amnesiadust's LJ, on the subject of cops and why it makes sense that they're often difficult to deal with, namely that people treat them like crap as much as possible and they're often in constant danger of assault. Those factors, for the most part, don't apply here: airline travelers are generally polite and cooperative while they're going through security, and the risk of any of them offering aggression to a TSA worker is basically nil--and even if it happened, they've got backup all around them. TSA workers who act as those in the above story do have, as far as I'm concerned, no excuse.)

Comments

[ewin.livejournal.com]

I have a friend who, after being out of work for a year as an engineer, decided to apply to TSA and has worked there for several years now. Some of the stories he's told of the things emphasized by the supervisors are downright ludicrous.

For instance, there was the one supervisor that demanded that TSA operatives never, ever take their eyes off of the luggage belt, "because a baby could crawl in and get stuck under the x-ray". A luggage belt three feet off the ground, mind you, behind a rope and a gate. This led to a legend among the employees that the instant you turn your back, heaps and piles of invisible babies immediately fling themselves on the belt and clog the x-ray machine.

It's a job that is all too easy to take way too seriously, apparently.

[jrtom.livejournal.com]

I can understand that the organizational culture of TSA is probably pretty oppressive: they feel as though they have to be able to tell their bosses and the press that they're doing the best they can to keep travelers safe, and that includes making their workers as paranoid as they can manage.

However, as Bruce Schneier and others have pointed out a number of times, there are better ways to spend this time and attention than on harassing individual travelers going through security. Sometimes you just have to step back, take a breath, and consider the situation rationally before concluding that a stressed-out mother with a probably-anxious toddler spilled some water just to piss you off and Disrespect Yore Authority. Among other things, if _I_ were trying to sneak something through airport security, I'd get in line right behind a family with a few small children. ("Look! A distraction!")

"Invisible babies": *chuckle*

Oh good, I'm not the only one!!!

[(Anonymous)]

Hi Joshua (from Julia, Sergey Kirshner's wife),

Congrats on the new babies!

I had a similar experience at LAX (although without being detained)! I was traveling with Ellie (16 months) and I had 4oz of water in her sippy cup. TSA officer asked me if it was juice and I told him that it was water. I was told that I cannot bring water through security, even for kids. I tried to explained that it was boiled water and that Ellie hasn't had tap water yet, but I was told that it didn't matter. I asked to speak to the supervisor who told me that next time I should tell the security officer that my daughter "has a medical condition requiring her to have water." I was stunned and I asked him whether "life" would be concidered such a condition :). In the end I poured out the water into a trash can, took the cup and got Ellie bottled water before boarding the plane, but the whole thing left me completely outraged!