I've gone on about 5 airplane trips since 9/11. Aside from having to take my belt off a few times, it had been... I won't say OK, but I would say more of a personal annoyance than a direct threat. It's been something that I oppose on moral grounds, rather than it actually affecting me.
So, I get home. Actually, to my parents, as I'm feeling ill with a cold and not about to do battle with Saturday night Atlanta traffic with a belly full of Dayquil and not nearly enough sleep. They let me do laundry this morning; so I open my luggage and find....
A TSA Notification of Baggage Inspection.
Now, you're probably asking what's so bad. I mean, they got a peek at my clothes, that copy of A People's History of the United States, a stuffed Minotaur from friend Cecil, a m500 Palm bought off of Cecil for a minute sum, a few copies of my comic book, and such. Heck, I just announced what was in my luggage right here, which will become searchable by Google and forever embedded in the web. I'm just getting upset over nothing.
I don't know.
At first, I'm thinking "What right do they have?" It is, after all, my luggage. My undies are private, and I want to keep them that way. And I'm not exactly sure that the TSA are the people who I want searching these -- at best, they're trained about 50% less than most beauticians attempting to get their license. Also, this kind of searching, at best, gets the stupidest people going to do dastardly deeds; if it looks like a bomb, it'll get stopped, but if it doesn't....
But I do understand basic safety precautions. Things like, "do a simple search of everything just in case." I won't be an apologist for the way these laws were forced in, but it does make a certian amount of sense.
I guess the best I can say is that I brought home something I wasn't expecting. Not the little piece of paper saying I've been searched, but the weight of knowing that I don't know what's best, being safe, or maintaing privacy.
Posted by Ted Stevko at November 3, 2003 01:40 AM | TrackBack