Airport guard falsely accuses NetStumbler.com creator of making death threat
[The police officer] then gives me back my passport, waves his hand, and says “Go through.”LinkI then hand my tickets and passport to another first class “document checker”, and then Jackie [a security guard employed by GAT Security] says, “What do you think your doing?”
“The officers said that I could come through!” I plead. “Oh no they didn’t, you get back in line where you were!”
Now, remember back now to the family holding my place in line? They had been watching this entire thing and were now at the front of the line, literally next in line. They waved to get my attention and say “We are here! We’re up here!”.
“I’m with those people, thats where I was”, I tell Jackie.
“Oh hell no, he’s not up there with those people, he’s got to get at the back of the line where he was.”, Jackie says.
“No, I was standing with them”, I plead again.
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This really makes me feel good about my flight to Dallas on Thursday. Sigh.
Cripes, I haven't flown in about four years, has it really gotten that bad? I live near Kansas City, home to KCI Airport (MCI), designed for the maximum inconvenience in terms of security. Each of the three terminals is set up like a huge circle, with the standard airport-mall (and bathrooms) on the inside, gates on the outside, and a security barrier in between.
If you go through security and then have to pee (or want a newspaper/coffee/sandwich), you have to go out and back in again. Back in '03, this wasn't that big of a deal (take off your shoes), but I can't imagine dealing with that airport nowadays.
Also, a prediction: children born around now will read Kafka in twenty years or so and puzzle at what the big deal is.
Stop flying. If you protest, it makes it worse. If you don't protest, it makes it worse. Every time that you fly, you pay somebody to abuse you and the other passengers. Rearrange your life and stop flying. As long as you keep paying the stormtroopers' salaries, you are the problem. If it's not a matter of life and death, don't fly. You have no rights except the right to stop giving them money. When people get fed up enough that air travel drops by 20 or 30 percent, things might change. But they don't care about your complaints as long as you keep giving them money. Biting the hand that feeds you is mean, but feeding the hand that bites you? That's just stupid.
I'm sorry, Antinous, but seeing the world is very much a 'matter of life' (I'm sure you meant life or death). And while you may be right from a certain consumer perspective (I'm guessing Mr. Slavin won't fly Delta again), the TSA is not going to go away just because fewer people are flying, and the crux of the issue here is that the TSA caused him to miss the flight the first time around.
I agree with you in spirit but the solution is not to isolate ourselves and stop flying, but to keep flying and demand that our rights are respected when placed in situations that require it. The way to change is through blog posts like this one and dissemination of information.
Dammit, I used my BBCode instead of HTML... silly me.
Not flying is not the solution. That's being like the luddites in the 18th century, destroying the machines that made everyone's lives easier.
I think we all should just cut to the chase with all this airport security stuff. Next time you fly, just show up with an orange jumpsuit on (for safety reasons of course), and with handcuffs, and feet shackles and NO carry on baggage, No food, No drinks, nothing - oh and barefoot. I mean that's what they want right? They don't want ANY kind of threat. For Pete's sake... You're not allowed to bring a cup of pudding on a plane.
If we all started flying in handcuffs, maybe they'd get the message?
I'm all for blog posts to spread the message, and websites like "the consumerist", but until we (the consumers) get organized and can boycott a company to the point where it hurts sales, then nothing will change. In fact, it'll probably get worse - if thats possible.
Given what authority-drunk zombie idiots most TSA employees are, I'm surprised that Slavin's experience wasn't even worse, e.g. arrested and cavity-searched as soon as he started arguing with them.
As for Delta, they're the worst major airline. I swore a year and a half ago that I'd never fly Delta again, even if it means an extra connecting flight.
I was actually thinking... what, of all the new security measures put in place since 9/11, would have stopped those attacks? They were done with box cutters, something which the old metal detectors and x-ray machines should have turned up.
How many planes have been blown up with shoe bombs? How many have been blown up with secretly smuggled liquids? Yet THESE are the things we're worried about. What's to stop someone from putting semtex up his ass like a cocaine mule... we can't prepare for everything, but I don't see how we have been made any safer by all of this.
...I thought Marius Milner wrote Netstumbler...
Squid, I think the idea is that if someone is looking to blow up a plane with XYZ, knowing that security is actively searching for XYZ may deter them from trying it. Terrorists tend to look for novel, unexpected weapons and techniques, so publicly announcing, "we realized that XYZ could be used to take down a plane," takes XYZ off the list of surprise tactics.
As for box cutters, rules put in place after 9/11 require that the cockpit doors be locked during flight, so a terrorist may be able to kill a lot of people in the main cabin using boxcutters, but he/she shouldn't be able to take over the plane that way.
@PHASOR3000:
I agree with that measure, but I was referring to all of the ridiculous pre-flight stuff. All the extra we have to go through now- pouring out liquids, showing off others in clear bags, taking off our shoes, etc.
I seriously doubt any of that has stopped any attacks.
TSA and the rest of the "Security Theater" Players have taken the completely wrong approach.
I admit that it's tough to preserve liberty while providing security. It's a hard job. That doesn't mean we need to make their jobs easier. In fact, I want Law Enforcement and security personnel who are PROUD of how hard their job is! Too hard? Fine, we'll get someone else.
(I thought changing our principles and way of life was the goal of the terrorists.)
Recipe: Airport
Ingredients:
Apathy, 1 metric crapton
Authority, Big chunks distributed unevenly,
Bureaucracy, enough to cover thickly,
Anonymity, pinch
Secrecy, to taste
Directions:
1. Give minimum-wage earners a large amount of authority, a difficult job and ambiguous rules
2. Add thousands of nervous, impatient, exhausted, distracted passengers
3. Sprinkle enough anonymity so that no passenger will ever see an employee more than once, and at best the passenger might catch a nametag
4. Thoroughly mix secrecy and bureaucracy so that nobody really knows the rules, and season with enough random authority so that they're afraid to ask in case they get put on a secret list that will make their lives miserable
5. Add just enough bureaucracy so that an employee who genuinely wants to be helpful is utterly boxed in as to what they can do
It's pretty clear that this guy dealt with some unpleasant individual employees, who later tried to dodge responsibility for their actions. Given the seriousness with which the TSA takes "jokes" about bombs in the luggage, and the like, it's especially galling for one of their number to make up an allegation about a death threat. I hope that aspect of the situation is taken seriously.
That said, the root of the whole problem is that he clearly didn't arrive early enough to catch this flight. He keeps pointing out in the comments to that entry that the Delta ticket window didn't open until 5:00 a.m., but he never actually says that he got there at 5, and given the rest of the timeline, he clearly didn't. He says he didn't have to wait at all to be checked in at the ticket counter, and then says that he got into the security line at 5:45. It sounds to me like he basically arrived one hour before departure, for a flight halfway around the world, and that's just lousy planning no matter what some web site says about average TSA line wait times.
Also, he wasn't griping so much about the special lines and treatment afforded 1st class passengers when the empty 1st class counter gave him the opportunity to jump the main check-in line.
Crunchbird, if I have anything to say about it, the last time I flew Delta will be the last time I fly Delta. Their counters were badly understaffed, the employees they did have were moving like slow lorises, check-in took an hour in spite of a relatively small number of passengers waiting, the check-in lines and security check lines were both so long and winding that they crossed in a couple of places, and there was only one metal detector/security check station for the entire operation.
The only way I made it to my gate in time was by bribing one of the airport employees: twenty dollars well spent.
Once I got on my plane, we had another unbelievably long wait, because Delta had scheduled some vast number of planes to take off more or less simultaneously, and it had stacked them up on the tarmac so close together that they couldn't get out of each other's way. It was pure incompetence. At the time we were scheduled to be landing at our destination, we were still on the ground, waiting to take off.
When I see a story that begins, "Delta screwed up," my default response is to believe it.
The police officers initially refusing to give badge numbers, the employee seemingly being unaccountable to any management, are the only two troubling incidents of this story.
He got to the airport later than the advised time, and as such tried to jump the security line because he was going to miss his flight. If they had the ability to help him and he had met a nicer security employee, maybe he could have gotten a break. But that was all he was hoping for -- a break. He did not arrive at the recommended time, and thus the whole rigmarole. I have to fly often for business -- it sucks having to pad time for bureaucracy, but if you want to get on your flight, you gotta play that game. The system isn't suddenly going to optimize because smart people know how to do things faster.
Did he get hosed by the GAT guard? Yes. Was it fair to be berated? No. Was it his right to jump the line because he was late? No.
Flying out of Bloomington, IL Sunday morning I handed my passport and bording pass to the TSA checker...
"Canadian," he says, "Were going to invade your country in the next few years."
Safer skies and foriegn policy, at minimum wage to boot!
Why is BoingBoing trying to sensationalize this story? It's clear from his own timeline that he showed up an hour before an international flight. This is his fault. Not Delta's, not the TSA's. Anyone that has done a rudimentary amount of travel post 9/11 should know better. And he's lucky Delta refunded him his ticket. He could've been stuck with e-credits.
The headline for this story should read:
"NetStumbler.com creator shows up an hour before departure and misses his flight"