My first thought upon reading the initial post was, “Well, she doesn’t sound like she looks Middle Eastern, but, well, there was that pregnant girlfriend of the jerkweed Jordanian who gave his “beloved” a bomb to carry on with her that went off over Lockerbie…”
Then, upon reading a little further, my next thought was, “Daaaamn. If a radical Islamic terrorist is ever gonna sneak a bomb aboard an airplane, I bet it won’t occur to him to make them look like Thai Jelly Butt Beads.”
And then, upon reading about groping and nipple tweaking, I found myself wondering what a lawsuit would do to some of these assheads… unless, of course, the right of American citizens to not be deliberately and lewdly groped up in public has been superceded by “the War On Terror”…
I must fly in some type of parallel universe. In more than 100 flight segments since 9/11 I have never seen women groped by men at security. This includes the young lady in front of me last month, who set off every alarm bell in the place, between her studded jeans, necklaces ala Mr. T, a belt buckle that probably doubles as a DSS dish, and boots with metal trim. I have often heard calls for a female inspector for a secondary screening.
This Tuesday when I was at LAX I saw a small sign at the security checkpoint that said that private area was available for secondary screening, if the passenger desired. I have never noticed one of these signs before, so I am guessing that it is a new addition.
The times that I have been chosen for secondary screening, the screeners have always been nice and professional.
BTW did anyone else notice that the linked article about Phoenix is almost a year old, and realize that security is not longer handled by airline sub-contractors?
Just bringing the topic up again since it’s being overlooked - remember, it’s not just terrorists that screeners are looking for. They’re trying to prevent people from smuggling drugs (this is a big one), illegally transporting/importing other items (guns, ivory, endangered species, etc.), and so forth. There are a heck of a lot of things they may be looking for when they pull you aside to search you. My elderly mother-in-law got stopped on suspicion of trying to smuggle restricted food out of Italy, but it was a false alarm; she’d had some sliced meat, bagged up, in her carry-on and some sandwich or something in her pocket before entering the airport (she’d eaten it on the ride there).
That’s not to say that you don’t get power tripping/perv guards either, but it’s not fair to link all searches with anti-terrorism efforts. That simply happens to be the “hot topic” reason to beef up security right now.
I’m flying to Atlanta on a business trip soon; hopefully I won’t have to resort to anything like Penn Gillette did (or if I do, I hope it turns out similarly well, though I’m no celebrity).
Wang-Ka, more likely food you’re not allowed to bring into the US. It’s virtually impossible to bring food (well, produce and meat) in from Mexico, even if you bought it in El Paso, took it across the border for lunch, and didn’t finish it all.
Correct, asterion - it’s been a while to produce of various kinds (meat, cheese, etc.) must be in specially-sealed packaging. Fruits and vegetables can’t be brought into the US (and I think California has its own restrictions as well) due to the worry that some new fungus or fly might infest domestic crops. There’s also a limitation on how much wine or alcohol you can import into the US - last time I was in Italy, it was 1 liter per person.