A few short days after terrorists flew jets into the World Trade Center I went through the TSA checkpoint at Mid-Continent Airport in Wichita, Kansas with a box cutter in plain sight. It was an accident; I had forgotten it was clipped in my laptop case. The TSA agent searched the case and made me turn on my laptop so she could be assured it wasn’t a disguised bomb. She missed the razor blade and passed me through without question.

Sometime later I passed through another TSA checkpoint with Kirsten. They confiscated a tiny bottle of lotion from Kirsten and completely missed the folded-up scissors in her purse.

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is a joke. In an article published in the November 2008 issue of The Atlantic magazine, Jeffrey Goldberg calls it security theater.

The Things He Carried
Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic, November 2008

In this interesting essay Goldberg not only describes how to foil the TSA security measures, he tells how he did it, over and over again. What is more interesting than evading security is whether or not any of that theater makes us any safer. Why wouldn’t a terrorist simply detonate their bomb in the totally unsecure TSA checkpoint where people are congregated in the interior of the busy airport? Or perhaps they’d just walk into the airport through the back door.

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government · richard reid · safety · security · terrorism · travel · tsa