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Science Fair Entry Shuts Down Airport Terminal
OverTheGeicoE writes "A graduate student was returning home from a science fair in Omaha with his handmade entry in his carry-on luggage. When the TSA discovered it, they shut down the airport terminal for several hours, until they could determine it was harmless. All of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again, so before you fly with your homemade Minty MP3 player, make sure you take a look at TSA Blogger Bob's warning or it could wind up looking like this."
We live in a post-9/11 world. We have to forfeit some of our rights in order to fight the terrorists. If you're not doing anything wrong, then you have nothing to fear. Think of the children.
Vote Palin 2012.
Why bother voting Palin? You know there's a Democrat in the white house RIGHT THIS SECOND right? And the Democrats have had control of house, senate, and white house within the last few years, and they most certainly didn't finally fight this TSA nonsense- in fact, in the 80s, they were in favor of something like this.
Can't blame Bush anymore. Guess you'll have to accept that they are all corrupt control freaks, eh? Both major parties are opposed to freedom, privacy, and any amount of self determination. I understand that once you pick Red or Blue you want to assign all the Bad Things to the Other Color, but it's just not that simple.
4. Profit!
Your Palin comment, while designed to be funny, isn't. Have you even seen what she thinks of the TSA and all that or you just assuming? In the end, all you've done is proved you're even more shallow than she is.
She believes all of THESE kinds of examples are nothing more than Politically Correct Security. The problem is that the LEFT WING handcuffs how we do things because it might "offend" the terrorists ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Muslims and incite them to commit acts of terrorism. So we pat down Granny's Diaper, confiscate Insulin, Fondle little kids and least ... smash a toy MP3 player.
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2630366/posts
If you're going to criticize Palin, make sure it is legitimate. This isn't one of those cases (there are plenty to choose from)
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
except that this actually isn't security theater. It's the useful kind of security procedure that actually prevents bad stuff happening. Screening of cargo and investigation of suspicious looking bits of cargo is how they stopped the printer-cartridge-bomb plot, for instance.
It's all very well to knee-jerk off about how the TSA is full of idiots and they're trampling over your inalienable rights and freedoms and blah fucking blah, but at least spend a few minutes thinking about the context. This science project was a fairly simple, hand-built electronic device with improvised casing whose purpose isn't immediately determinable. The TSA says, and I'm happy to defer to their superior experience on this specific point, that bomb detonators they catch often look like - in fact, are - fairly simple, hand-built electronic devices with hand-built cases whose purpose isn't immediately discernible. Are you seriously suggesting it's 'security theater' to screen airplane cargo and take a closer look at improvised electronic devices? Really? If so, I'm damn well not flying on _your_ airline.
It's not like they arrested the kid and hauled him off to Guantanamo Bay or something. They found a suspicious device and performed an exhaustive investigation to figure out what it was. Which came to the right conclusion. I don't really see that anything happened wrong here.