Slashdot Mirror
Scary Toothbrush Prompts Shutdown of World's Busiest Airport
McGruber writes "The big buzz for travelers today is the story of how a scary toothbrush prompted the closure of Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport: 'Airport officials told Channel 2 Action News that an electric toothbrush began vibrating inside a bag checked onto an AirTran flight, causing workers to alert airport officials to the strange noise.' The terminal and the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) subway were both temporary closed 'out of an abundance of caution.' ATL has been the world's busiest airport by passenger traffic since 1998, and by number of landings and take-offs since 2005."
Billions of dollars to shutdown airports for no reason. They were thrown off the tracks by Amtrak Chief of Police for trying to encroach on American's 4th amendment rights outside of their "jurisdiction". http://www.cnn.com/2012/02/06/opinion/don-phillips-tsa-vipr-teams/
I wrote to my representatives about how I feel about the TSA. You can too: https://secure.downsizedc.org/etp/tsa/
Came here to read that. Thank you for not disappointing!
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
Posting AC as I actually work for an airline at ATL. Worked there for the past 6 years, and maybe 3-4 times I've discovered a vibrating object in a bag. The first time a supervisor took the bag to another, private room and opened it up. The second time, it was obviously an electric razor and I was able to actually turn it off from outside the bag by pressing the button. The most recent time, I was in a bin loading the plane, it was rainy and was a quick turn, so did nothing. The passenger can always put more batteries in when they get there. In any case, at no time have I ever seen parts of the airport closed down for something like this, and vibrating bags are almost never reported anyway, because everyone knows its not going to be a bomb, and you know the person that has to open the bag and checks sure as hell doesnt want to open up a bag and find a vibrator.
I've had the security guys at various US airports get scared on multiple occasions when I've run my toiletries bag through the x-ray scanner and they saw my electric toothbrush. With the sheer number of times that this must happen in any given airport, you'd think they would know better by now.
I got a chuckle out of the video when the reporter mentioned that the airport personnel were "concerned". It's more like they were scared out of their minds, running from their own shadows.
Screening by airline personnel was the standard prior to 9/11. It wasn't clearly better.
I know the Internet helps to spread stories around a lot more today than they would've been pre-9/11, but I don't remember horror stories about airport screening being the everyday sort of thing that they are today. I never remember hearing a story about rape victims being sent to the ER after going through airport screening or security agents helping to disperse the ashes of dead relatives all over the security checkpoint. I find it utterly sad that I am in no way surprised that there are currently over 9000 (humor not intended) results in Google for "colostomy bag tsa", with a good number of them reporting on unique incidents spread out across a number of years. In fact, if anything, I'm surprised there are only that many.
And yet you think that the old screening wasn't clearly better than what we have today? I'll take a little more risk if it means getting my dignity back.