Month: December 2010

Pilot Exposes TSA Security Theater, Reaches Wrong Conclusion


By now perhaps you’ve seen today’s front page of Drudge. A pilot out of San Francisco (who wishes to remain anonymous, but TSA knows who he is), used his cell phone video camera to expose TSA’s “smoke and mirrors” security theater, how crew and passengers are hassled and harassed by TSA body scanners and groin pat downs, yet the ground crews – luggage handlers, caterers, and toilet tank dumpers, are simply issued a card to swipe, and out the door to the tarmac they go, with full access to your plane.

Well he is definitely a hero, and he is certainly paying a pretty price for whistleblowing. The feds and the State of California are both retaliating where no crime has been committed. I hope he sues the, ahem, pants off them.

Yet still, he absurdly draws the wrong conclusion. Instead of asking, “Why are we and all our paying customers being put through this smoke & mirror show?” he asks, “Why aren’t the ground crew being put this smoke & mirror show?”

Well, Capt. Anonymous Pilot, if it’s a smoke & mirror show, you’re asking the wrong question. Since your own video proves it is only a smoke & mirror show, and by not clearing every human being who enters an aircraft the TSA proves that to us as well, the correct question to ask is,

“Why are any of us being put through this smoke & mirror show?”

Smoke & mirror shows are nothing but a waste of tax payer money and an abuse of law abiding travelers’ rights. We must be clear in our thinking.