Holden McCrank writes "Recently, I flew out of the Gulfport, MS airport. They've installed one of those new passenger screening machines that blows puffs of air across a person, then sucks them into a mass spectrometer to test for explosives. At least that's the idea. I talked to the manufacturer of one of these devices at a trade show, and he admitted that one of the classic "false positive modes" for the device was little old ladies and their glycerine-based lotions (apparently a false positive for nitroglycerine).
So here's the sequence of events I encountered going through screening:
1) I take off my shoes and put them in a bucket to go through the Xray, along with my backpack, coat, and laptop. The TSA goon informs me I don't need to do that. I put them back on.
2) I await entry to the "blower." Two folks in front of me is a little old lady (LOL). Puff, puff, puff, and there's a long pause. The doors don't open to allow her to exit. Meanwhile my laptop has already gone through the Xray and is sitting forelornly all by itself at the end of the conveyor, just waiting for someone to snatch it.
3) Another TSA goon hauls the LOL out of the machine, and another begins wiping the inside down with a pad. I, and the other folks in front of me, are then directed to bypass the scanner.
4) Yet another TSA goon tells me to remove my shoes. Dammit.
5) Pass through the metal detector, then go to see if my laptop's still there (it is) and await my shoes.
6) As I depart the screening area, the LOL is sitting in a chair, and a TSA goon is talking to her. I hear little bits of conversation, including "with the back of my hand" and "sensitive areas" and "right to a private room."
Way to go, TSA! You got to feel up a little old lady, while the rest of us potential miscreants got to bypass your detector for free."
Thanks, Holden -- the picture of lots of little old ladies being searched would be, I think, the kind of visual nightmare that may sink this program. What's next? Perhaps machines that give false positives when apple pie or baseball cards go through the machine?
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