The TSA's a bunch of meanies.
I wrote this letter to the TSA tonight, as I had a little problem with them over the holidays. I'm hoping they do respond, and if so, I'll update here accordingly.
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It isn’t often that I travel by air these days. I used to travel fairly frequently a few years ago - up to two or three times a month. However, due to a drop in business I have lost many an opportunity to travel across the country and encounter your wonderful organization - the TSA. That is, unless I do a personal trip. Which is where the problem detailed below lies.
I am not a wealthy person, and therefore must plod along airports dragging behind an old, beat up suitcase with stuck wheels, an erratic center of gravity, and numerous tears. I am sure it must look like quite the suspicious piece of baggage when it is escorted behind the nylon belt and into the rubber-gloved hands of your department. I mean, it is a ratty suitcase, and there’s no way a terrorist would spend a lot of money on luggage if he was just going to let it blow up. So I was not surprised at all this last holiday to see a kindly note from your organization tucked inside my suitcase, informing me that my belongings had been thoroughly searched in the name of security and any dangerous items or contraband had been removed.
I’m very familiar with this note - it’s hard for me to think of a trip I’ve taken recently in which I haven’t seen that note. As I own an apparently terrorist-approved suitcase I now expect my property to be manhandled when I go to the airport. As disconcerting as it is to see the note every time I check in luggage, I don’t begrudge you this; in fact I approve of random searches as they can be relatively effective.
But coupled with my approval is a very important emotion: trust. If you trust me to pay attention and not pack any dangerous items then I have to trust you not take anything that isn’t dangerous. I am sorry to say that, after over a year of receiving your tucked-away letter, I no longer trust you.
Somewhere between checking in my luggage at the Orlando International Airport and opening my suitcase in Wisconsin some of my property - condoms, to be specific - disappeared.
I packed four (it was going to be a short trip) of Durex’s Intense Sensation condoms - the best I had available - in hopes of enjoying myself with my girlfriend and maintaining a high level of personal safety. Apparently Homeland Security trumps all things personal, for when I opened my suitcase upon arriving at my destination I found your note and two of my condoms sitting neatly atop a sweater (I had packed them within the sweater so I needn’t go searching the ends of my suitcase for them). I was genuinely surprised to find that half my stash had been snatched, knowing that the only entity that had been inside my suitcase between my packing and unpacking of it had been the TSA.
Now I ask you: what does this mean? Was I the victim of a horny TSA officer? Perhaps there was something suspicious about those two condoms that required them to be confiscated for security purposes? A caustic suggestion for me to get a less-fishy suitcase? There are a lot of possible answers, but my money’s on the first one: the condoms were stolen by a TSA officer.
Where does this leave our relationship? Part of wanting a secure country and society is making little inconvenient sacrifices, like time, or the least important of our civil liberties. But to unwillingly sacrifice my property (and intimate time with my girlfriend) is unsatisfactory. So, like in any relationship where trust has been betrayed my mind is spinning off into many directions.
Who else has been the victim of TSA officers with sticky fingers? What did they lose? Was it something that the officer deemed “unimportant” or “unnoticeable”? I also misplaced another item on my trip: a $75 gift credit card from my father. Is it so outrageous of me to wonder if it, too, was picked up by rubber-gloved hands?
I’ve asked many questions in this letter, but in reality I want answers to just the following, final queries: What kind of checks do you, as an organization, put in place to prevent these kinds of thefts? And what do you propose to do about my loss of property?
I anxiously await your reply.
Sincerely,
Paul Hiebing
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I just got a reply stating that my email has been received by their processing center and that it will be answered as soon as they get around to it. I'm not holding my breath.