Published on 26 May 2014
This is a story about a social experiment. What happens if I decide to opt out of the full body screeners? How am I treated differently?
I arrive at the gate two hours early for my flight from San Francisco to San Diego, with a planned layover in Los Angeles. I’ve never flown south of here before, and I have a habit of always showing up two hours before a flight, even when I can feel the city leaving me as I take the Uber car to the airport. I sign in at the gate, have a last cigarette, and go to security.
I’ve travelled a lot. I’ve racked up more miles by thumb (hitching) than almost anyone I know, and I’ve flown far more times than most of my friends. I’m a bit ashamed of that - I write long letters to a friend of mine in Wales, and she always says she’s going to have to come to the US someday but can’t with the world’s carbon levels being what they are. Her last letter had a drawing of a plane that was scribbled out with the word NO emblazoned over it. So, I feel guilty about being at the airport in the first place. I had planned to hitch down California 1 - the opposite direction of a trip I took two years ago to Vancouver - but I felt sick and I loved San Francisco so much I was toying on cancelling my flight and staying there regardless. So, I bought a cheap ticket, and showed up today to fly.
Just to let you know, I got through - I’m in the airport bar now, drinking Anchor Steam and listening to music. You can breathe. This isn’t a horror story.
But I’ve read a lot of horror stories about the TSA. And I’ve experienced some, myself; I was denied entry to the UK once, and kept in detention for a day before being flown back to Hungary. I’ve been held up at gunpoint at the Macedonian border, and I’ve shook hands with a friend who got deported (long story) from an Antiguan jail. I’ve illegally entered and left countries, several times. But I’ve never been at the brunt of the American border, never seen what it is really like to be unwanted or a security risk here.
The woman in front of me was sitting next to the full body scanner - she had decided to ‘opt out’ of being put into a humiliating machine where they can look at a very realistic depiction of your body. I didn’t know you could opt out. I had two hours to kill. Sorry, spend - you can’t be too careful.
I’ll opt out, please.
The TSA officer, a woman in her late twenties, didn’t blink an eye. She told me to sit down.
We have a male opt out, on Lane 4. Male opt out, Lane 4.
She repeated this several times. After around two minutes of waiting, watching as people passed by me, a man in his sixties with thinning hair and probably weighing twice my weight came over. He was distantly friendly, and I followed him through the gate on the side, avoiding the Machine.
He takes me through to where my bags are - two carryons and a collection of personal items - my camera, hat, iPhone, shoes, and belt.
Is this everything?
I pointed out that my computer was missing.
My computer is my life. In the two minutes I had spent sitting and waiting, someone must have took it. I broke out in cold sweats almost immediately, wondering what I would do without it.
This wasn’t funny anymore.
We waited for a minute, and I got increasingly anxious. Eventually, he grabbed my bags and walked me over to the screening room, saying that the supervisor was busy. He called to another agent, a portly woman in her fifties, and she asked in a condescending manner to the other man if he had waited, if anything strange had happened, if I had put it on the belt. I think he was a TSA in training, and flustered he answered that he had done all of these things. He took me back across to the belt, and put down my things. We waited another minute.
The woman TSA officer came over again and asked if I had been patted down.
No, you told me to wait.
Well, pat him down.
In my mind, the bit of fear turned into a mountain. I wasn’t just dealing with the TSA - I was dealing with straight out incompetency. I started swearing internally.
He took me over to the side, and put on new latex gloves. He then proceeded to explain where he would pat me, and how - using the outside of his hands, the inside of his hands, and so on. He began to pat me down, after asking the woman if she wanted to do it (no). While I’m there, she asks me if I had put my laptop with the other bags. I said yes. I ask if there were cameras - she nods, and said they will get to that. Meanwhile, the man finishes patting me down. It was far less invasive than I had figured, possibly because I have nothing to hide, although I did sit with these jeans on a porch where people were smoking weed last night (but this is California, and I don’t smoke marijuana), and because I really had nothing to fear. I had asked for this, after all.
When the man is done, he bumbles over to the trays, and starts looking through all of them. I’m imagining someone holding my laptop like a child and getting onto the next flight to Kuala Lampur. I’m screwed. While I’m figuring out if I can write this off as a tax deductible insurance loss or something, I see him walk all the way to the front of the belts, and try the containers there.
He takes a container, and puts it on the tray. It’s my laptop.
You forgot to put it on the belt. It happens most of the time in situations like these.
He hands it back to me, and walks away. I’m free to go.
The woman TSA agent comes over, and asks casually if I am flying for business. I explain I am, but that I haven’t travelled much domestically recently. She says I can get a precheck for $80 for five years, and avoid a lot of this. I nod, and explain I just wanted to see how it would go if I opt out.
Oh, I don’t mind at all if you opt out. No one really cares. I tell my grandparents to - I’m from Jersey, they live in Florida, and they travel all the time. They’re 70. Just opt out, I tell them.
I sheepishly put on my shoes, and think that two minutes ago I was worried the TSA had screwed me over by keeping me waiting while my laptop was stolen, and now I’m discussing grandparents. I say thanks, and walk away.
Like I said, this isn’t a horror story. Nobody died. Nobody even got detained. I’ve had worse walking to my apartment in Brooklyn. But it is a story - I walked in, purposefully trying to see what would happen if I went beyond what was necessary with expectations of red tape, poor service, and structural violence. Instead, I ended up shooting myself in the foot by messing up the system in the first place, and found that really, the TSA isn’t the worst thing in the world.
Still, though, this beer I’m drinking tastes pretty good right now, if only because I can drink it with my laptop in front of me.
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