Scoble’s Link Blog

I fly a lot.  I have been through every single major airport on the East Coast and a good majority of them on the West Coast as well.  Security screening is never a fun process, but I think the folks at the Seattle Tacoma Airport (SeaTac) are truly sadists. 

After 9/11, when they adjusted the sensitivity of the metal detectors, every single pair of dress shoes I owned caused the machines to go off.  So I tried to find shoes with less metal that I could wear on days I needed to dress in business attire but didn’t want to be felt up by a complete stranger.  What I found were these bad boys from Kenneth Cole (I got them for half that price).  I tested them out and they performed perfectly.  You still get the screener yelling “Sir! Sir! You might want to take those off.”, but you can calmly turn to them and reply, “I fly all the time, these shoes won’t set off the alarms, I promise.”  They worked so well I went back and bought the same shoe in brown.  I’ve been wearing them now for about 3 years and love them.  If I have some time to kill at the airport, I’ll get them shined for $5 and they look almost as good as when they came out of the box.

Then there’s SeaTac.  They tell you to take your shoes off just like every other airport, but if you don’t then you have to go through additional screening.  When I recently learned this first hand I happened to be having a horrible day and I considered this extra security screening to be a real pain in the butt.  To make matters worse, the guy inspecting me had a superiority complex.  While he’s patting down my nether regions because a rivet set off his little wand he could see the frustration in my face.  He smiles at me and says that “if you had just taken off your shoes then none of this would be necessary.”  This sent me way past the point of frustration, and I informed him he could stop talking to me in a manner that….well…attracted other TSA Agents to my location.  He didn’t stop, and neither did I.

“I’ve been through every other major @$%& airport and they don’t require you to take your shoes off.”

“Sir,” he says as sarcastically as possible, “I have been trained extensively and think I know the rules better than you do.  I’ve been doing this for a long time.”

(He is still working on my nether regions because of a stupid rivet) “Well, I’m glad to see you enjoy looking for trouser snakes for a living.  I sure you were the eager beaver in training sessions.”

As soon as that left my mouth, I realized I had crossed a line.  There were now a total of 5 TSA Agents around me, and none of them looked too happy with my assessment of their career decisions.  I quickly shut up knowing they have the ability to not let me board my flight.  He finished and as I was leaving a short female agent compassionately asked me to remember the guy that had a bomb in his shoe and that they were only trying to prevent another attack like this.  This lady was trying to make me feel better about the invasion of privacy I had just suffered, but it only made me feel worse.  I was no longer angry, but saddened by how truly poor security is and how futile the work of a security professional can be.

If a method for preventing an attack only causes an attacker to slightly alter tactics without any additional costs, then it is ineffective.  Anything I can hide in the heel of my dress shoes, I could very easily tape underneath my twig and berries.  There is more room there anyway.