My Experience with Airport Security

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Wed, 12 Dec 2001 13:00:00 GMT
Last week I went through airport security twice, once at Albany International Airport and once at Denver International Airport (DIA). I put my impact kerambit and my knife in my checked baggage, and checked my coat pockets before travelling for other "contraband". I checked a largish duffel bag and carried on my laptop computer. The duffel bag's two zippers were padlocked together with a cheap combination lock. The only difference I noticed at the security checkpoint was that my pocket change, which used to go around the metal detector, was now required to go through the X-Ray machine, and my laptop, which used to go through in its case, was now required to be taken out of the case and ride through separately in its own airport-supplied plastic tub. I have learned to take the metal buckle off of my military-style cotton belt, so I didn't set off the metal detector, and was not hassled in any way on the other side.

I was required to show my boarding pass and photo ID at Albany airport security. In Denver, they only wanted to see the boarding pass. When I went through security, there was no line at either airport. I showed up two hours before the flight, and waited over an hour and a half after passing security.

Though some passengers were randomly searched before boarding the plane, I wasn't. The searches I saw consisted of looking through carry-on baggage and a body scan with a metal-detecting wand. I'm pretty sure I could have gotten on the plane with both my kerambit (plastic impact weapon) and my CIA letter opener (glass fiber knife) had I attempted to carry them on my person, even had I been "searched". I don't know if they would have showed up on the X-Ray had I put them in my coat. There was no evidence that my checked bag had been tampered with in any way, and noone asked me to remove the padlock.

Because my sister said she was asked to remove pennies that showed up on the X-Ray of her checked baggage in Dallas, I called DIA before returning home and asked if there would be any problem with having a knife in my checked baggage. They said that there would be no problem. There wasn't.

I didn't take any rifles home with me this trip. I wanted to (a 6.5/06 wildcat and a kid-sized .22), but my wife talked me out of it. When I called US Air about their policy for checking rifles, they told me that it had not changed since 9/11. The rifles (a maximum of two) must be in a hard-sided locked container, and you must sign a paper promising that they are unloaded. There is a weight limit on ammunition.

J. Orlin Grabbe - WANTED: John Bin Ashcroft - Hehe. [grabbe]

John Bin Ashcroft is wanted in connection with the post-September 11, 2001 attacks on the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights. He is believed to be in the terrorist stronghold of Washington, D.C.

Indicted for: murder of U.S. freedoms inside the United States; conspiracy to murder U.S. freedoms inside the United States; attack on principles established by Founding Fathers.

Russell Madden at Laissez Faire City Times - Calling Out the Posse: The War on Terrorism and Posse Comitatus - Why now more than ever we need the Posse Comitatus act to protect us from our own military.

Indeed, how wonderful it would be if sheriffs throughout the country called out the posse -- the adult citizens of their respective counties -- and evicted any and all federal agents engaged in crimes against freedom and the Constitution they once swore to uphold.

That's one posse I would gladly join.

Alan Korwin - Gun-Show Bill Is Not What They Say - The McCain-Lieberman bill, S.890, is a real doozy. It's sponsored by McCain and cosponsored by Leiberman, Schmuck Schumer, Hitlary Rodham Klinton, and three other traitors. It does much more than close the so-called gun-show "loophole". It registers every gun show attendee and imprisons anyone who doesn't follow the new gun show law to the letter. I don't know why this is getting press now. It's been in the Senate Judiciary committee since May. [geneice]

Legion of the Bouncy Castle Java Cryptography API 1.11 - "The Legion of the Bouncy Castle Java Cryptography API provides a lightweight cryptography API in Java, a provider for the JCE and JCA, a clean room implementation of the JCE 1.2.1, generators for Version 1 and Version 3 X.509 certificates, and PKCS12 support. Versions are provided for the J2ME, JDK 1.0, JDK 1.1, JDK 1.2, and JDK 1.3. This release features the addition of the AES, the AES Wrapping function, and El Gamal in the JCE and lightweight API. RSA-PSS is now supported by the lightweight API as well. As well as a few bugfixes, several compatibility issues have also been resolved, the most important being that Elliptic Curve keys are now encoded in accordance with SEC 1."

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