Oh Lordy – Just how stupid can TSA be?
5-year-old mistaken for criminal at airport January 8th, 2008 It?s a case of a mistaken identity for a 5-year-old boy from Normandy Park. He had trouble boarding a plane because someone with the same name is wanted by the federal government. Mimi Jung reports from Sea-Tac Airport.
The report goes on to say that when the Mother, wanting to provide some comfort to her son, approached him to give him a hug, the TSA staff told her to not touch him because he was a National Security risk.
sigh
(Link via Boing Boing)
Technorati Tags: tsa, stupidity
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I don’t think that that is entirely fair. The TSA can’t win for losing. If they had the right person, and for whatever reason, said terrorist wanted to hug his mother, and the TSA dude let him, you would equally say he was stupid.
This poor TSA dude was just following orders (and, yes, I know where such arguments lead, but let’s leave that out for the mo). The other issue that most TSA agents are not very well educated, and many barely speak English. It’s unfortunate, but we have relagated our air safety to people who can only follow their orders as written.
Now, let’s also realize that while I don’t believe that this child WAS a terrorist, I do know from personal experience, that many terrorists use women and children to move such things as weapons and explosives because they are the least likely to be searched. As such, while it is a huge stretch, there IS the possibility that this child was indeed the same person on the list (is it also possible that he was a midget?).
Just my thought.