My Back of the Hand Brush with Nazis

Oct 7, 2013

Nazis of the TSA

Office of the [ha ha] "Civil Rights and Liberties"

External Compliance Division

601 S 12th St

Arlington VA  20598

 

Dear External Compliance Nazis:

I picked up a complaint form yesterday from your Ft Meyers airport gestapo desk, and used it - plus the backs of three pages of your official "Civil Rights for Travelers" website that I had printed a few years ago and which I carry with me whenever I fly ... just in case I need it - to write out the complaint I had against your gestapo agents at the Ft Meyers airport.  But the pen I had didn't want to work correctly, we had a bouncy flight over the remnants of a failed tropical storm, and my one-year-old son was kicking me as I was writing.  Even I can barely read what I wrote, so I am typing this up from those notes.

Copies of this are going to be sent also to my US Senators and my Congressman, at least one of whom has made statements on the floor of Congress critical of the nature and efficacy of the job TSA does, though nowhere near as pointedly as those criticisms need to be stated.  A copy will also be going out to a public and fairly popular internet blog site, as well as facebook and where ever else I can think of.  In fairness, I shall append any official response this complaint gets to the blog site and facebook ... so make sure it's something you'd want made public!  In other words, don't make yourselves look like more of the same type of imperious jackasses you usually advertise yourselves to be.

Before I get into a description of what happened yesterday, I should probably say - not that you can't guess by now - that I find absolutely nothing you do, ever, anywhere, to be a "service" for anyone other than those whose purpose is to amass excessive and non-Constitutional power for the government, in the guise of making Americans feel safe without actually making them be safe.  As you know, TSA during their entire existence, has not caught, interdicted, or even identified a single person whose aim or intention was even remotely to commit air piracy or air sabotage.  Not one.   Not even with the huge number of guns and knives and cups of coffee and snow globes and cupcakes-in-a-can you've found, nor with the colostomy bags you've ruptured, nor the millions of people you've humiliated and tens of millions you've simply outraged.

None.

You do not add safety to any transportation; you simply use that as an excuse to compel people - mostly American citizens, free people in a supposedly free country - to justify themselves to the US government, and make them prove themselves innocent in the face of your self-satisfied presumption of their guilt.  This massive compulsion of the general public to justify themselves in the face of presumed guilt, or risk detention and arrest, is exactly what the nazis did to the German people, as well ... and for the exact same reason: declarative public safety.   ...this point will come up in the narrative.  In fact, my father-in-law - a child at the time - spent much of the first six years of his life in a nazi prison camp, along with his mother, my grandmother-in-law.

I will also point out that during the years of TSA's existence, American citizens have - not once, but twice - interdicted individuals who were attempting air sabotage .... not that their attempts were going to amount to much.  Shoe bombs and crotch bombs were - as you know very very very well - not going to accomplish much more than a frat house accomplishes during a fart-lighting contest.  Smoke and stink and not much else.  At least, that is the results of the post-incident threat assessment made by those who do not have a vested interest in exaggerating the risks posed and therefore justifying the need for nosier and nosier tools by which TSA can violate everyone's 4th Amendment.

In short, nazis, the general public can do your stated job better than you do, and I've got to believe at this point that you know it, which leaves you with just one apparent function left: harassing and annoying that general public and removing their civil rights and confiscating trillions of items of their personal property.  Sadly, this fools many Americans into believing you're actually doing anything.

I, though, am an American citizen with a 1st Amendment, and I will use my 1st Amendment when I see fit - I don't care who you are or claim to be.  Further, no agent of the US government will tell me I cannot use my 1st Amendment, nor will any agent of the US government take any action against me, nor treat me any differently from anyone else, because I do use my 1st Amendment; when TSA's actions are predicated on obliterating the 4th Amendment, the 1st Amendment is about all we have left.

So ... we have arrived at the narrative of yesterday's encounter with your local gestapo:

My wife and I and one year old child arrived at Southwest Florida International Airport - the Ft Meyers airport - around 8 AM on October 6 2013 for a scheduled 9:30 AM departure on Southwest Airlines flight 3696 at Concourse B.  We had just finished visiting my grandmother-in-law, who is 90-something, and who hadn't met her youngest great-grandchild yet.  This is the same grandmother-in-law who lived for several years in a nazi prison camp, for what it's worth.

When we arrived there were as many as a dozen people in line, and - I counted - 16 blue-shirted brownshirts.  A touch of overkill, frankly.   We were soon next in line so we went up as a family to your agent checking boarding passes and IDs.  My wife and son went through and I handed my boarding pass and passport to your female agent ... who insisted on engaging me in conversation.  I will try to never talk to TSA; it's simply not worth it.  I cannot be polite to those who obliterate my constitutional rights and believe they are entitled to do so, and most people - particularly those with small egos and large powers - don't like my direct honesty if and when they do get a conversation started.  The conversation here went as follows:

"Good morning sir, how are you today?"  [This was a question]

... I said nothing.

"Sir ... good morning.  How are you today?"  [This was also a question, although imperious in tone]

...

"Sir, why aren't you answering me."  [This, however, was not a question; it was a boorish demand]

"Because I don't like talking to nazis."

"WHAT IS THAT SUPPOSED TO MEAN!!"

...

 

"I SAID, WHAT IS THAT SUPPOSED TO MEAN!!"

I waved at her attempting to indicate that I was not going to say anything else to her, that the only reason I said that much was because she couldn't leave me alone, and to not bother even trying to start up another conversation.  I don't want to talk to you.  It's not difficult to understand.  She shoved my passport [removed from its cover and folded backwards] and my boarding pass [now bent and wrinkled] back at me.  I took them and went to the get into the shoeless magnetometer line for the next pointless exercise. 

...only the magnetometer was closed and everyone was being funneled through the pornoscanner.  I didn't notice this, though, until I was already inside the thing.  I was trying to see how far ahead of me my wife and son had gotten; the useless and one-sided fake-polite "conversation" the ID-checker insisted on having with me allowed several other people to get between my wife and I.

The nazi at the pornoscanner told me to turn to my right, place my feet on the marks and raise my arms.  Bullshit!  I'm not getting into a pornonscanner, and I told the nazi this:

"I'm not going through the pornoscanner."

He tried rationalizing: "But it doesn't penetrate ..."

"I don't give a shit.  I'm not going through a pornoscanner."  And I went out the way I came in.

"SIR, YOU HAVE TO BE SCREENED!!"

"Not in a pornoscanner, I don't."

Another [male] nazi stepped up, told me to stand right where I was and not move.  I shifted around to see where the bins of my belongings were - they had long gone through the x-ray conveyor and I could no longer see my property, which included my passport, and he yelled, "I SAID, DO NOT MOVE!"

"I don't see my stuff, nazi."

As we both know, I'm supposed to be kept in contact with my stuff, at least to the point where I can see it if it isn't actually in the machine.  This reduces the chance that other passengers will accidentally or deliberately walk off with it, or that one of your upstanding nazis will keep it for themselves, which happens frequently enough that it's no longer a surprising news story.

"We need to get a male agent here to do a pat-down," he squawked into his cutesy rent-a-cop shoulder microphone.

"You're a male nazi," I told him; "you do it."

"I can't.  I'm working up front," he declared, as if standing around looking self-important and conceited is considered work.

...and he made me stand there for almost ten minutes.  In those ten minutes, I had two short conversations of note, one with him and one with another nazi.  In the first conversation, a female nazi came up behind me and said, "Y'know, sir, this is a difficult job, and we try to be as nice as possible when we do it; you need to be more cooperative."

"Nice?  What's nice about nazis?"

"I resent that description..." she pouted.

"I resent nazis."

"So do I; it's a good thing there aren't any around here," she huffed.

"I see 16, 18 nazis in blue shirts right here."  Within just a few feet of me there were almost two dozen TSA agents I could see, of which maybe 5 were doing anything of note - two checking IDs, one at the x-ray conveyor, one giving instructions at the pornoscanner, ... make that 4 I could see actively doing something.  Of the over dozen nazis I could see who were not doing anything obvious, easily half of them were male ... yet none of them could bother doing the grope portion of the pointless "screening".  They were all milling about looking stupid.

I alluded to this when I mentioned to the male nazi who had yelled at me to not move as he was just standing in front of me, "You're not supposed to harass or retaliate."  I quoted this from your "Civil Rights for Travelers" memo.

He scoffed back, "I'm not harassing you!"

"No, but you're retaliating; There's a half dozen male nazis doing nothing, including you, and rather than have one of them grope me, I'm just standing here.  How long does this need to take?"  I got no answer.

A few minutes later, another male nazi wearing blue gloves came up and asked if I was the opt-out.

"No, I'm the one for the groping.  Are you going to be my groper?"

He said something, but had his back turned and I didn't hear what it was.  He motioned for me to follow, and I did ... to an arbitrary spot about 20 feet away, because it was SO much better than where we had been before.  He stopped and imperiously asked which lane my stuff was in.

I looked around and didn't see my stuff and started to panic that it actually had been stolen.

The nazi with blue gloves got snotty and sneered, "It's real easy, it's either this lane or it's that lane."

Yeah, well, bite me, I don't see my stuff.  But I did see my wife and son [finally] and shouted to my wife, "where's my stuff?"  She pointed to indicate that my stuff was hidden behind a bunch of other stuff.  The nazi with blue gloves made me follow him to my stuff.

"Do you want the pat-down here? or in private?"

"No no!  Everything is going to be in public."  The entire TSA experience is humiliating to the general public in the first place; if groping those who won't play along humiliates the TSA nazis in return ... that is at least a partial victory.

At this point he proceeded to launch into a long-winded description of what he was going to do, how he was going to do it, and why he was doing it.  Several seconds into this pointless tirade I told him, "Just skip the foreplay, wujja?  You wanna grope me, so grope me."

...the first nazi, the ID-checker, was haughty and childish.  The nazi at the pornoscanner was obliviously confused as to why anyone would, gorsh!, not want to be irradiated by a sick pedophiliac fuck in the next room.  The nazi who yelled at me to not move but who had no other [apparent] job skill was high and mighty.  The nazi who resented being called a nazi almost, but not quite, as much as I resent nazis was condescending.

This nazi, though, the one with the blue gloves about to grope me, was peevish and whiny.  "I will not 'skip the foreplay'!!" he whined ... and he proceeded to start his pointless blather, obviously learned by rote, from the very beginning; more wasted time.   He finally got around to groping me, making a significant and unnecessary production out of it, and after he got his jollies out of the way, he informed me I was free to go.

Gee! imagine that, an American, a free citizen of a free country, was finally free from the warrantless [and useless and impractical] search for snow globes conducted by the government each American citizen is supposed to be free from.  Another American proved himself innocent!  Yay team!  Go USA, go!

As I put my sandals and jacket back on, he thanked me - for what, I don't know.   I was going commando, so perhaps he got off a little.

I don't welcome being presumed guilty by my own government ... which is supposed to be prohibited from making that assumption, and I find it offensive that I might be thanked for it, so I answered "You're not welcome, nazi."

"Yeah, well, neither are you to be honest about it."

"Sieg heil, nazi," I replied.  And as I left the nazi interment zone I said "Sieg heil" to four or five more blue-shirted brownshirts, each and every one I passed on my way out.

We finally escaped!  My wife changed my son's diaper in the ladies room, I got a cup of coffee and waited for her in front of the restrooms.  I thought I'd have been done being harassed by nazis for the day; I was wrong.

Shortly after my wife came out of the restroom and we were trying to decide what to do while we waited for the plane, up comes yet another nazi, this one wearing shorts, and despite having a mustache and appearing to be in his 40s or 50s, looking for all the world like a HitlerJugend. 

He stood directly in front of me, staring at me with his chest thrust out at me, and after a moment he said, "Have a nice day!"   Yet this was not a greeting; it was not a banal pleasantry.  It was certainly not intended as an apology of any sort for the litany of retaliatory abuse I'd just been given - an apology I was due, by the way.  You don't jut out your chin and your chest and throw your shoulders back to give greetings or banal pleasantries.  It was thoroughly aggressive and insincere, and intended as a childish challenge.  A taunt.

I replied, "And sieg heil to you, too, nazi."

And the boy had the gall to get offended!  He went out of his way to add harassing behavior to the already retaliatory actions the rest of his gang of nazis had perpetrated, and he was offended by my refusal to allow it to go unnoted.

 

"DON'T CALL ME THAT AGAIN.  IT'S A VILE TERM!" he yelled at me, attracting the attention of at least two passers-by.

Of all the arrogant self-righteousness.  I was now actually angry.  No government official has the authority, in public, to tell me what I can and cannot say, and I'll say any goddamned thing I want to.

"I know you nazis hate the 4th Amendment, but is this a 1st Amendment-free zone as well?"

"I SAID DON'T CALL ME THAT!  IT'S A HORRIBLE WORD!" he shouted over my rhetorical question.

Yes I know it's a horrible word, and what makes it more horrible is that it applies.  If you don't want to be called nazis, then don't do to Americans what nazis did on a daily basis to Germans, under the pretense of protecting those Germans from Jews, and Gypsies, and political subversives, and homosexuals.  By contrast, TSA is protecting us from snowglobes, excessive amounts of shampoo in our carry-on, large tubes of toothpaste, and unbaked cupcakes.  And don't bother quibbling about this because TSA hasn't accomplished anything else.  They have zero successes on identifying anyone considered to be a legitimate threat of air piracy or air sabotage.

Let me repeat that in case you still can't comprehend it: ZERO SUCCESSES.

 

By standing up to, and being rude about [while still complying with] the imperious edicts of the government, I would have been called a political subversive under the Third Reich.  And I was being treated in the Ft Meyers airport exactly as political subversives under the nazis were treated: harassed, continually challenged, facing childish retaliation not to mention risking arrest and detention for daring - daring, I tellz ya - to assert my right to tell the government, and its brainless agents, exactly what I think of what they do.  ...and them for doing it.

Seriously, how difficult is this?  You don't like being called nazis? don't act like them.

It was only at this point that I decided I'd had enough of these childish assholes.  "Do you have one of your little complaint forms on you?"

"No I don't; they're at the desk."  He seemed almost happy that I was now threatening to file a complaint against him and his gang of thugs.  We arrived at the desk in the nazi interment zone, and he told the nazi guard behind the counter, "This gentleman seems to have a complaint to make.  Would you get a complaint form?"

The only - and I mean only - nazi I encountered at Ft Meyers who did not insist on advertising himself as having a small ego with too much power was the guy behind the desk; he reached into a drawer and handed me a form and kept his mouth shut while doing it.  I don't even think he looked at me.   Good for him.  Just do your job and keep quiet about it.

I got the form, and turned to the mustachioed HitlerJugend; "What's your name?" I asked.

"Mario [something]," he answered.  It sounded vaguely Spanish, and there's a few ways of spelling the various Spanish sounds; my last formal Spanish language lessons occurred in 7th grade back in the early 70s.

"Would you repeat that?" I asked.  Mario repeated; I still didn't understand his last name.  Another nazi - the condescending one - was standing beside him with a pen and notepad, undoubtedly transcribing the encounter.

"Can I borrow your pen?"

"No you may not," she pouted, hiding it from me.  She and Mario thought this was amusing, in the same way that a 4 year thinks their own immature behavior is amusing.  Alright, then, if that's as grown-up as you're going to be...

I had the form, Mario would be easy to identify by description if nothing else, and I turned to leave.

Mario cat-called after me, "Have a nice da-a-ay."

I turned and called him "nazi" one last time.

While writing out my complaint by hand while waiting for our plane [delayed by 33 minutes due to FAA rules], several TSA nazis walked past me, and all of them glowered at me.  They didn't simply glance at me; they slowed down, made a point of turning their head in my direction, waited for me to make eye contact, and they glared at me until they were past me.

Yes; I see their point ... how dare an American act as if he should be free from his government making nosy and offensive presumptions about him.  I'm obviously the unreasonable bad guy here ...

Grow the fuck up.

=====================================================================

The stated objective of your complaint forms, not to mention the "External Compliance Division", is to improve the "customer" service of TSA ... despite TSA having no customers, only a throng of free citizens trying to go about their daily business  which TSA does everything they can to prove to them how UNfree they truly are.

Until such time as we get an elected government who's actually read - and understands - the US Constitution and the type of government we were designed to have with the severe limitations on power that were intended to be in place, my advice to you, in both terms of classical customer service, as well as reduction of retaliatory and harassing behavior, is as follows:

1] Many people don't mind engaging in idle chit-chat.  You wanna ask them how they're doing?  Go right ahead.  Some people do mind engaging in idle chit-chat, either because it's a useless activity in general, or because of who they're being engaged by.  If someone doesn't want to talk to you, then shut the fuck up and leave them alone.

2] Most people resent the pornoscanners for the dozen reasons you're already aware of though most will grin and bear it; some, though, will go out of their way to object to it; I will never enter one.  Stop acting surprised by these objections, and for godsake, stop acting as if the guy who objects to it is committing a crime by refusing to play along with it; he has legitimate options and you are obliged to fulfill those options without grabbing a pound of flesh along the way.  Just put these people in a separate line without the yelling and the screaming and the autocratic orders to stay motionless, and IMMEDIATELY grope them; no waiting.  Making people wait any longer than anyone else has to wait to get through your infernal nazi-machine is retaliation.  You are declaring that their failure to make your job easier rather than their own life less humiliating carries consequences for them; that is retaliation by definition.  You are making them pay for inconveniencing YOU ... as if your convenience means a damn.  It doesn't.  Grow the fuck up.

3] Some people don't want to be given a play-by-play of their groping ... again, shut the fuck up.  Just do your job.

4] When you annoy people for obliterating their sense of privacy from government intrusion that we were taught [at one time] we had a legitimate expectation of always having, and they call you nazis, or pedophiles, or simply sick bastards, ... that's their right as an American to do.  As an agent of the government you are not allowed to have PERSONAL feelings about it; your duty and obligation as a government agent in the uniform of that government is to let them call you those names.  The reason I know this is because **I** was a uniformed agent of the government at one time way back when, and this was among the first things they drilled into our heads: I was obliged to let them say what they wanted, and I could do nothing about it.  THEY were the citizens; **I** was - to them - the government.  Perhaps I've mentioned this before: do your job and do it silently; shut the fuck up.  Laugh about it or grouse about it ... your choice ... at the airport bar after work.  Quit and get a job as a Walmart greeter.  Go home and kick your cat.  I don't care.  You do not have the luxury of back-talking US citizens while you are in uniform.

5] When someone gets through your maze of nazi officiousness with the same stew of official childishness, condescension, self-righteousness and peevishness as I encountered, ... and the same rudeness that I gave in response to it all ... then any further encounters MUST consist of an agent in a supervisory position making an apology for it, regardless of where he believes the bulk of the responsibility lies.  He should also ask if there is anything he can do to ensure that such miserable encounters are avoided in the future.  That is "customer service"; since you don't actually have customers, I'm not terribly surprised you don't know this.  It would be a good idea also to have any complaint forms in his pocket when he does this.  Making childish challenges because a professional ego [or six] was bruised does not cut it.  In any enterprise which actually had customers and in which customer SERVICE actually matters, Mario's actions would be either a reprimandable infraction, or a terminating offense.  It was simply inexcusable.

6] I know better than to expect much in the way of acknowledgment of your official culpability, here, though there is much for you to be culpable about.  I am fully aware that an apology is nothing but an easy way out, and virtually all apologies are formulaic and insincere.  I don't want an apology from anyone, not even the ego-on-his-sleeve Mario.  I want structural changes in the way you asshole nazis conduct your business.  As I said before: until we get an elected government which actually understands the very strict limits on its power, you're going to be browbeating all citizens you encounter and nothing can be done about it except be rude to those who do it when it happens.  No one likes being browbeaten, and some of us will be rude to you when you do it even as they comply with your directions.  There's a difference between being compliant but rude, and being non-compliant, though.  People who are compliant but rude are no different from those who are compliant-and-pleasant.   Remember that, always.  Your ego goes off when your blue shirt goes on.

7] The people who pass through your nazi gates are almost entirely FREE CITIZENS of a supposedly FREE COUNTRY.  Why can we not be treated like it?  And no ... we are not treated like it.

This last is probably more of a question for the idiot politicians to grapple with; freedom requires limited government interference, and there's nothing limited about the government interference associated with airports ... with virtually all of the interference being pointless and ineffective.  Don't think you're actually accomplishing anything worth accomplishing; far too many reports and audits from within the same government say otherwise.   We both know this, so let's not bullshit about it.

On the off-chance that one of your higher-ups understands that I am largely correct about the nature of my complaint and the institutional changes indicated because of it [not likely] ... or if you simply wish to have your NSA brethren be able to locate me more easily for their continued warrantless surveillance of my insidious political subversion which in no way resembles nazi tactics at all [far more likely], my contact information follows.

Please surprise me, though, and acknowledge that some of your staff were acting childishly, others arrogantly, and Mario completely and inappropriately combative.  And then stop doing it. 

 

 

 

Ross Williams