The story: man doesn't want to be full body scanned, checks the San Diego airport website to make sure they don't have them, they don't, gets there and-- surprise-- they do.  Don't they  update their facebook?  They tell him he has to either have the porno shots taken or submit to a physical search of his "junk" (that would be penis), he refuses and asks to leave, and they threaten to fine/imprison him for leaving the terminal without getting naked.

The other part of the story: he appears to be on the right of Tea Party and he had a secret video camera running, which makes some think that he did this all just to provoke the TSA/get publicity.

After you pick a side and start yelling, take a moment and look at the big picture: an angry citizenry provoking a perceived oppressive government, manned on both sides by self-indulgent idiots who couldn't care less about the big picture.  Yikes.  If San Diego bloggers are driven to this kind of madness, you have to wonder what the Montana Militia is up to.  It sure ain't blogging.

II.

Go back and read about how power is applied, top down, and protected, bottom up, and you'll be able to see that far from this guy making any dent in the TSA's monopoly on power, he helped them solidify it.  He thinks this is civil disobedience, but it's not, his actions don't affect the workings of the PowersThatBe.   What he doesn't understand is that the TSA didn't do this to him, a couple of guys who happen to be wearing TSA uniforms did it.





Back in the day, you were supposed to subsume your personal identity under the larger one represented by the uniform.  The tradeoff was that anything you did in that uniform was the uniform's fault, not necessarily yours.  Your superior took the fall; hell, he resigned immediately on principle.

But not in 21st century Narcissist America.  Personal identity matters more than anything, even money and certainly more than honor ("huh? like shoguns?")  The uniform is just something you add to your character sheet.  "What, you think I'm going to let my job define me?  Only TV and music gets to do that."

Well, if you're going to play it that way the government will, too, so that when uniformed people do something wrong it's the fault of a few bad apples, the system is otherwise ok.  That's why uniforms have name badges: so we can identify the scapegoat.
 


So whether these TSA guys did everything by the book, or under the direction of a supervisor, or totally under the influence of drugs and spite, it will be a contained problem that will have nothing to do with the "good work" the rest of the TSA does every single day.  Heck, give them slightly more power, look at the kind of nonsense they have to put up with.  Can we just make it a federal law that you have to submit to full body cavity search?  Not because terrorists are wiley-- still no breast implant bombs?--  but because Americans are annoying.  You know they are, right?  Thanks.

Bonus: tighter enforcement of inconvenient laws always leads to an underground economy based on bribes.  Thanks for the idea, Russia!  We could really use the money.