Over the weekend, Megan McArdle posted a video of a woman trying to make it through a TSA security checkpoint without her breast milk being X-rayed. TSA rules allow women traveling with or without their children to carry on more than 3 ounces of breast milk, though they don't, as the woman seemed to be claiming, guarantee that the liquid doesn't have to be X-rayed. As the guidelines say:
We normally X-ray medication and related supplies. However, as a customer service, you may ask that Security Officers visually inspect your medication and associated supplies.
You must ask for visual inspection before the screening process begins; otherwise your medications and supplies will be X-rayed.
If you would like to take advantage of this option, please have your medication and associated supplies separated from your other property in a separate pouch/bag when you approach the Security Officer at the walk-through metal detector.
Ask the Security Officer to visually inspect your medication and hand your medication pouch/bag to him or her.
To prevent your medication, associated supplies or fragile medical materials for contamination or damage, we will ask you to display, handle, and repack your own medication and associated supplies during visual inspection. Any medication and/or associated supplies that we can't clear visually will be X-rayed. If you refuse, you will not be permitted to carry your medications and related supplies into the sterile area.
Moreover, these were rules in place before the more aggressive screening and pat-downs went into effect. What we see in this video are TSA agents working to enforce ridiculous rules, and then dealing with an upset passenger (as they are forced to do nearly every hour of every day). Upset passengers might serve to make those agents suspicious, or they might serve to stir in them a need to assert authority and keep the situation under control.
It's important to remember, though, that we've empowered the government to do this. We've decided, collectively, that our fears override our common sense, and we've accepted every step-up in security up to this point. If our legislators and other government officials spoke with common sense about terrorism -- that it is rare, that the best tools we have to stop it are old-fashioned intelligence-gathering methods, and that there are likely some determined terrorists we'll never be able to stop because that's the price we pay for living in a free society -- we'd likely punish them for that honesty. The video was posted to help stir up the anger holiday travelers are already feeling over the newly established invasive procedures, and many of those travelers might have finally realized we've gone to far. And now, many will blame the government; E.D. Kain at The League of Ordinary Gentlemen even asserts, nonsensically and without his reasoning, that we should outsource security to a private company who would then somehow be more accountable to public anger. But it's not the fault of faceless bureaucrats or the individual agents who are going to pop up on countless YouTube videos from now on; it's our fault. We asked for this. The government actually is accountable to us, and this is what we've demanded. Now, every American who flies will feel the pressure of a state authority that suspects them of anything, though we should remember that lots of Americans have been feeling the weight of that for a long time.
-- Monica Potts
