TSA: 'Just doing our job'
March 13th 2008
Engadget, quoting the official TSA blog, says that Michael Nygard, who had the temerity to try carrying a MacBook Air onto a plane, missed his flight because screeners were just doing their jobs.
TSA agents are in fact trained to look for anomolies. So along come the MBA laptop. It's new (thus, rarely seen), ridiculously thin, and lacks a mechanical hard drive and any visible ports. Requesting further inspection is exactly what Mr Nygard should have expected. As surly and detached as TSA officers tend to be, in this case they were doing their job just as they were trained.
Engadget posits that Nygard should have expected to be delayed, because the MBA is different. Never mind that it boots and does what a laptop does.
It may be the case that Mr Nygard isn't the first or only person to essentially to be detained for carrying an advanced laptop. It's also quite possible that the particular screeners involved have a bent for inflicting random grief on unsuspecting passengers.
The words 'Just doing our jobs' (aka 'We were just following orders') have been used to justify every kind of absurd and insane act. I'm not suggesting we should view the TSA or their employees as the Gestapo--that would be absurd--but Franz Kafka would have been hard pressed to create a more demented scenario than the one endured by Nygard.
If incompetence had a song, "Just doing our job" would be the lyrics. But why, oh, why is Engadget singing right along...
What's your take?
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