New York Times gets it at least two-thirds wrong

Yesterday, the New York Times online featured a brief video clip called Business Travel Minute: More Checkpoint Follies.  Video links on nytimes.com are kind of screwy and the whole thing will probably disappear in a few days, but as of this writing, you could still watch the video at the link above.)  The piece is in the currently popular "airport security is absurd" genre and features three examples of alleged TSA bone-headedness.  Smug tittering aside, at least two of the ridiculed examples are perfectly understandable.

The first case is a toss-up:

An on-duty FBI agent was cleared to board a plane with a loaded gun, but her nail file was confiscated.

Ok, the end-result here is absurd, but I do not find serious fault with the process.  How much leeway should gate inspectors be given to interpret the rule, "do not allow sharp metal things on board"?  Perhaps the law can be changed to give authorized airplane gun-carriers the additional authorization to carry knives (or be immune from the screening process in general), but unless that happens TSA inspectors should not be blamed for enforcing the rules.

Examples two and three are completely appropriate airport security behavior (at least as briefly stated by the NYT, there may have been other circumstances).

A woman holding an infant was ordered to remove her shirt.  When she refused, she was led away for a private inspection - and yes - the infant also got the full pat down.

Ho ho ho.  Wait, patting down an infant makes sense because, um, you can hide things on an infant.

An investment executive who's a retired navy man got so fed up with being treated like a suspect that he showed up at the airport in a tank top with all his military medals pinned on it.  Yes he had to remove the medals.

What were they supposed to say? "Go right ahead and set off the metal detector sir.  We trust that you don't have anything else in your pockets."  Come to think of it, a case could be made that any upset man who shows up at an airport wearing a tank top pinned through with dozens of medals (for proud service to the USA and/or eBay) should probably not be allowed to board at all.

There's no shortage of legitimate ridicule of US airport security (see my own attempts here, here and here), but this snickering from the New York Times is just dumb.

(Thanks to Dave Engberg for the link.)