HERE IN BOSTON last week, five airline workers — ground staff at Logan International Airport — were arrested on charges of smuggling nearly half a million dollars of drug money through employee checkpoints, using their credentials to bypass TSA security.
Four of the five were JetBlue employees. One of them, according to the allegations, had agreed to carry a firearm into a secure area of the airport.
I bring this up for no other reason than it so pungently underscores one of airport security’s most ridiculous protocols — namely, the fact that tarmac workers are exempt from TSA screening, while pilots and flight attendants are not.
“Most ridiculous” – that’s a pretty big claim, because there are so many ridiculous rituals that waste person years of time every day. And it will never, ever change. The TSA logo should just be a smiling picture of Osama Bin Laden flipping the bird with the caption “I won, motherfuckers”,