Lying To Make Friends

Yesterday I flew to Las Vegas for the second time this month. I was sitting in front of a loud, Eastern European couple. I couldn’t recognize the language they were speaking, but at one point in the middle of their impenetrable conversation, the man said in perfect English, “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.”

This was especially funny to me because the last time I was in Vegas, for a bachelorette weekend, a married man famously hit on my friend by telling her he had just heard said phrase for the first time, and felt it could justify their having a one-night stand.

Like Proust’s madeleine, hearing this charming defense of Vegas debauchery for the second time in a month sent me back, back, to that earlier plane flight coming home from Vegas. There we were, exhausted, carrying leftovers from Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville (of all things), queuing up for the Parade of Irritating Helplessness which is the TSA security checkpoint.

As often as I have gone through airport security, it never ceases to annoy me. It is like when you’re babysitting for a spoiled child, and you’re forced to play in some inane game the child has concocted to see how far you’re willing to degrade yourself for ten bucks an hour. Take off your shoes, the TSA person says. But why? Because that is what Princess FairyDust demands! Throw away your water bottle. Can’t I just drink it to prove it’s water? Do not speak back to Princess FairyDust! Now you must walk through the metal tunnel of shame and I will rub my wand of punishment all over you!

This particular trip through airport security, I was treated to a new weapon in “War on Terror 2: Shoes, Water, and Other Dangerous Liquids,” the body scanner. The body scanner is a type of “whole body imaging technology”:

Millimeter wave technology produces whole body images that reveal what’s under your clothes, including Metallic or non-metallic devices and objects are displayed, including weapons, explosives and other items that a passenger is carrying on his/her person. The images are viewed by a Transportation Security Officer in a remote location. According to the TSA: To ensure privacy, the setup “has zero storage capability and images will not be printed stored or transmitted. Once the transportation security officer has viewed the image and resolved anomalies, the image is erased from the screen permanently. The officer is unable to print, export, store or transmit the image.”

The body scanner is supposedly being offered as a voluntary alternative to a full-body pat-down, but that was not my experience. After going through the metal detector, I was told to step into a glass booth that looks like one of those money machines, only way less fun. I had to put my arms into multiple zombie-attack-type poses while the machine turned around me, the TSA employee said, “taking pictures.” Is this some kind of X-ray? I asked. Oh, no, just pictures, the man said, it’s completely safe.

Turns out, not only was this machine attacking me with millimeter waves rather than just “taking pictures,” it was also transmitting an image of me, naked-like, to some unknown government employee somewhere. But don’t worry – it’s not like my picture was being stored or anything! Oh, well then – go ahead! I’m sure it’s inconceivable that a TSA employee would, say, take a cell phone picture of your weird, nudie, blurry-faced image. (As the ACLU points out, whatever rules the TSA has in place to protect privacy are nowhere in law or regulation, so they could be changed on a whim. Or ignored.)

And anyway, that’s not the point. You would think getting on a plane was like being admitted to heaven or something. Apparently we are OK with random nutjobs packing heat as a matter of course, but when it comes to plane travel the thought of a plastic gun or a liquid shoe-explosive so terrifies us that we let these turds take weird wave pictures of us as nude globs. Way to go, rational beings.

You’ll be happy to know TSA has just purchased 150 more of these stupid things. I guess what happens in Vegas doesn’t just stay in Vegas after all. Zing!

And now, here’s Susan Hallowell, Director of TSA’s Security Laboratory, in the flesh.

-AS