The Transportation Security Administration…has on its Web site a “mythbuster” that tries to reassure the public.Myth: The No-Fly list includes an 8-year-old boy.
Buster: No 8-year-old is on a T.S.A. watch list.
“Meet Mikey Hicks,” said Najlah Feanny Hicks, introducing her 8-year-old son, a New Jersey Cub Scout and frequent traveler who has seldom boarded a plane without a hassle because he shares the name of a suspicious person. “It’s not a myth.”
Michael Winston Hicks’s mother initially sensed trouble when he was a baby and she could not get a seat for him on their flight to Florida at an airport kiosk; airline officials explained that his name “was on the list,” she recalled.
The first time he was patted down, at Newark Liberty International Airport, Mikey was 2. He cried.
After years of long delays and waits for supervisors at every airport ticket counter, this year’s vacation to the Bahamas badly shook up the family. Mikey was frisked on the way there, then more aggressively on the way home.
“Up your arms, down your arms, up your crotch — someone is patting your 8-year-old down like he’s a criminal,” Mrs. Hicks recounted. “A terrorist can blow his underwear up and they don’t catch him. But my 8-year-old can’t walk through security without being frisked…”
On the way home last Friday, Mikey’s boarding pass showed four giant red S’s at the airport in Nassau. “Oh, random screening,” Mrs. Hicks said…Mrs. Hicks said she wanted to take pictures of her son being frisked but was told it was against the rules.
The worst kind of bureaucrat is the robot whose artificial brain can’t see beyond obeying “The Rules”. There is nothing more important in their diminutive lives than The List.
I’m on the watch list – but only in Houston!
Whenever I fly to/from Houston I’m selected for extra screening with SS SS on my boarding card (nice touch – but they didn’t get the lightning font right)
Last trip I even wore a yamulke and asked the nice gentlemen searching me if it was just anti-semitism but that apparently had too many syllables.
Airport security is broken and has been sense before 9/11. None of these “security” mesures help, they don’t make flying safer they just make it harder on the non terrorists.
Like Gorge Carlin said: its not about safety, its about the illusion of safety. And there are many who would sell this country out to its enemy’s for that illusion.
13,
AND YOU know this?? how??
FROM SOME other person TELLING you what is in the BILL?? or did you REAd the whole 1000+ pages BEFORE the amendments??
I DECLARE HIM A SHEEP..Baaaaa!!!
NOW if you read it, you will ALSO know that..
1. there are 3 bills out there, WHICH one are you talking about?
2. that this bill has been brought up since TEDDY ROOSEVELT..
3. THIS is not talking about MEDICAL..DONT drive the conversation to your FAVORITE BITCH.
4. IF you want to make a STATEMENT, goto Cagematch, and have all the fun you want, and we will join in and have a REAL nut cracker conversation.
SOp for out REPRESENTATIVES..WATCH the other hand while they piss you off with NOTHING.
#17,
you dont give ROBOTS enough credit..
THEY would have a PICTURE of the person
THEY would have an AGE for the person
THEY would have a RACE/NATIONALITY for the person..
HUMANS just use a NAME..which is ASININE.
You might as well goto ANY school and arrest the PERSON named ED or BILL, how about TOM..
After the first 50 are arrested WHICH one do you choose??
I have some wierd-arse country visa stamps in my passport and expect to get hassled for it, but it doesn’t happen much.
Once my whole plane from some Arab country )I forget, now, which one) sent to a special screening area at Heathrow. That was a nuisance.
The weirdest one was a US border guard tell me that I would need a letter from my employer explaining my travels if I wanted to get back into the US again! This seemed so wrong but he insisted it was the new rules.
I did get the letter but I’ve never been asked for one again. I think that guy was an idiot and it’s not comforting that he is protecting our borders.
Keystone Cops at it yet again………… and they want to be taken seriously?
Hah!
“The worst kind of bureaucrat is the robot whose artificial brain can’t see beyond obeying “The Rules”. There is nothing more important in their diminutive lives than The List.”
Exactly: that is the way bureaucracies work. You follow the rules or you get fired. Health care is going to work the same way. In fact it already does.
It is likely that in the future at least 50% of a teachers evaluation in my state is going to be based on the value added part of their students test scores. They will (we already are) teach to the test and a lot of things a lot of people want is going down the tubes but accountability on what is on the test negates all else because you have have a make the score or you are going out the door. You wanted it and you are getting it.
27,
”””””
anD YOU ARE AN idiot….ADNIT IT…YOU LISTEN TO THE leaders, OR THE other IDIOTS…
YOU ARE SCREWED more by your OWN MIND/idiocy
THEN by anyone else.
I share the same name (Michael Hicks) and can confirm that it is always an extra hassle at the airport. The biggest problem is that I cannot do advance boarding passes. I have to go to the airport and check in at the counter with a live attendant to get my boarding pass.
Look at those cold, calculating eyes. Gives me the HebeJeebies.
I’ll see you your 8 year old
…and raise you a 2 year old…
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10620568
I wouldn’t trust any child that is a member of a paramiliary organization like the cub scouts. All they do is sit around, learning skills that prepare them for the end times.
#31,
CUB scouts ISNT the cub scouts from 30-40 years ago..
STOP FLYING! Make a stand you spineless consuming zombies!
If you stop flying the airlines will hurt and there is no way they will let that monster fall to the ground.
Every $ you spend is a vote for how you want the world!
So every $ spent supporting the TSA (and any other BS group) is a vote for harsher security!
WAKEUP!
If you really understand what is going on you will change your ways!