[118405] in Cypherpunks
Oct. 3 column -- 'May I search your bag?'
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Robert Hettinga)
Sun Sep 26 18:49:17 1999
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From: Vin_Suprynowicz@lvrj.com (Vin Suprynowicz)
Subject: Oct. 3 column -- 'May I search your bag?'
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FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED OCT. 3, 1999
THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz
I watched the Bill of Rights dying last week
Last Tuesday morning I watched the Bill of Rights dying. I don't know
if anyone else noticed; it's been on its deathbed so long that most folks
don't even go visit anymore.
Following a speaking engagement in Marina del Rey the evening before, I
found myself approaching the security checkpoint at Terminal 1 of LAX at
6:10 a.m. Sept. 21, preparing to catch the 7:56 to Vegas.
Approaching the baggage X-ray machine, I noted the now-familiar sign
listing the facility's international red circle-and-slash prohibitions,
warning passengers they'll be jailed if found in possession of a firearm or
even a can of pepper spray -- this now thoroughly routine rape of the
Second Amendment drawing not a single glance from the customers standing in
line for their morning McDonald's coffee, despite the fact it was occurring
in their full view.
In fact, after a successful evening selling and signing books, a
combination of the absurd local firearms restriction of Los Angeles County
and this anti-self-defense policy of the airlines and the FAA had left me
wandering the streets of Los Angeles at midnight the night before,
searching out an open Burger King, with $500 cash on my person. Had I been
beaten and robbed of that sum, do you suppose the airline, or the FAA, or
the County of Los Angeles would have made good my loss, since it was their
unconstitutional conspiracy that deprived me of my right to safely and
legally carry a firearm (or even a can of pepper-spray) for self-defense,
as I otherwise would surely have done?
I don't think so.
Past the now-familiar notices of anti-gun tyranny, I pushed my carry-on
bag through the X-ray machine, submitting to its scan of my personal
effects despite the fact neither the airline nor the airport administration
held any warrant to search them, nor even offered me any probable cause.
But was that enough? Not last Tuesday. As my bag came down the belt, a
tall, sleepy-eyed young man with a shaved head and an ill-fitting blue
blazer, standing on the other side of the conveyer belt, asked "Sir, do you
mind if I search your bag?"
I replied: "Actually, I do mind. I do not consent to any search of my bag."
The young man acted as though I had not heard his question. "Sir, do you
mind if I search your bag?"
"Yes, I do mind. I do not grant my consent for any search of my bag."
"Sir," he repeated, "do you (start ital)mind(end ital) if I search your
(start ital)bag(end ital)?"
I still don't know how long this would have continued. Sensing that it
was up to me to jog the needle on this trance-like broken record, I next
asked, "Did you see something on the X-ray that looked like a weapon?"
"No sir," he admitted. "It's a random search."
"A random search?"
"A random search."
At this point, a bearded dwarf in a tweed jacket, looking for all the
world like former Clinton cabinet secretary Robert Reich, appeared at my
left shoulder, coming to the aid of my somnolent oppressor. "He can ask you
to search the bag, and if you refuse, he doesn't have to let you continue,"
said this strange apparition, holding his own two suitcases and a plastic
shopping bag.
"How is this any concern of yours?" I asked the dwarf. "Do you work for
the airline?"
"No," he smiled proudly, like an enormously self-contented bridge-player
laying down the last trump card. "I work for the FAA."
"And you're on duty here?"
"No, I'm not. But I know about this," he smiled even more broadly.
"Then you must know the security directive says they should ask to see
our photo ID, but it specifically goes on to say that if we refuse, they
can (start ital)not(end ital) bar us from boarding" I said quite firmly,
drawing the attention of the sleepy-eyed fellow's lady supervisor, who now
waddled over to join us. "So I assume it's the same with these 'random bag
checks.' That's why they ask for our permission, right? If they don't need
our consent, why keep asking for it?"
Astonishingly enough, at this point, the little dwarf's smile collapsed,
and he turned and trundled away like a disturbed woodchuck. Given that he
presumably took an oath before God to protect and defend the U.S.
Constitution, which still contains the Bill of Rights, it's unlikely the
leering little geek's immortal soul will escape as easily.
"(start ital)Sir(end ital)," asked the tall young man, clinging to the
security of his minimal training, and apparently hoping to break the record
set by John Lennon, who once managed to find more than two dozen different
ways to sing the eight words "Why don't we do it in the road?" in the same
recording ... "do you mind if I check your bag?"
"Listen," I said, "I do not grant my consent, and I'm not going to grant
my consent. If you believe you don't (start ital)need(end ital) my consent,
then do what you have to do."
At this point, with his supervisor looking on, the young man went through
the motions of unzipping and re-zipping the two small side compartments on
my bag, barely glancing at, in turn, a clean pair of white socks and a
plastic bottle of Pepto-Bismol. He never undid the straps or unzipped the
main body of the bag, at all. "Thank you," he said.
"I'm not going to thank (start ital)you(end ital)," I replied, "because
we still have a Fourth Amendment in this country, which protects us from
warrantless searches. You do know that, right?"
The bald young man looked right through me, focusing on the far wall, his
heavy-lidded eyes blinking slowly. His companion, a grossly fat black woman
in the ill-fitting rust-red jacket of a "supervisor," who had been puffing
up to say something before the FAA troll butted in, looked disgusted but
averted her eyes, refusing to meet my gaze.
These are the faces of tyranny, bored and uncaring. When instructed to
load us political nonconformists onto cattle cars bound for the internment
camps, they will do so in unquestioning, shuffling boredom, eyeing the
clock to make sure they don't work a minute into their next scheduled
break.
Thus are our precious constitutional rights daily rendered null and void
by uncaring stooges, like dying rest-home patients clutching their
bedframes in silent agony, writhing their death throes in their own
excrement as the bored orderlies play cards in the break room down the
hall, the sound turned up on the cheerful idiot morning TV calisthenics
show, hoping their shifts will end before someone comes in and orders them
to go change the sheets.
Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas
Review-Journal. His new book, "Send in the Waco Killers: Essays on the
Freedom Movement, 1993-1998," is available at $21.95 plus $3 shipping
through Mountain Media, P.O. Box 271122, Las Vegas, Nev. 89127; or at
1-800-244-2224; or via web site
http://www.thespiritof76.com/wacokillers.html.
***
Vin Suprynowicz, vin@lvrj.com
"The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it." -- John
Hay, 1872
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and
thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series
of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken
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Robert A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
