Bunny Lady vs. TSA, Deep Throat gets choked up, and a comment about comments

I won’t bury the lede, as they say in journalism: After yesterday’s poll that asked if asking I should continue using polls on this site, I feel as if I have a mandate.

The polls stay.

And now, on with the show. This week’s most ridiculous story is the imprisonment of the Bunny Lady by the TSA. Why, you ask, would the federal agency charged with protecting our transportation systems want to put Val Baul behind bars?

She had what my colleagues call a “bizarre” run-in with an agent over an Easter egg. Specifically, she had the audacity to sprinkle an agent who questioned her about her eggs with a little confetti.

You can’t make this stuff up.

As you read the story, ask yourself: Do we need to be protected from the Bunny Lady? Or is the TSA out of line?

I’m going to refrain from highlighting any other TSA stories in this post, although there are plenty of them out there.

Many of you have asked about the memos I was planning to publish last week. The answer is complicated.

One whistleblower, a TSA agent, got cold feet. I totally understand why someone would stop cooperating, particularly when you could lose your livelihood (and might end up sharing a cell with the Bunny Lady — the horror!). Of course, I’m disappointed that Deep Throat got a little choked up, but I get it.

The other memo was shared with me and several other journalists for a mainstream media organization with which I’m affiliated. I consulted with my editor and we decided that the memo would be best handled by a different department. I’ll be sure to link to the final story when it’s published.

Of course, the memo we all want to see isn’t a memo at all — it’s the Screening Management Standard Operating Procedures like the one accidentally released in 2009. It would reveal exactly how TSA agents are instructed to “pat down” air travelers and tell us precisely how they deal with those scanners.

If there’s anyone with a current copy, you can email me directly. I’ll keep your name out of it, of course.

Even if you don’t have access to the TSA manual, you can help me today by giving me your opinion. Some of you may have noticed that for a few hours on Saturday, I tested a new, cloud-based commenting system called Livefyre. It would have been pretty cool if it had worked, allowing us to integrate Facebook and Twitter and do other neat things.

But there were two problems: First, it required that you authenticate yourself by either logging in with a social-networking service or creating a new account, which some of you weren’t comfortable with. And second, it didn’t archive the new comments, so if I ever decided to revert back to the old commenting system, the new comments would be lost.

I still want to try to try something cloud-based and more social. Right now I’m running a hybrid of Facebook comments and homegrown WordPress comments (scroll down to see what they look like). I really like Disqus, which is used by some mainstream media organizations like CNN.com, and am thinking of switching to it.

Should I?

Please help me figure out what to do.

(Photo: Robo bo bobo/Flickr Creative Commons)

  • Jeanne in NE

    Umm, Chris, the Bunny Lady didn’t “sprinkle a little confetti” over the TSA Agent, she smashed the egg on the agent’s head and released the confetti – and egg shell pieces.

    I think that’s called assault, if the other person isn’t in on the joke. I see she’s up on charges of harassment. That’s appropriate.

  • BillC

    I am happy with the comments as they are. If I have to sign up for another service or provide another email address to yet another faceless website I will probably just not bother commenting as I did yesterday.

  • barbie45

    Sorry,although I believe the TSA targets the innocent and has failed to thwart a single terrorist this action was wrong. Confetti is fine for a wedding or maybe a divorce but in this case it was assault. The punishment was not ridiculous.

  • Alan

    Bunny Lady was being whimsical, but whimsy is not something the federosaurus is known for appreciating.

  • Sommer Gentry

    To the TSA source who might still be willing to help the American people: we beg you to help us understand the secretive and unfair authority being exerted by your employer. You may be the only person who can help us get real security to replace the security-by-obscurity strategy of telling us nothing. (Security-by-obscurity refers to the practice of “solving” security weaknesses by trying to hide those weaknesses instead of strengthening defenses against them.) You are the person who can prove the official statements of the TSA are lies. You are the one who can reveal whether children under 12 are subject to genital touching. Obviously I don’t know what information you considered sharing with Chris Elliott, but I ask you to consider again, to reconsider your duty to this country and its citizens, and to help us shine a light into a very dark corner of our government.

  • SDJD

    I am certainly no fan of TSA but I’m not sure they acted inappropriately in this case. What made The Bunny Lady think that the correct answer to the agent’s question of “What are those?” was to crush a confetti-filled egg (called cascarones) on the agent’s head. I’ve had that done to me and it’s really annoying so I’m not surprised that she was charged with misdemeanor harassment. The Bunny Lady is lucky that she wasn’t charged with battery, because that’s what it was — an offensive contact on the TSA agent.

  • Barry Graham

    All I can say is – No Comment

  • cjr

    Both sides are wrong in this ‘bunny lady’ incident: TSA shouldn’t be stopping her if she’s already got through security without incident, and the lady shouldn’t be smashing fake eggs on anybody.

    TSA will continue to be guilty of many counts of ‘misdemeanor harassment’ (or worse) on a daily basis against travelers.

  • Glenn

    @SDJD, So, when the TSA agent does an ‘offensive contact’ to us (i.e. a pat-down), does that mean we can have them charged with battery … or at least misdemeanor harassment?

  • http://www.maineprmaven.com Nancy Marshall

    I haven’t seen your new Cloud comment app yet, Chris, so I can’t comment on that form of commenting. However I know that on my blog, I always enjoy receiving comments of any kind. As for the Bunny Lady, I think we all need to be respectful of the TSA regardless of whether we are carrying eggs or illegal substances (which we really should not carry on planes). It’s kind of like trying to argue with a publisher of a newspaper who buys ink by the barrel. He or she’ll always have the last laugh. Same with the TSA. You can think you’re funny until they bring in the guys who will haul you off to the Crowbar Hotel.

  • Jeff Pierce

    The bunny lady should not have cracked the confetti egg on the TSO’s head. It is probably a misdemeanor assault or something – lots of people get off on lesser charges.

    BUT – when the TSA forces me to be touched on my body and genitals, that sure as heck is an assault as well. They coerce one to the touching because of the severe consequence – I cannot find equal, alternative travel.

    @GLENN: Note that if the Philadelphia police arrested the egg lady, then the local law enforcement has jurisdiction at the airport, and therefore I think they have every right to arrest anyone in the airport who is violating a local, state, or federal law that they are given the power to enforce. So, yes, they should arrest the TSOs.

  • K

    I unsuccessfully tried to leave a comment yesterday with Livefyre but it just led to a swirling Safari circle so I’ll leave it now: whatever you decide to do with the polls or the comment system, could you please add an update column every now and then to let us know what the outcome is after you act on poll results? I would rather not have to search out an old column to find out if an update has been posted to it. Thanks!

  • LeeAnne

    @Nancy Marshall – You think we should be “respectful” of the TSA?? Are you for real? We should “respect” this bloated, wasteful, out-of-control terroristic government agency that is violating the basic civil rights of millions of innocent civilians, blowing billions of our tax dollars on unnecessary and utterly useless theatrics masquerading as security, and sexually assaulting the elderly and disabled on a daily basis? You have GOT to be kidding me!

    There is absolutely nothing to respect about them, either as a whole, or any of the individual employees who participate in this abuse. They are violating our bodies, stealing our belongings, and wasting our tax money.

    And for what? They accomplish nothing! They “confiscate” (aka steal) a dizzying assortment of technicians tools, boy scouts’ Swiss Army knives, eyelash curlers (yes, they took my eyelash curler), and other “prohibited items”, not a one of which would have been used to take down an airplane. Meanwhile they fail miserably in detecting guns and other weapons carried onboard by their own testers. They harass innocent people for carrying cash, in spite of the fact that they are legally ALLOWED to carry cash. They illegally detain a breast milk-carrying mother, forcing her to actually dump out her breast milk that she was, by TSA’s OWN rules, allowed to carry onboard. They wrongfully accuse a woman of assault, and have her PROSECUTED, for trying to bring on a small cooler of medically-necessary food and liquid for her disabled, medically fragile mother. They pop a man’s urostomy bag, sending him onto his plane covered in urine, without even an apology. They rub the genitals of children, the elderly, and the disabled, threatening us with “Do you want to fly today?” if we don’t let them. They physically and sexually assaulted ME, pressing on my recent surgical wounds until I literally cried out in pain, even after I specifically begged them not to do so.

    You tell me one thing I should respect about these abusive terrorists.

  • DJP

    I want my privacy on the site…I dont want my comments on here associated with say my facebook profile or some other personal identifying location

  • http://www.talestoldfromtheroad.com Dick Jordan

    Chris,

    You tell us you like Disqus, but not why. (I went to the Disqus Website to determine if I should use it on my site, clicked on “Learn More”, but didn’t learn much at all).

  • Dana

    I just signed up for Disqus but it bothers me because creating so many online accounts just kind of makes me uncomfortable. I don’t want to give my information to that many companies, especially ones I don’t know a lot about.

  • carteelady

    Barry Graham…if all you can say is “No comment”, then why say anything at all???

  • http://badbadwebbis.wordpress.com badbadwebbis

    The bunny lady didn’t deserve to be arrested, but if someone whimsicalled all over me with a confetti egg I would be pretty annoyed. Since the TSA has a god complex, I’m not surprised that the reaction by the agent was to have the woman arrested.

    Agree with the TSA or not, you have to keep in mind that if you are going to do anything that might be deemed inappropriate with them, then you are probably going to suffer consequences that far outweigh the offense.

  • Grant Ritchie

    Hi Chris,
    A thought re: the reluctant TSA whistleblower… the Feds are known to distribute memos (and other writings) with small, hard to spot differences between each copy. Then, if a leak occurs and the writing is published, they know who did the deed.
    Perhaps (and you may already be doing this), you could promise sources that any documents provided to you will be paraphrased and then destroyed.

  • http://www.cogitamusblog.com/2010/11/five-words.html Lisa Simeone

    Here’s hoping that some TSA employee, out of the tens of thousands of them, finds the guts to leak the manual (or portions of it — several different whistleblowers could leak different portions that add up to a whole, thus escaping the danger that Grant Ritchie outlines). And anything else they can leak that will help stop our government from terrorizing us.

  • Chicky

    Here’s a possible solution for dealing with some of these TSA nightmares (confetti eggs notwithstanding). If it’s your home airport, then contact the airport director and give that individual an earful about the TSA’s conduct. Now, the response you’ll probably get is “Well, they don’t answer to us,” BUT the individual airport does have some say in who works in their facility, and they can put pressure on the TSA that ordinary citizens can’t.
    The other thing to do is to make sure you get the name of the TSA agent, and contact the media in that city. Call the newspaper. Call the TV stations. Write a letter to the editor. The last thing the TSA wants is more bad publicity — particularly when it’s the media outlets. Name names.
    One more thing: really get after the city government. Call the mayor’s office and the city council. Even though the TSA is a federal agency, this kind of conduct reflects poorly on the whole city, and any town concerned about tourism and repeat business can, again, apply pressure where we can’t.
    If you run into a really bad agent, go ahead and get on the plane. Then, stink up the place (figuratively speaking, of course). Make noise. Write letters. If you get ahold of the media, please ask the reporter to contact the U.S. Congressional representative for that district. Also write a letter to your own Congressional representatives. It really does more good than you think it will. Contact their local offices and raise Cain (be nice to the person you’re speaking with, though).
    As citizens, if we really want to change things, we do have the tools to at least start the process. We just have to be willing to use them.

  • http://www.cogitamusblog.com/2010/11/five-words.html Lisa Simeone

    Chicky, I agree with you that we have to make noise, but it’s going to take a lot more people and a lot more noise. I’ve been publicly agitating about this — using all the methods you cite above and then some — for two years. Chris has been agitating here as well. But there’s so much apathy out there, and so much complicity. If the egregious abuse that’s already going on isn’t enough to wake people up, what is? I’m afraid we’ll see the answer in short order. And after that, it’ll be too late.

  • http://www.cogitamusblog.com/2010/11/five-words.html Lisa Simeone

    After a slew of recent embarrassing security screwups — including a dead dog being loaded, unscreened, onto a jet — managers at the busy New Jersey airport admitted in a stunning new report that safety has been going downhill for years.
    “The performance of the TSA here at Newark Liberty International Airport has been on a gradual decline,” the internal report states.
    The meetings were led by Jim Blair, a senior TSA official who oversees airports in New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland.
    Blair visited Newark Airport in February after the facility racked up at least six security breaches in a six-week period starting Jan. 2.
    In addition to the dead dog debacle — the pooch was loaded onto a Continental plane in February — the report also cited incidents of passengers going unchecked onto planes with knives.
    The TSA’s Virginia-based Office of Inspection last month sent a team to evaluate the airport for the first time in its history, TSA spokeswoman Ann Davis confirmed yesterday.
    In a statement, Davis said that the TSA managers “have taken ownership for these issues” and are “committed” to making “any changes necessary.”
    According to the report, understaffing, poor communication, poorly designed checkpoints, lack of training hours and “complacency and lack of focus” have contributed to the drop in safety standards.
    Some Newark employees blamed the airport’s shortcomings on Barbara Bonn Powell, Newark’s federal security director.
    Davis said Powell will remain in charge of Newark’s TSA operations.
    Turbulent times
    A scathing internal TSA report on lax safety at Newark Liberty Airport blamed “diminished” security on:
    * Complacency and lack of focus
    * Lack of direction and guidance
    * Poor checkpoint design
    * Understaffing and lack of training time
    * Insufficient flow of communications
    Source: Star-Ledger of NJ
    http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/newark_airport_security_shock_fIreUA7KYPTbLbTs9hIP5M

  • Chicky

    @ Lisa S.: That’s why I say we have to be willing to use the tools we have. People have to be willing to stand up and do the legwork to hold the TSA and others accountable. Apathy is far worse than ignorance, IMO.
    I think too, that the average person feels they have no recourse. They’re mad, they feel violated, but they don’t know where to turn, and they don’t read this column, unfortunately.
    So, we keep educating people about their rights, and keep yelling. Even a voice crying out in the wilderness will be heard eventually.

  • Ed

    Well, we *ALL* know that Bunnies have Great Big Pointed Teeth and that the only way to deal with them is with the Holy Hand-granade of Antioch!

  • David Z

    Chris, I guess I’ll be the one to comment on using Disqus or whatever. I’ve and I’m trying them out on a test blog. :)

    So far I haven’t found any option in Livefyre, but I found one in Disqus that allows users to comment without forcing them to create a Disqus account or log-in via Facebook. Log into your Disqus account, go to Admin, then scroll to Settings under Who Can Comment.

    I read some blogs indicating Disqus saves both comments in their servers and yours, but I’m testing and waiting for my hosting to “tell” me so. I’m sure that’s true, though.

    The last part I’m trying out (just taking a break) is if Disqus will indeed allow one’s comments to post on their Facebook. That way, they can log in with their Facebook account if they opt to, leave a comment, then show up in their FB wall as well.

    You have my email. I’ll try to reply soonest since we’re all busy with something. ;)

  • cjr

    Looks like DHS (and by extension TSA) are going to be introducing a new round of propaganda:

    http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/news/local/chibrknews-homeland-security-outreach-facing-criticism-20110406,0,6923259.story

  • http://www.cogitamusblog.com/2010/11/five-words.html Lisa Simeone

    Dessaure said Homeland Security has become disconnected with the public, particularly after a DHS reorganization in 2003. Officials hope the Chicago program would become a template for similar outreach nationwide.

    I wonder when they’ll do “outreach” to explain how strip-searches and sexual assault are keeping us safe.

  • cjr

    Parents call for TSA to review frisking after kid gets pat-down
    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42568865/ns/travel-news/

    Didn’t TSA awhile back promise to change the way they groped children? And then they didn’t actually tell us how they were to change their groping procedures? Only to not actually change them at all?

  • http://www.cogitamusblog.com/2010/11/five-words.html Lisa Simeone

    cjr, yes, but they’re forever promising and forever lying.

    They also don’t follow their own rules, don’t know their own rules, fabricate new rules, make sh*t up on the spot, and in general perpetuate their numbskull behavior as often and as pervasively as they can.

    $8 billion a year and this is what we get. Sure glad they checked that little girl’s waistband — why, she might’ve had a bomb in there! Just ask all the security cheerleaders on this site.

  • mort

    Question: Have you heard of any negative comments on the TSA made on this site or any other similar ones, caused retaliatory actions against the senders?

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