[The note and Jill Filipovic, the lucky recipient]
Last week they let a loaded gun* through in a checked bag, but when an agent scrawled a note about a woman's vibrator and left it for her after pawing through her checked bag, that was too much.
The TSA blog makes note of the incident this way:
"Inappropriate Note Author Identified and Removed From Screening
Earlier this week, a passenger found a highly inappropriate note scrawled on a "Notice of Inspection" that TSA places in checked bags if they are required to be searched. She tweeted a photo of what she found and we soon learned of the incident.
TSA quickly launched an investigation and identified the employee responsible. That individual was immediately removed from screening operations and appropriate disciplinary action has been initiated.
The handwritten note was highly inappropriate and unprofessional, and TSA has zero tolerance for this type of behavior.
Agency officials have also reached out to the passenger to personally apologize for this unfortunate incident.
Blogger Bob
TSA Blog Team"
The amusingly named Blogger Bob doesn't say what prompted the agent to so crudely make his presence known while lurking in this woman's private affairs, nor does the TSA say whether the agent is still employed. The incident occurred last Saturday at the hilariously named Newark Liberty International Airport, scene of so many TSA escapades.
The vibrator belonged to Jill Filipovic, a lawyer who blogs on Feministe. "Just unpacked my container and found this note from TSA. Guess they detected a ‘personal item' in my bag. Wow," she tweeted.
The "personal item," Filipovic said later, was a "$15 'Silver Bullet' vibrator from Babeland." Here's an account in New York Magazine.
Given the groping it's probably been through at the hand of the creepy agent, she said, the Silver Bullet is "being retired." And good for Jill Filipovic for having the guts to stand up and make an issue of this.
* By the way, some of the media made way too much of the loaded gun slip-through. Unloaded guns of various kinds are permitted in checked bags, and a loaded one poses no direct security threat. You check a bag before entering the secure area of an airport and retrieve it after leaving the secure area. On the other hand, you probably don't want some TSA agent inspecting checked bags, deep within the secure zone, to have access to a loaded gun. Better he should stick with a vibrator.
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On another TSA story, the TSA blog makes note of a goofball account that was being flogged by the pathetic and reckless Matt Drudge earlier this week. Drudge hasn't done any actual "reporting" since Republican operatives used to piss gossip in his ear at opportune times in the Clinton take-down so long ago. what he does is link to "select" stories generated by news organizations and various right-wing propaganda outlets. Quite often the sources are as half-assed as the site proprietor is.
This week Drudge breathlessly headlined a report that the TSA was now planning to insert itself on the nation's highways and set up roadblocks to randomly check motorists.
Now anyone with the sense of proportion of a turnip would have suspected that story was wrong somewhere along the line. Some nitwit of a reporter obviously got a whole bunch of facts wrong and made unwarranted assertions, and some nitwit(s) published the account with it without checking it out.
Here's the TSA's response saying it was basically nonsense.
On the other hand, doesn't the TSA have enough to do, furtively pawing through womens' personal things in airports, without handing out leaflets at Interstate truck weighing stations? I mean, can;t the Hare Krishnas or the Scientologists be enlisted to do that?
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