Trouble At The Airport
 Tuesday, April 14th, 2009  by Connie T.

At the Fort Myers airport in sunny Florida recently, I took off my shoes, put my purse and carryon bag into gray tubs on the conveyer belt along with my sandals and flight itinerary, and took two steps forward through the metal detector with my hands up and a goofy smile at the security guard beckoning me forward.

"Your ticket?" he asks me.

I looked at my empty hands and realized my ticket was attached to my printed itinerary, just two steps backward in the gray tub that had not yet rolled onto ramp to the X-Ray machine.

"Oh, it's just there, I didn't realize," I said, and turned to snatch up my flight ticket, which I wasn't sure I'd need until I got to my airline's gate.

"No, no, it's too late, step forward," the man told me, and then called over his shoulder, "I've got a Code Blue [something or other], negative on the metal detector, negative on boarding pass. I need a female officer."

He rushes me into an enclosed room with glass walls to my right, not unlike the rooms in which you wait while your vehicle's emissions are inspected when you renew your license plates. Except this room has a rectangle drawn on the ground, and in the center of are white outlines of shoeprints.

"Stand with your legs apart, and your arms out by your sides, raised up," the airline security man said. "Position your feet on those footprints. Stare straight ahead."

The female security officer arrives and says, "This will be just like a nice free massage, okay?" What if I don't want a nice free massage...? She frisked me head to toe, while my bags were inspected and left unattended at the exit of security. The man who had been behind me during our wait in the line to get past security - a dead ringer for Bruno Toniolli, seriously - was standing on the other side of the glass wall with his eyes wide open and jaw dropped, watching the woman patting me down, as if I had been terrorist in his midst standing shoulder-to-shoulder with him all that time.

And then it was over, and I was sent out past the knot of people muttering and lacing their shoes back up.

Some of you may be familiar with the Campaign for Liberty, the official website for supporters of former Presidential candidate and current Congressman Ron Paul. I received an e-mail from the campaign, announcing that one of their members, Steve Bierfeldt, was detained by Airport Police and TSA (Transportation Security Administration) officials at the St. Louis, Missouri airport. Steve was there for the Campaign for Liberty's regional conference, and had on him $4,700 in checks and cash from C4L, as well as Ron Paul bumper stickers and materials. This made him "suspicious."

He was questioned, in what sounds much like an interrogation tape, by local and federal agents. The upside? He recorded it all using his cell phone. It starts at 1:06 in the video below.

Before my run-in with airport security, this issue might have seemed more removed from general civil liberties that Americans should be aware of. But now I further sympathize with Steve's position and recognize the underlying questions, very important ones: Are we as Citizens aware of our protection under the law, if any, while we're at the airport? And how can we become better informed of it?

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