Ryan Byrd’s Ramblings

I do a fair amount of flying aboard commercial airplanes. Obviously, I am constantly annoyed by the TSA. I’m annoyed that I have to take my shoes off because of an unsuccessful shoe bomber in the UK. I’m annoyed I can’t take bottled water on board (because of fears of liquid bombs.) I think it’s silly they make you take your belt off (so I wear a non-metal-buckle belt, which Rachel thinks is HILARIOUS.) Here’s my point: we are NO SAFER than before 9/11 even though the TSA is a BILLION times as intrusive and annoying. The regulations simply don’t make any sense at all. They’re merely inconvenient and don’t deter would-be bombers.

Adding to their fierce incompetence, this week the TSA released their secret training manual which lists all sorts of ways to defeat their already stupid security (You can find the manual here: http://cryptome.org/). Turns out the TSA did a really poor attempt at censoring sensitive information in their PDF (they just drew a black box on top of it in Adobe PDF creator…)

In this uncensored TSA 93 page manual you’ll find useful material on:

• who doesn’t have to remove their shoes (old people!)
• pictures of legitimate law enforcement identification
• tolerances used by metal and explosive detectors (which thicknesses of wire can’t be detected, etc.)
• which fake passports NOT to use (because you’ll AUTOMATICALLY get extra screening): Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Libya, Syria, Sudan, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Somalia, Iraq, Yemen or Algeria.

The TSA requested the document be taken offline…