Originally Posted by
RadioGirl
You're right.
"You've got to be taught to hate and fear, You've got to be taught from year to year,
It's got to be drummed in your dear little ear, You've got to be carefully taught.
You've got to be taught to be afraid Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade, You've got to be carefully taught.
You've got to be taught before it's too late, Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate, You've got to be carefully taught!"
Oscar Hammerstein, "South Pacific" (1949)
Most people know that 999,999 times out of a million*, an unattended bag in a public place, airport or otherwise, is just that: a lost or forgotten piece of luggage. Go to the lost-and-found of any airport, train station, bus terminal, department store, university, and look at all the stuff people leave behind. Actually, just the other day, someone from your airport
said:
Forgetting something, especially given the numerous pressures of air travel, is far more common than being a terrorist. Orders of magnitude more common. And most people understand that. Unless you "teach" them.
*If TSA can make up statistics out of thin air, so can I.
Which is what I said!
I never said an unattended bag means there is trouble, or that suspicious activity means terrorist are lurking around the corner. If that's what your read into what I said, that's ok; we all have our biases and can't help but interject them into our conclusions.
And that TSO you cite, why, he's just brilliant!
Regarding those lost items TSA stores, as has been covered before those are items lost in a TSA area, such as the checkpoint. You would be surprised how many times a passenger tells something is left behind, either before or after the x-Ray, that they can describe the person who left the item.... And you want to smack them upside the head for not calling after the person who left the item. No they just watch them walk away.
Yes, most people need to be taught to report things, but it does not mean whY they report means terrible things are about to happen. Many times it's just helpful, so a person doesn't forget their bag, or we can return it to them, etc.
But as a society we do not. It's called the diffusion of responsibility.
http://www.psywww.com/intropsych/ch1...nsibility.html
So again, I stick by my claim that we have to be taught to report things.