It's only a 'jacket' if it's unbuttoned
 

From Neal Boortz:

THE LATEST FROM THE TSA

I don't want to identify the airport ... but here's my latest TSA adventure. It happened over the weekend. As I approached the screening machine I was wearing a colored t-shirt (t-shirt of color, if you will) with an unbuttoned long sleeve sports shirt. The lady shoving the luggage into the machine told me I had to remove my jacket.

"It isn't a jacket. It's my shirt."

"Well you have something on under it."

"That's my undershirt."

"Well, you're wearing it like a jacket, so you'll have to take it off."

"What if I just button it?"

"That would be OK".

So .. I buttoned it up and went on through .... wondering just where they get some of these people, During that flight I couldn't help but think that my safety was dependent on a woman who couldn't tell a sports shirt from a jacket and who thought that by somehow buttoning it up all threats were removed.

http://boortz.com/nuze/200502/02142005.html

hmm
 

If you had it unbuttoned then it would be bulky and hanging on you. When you buttoned it up, it left nothing to the imagination as to your outline and form so you were allowed through. No mystery here.

Each time I travel I find it to be a great learning experience. Here they are worry about a shirt unbutton but at EWR a passenger is allow to go through security with a butcher knive.

All a terrorist needs to do is carry a vial of nitroglycerin - a clear yellowish substance. Never will it be detected.

If it is unbuttoned you should not be embarrassed taking it off.

Travel tips:
http://members.aol.com/ajaynejr/travel.htm

Sheer lunacy. Do you just take whatever your bosses tell you as policy and regurgitate it? Do you have capacity for critical thought? If it was a baggy shirt and it was untucked, it would still be "bulky and hanging on" him whether it was buttoned or not.

Maybe you can answer these questions, that so far no TSAer here has bothered to address: do terrorists not wear undershirts? Is that why a baggy shirt/sweatshirt must be removed only if there's a t-shirt beneath? Or is this information SSI? :rolleyes:

This has been addressed here before but I'll try my best to explain it. And, no, this is not SSI, this is what we can tell pax in line if they question us. In addition to jackets and coats, bulky sweaters and sweatshirts, hoodies, vests, pullover windbreakers, thick shirts and that type of item needs to come off and be sent through the xray. This allows a quick way to clear the item and the passenger. If the passenger balks at removing the item for whatever reason, i.e. nothing on underneath, think its a stupid rule, refuses with no explaination, then they do not have to remove said item. They are to be refered to secondary screening where the hand wander will determine if the person and the garment in question can be cleared through wanding/pat down or if a private screening and garment removal is necessary.

myrgirl, we all know the rule. The problem is that the rule is moronic. Your response above is just further regurgitation.

One more time with the question -- do terrorists always wear undershirts? Is that why one has to remove if one has undershirt and not remove if one does not have undershirt? Or is this policy just lame-*ss psuedo-security like just about every other TSA lame-*ss policy?

One more time with the answer. They need to come off, but sometimes we try to be considerate, okay? What's so difficult to understand?

The question is WHY do they need to come off, which I have now asked about 300 times. You have yet to answer. It's not so difficult. Just say, "yes, it's an assinine, stupid, moronic rule" and we'll all be satisfied.

Why do they need to come off? You know the answer to that, don't you?

Some Russian whores bribed some airport security personnel, two planes blew up, and within days the TSA leadership suddenly figured that we all needed to be patted down if we weren't dressed like Superman, Spiderman or Batman.

If you're wearing skintight Spandex, you're not a bomb-toting terrorist.

If you're dressed normally, like most Americans tend to dress, you must disrobe and the security "professionals" must pat down your breasts and groin to make sure there aren't any imaginary explosives.

Kubuki Theatre at its finest. Amazing what $5 billion will buy you. If you try hard enough to flush it down the toilet.

What a stupid country we have become.

Ordinarily one has to remove always except there would be too many complaints from other nearby persons.

Sorry, if this farce were actually necessary for security, then either ignore the complaints from other nearby persons or put up partitions behind which the "baggy" shirts can be checked. Or maybe use technology, "bomb-sniffing" machines, for an actual security checkpoint, rather than make-work window dressing.

We have that: private screening. :)

"bomb-sniffers" would be nice, however.

Yes many screeners have the capacity for critical thought but if your bosses override you and say do it this way it doesn't do much good does it? Some checkpoints are run strictly by the book and others allow for a little common sense wiggle room.
Me personally I tend to look at the rules in two perspectives, the letter and the spirit. Take the outer garment rule, it's possible to look at people from more than one perspective. While they have their back to me putting their stuff on the belt are there any unusual bulges? When they turn to face me is their clothing form fitting enough so that it can't hide anything or is the garment open wide enough so I can clearly see the contours of the person's body underneath the garment? Is the garment hanging oddly like one with something sown into the lining would be?
Observations like that are why i'm more liberal with what I allow people to wear through the metal detector but unfortunately if the supervisor overrides me and says they must come off then the matter is ended.

I'm not averse to flinging epithets myself, but I do try to be accurate. They were Chechyns whose husbands had been killed 'fighting' the Russians. Whores they most certainly were not.