Technology, Culture, Commentary on the Internet Revolution

MacBook Air Confuses Airport Security

by Mike Abundo on March 11th, 2008

Last week, I was playing Final Fantasy VI on my Nokia N95 when a building guard told me I shouldn’t take pictures. I had to point out that the lens cap was closed, and that his building looked nothing like Figaro Castle.

Of course, that’s nothing compared to what technologist Michael Nygard went through at the airport.

Instead of my bags trundling through the x-ray machine, [a TSA agent] stops the belt. Calls over another agent, a palaver. Another agent flocks to the screen. A gabble, a conference, some consternation.

They pull my laptop, my new laptop making its first trip with me, out of the flow of bags. One takes me aside to a partitioned cubicle. Another of the endless supply of TSA agents takes the rest of my bags to a different cubicle. No yellow brick road here, just a pair of yellow painted feet on the floor, and my flight is boarding. I am made to understand that I should stand and wait. My laptop is on the table in front of me, just beyond reach, like I am waiting to collect my personal effects after being paroled.

I’m standing, watching my laptop on the table, listening to security clucking just behind me. “There’s no drive,” one says. “And no ports on the back. It has a couple of lines where the drive should be,” she continues.

A younger agent, joins the crew. I must now be occupying ten, perhaps twenty, percent of the security force. At this checkpoint anyway. There are three score more at the other five checkpoints. The new arrival looks at the printouts from x-ray, looks at my laptop sitting small and alone. He tells the others that it is a real laptop, not a “device”. That it has a solid-state drive instead of a hard disc. They don’t know what he means. He tries again, “Instead of a spinning disc, it keeps everything in flash memory.” Still no good. “Like the memory card in a digital camera.” He points to the x-ray, “Here. That’s what it uses instead of a hard drive.”

The senior agent hasn’t been trained for technological change. New products on the market? They haven’t been TSA approved. Probably shouldn’t be permitted. He requires me to open the “device” and run a program. I do, and despite his inclination, the lead agent decides to release me and my troublesome laptop. My flight is long gone now, so I head for the service center to get rebooked.

Behind me, I hear the younger agent, perhaps not realizing that even the TSA must obey TSA rules, repeating himself.

“It’s a MacBook Air.”

The MacBook Air couldn’t hide a knife, much less any explosives. Why the TSA would worry about it eludes me. Maybe they’re suspicious of Apple products because Steve Jobs says boom all the time.

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POSTED IN: Apple