Comic creator quizzed by TSA for script about writer quizzed by TSA

[He11blazer]

Comics writer Mark Sable was detained and intensively questioned by the TSA for carrying a -script for an upcoming comic book about a writer who is detained and intensively questioned by the TSA for writing a comic about terrorism.

 

Link to story

 

Irony doesn't get much better than that!

[Duffman_Comics]

Truly incredible.

 

And what about the participants throwing terms like "epiphenomena", "recursive" and "fractally beautiful".

 

That mob's a class act. Wonder if they'll let me join?

[Not*Sure*]

It is totally a believable scenario. I can't believe they actually started reading the guys -script. I hate those TSA thugs. I was going through with an expensive statue after a convention. I didn't want to risk it by checking it. I wanted to keep a careful eye on it. I packed it ever so carefully wrapping in layers even though it was still in it's original box with styrofoam inserts. I thoughtfully pointed out I was carrying a fragile item and asked if they would like it unwrapped for screening. They grabbed my bag and shoved it in the Xray machine. They roughly grabbed the bag back up after the first pass. I said "Please it's very fragile" One stepped in front of me while tossing it to the other who looked at me and SLAMMED it down with force on the metal table. he gave me this "And you can't do anything about it so there look" Then he unwrapped it tearing through it like a jerk. They removed my foam surrounding it in the once mint package and tore the chunks of packing to pieces. I was really upset that they were ruining for one thing the box and original packaging hence lessening the value of the item. Their attitude was just as rude as could be. I was taken aside for further screening, where they asked what it was supposed to be why I was carrying it on the plane. It is hard to explain non super-hero characters to strangers who don't know diddly about comics. Then they checked me and swabbed me and the attache case I had for explosives.

I was fighting really getting super upset I didn't want to end up in gitmo or something you know? It is not everyday I spend $385 for a statue. Now we drive.

[Bosco685]

It is totally a believable scenario. I can't believe they actually started reading the guys -script. I hate those TSA thugs.

They can read?!

[electricprune]

Truly incredible.

 

And what about the participants throwing terms like "epiphenomena", "recursive" and "fractally beautiful".

 

That mob's a class act. Wonder if they'll let me join?

 

My vocabulary tripled after reading that whole exchange.

[He11blazer]

Mark Sable joins the comments if you keep reading down:

 

#72 posted by Mark Sable, June 28, 2009 3:41 PM

 

Hey everyone...Mark Sable, the writer in question here.

 

First, thanks to Cory (whose book Little Brother I read and enjoyed just before traveling on said trip) for writing about this. And I appreciate everyone's comments.

 

I figured I would try to make myself available for questions (ask away) and fill in a bit more detail.

 

I think IAMINNOCENT has it about right. I'm not particularly conspiracy minded in real life, although it does make for good fiction.

 

It's remotely possible that I was flagged SSSS because of my writing. I only mention this because I created an ARG to market UNTHINKABLE, one that might have aroused the suspicions of, say, the NSA.

 

But as one of the intelligence sources I used for the book put it, he would have been surprised if any of our security organizations were competent enough to make that connection.

 

Most likely, I was flagged SSSS for an...unusual flight pattern (6 flights in 10 days) that was full of seemingly one way trips, and that I changed a bit relatively the last minute. (Ironically, my penultimate destination was originally Prague, so I came just short of, as others have so aptly put it, "the full Kafka").

 

I have been flagged on occasion for that reason.

 

What I found strange and took issue with was not the initial flagging or even the extra screening. It was the fact they went out of their way to read the -script (which I had brought with me to type handwritten corrections due the next day into my laptop).

 

There were plenty of documents in my bag they could have read through. And while the first page of the -script did contain words like "9/11" "terrorist attacks" and "police state", it was in an extremely small font.

 

Regardless of how or why I was stopped, it was unnecessary of them and quite possibly a violation of my civil rights to read the -script.

 

And let's be honest, what was reading the -script going to tell them? Do you think the average TSA agent - someone who doesn't need a high school diploma for the job - knows the difference between Hezbollah and Hamas (or Hadassah for that matter?)? They don't remotely have the training to analyze suspicious reading materials.

 

The TSA by its own admission is only designed to stop "stupid" terrorists.

 

I'd love if this helped the book sell more copies of Unthinkable (and surely, the only way to really punish the TSA is to buy as many books as possible), but I'd much rather my work be judged on its own merits.

 

[He11blazer]

It is totally a believable scenario. I can't believe they actually started reading the guys -script. I hate those TSA thugs. I was going through with an expensive statue after a convention. I didn't want to risk it by checking it. I wanted to keep a careful eye on it. I packed it ever so carefully wrapping in layers even though it was still in it's original box with styrofoam inserts. I thoughtfully pointed out I was carrying a fragile item and asked if they would like it unwrapped for screening. They grabbed my bag and shoved it in the Xray machine. They roughly grabbed the bag back up after the first pass. I said "Please it's very fragile" One stepped in front of me while tossing it to the other who looked at me and SLAMMED it down with force on the metal table. he gave me this "And you can't do anything about it so there look" Then he unwrapped it tearing through it like a jerk. They removed my foam surrounding it in the once mint package and tore the chunks of packing to pieces. I was really upset that they were ruining for one thing the box and original packaging hence lessening the value of the item. Their attitude was just as rude as could be. I was taken aside for further screening, where they asked what it was supposed to be why I was carrying it on the plane. It is hard to explain non super-hero characters to strangers who don't know diddly about comics. Then they checked me and swabbed me and the attache case I had for explosives.

I was fighting really getting super upset I didn't want to end up in gitmo or something you know? It is not everyday I spend $385 for a statue. Now we drive.

 

That's an incredibly frustrating story. My condolences for you having to go through that

[MedicAR]

 

I used to laugh at the conspiracy theorists, now I am one.

 

We're moving closer and closer to a police state all in the name of keeping ourselves "safe."

 

The military practices containing civilian uprisings within the U.S. Camps are built and maintained in case there is a sudden need to house thousands of people. The Japanese internment camps in Arkansas are deep in the forest, but they are kept freshly painted, fenced (with the barbed wire at the top facing in) and secured. The railroad tracks leading to them at well maintained and there are dozens of plain white "cattle cars" inside. It's not a museum, it's not even publicized as to where it is. Why is it maintained but empty?

 

As a nation we're slowly giving up our freedoms in hope of stopping "terrorists" but never giving a thought to those that claim to protect us.

 

"Who watches the Watchmen?" How prophetic.

 

 

 

[Not*Sure*]

Indeed I wonder what things are coming to. I won't fly unless there was a really urgent need to. I actually made 27 flights one year before 9-11 (actually the year before) I get asked all the time to do inflight evaluations it's just too much hassle to think about getting the shake down again. In flight evaluators are wired with equipment wich would be a P.I.A. to explain to homeland security.