Pixiq

“The images used just illustrate general aviation environments,” Kimball said.

Hmm, granted it’s been a while since I last flew, but do airports routinely come with hooded photographers nowadays?

Yeah, if you just wanted to illustrate general aviation environments you’d have left out the photographer. That was added intentionally. You might be able to argue about their reasons for adding it, but it’s quite obvious it wasn’t an accident.

Makes me want to pull up my hood and go to the nearest airport. We do have a landing and take off once in a wile. LOL

Phil

Does the poster mean we should ignore photographers that aren’t wearing hoodies? Or photogs that aren’t behind a chain link fence? This “campaign” just goes to show how out of touch OUR government is.

@Jay: This isn’t about being out of touch, it’s about security theater. I doubt they put much thought at all into it, they just wanted _something_ that looked good to put up so they could tell the (mostly clueless) public that they were doing things to stop terrorism!

In reality it’s not doing a damn thing, except annoy photographers.

They should continue with the theme and make posters of the rest of the people that the TSA considers the main threats for terrorism, amputees and families with small children.

Take your concerns directly to the HLS Site
http://www.nppa.org/news_and_events/news/2010/09/poster.html

If the TSA wasn’t confiscating hand cream and melding with your picture taking, they honestly would have nothing to do 99.999% of the time.

uh…the link that’s supposed to point at the TSA’s blog instead points back here. Whoopsy?

Thanks, Robert, just fixed it.

We should make an ad campaign that shows TSA agents leering at a security monitor suspiciously. If you see something, say something!

Fun stuff. I recently flew back from Europe, departing from Munich. Every time I’ve flown out of their, someone from their equivalent of TSA at the security check point asks me to take my camera out of the bag and he looks it over, clicks the shutter and then says thank you and send me on my way. It’s not really a complaint (they’ve never been rude or hassled me in anyway). But it’s always amused me. I’m not sure what they’re looking for? Fake cameras to smuggle out German chocolate?

@Random: Sorry, my sarcasm didn’t make it through. I know that this (and 99% of everything else) is security theater. This is will do nothing except give local LE and airport security another reason to illegally detain photographers.

@MikeB

They’re just making sure its actually a working camera. Before the TSA got all 9/11 on us, all they cared about was whether its a real working device, not a bomb. It would be difficult to fill a camera or laptop with any foreign substance and still have it function

The TSA missed the boat with a poster making aviation photographers look like terrorists. They should have included us in their campaign to help monitor airport security. We are out at many airports, usually quite visible (unless local LEOs have run us off…) and often know when the wrong gate is left open or some other thing looks out of place. I know how to dial 911 just like any other “concerned citizen”.

I can hardly wait for the government to bring the same, high quality, intelligent approach to health care that they have to transportation security.