That Should Be Just Enough

I haven't flown since well before September 11, 2001. I understand things have changed since then. The end of June (2009), the Clark H Smith Family of Wife and Children are flying to Alaska. I don't know what I'm in for. But I got a sneek peek today when I visited a doctor about, well, you know, psoriatic arthritis.

My m.d. shall go un-named (not to protect his identity, but to keep from embarrassing him when I tell you that his nimrod assistant put a blood-pressure cuff on my "risk" (wrist - that's where the new-fangled contraption was designed to work, but I can't figure out why someone in a medical office can't pronounce "wrist")), but I can tell you his name is in the top 15 of most common US surnames. Since his office records concerning me were a complete jumble, we fell into a fascinating dialogue about the TSA, spyware, and what not to say to your US Senator.

It turns out Dr. Top15 had recently flown to Canada with ease, but upon his return, he was "way-laid". Turns out, an unsavory character with his same name, his same profession, and also sharing the same high-skill hobby with the good doctor had recently traveled between Canada and the US in the business of trafficing drugs or some other thou-shalt-not. So doc winds up on the TSA no-fly list (for reasons that will soon become obvious, I'm going to forsake my habit of creating hyperlinks to these latest keywords). He made a few low-level calls to see what could be done to get his good name cleared and free the Mounties to keep the real bad guys from flying. Finally, some one suggested doc call his senator.

Being a solid tax-paying citizen, doc rang up Capitol Dome and personally asked his senator what to do. Senator, who I hope never gets a case of psoriatic arthritis, told doc to file a request with the TSA "by email" which was the one route doc hadn't (yet) taken. The TSA promptly replied (via email) to doc that they would not be taking him off the list.

End of story? Not on your paranoid, first-thru-seventh amendment life.

Within a few weeks, doc noticed his computer was running slow and acting weird. Doc ran thru some low-level diagnostics and finally asked the nerd-next-door to check out his system. NND reported that doc had a peculularly vicious edition of spyware running on his computer a million miles an hour. What flavor spyware??? You guessed it, it was branded by the TSA. Apparently, when the TSA was kind enough to write back, a little-sumpin-sumpin was included with it and it installed when doc opened the email.

Doc called back the Senator that advised him to email the TSA in the first place. The senator now advised a) do not attempt to uninstall the trojan, and b) don't do anything on "that" computer other than absolutely benign activity - like emailing grandma. Your tax dollars at work for you.

Now, that's where the story ends. Lessons learned. 1) don't fly, 2) if you have to fly, get to the airport early, in plenty of time to be cavity searched, 3) take tons of paperwork, whatever proves you're not the other guy, take your mother if you can, 4) if you develop a problem, don't ask for help, 5) if you ask for help, the help you are going to get is going to be a much greater clusterbomb and a far more invasive clusterbomb than that cavity search you were trying to avoid in the first place. Oh, and 6) don't fly.

(Editor's Note 1: This entire post sounds like paranoid conjecture. It's not. At least it's not my paranoid conjecture. If you met or knew my doc, you'd agree that this frumpy little suburban rheumatologist is not given to flights of fancy, paranoid conjecture, or delusions of self-significance. It just ain't there. I have searched fairly diligently across the world wide web to see if there is another soul on the planet with a similar story. I can't find one (except this related un-credible comment (search for "spyware" on the page)). There may be more references the day after I post this, I don't know. I'd love to hear some comments on this topic. I'd love for some of my paranoid brethren to look into this - just be sure to do your research on your co-worker's computer or the public one in the orthodontists office.)

(Editor's Note 2: If there is even a shred of truth to the claims stated in this post, we're in for this much and a great deal more. There's an old conundrum about how much liberty you are willing to give up for the sake of safety. The answer is "just enough".)