FITUG e.V.
Förderverein Informationstechnik und Gesellschaft
FITUG e.V.Förderverein Informationstechnik und Gesellschaft |
|
------- Forwarded message follows ------- Date sent: Fri, 19 Oct 2001 01:16:29 -0400 From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com> To: politech@politechbot.com Subject: FC: Phila. man hassled, detained, barred from flight because of book Send reply to: declan@well.com
http://www.citypaper.net/articles/101801/news.godfrey.shtml
Novel Security Measures
A local man was kept off a recent flight because of a book he was carrying.
by Gwen Shaffer
Everyone knows it is a bad idea to try and board a plane carrying a box cutter, a flight manual written in Arabic, or a sack full of mysterious white powder. But with ultra-tightened airport security, a book could also prevent you from boarding that plane.
No kidding. It happened just last week in Philadelphia.
Neil Godfrey arrived at Philadelphia International Airport around 9:30 a.m. on Wed., Oct. 10. His brother's girlfriend dropped him off with plenty of time to spare before his 11:40 a.m. United Airlines flight. Godfrey was on his way to Phoenix, where his father lives. From there, the family was planning to head out for a vacation at Disneyland.
It is fair to say that Godfrey -- brother of City Paper webmaster Ryan Godfrey -- doesn't look unusual for a 22-year-old kid living in Center City.
His outfit that day was typical: black Dockers, a T-shirt with a logo for the now-defunct Phoenix Gazette newspaper and New Balance running shoes. He has a medium build, recently dyed jet-black hair and a quiet demeanor.
When Godfrey stepped up to the ticket counter, the United clerk informed him he had been selected for a random baggage search.
"No problem," he replied, going through the usual motions of checking his bag and getting a boarding pass. Now toting nothing but a novel and the most recent copy of The Nation magazine, Godfrey hiked through the concourse toward his boarding gate.
As he passed through the metal detector, an airport security guard furrowed his brow at Godfrey's reading selections as they disappeared through the conveyor belt.
On the cover of the book, Hayduke Lives! by Edward Abbey, is an illustration of a man's hand holding several sticks of dynamite. The 1991 novel is about a radical environmentalist, George Washington Hayduke III, who blows up bridges, burns tractors and sabotages other projects he believes are destroying the beautiful Southwest landscape.
"For the first time, it occurred to me the book may be a problem," Godfrey recalls.
He proceeded through the security checkpoint and sat down to read near his boarding gate. About 10 minutes had passed when a National Guardsman approached Godfrey.
[...]
---------------------------------------------------------------------- --- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ---
------- End of forwarded message -------