Boston and Ana Birchall

A couple of years back I found myself in the Boston airport, meeting face to face Ana Birchall, whom I have previously featured on this blog. It was not a meeting organized by our respective secretaries, but it was nonetheless interesting for me.

I’d rather not go into too many details, but it was some time in the fall, had a connection flight within one hour and the amazing TSA had decided to put me through some stupid lineup. Halfway through that huge line it became obvious to me that no only was I about to miss my connection flight, but I was also about to be fingerprinted. That thought caused me to panic.

I had booked that flight through Boston because it was cheaper by several hundred dollars than a direct flight (the way airlines price their flights is a mystery, with flights having more connections costing less, especially those going through major hubs) and knowing that as a Canadian, I was not about to be fingerprinted. I have been using biometrics, mostly as a fingerprint scanner with my door locks and laptops for more than a decade now, and there’s a good chance that if NSA has a program to mass-collect biometric data they probably have all my fingerprints by now, but I still was not ready to be fingerprinted in the airport as part as air travel, even though almost everybody else in the world is. The sheer stupidity of security theater consumes me.

LE: I am selling my first Targus Defcon Authenticator (fingerprint scanner and USB hub) on Kijiji and Craigslist. I'm not selling in Romania, but if I did, I'd go for either okazii (despite their silly phone-based authentication), telegrafonline, olx or piata-az (zmc-clssfds).

It was in this context that I met Ana Birchall. She was together with a colleague or assistant and, as the neverending line-up was meandering, we found ourselves separated merely by a crowd control line. Now, I don’t think I had anything to be ashamed of – I was fair in covering what happened to Ms Birchall and derived no benefit out of my coverage. I make no money with this blog, I support increased female participation in politics and other areas of public life simply because as a (formerly?) attractive male, I often find it easier and more interesting to interact with women than with men. Still, it felt odd when her conversation with her friend stopped and it felt like they were both waiting for me to address them (quite possibly because they somehow felt I spoke Romanian).

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I had a recent look at Ms Birchall’s site to see what else she’s been doing, and found out she’s accusing Liberals of “political fariseism”, talks about “accident” as a method (like Naomi Klein?) and outlines her battle plan for 2015. Although I’m not happy with how she chose to fight against the smear campaign against herself (it seemed logically inconsistent), I’m glad that she did not let it bring her down.

*(*This article is unfinished – it was scheduled to appear in the hope that it will be finished before, but since this message is here and until it is removed, the article is to be considered work in progress*)*.

Sources / More info: wiki-bft, time-b10, zmc-clssfds

Zamo, ana birchall, boston, usa, airport, security theater, tsa, freedom trail (Tags)