It’s more like, By being on this planet, whether alive or dead, we will search you, your property and belongings and everyone you have been within 1000 miles of, whether in physical or virtual form.
Obviously, it’s not the same thing, and there’s a real privacy violation going on here, but I can’t help but find the slightest irony in that this is becoming an issue specifically for people who use valet parking - i.e., those who voluntarily hand their cars (and all their contents) over to strangers in the first place, just for a little convenience.
Luckily the valets at the Rochester Airport all happen to be highly skilled in the identification and safe handling of explosives.
Yeah, there’s a constitutional amendment about that somewhere.
At what point do we scream loud enough that our legislators will actually do something to rein in the TSA?
This is a government agency thoroughly, unequivocally and almost gleefully out of control.
TSA to Valet. “Okay, you are going to have to do part of my job starting this week.”
Valet. Okay. How much extra am I going to get paid?
TSA. Nothing. You are helping your country.
Valet. Do you work for free?
TSA. No, but you already have a job this is just a new part of it. We want you to quickly check out the cars you are parking. No big deal.
Valet. What am I looking for?
TSA. Anything unusual, or suspicious–like a package or suitcase, backpacks, anything big enough to contain a bomb.
Valet. A BOMB! ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?! You want ME to sweep for bombs, which is YOUR job and you don’t even want to pay me anything extra?
TSA. Calm down. The odds are very very small that someone will do this, we are all just security theatre remember. We will give you a slip of paper to tell people you searched their car while they were away. I’m sure that they will be grateful that you are protecting them from terrorists and they will give you a bigger tip when you return their car.
Valet. Are you high? They will go ballistic! They already hate you, Stop making them hate me too. YOU do it!
TSA. We can’t, we have our handsful patting down seniors in wheelchairs and making women drink their own breast milk, we are swamped. Come on! Don’t you love America?
Valet. I do and I also love the 4th Amendment.
TSA. Which one is that?
Valet; The one that guards against unreasonable searches and seizures, which requires a warrant to be judicially sanctioned and supported by probable cause.
TSA. Never heard of it. Besides, we don’t follow rules written before 9/11 because 9/11. We get to ignore stuff that gets in the way of protecting everyone.
Valet. I’m not going to do it!
TSA. Do it or you’re fired. Unemployment is so high, we’ll have a hundred people lining up to take your job.
Valet: 
h/t Jardin for image and last line.
Protip for valets on how to obey the TSA’s instructions:
Step 1) After parking car, take a cursory look around as you sit in the drivers seat
Step 2) Leave their thankyou note
You don’t work for the TSA and you don’t have to follow their instructions. Airport security is not your responsibility and there will be no repercussions for you even if there IS a bomb in the car. It’s not your job to fight this as doing so would likely have no effect short of you losing your job, so save yourself the effort, save your countrymen from violation of their privacy and just do a shitty job when searching.
TSA to Valet: Do it or you’re fired. Unemployment is so high, we’ll have a hundred people lining up to take your job.
Valet:
So now all terrorists have to do is wire the bomb to the glove compartment so that it explodes when the valet opens it.
I assume the valet doesn’t work for the government. So it’s not a government search, is it?
Not that it’s okay, mind you
Why is everybody so anti-TSA? The way I see it, they’re doing such a good job that there’s no possible way terrorists will ever hit the Twin Towers again.
I thought this was an area where we no longer have a right to be without being searched.
I seem to remember a sign at the edge of airport property saying that all cars were subject to search. I haven’t noticed it for a while so it may have been from a higher threat level or something.
This doesn’t say that valets are the ones that should be doing it. But, I don’t know that they are any less qualified than some of the TSA agents I’ve encountered.
Do this, don’t do that, can’t you read the signs?
Why don’t they just ask the driver if there is a bomb.
(this will turn out to be bogus.)
It would be interesting to leave some hidden cameras in there along with some cash to watch them steal it (which they will, of course).
The 4th Amendment also applies to agents of the government. By doing the search under the direction of the government, the valet is acting as an agent of the government.
I saw one once with a big bomb, and he was like, “Ooo! Aaah! Eee!” gingerly hot-potatoing it over to the garbage can. It was impressive.
Okay, I live in Rochester. I’ve picked my friends up from that airport. It’s a little itty bitty small-city airport with pretensions of being international because of the flights to Canada across the lake. We’re a small little city that most people have never heard of. We’re not a major terminal, where an attack would have effects across the entire hemisphere. Why on Earth did anyone in the TSA think we might have a terrorist threat here?
The answer is, of course, security theater here, there, everywhere!, but the lack of any sort of targeting and prioritizing according to actual realistic threat assessments, instead applying it as a blanket thing everywhere (presumably), kinda gives it away as security theater.
This is completely unacceptable. Every congressman and senators needs to get an earful that we are not going to tolerate this crap anymore. De-authorized, defund, layoff, and shutdown down these agencies. The government and these out of control rouge agencies have destroyed American. They have made our daily lives miserable.
“we don’t follow rules written before 9/11 because 9/11” FTW
