Mike Franklin

Secretary Chertoff’s description of the newly published DHS policy on laptop searches was not just misleading – it was flat-out wrong. In an interview with Wired.com, the Secretary stated that “[w]e only do [laptop searches] when we put you into secondary [screening] and we only put you into secondary [screening] … when there is a reason to suspect something.”

But the actual policy that DHS published says the exact opposite. It does not even mention secondary screening, let alone limit laptop searches to those cases, and it expressly states that Americans’ laptops may be searched “absent individualized suspicion.”      

We were trying to say we don’t take everyone’s laptop and suck it up into a giant vacuum cleaner.

There is some basis for suspicion the inspectors use, and they are the same they have used for decades.

Almost every time he analyzes a group, Waber discovers that the super-connector — the crucial person who routes news among team members — isn’t the manager. “The manager is almost always peripheral,” Waber says. “It’s some random guy.” And that person is usually overworked and overstressed. He isn’t given enough support to fulfill his role, because nobody in the firm knows he’s doing it in the first place.

If you study the org chart, the higher-ups are in control. But if you study reality, those same managers barely know what’s going on.

American Airlines even invented a $5 omnibus fee. Its purpose? By the airline’s own admission, the fee applies if you somehow managed to avoid all the other award fees it now charges.

Depending on the airline, your destination, and your time frame, a formerly free award seat can cost you as much as $300.