Meet the 8-year-old on a TSA watch list

Say hello to Mikey, the eight-year-old terrorist mastermind.

Sure, he may look like an adorable bespeckled boy scout, but don’t let that fool you. TSA sure didn’t take their eyes off the ball when agents harassed little Mikey not once, nor twice, but many times over a number of years.

The first time they frisked him was when he was two-years-old.

“He cried.” I’ll bet.

Here’s the cute part. When confronted with the fact that there’s an eight-year-old on one of their watch lists, TSA cried foul. They even put up a denial on their “Myth Busters” website:

Except, that’s not true as the Times reported today. Mikey is no myth.

The TSA may be creatively interpreting the wording of the accusation. Mikey is on a watch list, but not the federal “no-fly” list.

A spokesman for the T.S.A., James Fotenos, said that as a rule, “there are no children on the no-fly or selectee lists,” but would not comment on Mikey’s situation specifically.

But notice he didn’t comment if children can still be affected by the watch lists. No child is originally placed on the list, but if they share a name with someone accused of conspiring against the government, then all rules are off. And just like that, Mikey is crying while a TSA agent pats down his crotch.

Weirdly, his mom doesn’t seem grateful that the gubment is keeping her safe by harassing children:

“Up your arms, down your arms, up your crotch — someone is patting your 8-year-old down like he’s a criminal. A terrorist can blow his underwear up and they don’t catch him. But my 8-year-old can’t walk through security without being frisked.”

Of course, this isn’t the first time the watch lists have targeted children. There was two-year-old Jack Anderson, who was first accused of being on the “no-fly” list before it was revealed he was on the airport’s “no-fly” list, but not the federal one (there are different echelons of lists, you see.)

And there are numerous stories of baby harassment with victims that make Mikey look positively ancient:

Ingrid Sanden’s 1-year-old daughter was stopped in Phoenix before boarding a flight to Washington at Thanksgiving.

Sarah Zapolsky and her husband had a similar experience last month while leaving Dulles International Airport outside Washington. An airline ticket agent told them their 11-month-old son was on the government list.

The TSA has a ”passenger ombudsman” to investigate claims from passengers who say they are mistakenly on the lists. A TSA spokeswoman, Yolanda Clark, said 89 children have submitted their names to the ombudsman. Of those, 14 are under the age of 2.

And that story was from 2005. Who knows how many children have been frisked since then?

Really, does any of this make people feel safer? Even with the hours of waiting in lines, full-body scanners, and baby-frisking, the occasionally crazy person is going to evade security. And what then? What’s the next crazy level? What other civil liberties are people willing to surrender in the name of some unobtainable, omnipresent daddy figure: He Who Keeps Us Safe At All Times?

And this isn’t to say I place the onus for Mikey and the other victims of baby-frisking entirely on the TSA or federal government. Bureaucracies are inherently complex because there are so many individuals involved, and so many layers of management. There are literally thousands of processes that can break down due to faulty communications every single day.

But there has to be accountability here. Secret lists violate the civil rights of passengers. Additionally, any TSA agent that unquestioningly pats down a child is a cowardly lemming. Seriously, if my boss tells me my job entails making a two-year-old cry, then that’s my last day working that job.

“Why do they think a kid is a terrorist?” Mikey asked his mother at one point during the Times interview.

Good question, Mikey.