For those of you who are not #tweeps (or twerds, or twitter users, whatever you label yourselves), this last day has been a rough one for aviation bloggers/journalists.  Recently, two blogger/journalists (bloggerlists, or journners, however you merge the two), Steven Frischling of the blog Flying with Fish [ link ] and Christopher Elliott of elliott dot org [ link ] were served subpoenas by Special Agents in regards to publicizing security directives outlying procedures put in place by the TSA in response to that Northwest flight where that Nigerian prince had sent out countless spam emails from the in-flight wifi or something like that.  Not only did the shock of legal action hit these two men hard today, but twitter users everywhere, as well as bloggers around the world (us included).  Think I’m joking?  Check these links out:

• twitter search of hashtag #TSAFail [ link ]
• Steven Frischling’s recent post @ flying with fish [ link ]
• Christopher Elliott’s actual subpoena [ link ]
• Rob Mark of jetwhine.com fame’s interview with aviation blogger Mary Kirby of Runway Girl [ link ]
• Runway Girl’s updated post about the incident [ link ]
• Article about Steven Frischling’s hard drive being confiscated [ link ]
• Another article, but from wired.com [ link ]

There’s a ton more links out there to reports and commentary on the issue, and many comments written at the links above link you elsewhere throughout the internet.  So what does this mean to YOU, blog reader/poster/frequenter/lover?

First of all, we cannot stress enough the power of emerging social networking medias and their outlets.  On news media outlets alone, this story has gotten around quickly.  Through the blogosphere, the horror of being served a subpoena has been spread like the plague.  And through twitter, many users, perhaps a great number of whom are not in the aviation industry directly, have spread the hash tag #TSAFail out almost as much as #RushLimbaugh, or their favorite #songsofthedecade.

BUT.  Here’s my problem, and one we will never, ever, get rid of.  The inconsistencies of government, and how “the man” is out to crush the little guy.  ABC News recently had written an article about the leaked TSA Screener Manual [ link ], which, unlike the Security Directive that was posted on Frischling and Elliott’s blogs, this one clearly has the standard security warning on the bottom of every page that, in legal-copy terms, litter the entire document with the ol’ fashioned “NEED TO KNOW ONLY” stamp.  But, while this secret document was leaked out, including images of identification samples of government employees, no subpoenas were sent to ABC News, and no news of this magnitude was distributed, as I would guess many aviation enthusiasts would see and delete, or, rather, not give two cents about how a screener does their job (we’ll leave the TSA jokes up to you).

So, #TSAFail, great job!  Hopefully our fellow aviation writers’ get through this ordeal without any personal hardships, and hopefully the TSA can get their act together in protecting travelers from having to fend off terrorism from a middle seat between a passenger who has H1N1 and an armwrest hog.