Taking a Metal Copy of the Bill of Rights Through Airport Security

by Gary Leff

Sam comments on my post about carrying through pot at the Portland airport,

In other airport security news, Penn and Teller are selling small metal copies of the Bill of Rights designed to set off an alarm when carried through airport security.

Theses are being sold in the lobby of the new P & T show on Broadway, but I imagine there may be a link soon on VFTW.

Ah, but Sam — these aren’t new at all! They date back at least to 2010. And they’re classic.

Your metal copy of the Bill of Rights will alarm the metal detector and then you can actually say to the TSA, “Oh I’m sorry, here, take my rights” as you hand it over to be re-screened.

You can buy them here.

But they’re actually part of a whole family of products on offer. While fourth amendment luggage tags are out of stock, you can buy fourth amendment socks.

Here’s Penn Jillette on MSNBC:

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  1. If I’m not mistaken they’ve had them for sale outside the P&T show at Las Vegas for years.

  2. You really have no rights, re-entering the USA. Customs and Border Protection can search you and all of your property, without any reason other than randomness. You can’t refuse the search as the CBP will deny you re-entry to the USA. And God forbid if you have Global Entry and they find something! You will be banned from Global Entry. Gary, you don’t cover this! It is important as many of your readers have Global Entry. I would bet many don’t know that very small items can trigger a full search. We were told that they usually find something. Luckily for us, they found nothing but it was time consuming and embarrassing.

  3. @JohnB, I agree. TSA urinates on our liberties while CBP defecates on them — explosively. I was horrified at the latest WaPo article on large seizures of cash at IAD. At least one agent showed a modicum of compassion when they let a guy keep $1000 as survival cash for his third world destination. Nonetheless, the laws must be rewritten. It is absurd that a person’s life savings can be legally stolen for a simple non-declaration. At the very least, keep the money while the person is cleared of criminality, and then return it all, or all minus a reasonable fine.

  4. Yep, agreed many people do not realize they don’t have the same rights when trying to cross into the US from outside the border. Also, there is the 100 miles within the border rule where border patrol agents operate. This area encompasses a portion of the country where 2/3 of the population lives. Of course constitutional rights apply once your inside the borders but border patrol has a tendency to violate them.

  6. @JohnB,

    The CPB can detain you and search all your stuff, but if you are a US Citizen, they certainly cannot refuse your entry back into the United States.

  9. Thank you for mentioning my site.

    I’ve actually been offering the cards since 2002, unfortunately.

    They came about after a conversation between me and Penn Jillette where I said “Omeone should print the Bill Of Rights on metal cards so the TSA could literally take our rights.” and then about 15 seconds later I said “I’m going to print the Bill Of Rights on metal cards so the TSA can literally take our rights.”

    The rest is a sort of pointless history 🙂

    Penn & Teller now have their own version and even use a card in their amazing show.

    Pretty cool for something that started as a silly joke.

Comments are closed.