Last year, a thwarted Romeo hit the headlines when he skirted the TSA’s nonsense at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport. He not only “walk[ed] through the airport without identification or a ticket,” he even boarded a flight–and all because “he didn’t want his girlfriend going down there [to Guatemala] and being with the wrong guy.”

Romeo is back in the news because finally, a year later, the TSA and the airport have released the surveillance tapes showing exactly how he evaded the rigmarole that passes for “security” at airports. No wonder the Thieves and Sexual Assailants stalled publication for so long: the films show how very easy circumventing the TSA’s elaborate charade is.

But of course how Romeo outwitted the TSA isn’t nearly as important as the fact that the airline booted him off the flight because he had no ticket. Though he had “walk[ed] past a TSA agent who appears to be looking down at his phone,” the “gate agent”—an employee of the airline—not only noticed Romeo but followed him on board. Apparently, he then convinced the gentleman to disembark: some moments later, “the footage shows [Romeo] and the gate agent walking to a main terminal area where two police officers meet them.” (In our absurd age that scoffs at love, at least of the heterosexual variety, the cops arrested Romeo and charged him with “criminal trespassing.”)

With or without the TSA, airlines have a vested interest in preventing folks without tickets from enjoying a free ride on their planes. And absent the Civil Rights Act of 1964, they’d also refuse to sell a seat to anyone who aroused suspicion as a potential troublemaker.

The TSA: always unnecessary. And obligingly proving that truth every day.

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