Inspected For Your Safety?

I got a couple of Geof Huth postcards from Manchester, England, recently. One of them was postmarked May 4 and featured a picture of an early 2000s Manchester building known as Urbis. On the card, and his blog, he describes a city well worth seeing. Good thing he updated my notion of Manchester, because the last thing I heard about it involved a football riot last year.

Attached to the message side of the Urbis card was this curiosity:

I'd never spent any time looking at the TSA seal before. It's a not-very-imaginative variation of the Great Seal of the United States, complete with displayed eagle. Instead of arrows and an olive branch, the eagle ought to be holding some scanning wands.

I didn't know the TSA bailiwick included inspecting incoming postcards. Maybe it doesn't. The TSA does inspect bags and issue stickers at JKF, however, and maybe Geof recycled it. The sticker is placed on exactly one of the few spots that has no printing or handwriting. In fact, it seems like the handwriting goes around the sticker slightly.

Still, I like the image of a fellow in some TSA warren somewhere reading overseas postcards with a decoder ring nearby, hoping day after day to catch some bit of useful data.