?

oh, this is about the art I reblogged from janus…

hm. Whether the Grid needs the TSA? Interesting topic.

Well… right from the beginnings at Encom, it did have security checkpoints, of at least two forms

Probably not comparable to the actual TSA (which was only instated after 9/11/2001) but possibly comparable to airline security and customs checkpoints that existed long before then.

Tron himself, of course– the one who “monitors all contacts between our system and other systems” and “shuts down” anything “unscheduled”

And Dumont the Tower Guardian, who was there to verify the identity and intentions of all programs approaching the I/O Tower to communicate with their Users

…the latter was clearly among the inspirations for that art I reblogged; mainly because I thought it was cool how it took inspo from early concept art of Dumont’s pod

anyway. it is true that both these types of “security” could be very badly abused– and similar forms of security definitely were, under Clu– and this probably does parallel the TSA in some ways

But the last time I was in an airport, I very clearly remember thinking, “DAMMIT I wanna live in a Tron AU where that throwaway line about sending Alan to Hawaii actually became a valid use for the laser. I would take a layover inside the Encom Grid over being in a fucking airport ANY TIME. I wanna be able to travel anywhere in the world at the speed of internet communication, and the ONLY security I ever wanna deal with is Tron doing a virus check on my digitized luggage, –with Ram and Yori there, of course, to recognize every weird sex toy I have in there and reassure Tron that they are totally not threats.”