I passed through TSA with a pocket knife, a small pair of sewing scissors, and a Leatherman multitool I forgot I put in my work backpack, but had to throw away my solid hand lotion for being 3.4oz. Larger than 3oz was a potential explosive, they told me. I had to toss it in a trashcan filled to overflowing with other potential explosives, located in the most populated area of the airport. I guess so it would take out as many people as possible and do the most structural damage, if my sealed Working Hands lotion was to explode and set off the other containers of lotions, water, and sodas. TSA is a joke.
TSA has an 80% failure rate during inspections.
Everyone knows the TSA is useless. I know people who have accidentally carried fixed blade knives through security without getting stopped.
Yet they never, ever fail to miss the banana I have in my carry-on for manual review. They very literally only look for the lowest-hanging fruit in scans. And that’s not a joke, they focus on the easiest to do and accept or reject.
They keep intensely checking my stuffed triceratops. Triclor is a good boy and they need to stop picking on him.
Aww! It’s not a pet per se, so I can’t invoke the pet tax, but might I request a picture of your stuffed friend?
But you can be damn sure they’ll catch that 5oz bottle of shampoo you’ve got.
BTW: your link is broken because you have a 9 at the beginning
I travel a lot for work. US Customs and the TSA are absolutely a sick joke. I could easily write a novella on the extremely poor training of TSA employees. I have a small permanent retainer (read: braces); about 25% of the time, that is considered suspicious, and I get an enhanced inspection. “Ya know, I could just open my mouth and show you what’s in there.”
The TSA always determines that my juggling balls are suspicious, so I never pack them in carry-on anymore. I have NEXUS, yet I always get an enhanced inspection on return to the US. Literally every other country to which I have flown just waves me through, even before I got Pre-Check/NEXUS/Global Entry.
My partner had her rigging knife in her backpack on a flight out and back. She was unpacking and found it in her backpack after the trip. Good catch, TSA.
And the absolute frosting on the TSA shit sandwich: one of my close friends owns a private security firm. His company was approached by the TSA to assist in security audits at a major international airport. He and his team were contracted to “smuggle” fake firearms through TSA checkpoints, any way they could. The TSA repeatedly failed to detect the firearms for each of five audits. The TSA division (district? regional?) manager, frustrated at his group’s 100% failure rate, determined that my friend’s company must have specialized criminal training, and everyone who worked that contract were put on the no-fly list. It took him about 18 months to unfuck that mess for him and his employees.
I had written a few more paragraphs about TSA hassles, but I think y’all get the picture.
The TSA division (district? regional?) manager, frustrated at his group’s 100% failure rate, determined that my friend’s company must have specialized criminal training, and everyone who worked that contract were put on the no-fly list.
What in the fuck?
Oh, throughout the whole thing, he and his employees were treated like garbage. He would get through security, go directly to the person’s office, and reassemble the pistol in front of the manager. And then my friend (or one of his employees) would get interrogated for hours on unrelated questions, like it was somehow my friend’s fault that the TSA failed their audits.
Damn I think this might somehow be worse than the Iowa county who had physical pen testers arrested: https://krebsonsecurity.com/2020/01/iowa-prosecutors-drop-charges-against-men-hired-to-test-their-security/
the only surprising thing in this story is that no one got their genitals full on cupped and brushed.
I’ve had 3 different TSA agents reach down the front of my pants and either full on grab my junk or very heavily brush the back of their hands over it (through underwear)
Juggling balls you say?
If my juggling of balls catches your fancy, you might also be interested to know that I also smoke meat, play the flute, and churn butter. 😆
Fresh butter on smoked salmon with live entertainment on a flight? What’s not to like?
TSA is not in a fun position.
They are literally dealing with “The Most Armed Nation … In The World.” /clarkson And that is not often given to them out loud as the reality of their working parameters. Statistically that gives them a magnified margin of error by sheer volume of gun owners in the USA to my mind.
That said I have been terrorized by some TSA operators and patted down in the Denver airport without being asked or given a chance to have privacy by a TSA in the middle of line.
So won’t you at least give the TSA a chance to go fuck themselves ?
I know this one… it’s because the TSA sucks and isn’t anything more than security theater.
What’s surreal is being in a security line that is so backed up that the TSA on duty decide to tell people to keep their shoes on, and they open up the old fashioned metal detector to supplement the body scanner just to get people through faster.
Straight up confirmation that none of what they do matters.
I’m pretty sure people who work for TSA are in it for the groping and harassment, catching something every once in a while is just a cover
