Mmmmm love the smell of security theater in the morning
I think they are quite consistent, as a foreigner, when I travel to the US I get the random inspection every.single.time
/s
Try setting random seed to none
That’s it! I had it set to 4
Of course they don’t know how it got missed! If the knew how, they’d’ve been able to improve their 70+% miss rate
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 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)
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/
Juggling balls you say?
I’ve carried a set of leather wrapped juggling balls on flights off and on since the 90’s. They used to make every X-ray reader twitch out. They’re about the right size for bad items (explosives, grenades), and I have three, not just one.
Normally it would get a quick search, a moment of confusion, and then no worries.
Once when going through the old airport in Berlin, I got searched at the second checkpoint, they brought out the balls to me, so I started juggling them and did a routine. It was really quiet so I was the only passenger in sight. That was the only time I’ve performed in front of an audience who was carrying machine guns.
This kind of makes me want to take my Renegade pins in a carry-on to see what TSA makes of them.
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. 😆
Are you a Hobbit or something? Because I approve all those things.
Fresh butter on smoked salmon with live entertainment on a flight? What’s not to like?
He does it every single flight.
All of those things.An absolute pleasure to share a flight with.
American border is like prison border with the world being the prison. They are more concerned about people getting out of the prison than people getting in.
If you can’t keep track of your ammunition, you should not own a firearm.
If you can’t keep track of your guns, you should not own ammunition.
TSA screeners get paid less than $50,000 a year and have to deal with entitled assholes who argue with them all day. I’d do a half-assed job too.
Just a few months ago, my wife and I went on vacation, and she had my mushroom hunting knife with like a 4 or 5-inch blade on it in her purse. The purse went through scanners and everything and no one said a fucking thing. Didn’t realize we had the knife until we were on the plane in the air, and she went to get gum out.
Yet when I was bringing some fudge home for family, I got hassled on it being too much…
We got harassed because we brought a bag of goldfish for the kiddo. Dude actually dug through the bag.
It is a mix of “American tourists who are to stupid to consult government service pages about their destination” and “TSA is all about perceived security, but not real security”.
Isn’t TSA just a money-grab?
With no actual oversight, requirements, or sanctions, that’s just transfer of public money to some random wage-slaves and private subcontractors (like for the all-so-special equipment they must have, as well as tons of gloves and lube they consume daily).
Im sure AI could do racial profiling just as racially biased as them, and also fail at detecting any real threats. And Im sure I’ve seen some ‘cavity search’-like robots online that could be deployed.
Pro-tip: Keep your range bag and your travel bag SEPARATE. Problem solved!
I put a 5 inch blade in a bag I used for work that I totally forgot about, for 2 full years and flew all over the US without anyone calling me on it. I’m glad that TSA provides employment for so many people but they are in fact a joke
I would probably be fine with TSA as a jobs program, except I really don’t like being yelled at by power tripping agents just for taking my laptop out, or for leaving it in my bag. Because no airport is the same and they all seem to make things up when it comes to policy. To be fair most agents are pretty chill, but some out there definitely enjoy the power trip.
No serious entity can legitimately claim the arts don’t get funding when security theatre this entertaining exists.
There’s a higher chance Boeing will kill me than anything people bring on board.
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.
Yeah, wtf do they mean ‘they don’t know how?’.
The TSA is probably the only employer in America worse than Boeing when it comes to employees giving a shit about doing their jobs and actually doing them well.
Both organizations promote incompetent ass kissers over those who actually give a shit, and both orgs also have a massive culture of making up excuses for why something that was supposed to happen did not.
Oh right, both also have absurd amounts of paperwork that ‘ensures’ policy was followed, but seeing as everyone hates you if you actually try to keep up with it, most people just focus on a few main things and sign off on anything.
I mean “they don’t know how” doesn’t have to mean this is an exceptional case
They could just be ubiquitously incompetent and they don’t know how a lot of stuff happens
I mean it in the sense of:
Every job I’ve ever worked, if someone asks ‘how did this happen?’, that is a question that has an actual answer within usually 30 seconds, maximum 30 minutes.
I basically agree with you, I’m phrasing it as if I were some kind of competent person asking where a whole bunch of taxpayer money is going.
There are times when it takes longer, such as when Fukushima had a meltdown. The thirty-second answer only starts to explain how it happened, the thirty-minute one makes you start to realize that a good part of it is because people fucked up, and the full answer, which requires going over reports since the construction of the plant shows you just how comprehensive the fuck-ups were and why it was only a matter of time for something that catastrophic to happen.
But yes, usually these things can be figured out pretty quickly. It doesn’t take nuclear science to figure out why they can’t do their job.
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
fixed
I once lived and worked in a small store in rural Australia. When I left the job, I threw my box cutter in my backpack at the end of my shift without thinking.
They flew me back to the nearest city when I left, then from there I flew to Bali and back, then eventually I flew home. Every time I flew. I used that backpack as my carry on luggage. It was found when I landed after that final flight. I’d totally forgotten it was in there, and it had been scanned for all of those flights.
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.
Perhaps attach the banana more securely so it’s not hanging
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?
Bonus cat!
Aww, he is a good boy!
Thank you so much for sharing!
#JusticeForTriclor
I’ve accidentally brought my pocket knife through the TSA multiple times. But coffee? That that’s clearly a bomb let’s scan it.
I brought a used weed pipe, a used grinder, and a baggie of psilocybin powder through TSA by mistake.
Good times.
I brought a 3-inch credit card blade (acquired at a trade show, with some tech company logo on it) through the airport four consecutive times without even realizing it.
I found it while packing for another trip, and I decided to gut my overly-thick wallet and realized that I’d been carrying it around everywhere, including through courtrooms and other government buildings that X-ray everything I bring every time I pass through as a contractor.
So yeah, a knife inside my wallet went through about 50 X-ray machines at federal facilities completely undetected, and I unknowingly carried it through all sorts of places where it is extremely illegal to have a knife. They always scolded me though if I tried to bring anything made of glass, like a coke bottle or something, because it could be used as a weapon.
Pictured:
I flew across country and back twice with a pack of super sharp Olfa snap off replacement blades that if forgotten were tucked into the bottom of my laptop bag.
