Ah, the dangerous liquids ban. We’re all so much safer because of it.
Reader Porter says he accidentally left his Swiss Army knife in his backpack as he went through the TSA check point, an all too common mistake.
Thankfully, the TSA agent spotted his package of pudding and confiscated it, missing the knife completely.
I was passing through Sacto airport security checkpoint. I sent my carry-on backpack through the Xray machine. The operator found something, and raised her hand for assistance. Another TSA person came over and pulled my bag out of the machine and commenced with a hand search. Inside he found a package of unopened Hunts Pudding Snacks in my lunch. He confiscated the pudding “it’s a liquid” and sent me on my way. Absurd, but forgettable. However later in the day I had a layover, and was going through my backpack looking for a pen and came across my Swiss Army Knife with a 4″ locking blade. I had been camping and had inadvertently left it in my backpack. I was stunned that the moron TSA agent had confiscated my pudding, but missed my knife.
I am left wondering if the X-ray person ordered the hand search because she saw my knife on the xray, but the hand searcher got thrown off his game by the delicious, and apparently dangerous pudding. If so the lack of communication between the Xrayer and hand searcher indicates a serious weak spot in their protocol.
After I discovered the knife, I took a cell phone shot of it in the airport bathroom, and a shot of it as I was LEAVING the secure “sterile” area of the airport.
Well, that’s depressing. Is pudding a liquid?
(Photo:Porter)
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Cory Doctorow: A Consumerist reader writes in with this chilling tale of TSA confiscation hijinx — crack anal-probers at the Sacramento airport stole the flyer’s pudding, but left him with his stabby stabby knife. I was passing through Sacto airport security checkpoint.
Just bring several 2oz pudding cups and recombine them once you’re past security. Or have the other members of your sleeper cell bring 2oz of pudding.
Hmm, or maybe bring a packet of instant pudding and make it after getting screened.
“So… thousands dead from terrorists with boxcutters vs. 1 dead, 10 injured by a guy with liquid nitro? You’re not helping your case.”
I don’t know about you Angiol, but if I were on a plane post 9-11 and some fool produced a box cutter, I don’t think he would have much luck convincing my fellow passengers and I to sit still and wait for the plane to crash into a building. With a bomb you wouldn’t get the chance to fight back.
@RvLeshrac: & @FLConsumer: It would be a tremendous benefit if you guys, with your background, could add a passage to that Wiki article that expresses your learned scepticism. I’ve heard it cited a couple times here, and suspect it’s one of those articles that suffers from a one-sided, quasi-factual, hysterical viewpoint.
TSA is very hit and miss. I had forgotten my lighter and a pocketknife in my purse when I started working at MSP airport. I discovered that for a week, at one security checkpoint, they both went unnoticed. Each day, different people doing the x-rays, it didn’t matter, they were even looking at it and either didn’t know what they were looking at, or just ignoring it.
But when I started going through a closer checkpoint on the other side of the airport, they immediately flipped out on me. By this point, I had forgotten what I was even doing “wrong.” They also like to occasionally take my purse aside and swap it for bomb materials, because I bring my digital camera and iPod with me, and they “like to be sure about electronics.”
City Pages has an interview this week with Bruce Schneier, the man who initially coined the phrase “security theater” back in 2003.
A doctor makes an honest mistake and can get sued. A dry cleaners looses a pair of pants, and ends up getting sued. Yet the TSA is immune. Perhaps if they could be personally liable they would do their jobs better?
Or maybe they would admit that most of this stuff is just to create true job security for themselves at our expense and quit.
^bump for all the previous work and effort
seriously…pudding? whiskey tango foxtrot???
That TSA was not interested in security matters.
He was hungwee!!
@Consumer-X:
When the goal of terrorists becomes simply destroying planes, then I would be more worried about bombs. Until then, weapons that allow them to kill other people *without blowing up the entire airplane* are more helpful to a would-be terrorist.
Here’s why I think so:
In the past (for what it’s worth), the primary goal of airplane hijackers has not been to blow up airplanes. It was either to return hostages safely for ransom, or to crash the planes into symbolic targets. Blowing up the plane in either case would undermine the primary goal.
Now that 9/11 happened, passengers may feel that they are just as likely to die whether they accept a hijacker’s demands or not. So in that case, if some crazy dude claims to have a bomb on a plane and will blow it up unless he can fly it … I think a likely scenario is that the passengers call his (potential) bluff. As may have happened on the United flight 93 or whatever that crashed in pennsylvania after passengers found out what had happened to the other flights.
TSA… what will we do with you? I fly just about every week. It always amazes me to see the things they do, the things they take, the things that sneak past them.
This doesn’t surprise me- not in the slightest. What scares me more is that Chicago O’ Hare is missing something like 4,000 security badges… 4,000!!!
The TSA website says no to pudding unless 3 oz or less. Who would be willing to loose their job over that? You give these guys a hard time, try using your brain. Lighters are permitted. Maybe the rules are dumb, but the people are like you and me, at least I hope like you, and value their jobs.
OK, so food is the big hazard? Apparently so, because I recently flew from San Diego to Boston on “Air Greyhound” (Southwest). Because it took a good part of the day, and we landed in four cities on the way but only got pretzels each time, I brought provisions – apples, a couple of bagels, some cheese. The apples were confiscated because I didn’t have a supermarket receipt to prove they didn’t threaten Med fly contamination (although the threat supposedly is bringing the flies INTO California, not out), but the bagel knife with the 8″ serrated blade (oops!) was fine for me to have with me. I guess they were hungry for fruit, not bread and cheese.
Not only that, but coming back I had two gallons of coffee syrup that had to be sampled by a gas chromatograph (and tasted!) before they could even be checked through – but I still had the knife!
ROSSMCD,
Prior to 9-11 I would have agreed with you. The passengers on flight 93 attacked the hijackers after learning that their plane was likely to suffer the same fate as the other hijacked planes on 9-11. Post 9-11, all airline passengers know that a hijacking is very likely a Jihadist suicide mission rather than a mere political or criminal event. I would not take the chance and trust a hijacker if I were on a hijacked plane. Would you?
TSA: Thousands Standing Around
@Consumer-X:
Once again we’re looking at the same premise and coming to different conclusions. Let me try to explain myself more clearly.
I wouldn’t trust hijackers either. Given the outcome of 9/11, who would? I think nobody.
That’s why I think that if hijackers were attempting to take over a plane, people would rush them no matter what threats or promises they made. Thus the hijackers would be forced to use any weapons at their disposal to try to secure the plane.
Scenario 1 – they claim to have a bomb, and will detonate it unless given control of the plane. The passengers rush them anyway. If the bomb is real and they do indeed detonate it and it destroys the plane – then the terrorists would have failed in their primary goal of crashing into some symbolic national or financial monument. If the bomb is fake or if the terrorists don’t explode it, they will probably be overcome by the mob of passengers.
Scenario 2- they have guns or knives and either take hostages or just directly threaten all passengers. The other passengers rush them, and there is a blood bath. If the passengers win, then the terrorists fail at their primary goal. On the other hand if the terrorists win, then they succeed.
So as I visualize these scenarios playing out, the only one that ends up with terrorists being able to crash a plane into some big building is #2. If crashing the planes into buildings is their ultimate goal – and not just destroying the planes themselves – then guns or knives would make success much more likely.
So if hijackers are serious about trying to do another big hit, I don’t think they’ll use bombs on planes. Although I don’t really think they’d use planes again at all. They’ll try some other tactic. Succeed or fail, after that we’ll have more TSA stepped up security somewhere else – on trains, elevators on skyscrapers, whatever. Once again responding to yesterday’s threats.
It’s quite interessting how TSA has so many mishaps when going through to security. I had a buddy who bought somme apple cider and passing the security gate they took it. Him being the stubborn guy, tried to argue about it, resulting in him missing his flight, losing his baggage for a few hours for inspection, and the worst part they took the apple cider which was, the shit!
Funny though, buddy behind him just bought a 8″knife, it was in a case, conceled in cardboard, duckedtape, and they let him through.
Another interessting thing, is that there could be a technology out there, either that im not aware of or that doesn’t exist yet, but that can get passed the xray’s; ex: a coat thin as alluminum paper that hides all evidence inside. Sure it’d be suspicious at first if this technology exists…but who knows the future capabilities if it we’re possible.
I think they saw the videos of the diet coke and mentos and got very… very scared. As they should be.
I just love this at the TSA site:
“lighters no longer pose a significant threat”
So…how exactly have lighters changed that suddenly make them insignificant exactly?
What? They never actually WERE a threat? Then why didn’t you just SAY that?
I have done the same thing actually. I was flying out of Pensencola, FL. I drove a car out there for my brother and was flying home. Not thinking when I came out there i had 2 knives in my backpack. On each side of the backpack there was like a mesh container, like you would store a waterbottle or something in. Well Oddly enough I was storing pens, highlighters, etc as I used them for school. Well I had a knife in each pocket, mixed in with the pens, so you really didn’t even see it, yet it was in plain view. Went through airport security and they only “found” one knife. They were like do you have any knifes in there? I said ohh crap, yes, here it is, pulled it out for them and showed them. It was a cheap like 5-10dollar knife, gave it to them and they took it and let me go on my way, didn’t say anything about the other knife which was a lot more expensive, but still a 4in blade.
I was like ohh well, that was great security.
i deal with those tsa morrons every single day ( i am airline pilot),i make a point to make fun of them every morning but they so stupid they don’t even get it. good think they waste their time searching grandma in the wheelchair and confiscating the milk from a one year old baby bottle.
tsa: Thousands Standing Around….
Last December I was flying out of Milwaukee. The x-ray screener called for a hand check of my backpack. Her associate held up my bag, looked at me like I was Osama himself, and told me that he was going to have to inspect the contents. He pulled out a 2lb brick of a 5 year old cheddar that I’d bought for my dad. Ever-so gently, he carried it to the blast area where he swabbed it down and gave it the “puff test”. Satisfied, he gave it back to me and said, “I think I know what this is.”
I don’t know what C4 smells like but I don’t think it smells like a ripe cheese. In Milwaukee. In Wisconsin. Moo.
@RISwampyankee:
Ever wonder why food seems to be the sticking point for screeners looking at X-ray’s of baggage?
Could it be because both food and some explosives both happen to be dense organic materials? Could it be because the scanners are designed exactly to identify dense organic materials that have the potential of being explosives?
(picture worth a thousand words)
[technology.newscientist.com]
(thousand words)
[en.wikipedia.org] [www.technologyreview.com]
Not to sully the general governmental hate-on that these threads tend to lean towards, but it seems to me that them swabbing/hand checking materials that show up on a scanner as even ‘explosive-like’ isn’t terribly incompetent.
You know, just saying…
Oh, and that’s not to say that I tolerate incompetent (the specific ones, not screeners in general) screening staff… Imagine trying to explain that your carry-on swabbed positive for explosives because it had been carrying explosives only a couple days prior (props to equipment sensitivity, btw) You would think that would have been easier considering I was in uniform, and hold much higher clearances then they do – but it definitely made for very touchy conversation.
Recently for work, I took my laptop with me on a flight. My flights got changed last minute due to weather (surprise) so I was flagged for the special security. When asked if there was anything sharp in the bag, I realized at the last minute that I had a screwdriver set in there, a supposedly banned item. Did he take it out? Nope.
A month later, my wife and I were flying, and we both had a container of eye drops. It really didn’t matter that it was in the tray, nor did they check out this open container; they just let it through.
At least it was only two containers of Visine and a screwdriver set. It could have been anything in the bottles and the edges of the screwdrivers could have been sharpened, but ok.
@RossMcD:
RossMcD, I agree with what you say, I just think that your assumption that terrorists’ goal to fly a plane into a symbolic target is only partially correct. The Bojinka plot and the Richard Reid shoe bomb plot proved that terrorists will gain great terror value from merely killing a bunch of people and shutting down air travel. Hitting a symbolic building is merely one method of achieving their goals.
@noguef1:
Right… with your grammar mistakes I highly doubt your a pilot.
Two gallons of coffee syrup, Andy? You must be a Rhode Islander!
@ZzFDKzZ:
Right… with your grammar mistakes I highly doubt your a pilot.
That should be you’re, as in the contraction of “you are.”
People who live in glass houses…
Technically, pudding is a Non-Newtonian Fluid — somewhere between a liquid and a solid, since it exhibits properties of both. Gels are also Non-Newtonian Fluids, and the TSA does specifically state that “liquids or gels” are verboten. So, they might be idiots, but they’re consistent idiots… at least when it comes to their definition of liquids or gels.
This isn’t the first anecdote of security folks missing a critical potential weapon while confiscating something inane. Some interesting psychology going on there, I’d wager.
Shame on all of you! I am a TSA officer and it is only the fault of the complacent, asleep American public that any of this goes on! You should be directing all your comments to your state representative or senator and making a way bigger stink about this than just sitting by complacently and sniggering!!!!! TSA does hire morons…I work with them daily. And I am administered by them daily. And your’re right, there are many missed items. But you come and try it. It isn’t easy at all and we fucntion without alot of things we need as well, not the least of which is competent management and help!! Nonetheless, we do catch substantial things and we are trying to keep your snotty asses from being blown out of the sky. Some of us actually do our job, are good at it and care. What we worry about is being sitting ducks because if we flag something suspicious, do you think that person is going to just sit there and let us take his/her bomb away nicely? (At least at the passenger checkpoints) Who goes up in somke first? Us!!! At least we are trying to do something to make a difference. If you really care about this become an activist and put your money where your mouth is! Petition congress to upgrade TSA and give us modern technology, up the qualifications for officers, weed out the incompetents and then talk to me about pudding. Do you think I like not using my common sense? But we don’t have time to mollycoddle ignorant pilots and passengers who think it is all a joke by personally testing and screening each and every item they carry. There is a ban on stuff? Don’t bring it!!!! And yes the Bojinka bomb did blow a hole in the plane and kill maybe one guy but only because it blew up while still on the ground.
When I was coming home from Orlando about a year ago with my then five year old son, I was in a huge rush to get packed and to the airport on time. Without thinking, I threw my toiletry bags into the suitcase I was going to use as a carry-on. Of course, I got stopped. The agent pulled out the first (much smaller) bag, and pulled out a bottle of hair conditioner – expensive stuff, so of course I protested. I think my protests threw off the agent, and he failed to notice that there was still a full bottle of perfume, shampoo, and facewash, as well as a bottle of water, still in the bag. Maybe it’s because my son and I are both blonde haired and blue eyed Americans – but what were they thinking?! So easy for them to miss anything as long as there is a distraction… and you could be on that flight. Geez.
This happened to me this morning. TSA missed a small pocket knife that I forgot to remove from my keychain. But they diligently confiscated my dangerous 6oz tub of Yogurt that I was going to eat on the plane.