In other news the TSA said "They wanted to be seen by passengers as making them saferer".

Useless.

The whole TSA thing is a fiasco, and I do not buy it that they confiscated the following which are on display at the CLE airport;

Dynamite, Hand Grenade, Nun Chucks, and a Ninja Star unless Rambo and Bruce Lee was trying to get on...

This is just getting hillarious. They can't catch fake bombs they put through themselves to test themselves, but they find a battery pack and empty water bottle and they tell everyone how much safer they are.

That's like the trash man taking your neighbors rubbish and putting out a PSA saying that he made your neighborhood safer.

Chuck Norris confiscated the TSA.

I would say that maybe they were afraid that while the individual thing wasn't harmful, if combined with another item, which may seem innocuous by another passenger, it could be dangerous. Remember the end of Superman III?

He should have hidden it in a hollowed out book. Like this guy: [www.tsa.gov]

@Git Em SteveDave is a poor substitute for LindsayJoy:

oh shit, is Zod back?

wait... wrong movie.

OH COME ON!!!

I am seriously so angry at this that I can't form a sentence.

The part that really ticks me off is that it looks like a SIGG bottle, which is made of aluminum. I travel with my SIGG bottle all the time, and get smug Prius-like self-congratulatory feelings about how I'm not contributing to the landfills or the bank accounts of the bottled water industry. And now some dumbass TSA cowboy is going to dimly recall seeing this picture and is going to confiscate my cute happy Swedish water bottle because I might be the evil midnight bomber what bombs at midnight.

Idiocracy indeed.

I would much prefer the Junior TSA Kid Officers to be screening me:

[www.futuregringo.com]

@Eldritch:
Looks like you did OK to me. :)

One of the first questions people should ask candidates is "what do you think about security theater?"

[en.wikipedia.org]

At this point I'd prefer we just flush the toilet and go back to the pre-1965 days of airline travel, with no screening whatsoever. No terrorist will have a chance with a metal cockpit door and some of the law-abiding passengers carrying random knives, tasers, and handguns. The cockpit door stays LOCKED during flight, no FA's going in to serve coffee. There can be a metal bin to pass stuff through for that kind of thing.

And we can go ahead and put in some molecule detectors on the gateway just to make sure there's no Unabombers getting on the plane. But no taking peoples water and baby food away... those days are over.

Maybe I ought to run for Senate?

I hate you, TSA. So, so much.

Unbelieveable. Not only do they incorrectly assume that other passengers would feel insecure because of someone's battery pack; they are basing actual security policy on a potential incorrect assumption.

"Someone might have been mistakenly frightened by this completely harmless thing, so we confiscated it. See what a great job we're doing keeping you safe? All praise be to the system!"

Dear Congress & the next-elected President:
Please disband this ridiculous, ineffective, and useless organization before it causes any more harm. Stop wasting our money on this nonsense.

The world is once again safe from b-movie plots.

@FangDoc
It's swiss not swedish (the bottle) [www.sigg.ch]

I salute you TSA! So much for truth in obviousness. Ron Paul is crazy, and the TSA is just sane.

@RodAox: You never know, Jerry Lewis just got popped for trying to bring a gun onto a plane in his luggage. [www.reuters.com]

Did anybody actually look at his "battery pack"?
It looks like a damn bomb!
How would you describe an improvised pipe bomb? A bunch of batteries taped together, and a sealed metal container to generate shrapnel? How bout it he includes an electronic device to act as timer wired into the whole thing?

This is the kind of thing they should be stopping, not my toothpase.

@megafly:
This IS the kind of thing they should be stopping, inspecting, and then letting go through.

This is NOT the kind of thing they should be stopping, confiscating, and then touting how great they are for stopping a not-bomb that posed no threat to anyone's safety.

Any job where you're looking for something...searching for a signal, searching for evidence, searching for faulty or contaminated products...you don't go blowing your own horn every time you focus on something suspicious and then find that it was really nothing. Well, any job except the TSA...the only place bullshit like that isn't laughed into silence.

MotherFUCK reading that TSA site is making me angry.

"3-1-1 Gains International Acceptance"
[www.tsa.gov]

Oh yeah, that must be because it is an effective policy which actually makes people safer, right? It couldn't have anything to do with the fact that so many international flights are to and from the US, and that therefore other countries HAVE to comply with bullshit American rules...and that it's easiest to just make EVERYONE go through the same screening rather than set up a separate screened area for travelers to the US.

God, what will it take for other countries to stop putting up with our security theater bullcrap?

Ah well, in another couple decades we probably won't have the clout to make people do things our way.

Think my pinpointer would make it thru these days? ( [img129.imageshack.us] )

Well in 2003 I flew to england with it in my carryon bag. It made it thru the scanners at Kansas city Airport, but I was randomly selected for a carryon search right before we boarded in Minneapolis. Two guys went thru it & one held it up for the other guy to see. I had to walk up & point out the ad for it (I had cut out of a magazine that says what it is & shows a pic of it) that I had taped to the pinpointer just in case. It worked & they let me thru.

Note: my buddy I was traveling with had accidentally left a longrifle bullet in his carryon bag & the x-ray screeners missed it.

I just flew last week and mistakenly left my large swiss army knife in my carry on. Oh and I also had the little one on my keys in the same bag. Both sailed through the rigorous security check with zero problems.
Thanks TSA!