The TSA is something that shouldn’t exist in its current form. They very often fail their audit checks and normalize invading your privacy to an extreme degree like body scanners and pat downs. If water bottles are considered potentially explosive then why dump them on a bin next to a line of people where they can go off? This is low grade security theater that inconveniences passengers at best.
It’s security theater through and through.
Apart from the obvious failings of these checks, think about what kind of damage a single backpack of explosives can do to a packed airport during holiday season. You can literally put a ton of explosives on one of those trolleys, roll it into the waiting area and kill 200 people easily. No security whatsoever involved.
Reality is, most security measures are designed to keep the illusion of control. Nothing more. Penetration testers show again and again that you can easily circumvent practically all barriers or measures.
The goal is not to stop the people in the queue being attacked, its to stop someone boarding a plane with the means to hijack it
They fail gloriously at at that too.
Whenever they get tested the red teams manage to smuggle in everything needed to hijiack a plane plus a kitchen sink.
The few times that terrorists tried to board planes, they made it through security and were caught by other passengers.
Yeah, and you don’t need the TSA for that. Just do as they already do: lock the cockpit.
They had to do something about the plague of people hijacking planes with bottles of water.
It’s basically the only type of jobs program that both sides of our broken government can agree on: petty nonsense that looks like it might do something useful, but really doesn’t, and only inconveniences the poors.
The main reason that rule still exists is to sell overpriced water. Otherwise they could just ask you to drink some of it to prove it’s water.
Some airports have no place to refill and have only hot water in the toilet sinks. It’s inhumane.
This happened to me after a lunch break going back into the court room for jury duty. Didn’t think about my soda until I got to the checkpoint, used to the TSA’s mentality so figured the rest of it was forfeit. She just tells me to take a drink to show it’s valid. Respect for people doing their job correctly, and using common sense.
According to the story I heard as to the origin of the “no liquids over X amount” rule, years ago there was a terrorist that tried to smuggle hydrogen peroxide and acetone - which can be used to rather easily synthesize triacetone triperoxide (TATP, a highly sensitive explosive) - onto a plane in plastic toiletry bottles. They got caught and foiled somehow, and then the TSA started restricting liquids on planes. This was in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, if I recall correctly.
And I happen to know, from a reliable source, of someone who accidentally made TATP in a rotary evaporator in an academic lab. So it seems plausible.
Not that the rule is actually effective prevention against similar attacks, nor that the TSA even knows what the reason is behind what they do at this point, haha. I just thought it was an interesting story.
hydrogen peroxide and acetone
So there are worse cleaning chemicals to mix than bleach and vinegar
At least they haven’t taken away our shoes. And is there a limit to the number of 3 Oz bottles you can carry?
You can bring as many as you can fit in a single (quart size I believe) ziplock back.
The main reason why it exists is to provide jobs. The number of people who work at the TSA at every airport in every state…no representative wants to cut those jobs.
I fucking hate that this is a thing. “We can’t stop doing this useless and/or detrimental thing, look at all the work it makes for other people to do!!!” Absolutely bonkers that it’s just a standard political argument.
Same thing with medical insurance. It shouldn’t exist but it pays a lot of people’s salaries.
“The government made 25% of my district unemployed, why didn’t I get reelected?”
Ask it from that side and you have your answer.
I mean if a state removed the TSA and spent the money on something else, surely they could use the money to create as many jobs as they removed but in an actual useful field.
Could we pay them to dig a ditch and fill it back in again? It’d be just as useful.
It just hasn’t had the right public messaging behind it. I can think of a few historically recent things that are security theater but have been successfully accepted by the public because of slogans, social engineering and authoritative messaging. TSA just needs their own marketing blitz.
To be fair a explosion in a on the side of a line not gonna kill anyone, now a explosion in the airplane windows, maybe?, i get their argument, not that’s a good argument
It’s actually stated on the TSA website that frozen liquids are permitted. https://www.tsa.gov/travel/security-screening/whatcanibring/items/ice
Notice the footnote on every TSA webpage that their officers can always change the rules on the spot if they feel like it. So it’s always a gamble.
This is what gets me the most. It’s totally arbitrary, every time it’s a chance for new rules. What you brought one way maybe a problem on your way home.
Special fuck you to the TSA agents at the Vegas airport, they’ve confiscated my lighter twice even though it’s allowed. Never had a problem at any other airport with them.
Pouring one out for my cordless Black and Decker electric screwdriver.
Used to travel with it because it was small and light and it worked well for racking network equipment.
It was a cheap piece of junk. But it did the job. Until one day TSA decided I couldnt bring it any more. It was under 7" but that wasn’t good enough.
Told me I could check it. It would cost more for me to check a bag than for me to replace it.
Still upset about it.
Big caveat
The final decision rests with the TSA officer on whether an item is allowed through the checkpoint.
I mean sure, but it theoretically stops people arguing and threatening to try and bring stuff they shouldn’t really be bringing through, as being able to point at that will end a lot of arguments… Equally though, it makes a lot of sense as otherwise you’d have “ah yes this bomb isn’t banned because I’ve switched out a molecule in the explosive for an analogue”
The longer they discuss the less it is allowed.
Yup, TSA is on the same level as McDonald’s. You’re arguing with a dipshit who hates you.
Do you think they get mad if I bring plasma
They tend not to care so much about “how safely the hazardous material is stored”
Just ask anyone who’s tried to smuggle on 5lbs of mercury…
Nah, that’s because five pounds would be about 6 fluid ounces of mercury and you’re only allowed 3 ounces of a fluid.
