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.
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
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?
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 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:
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.
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.
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/
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. 😆
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.
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
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.
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.
It’s also a slush fund pork-barrel for screening device manufacturers! (alwayshasbeen.meme)
you mean the devices that were stupid and no one wanted to buy because they were mostly useless, until suddenly 9/11 and the investors in the company Republicans demanded they be installed in every airport and bus station?
