TSA Pours Out Coffee, Ignores Boxcutter

by Justin Glow on

Remember the pudding incident? Another BoingBoing reader had a similar experience — this time, Shannon Larratt‘s girlfriend forgot she had a boxcutter in her purse, but the TSA didn’t notice/care. They were more interested in throwing away the cup of coffee she had just purchased at the terminal cafe.

What’s scary is this probably happens pretty regularly, but not everyone thinks to sneak off to the airplane bathroom and snap a photo of the incriminating device. One commenter writes,

“I’ve done the same thing a half dozen times. I use my mess bag both for biking and travel, and I’ve at times forgotten to thoroughly de-terrorize it. I’ve been let on planes with an assortment of knives, bike tools and folding tools, no problems.”

What I’d like to know is if a passenger or flight attendant somehow finds out that there’s a boxcutter on the plane, whose fault is it? The person who accidentally forgot it was in their purse, or the TSA official who didn’t notice it?

Travel Lessons We Can Learn From Summer 2007

by Catherine Bodry on

Christopher Elliott took a couple of polls and determined that travel this summer wasn’t as bad as it seemed. 54 percent of those polled even said their summer travels had been “average.” You wouldn’t think so just by reading Gadling, let alone any other travel news.

But, Elliott concedes, that doesn’t mean there haven’t been a few rough patches. Flight delays, horrible customer service, an overburdened passport office and high fuel prices have all but made even the most enthusiastic travelers yell “uncle.”

So, what can we learn from all these? Elliott draws some lessons:


1. Apply for your passport early.

The massive backlog at the passport office continues to worsen. Since the U.S. government began requiring air travelers to Canada or Mexico to have a passport, thousands of vacations were delayed or canceled due to delayed delivery. And in 2008 all overland travelers will need a passport, which will no doubt create an even larger stack of paperwork. “Express” service has been lengthened, and what used to take 6 weeks now can take upwards of 3 months. Mine expires in June 2008 and I’ve got to get on it. However, that passport crunch might be over….

2. Air travel is actually worse than reported.

Sure, airfares are (sorta) low and there’s a decent safety record, but who cares about that when your flight’s been canceled? Not only is this possibly the worst summer ever for air travel, but it’s shaping up to be the worst year. We’ve certainly had a lot to say about it. Like here. And here. And there’s this story. And blogger Leif is on a one-man rampage against Northwest.

3. Europe sucks.

Well, Elliott is a lot classier than I, and didn’t actually use the term “suck.” That’s all me. But if you traveled in Europe this summer, you might have had a sucky time. The dollar was at an all-time high low against the Euro (for 120 days, mind you!), luggage was lost like socks in a dryer, and Heathrow was more politely described by another blogger here at Gadling as “shabby and slow” (read: sucky). However, I have a hard time imagining that Europe wouldn’t be worth all the hassle. Even with the Eurotrash.

4. Mind the gap.

It’s as if Hurricane Katrina didn’t teach us one thing about aging infrastructure. After Minneapolis’s I35W bridge collapsed, we all paid more attention to the state of bridges and highways in the U.S. But will that save lives? The Transportation Department recorded an all-time low in traffic fatalities in 2006, and 2007 is following suit. Let’s hope the bridges continue to hold out.

5. TSA really sucks.

Again, we’ve had nothing but awful news to report here on the state of airport security. From laughable errors to scary incompetence, airport security has gotten a lot of flack this summer. And it’ll probably get more; according to Elliott, the new “Secure Flight” initiative threatens to take even more of our civil liberties away, even though it claims to protect travelers’ privacy. At least there are products out there to help us have fun with TSA.


Planning a trip? Check out our Travel Guides.

6. High fuel prices won’t stop us from taking our hard-earned vacations.

8 in 10 travelers complained about gas prices, but in general more people were taking road trips (perhaps because their flights were canceled? Just a thought). I know high fuel prices didn’t keep me from driving the 2500 miles from Seattle to Seward — but the prices also gave me something to complain about all the way through Canada. But mercifully, gas prices dropped a bit in June.

7. If your airline blames the weather, they’re probably lying.

How many times can you use the same excuse? Can’t the weather be filed away under “ancient clichés” with dog-eaten homework and it’s-not-you-it’s-me excuses?

It’s nearly impossible to disprove a weather excuse, and by blaming an “act of God,” the airlines get out of taking responsibility for a delayed or canceled flight. I predict more bad weather on the horizon for air travel.

%Poll-2859%

TSA steals traveler’s pudding, leaves him armed with knife

by Justin Glow on

I purposely copied the title of this post directly from BoingBoing because it’s funny and worth repeating. Just read it: “TSA steals traveler’s pudding, leaves him armed with knife.” Seriously? Take a man’s pudding away, but let him keep the knife. That pudding, after all, might have been explosive. Here’s what went down:

“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.”

It’s not that I think the TSA is doing a horrible job (or do I?) — everyone makes mistakes and misses things — but we’re talking about pudding here. True, it is a liquid (right?), and I understand that….but if you’re going to inconvenience a passenger enough to take his snacpac away, the least you can do is properly search his entire bag for items that could truly be a threat to flight security.

Pudding…

Airport Security: Once You Go Through, There’s No Turning Back

by Justin Glow on

On Friday, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decided that once a passenger places an item on the x-ray machine’s conveyor belt, or walks through a metal detector, they can not refuse further searching.

According to Christopher Elliot, “The decision involved a Hawaii airline passenger, Daniel Kuualoha Aukai, who was arrested for crystal methamphetamine possession before boarding a scheduled flight to Kona from Honolulu in 2003.”

Mr. Aukai was flagged for not having identification and pulled aside for subsequent searching. He then claimed he was late for his flight (which was true) and left the designated search area bound for the gate. He was stopped, and forced into a search which revealed drug paraphernalia.

In this situation, I think the court’s decision is correct. If you’ve been pulled aside for whatever reason, you can’t just get up and walk out. If you could, the search would be useless, as all those who did not have anything illegal on them would comply, while anyone carrying something illegal would simply walk away. This ruling needs to exist for the searches to do any good.

How Would You Hijack an Airplane?

by Jonathon Morgan on

You know how in movies the bad guys always come up with a nearly air-tight plot to destory America, mankind, or whatever — only to be thwarted in the final hour by death-defying heroics?

Bruce Schneier, author of the Schneier on Security blog, things there’s some similarities between those seemingly plausible plans for destruction, and the ongoing battle between would-be terrorists and the TSA: We screened for guns and bombs, so the terrorists used box cutters. We took away box cutters and small knives, so they hid explosives in their shoes. We started screening shoes, so they planned to use liquids…

As such, he’s started a contest: invent your own terrorist hijacking plot.

Here’s the idea: invent a terrorist plot to hijack or blow up an airplane with a commonly carried item as a key component. The component should be so critical to the plot that the TSA will have no choice but to ban the item once the plot is uncovered. I want to see a plot horrific and ridiculous, but just plausible enough to take seriously.

Think you have what it takes to invent something so terrifying — yet plausible — that the TSA would be forced to ban wristwatches? Zippers over three inches long?

Give it a shot in the comments section of this post on Schneier’s blog.

[via BoingBoing]