Cheese it, it's the TSA

Well, now I really am afraid for when Snow Country decides to escape to WV on Friday for a biology trek down the Ohio River.  She is on some sort of watch list as an ecoterrorist (which she isn’t!) because she flew while wearing a Peace on Earth T-shirt.  She tries to get to the airport two hours early in case she is needed to sit in a room with her pants off link.

But now there is a watch out for terrorists doing “dry runs” to test whether the TSA are alert enough to catch bombs. There is a leaked bulletin described on CNN that is very scary- if you are from a dairy state.  The bulletin is titled "Incidents at U.S. Airports May Suggest Possible Pre-Attack Probing."   Is this the latest effort to scare us, or should we pay a little more attention to what is going on when we travel.  Join me for a discussion of the latest in TSA below the fold, with a funny poll on taking the wrong stuff on the airlines and its consequences.

Apparently, the terrorists are toting cheese and clay, possibly to see if the TSA is watching for it.  link  Yes there have been suspicious moments like these….

a case from June in which a passenger in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, had a carry-on bag with items resembling IED components, such as a wire coil wrapped around a possible initiator, an electrical switch, batteries, three tubes and two blocks of cheese.

in November, a passenger in Houston, Texas, checked luggage that contained a plastic bag with a 9-volt battery, wires, a block of brown clay-like minerals and pipes.

Earlier this month in San Diego, California, a passenger checked a bag containing two ice packs covered in duct tape. The ice packs had clay in them instead of the normal blue gel.

last September, a couple in Baltimore, Maryland, checked a plastic bag with a block of processed cheese taped to another plastic bag containing a cell phone charger.

Well the cheese can be explained, coming from Wisconsin.  And, there are many people who carry gadgets and inventions with them on planes, not wanting to check them.  This could have been a salesman on his way to a convention with stuff for the booth.  

Imagine duct taped cheese and a cell phone recharger.  In plastic bags.  I carry lots of crap around in my luggage after conferences, including plenty of batteries, wires, rechargers and ever, god forbid, cheese.  I won a NY cheese basket at a conference once.  Those NY farmers make some nice cheese.

Or imagine this one:  

An electronic bagpipe packed in a length of PVC pipe looked so much like a bomb on an X-ray machine screening baggage that officials evacuated Portland International Jetport for more than an hour Tuesday morning.

TSA had never seen an electronic bagpipe before- well the regular ones scare me- I shudder to consider them electronic.  It probably did look suspicious.  

In another incident, Los Angelus Terminal 1 was evacuated earlier this year after a “prohibited item” was found in checked luggage.  It was a pipe salesman, carrying pipes in his luggage.  

But they are also mssing a few intentional fake bombs like this one.

In one test, TSA inspectors hid the components of a fake bomb in carry-on luggage that also contained a bottle of water. Passengers are prohibited from carrying containers holding more than three ounces of liquids, gels or aerosols through airport checkpoints.
The screeners at Albany International confiscated the water bottle but missed the bomb. In all, the inspectors slipped four banned items through the main checkpoint during the test, sources said.

Seems like TSA could be a little more concerned about what happens when the flights stop and they leave for home.  In Phoenix’s Sky Harbor Airport, when TSA leaves, a private company takes over security.  The assumption is, if you have an ID you are safe to bring stuff through security without any inspection.  Luggage, newspapers, cleaning carts.  And as we all know, you can forge a badge pretty easily or swap with someone who looks like you.  TSA said it was the city's problem to secure the airport after hours.  

What sorts of things could airline employees be smuggling onto plans?  Well, in Orlando it was guns.  And if you can smuggle dozens of guns, maybe you could smuggle some really dangerous stuff.  

"When we highlight the fact that you can smuggle guns, we're also saying you can smuggle bombs, you can smuggle chemical weapons. If we don't search people in the backs of airports, we are totally exposed," Slepian tells CBS News.

The agency was criticized last week after law enforcement officials made four arrests in connection with a drug-smuggling ring that bypassed Orlando airport security to send guns and drugs to Puerto Rico.

Back in January, with hidden cameras, CBS News revealed a gaping hole in airport security, how unlike passengers, pilots and flight attendants, some 700,000 airport workers with ID badges are allowed to completely bypass airport screening areas at virtually all our nation's 452 commercial airlines.

link

And the USA Today points out that all the regular travelers like ourselves are part of the problem- we aren’t learning to pack right and safe.  

In 2006, the TSA screened 700 million passengers and intercepted 13.7 million knives, lighters, filled bottles and other potentially dangerous items. That's 37,500 items a day.
"It slows down screening," says Greg Meyer, a spokesman for Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport in Florida. "Every time, it has to be explained to the passenger why" something is barred from airplane cabins.
Travelers are sometimes slow to adapt to new security rules.
When the TSA banned lighters from airplane cabins in April 2005 following a congressional mandate, the agency thought passengers would stop bringing lighters through checkpoints. They didn't.
The lighter ban resulted in a quadrupling of the amount of hazardous material intercepted at U.S. checkpoints. Hazardous materials are stored at secure sites off airport property until a contractor picks them up.

 
And liquor is a problem too.

Good news- starting in August you can start bringing cigarette lighters onto planes again-they had been banned the last two years.  But they were taking so much time to confiscate, and causing so much problem for disposal, they are now allowed back on.  And if you have a baby on board, you can bring  breast milk in 3 oz containers.  

The conundrum, is being cautious enough to catch the obvious holes that anyone can walk right through, like when TSA goes home at night and the City hires a lower cost service to run security.  And, not spending all your time taking candy from babies and wrinkle creams from old ladies. I admit- I forget I have a bottle of water or a can of diet cola beverage in my luggage.   And I am a little pissed to stand there and swill it down before getting on the plane.  But most of the screeners are trying to do their jobs.  For some that job is truly a mission, which can lead to getting stuck in the slow line.  But then, they do catch quite a bit of stuff.  

Just watch where you put your cheese and PVC pipes on your way to Yearly Kos.