Update: TSA Still Sucks

By
Omri Ceren
– March 29, 2007Posted in: Airline Security

We don’t have any larger post to throw this into, but honestly – they just suck:

Although my quart-size Ziploc bag holding containers sized 3 ounces or smaller has slid through airport security unquestioned everywhere from LAX to LGA, Miami, Montego Bay, Moscow, Newark, JFK, and Nice within the past few months, when I put it through the X-Ray machine at PBI yesterday, the TSA worker stopped me. “Why have you got so much stuff in here?” she asked. Now, when a TSA worker asks a dumb question, you can’t risk sounding impertinent by saying something like, “TSA rules say there’s no limit to the number of containers you put in your quart-size Ziploc bag, as long as they’re each 3 ounces or smaller.” So instead I pointed to my kids and said, “That stuff is for three people.” The TSA worker let me through . . . after throwing out the few mouthfuls of water in my 3-year-old’s sippy cup.

One 6-ounce bottle of shampoo bad, but two 3-ounce bottles of the same shampoo OK. Because you could never, ever just mix them once you get through security (as if the regulation made any sense in the first place…)

It’s not just that a couple lines of computer code can get any terrorist on any flight in the US, probably with a weapon. It’s not even that the entire TSA redundancy scheme seems specifically designed to make us less safe.

It’s that in the process of not protecting us and making us less safe, they also implement inconceivably stupid regulations to harass and inconvenience travelers.

References:
* Stupid TSA Tricks
* Airport Security in This Country is a Bad Joke [MR]
* Q: Could Airport Security Suck Worse? [MR]

Previously:
* TSA Web Site Hacked and Hijacked. Of Course It Was.
* Are These Union Jobs?
* Pelosi To Take Stance On The Side Of Airline Imams?

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