[edm0nd]

Correct. In the US, the TSA is just a government jobs program for the lowly skilled or unskilled. It's all security theater.

TSA Chief Out After Agents Fail 95 Percent of Airport Breach Tests

"In one case, an alarm sounded, but even during a pat-down, the screening officer failed to detect a fake plastic explosive taped to an undercover agent's back. In all, so-called "Red Teams" of Homeland Security agents posing as passengers were able get weapons past TSA agents in 67 out of 70 tests — a 95 percent failure rate, according to agency officials."

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/investigation-breaches-...

[fc417fc802]

I find it interesting to contrast this with my experience flying out of China. I was taken to a private room and shown the digital colored X-ray of my bag on which a box had been drawn around an empty lighter, I was asked to remove it myself and hand it over, and I went on my way. All in under 5 minutes, no pat down, no fuss, and no one physically rifled through my belongings. (Granted I was a tourist so that might well not be typical.)

I'm not sure what their success rate is when tested by professionals but the experience definitely left me wondering WTF the deal with the TSA is.

[Waterluvian]

This sounds like my experiences in Toronto. It’s less adversarial than the experiences I've had in the U.S.

My experiences were basically a form of, “Hey we saw something that caught our attention and might be an issue. Let's work through addressing this."

One case it was a handful of 3.5" galvanized nails. "Whoops. Okay, so, this bag used to be my makeshift toolbag. My other one ripped and I had to get one last minute--" "No problem. Can you remove them? You can either surrender them to us or we can get them mailed back to you, but I'm guessing it's not worth it..." I was so defensive because to me it looked bad but they weren't actually after me in the way I thought they'd be.

The second time was that I had an "Arduino Starter Kit" full of bundled up wires and random chips and such. Once they saw the box they didn't even ask me to un-shrinkwrap it, and unlike the nails, didn't re-x-ray the bag.

Both times they rotated their screen and pointed to the box framing the item in question on the colourized x-ray.

[2muchcoffeeman]

Once at a security checkpoint to a museum in Shanghai, they saw my water bottle, and then told me to take it out and drink from it.

[woolion]

Flying back from Beijing, I had bought a lot of books. I filled my bags with it, so they were very heavy. When the agent came to try to check my backpack, he casually grabbed it, and fell on the conveyor belt trying to lift it. He looked at me with shock. "I'm done", I thought. He opened the bag, and saw a box of zongzi the university gave me, on top of the books. He instantly became radiant, gave me a pat on the back, and just indicated the way.

[Zigurd]

Flying out of HK after visiting SZ, I was quietly and quickly surrounded by men with guns after my bag was xrayed. I like nice clothes, especially neatly laundered and pressed shirts. I had an Altoids tin with a few brass collar stays for those shirts. Brass. With a pointy end.

[Nihilartikel]

Interestingly, I had the exact same experience leaving Shanghai - I had picked up some nifty lighters at the wholesale markets. They took me to the room, had me take them out, and I was lucky enough to be able to hand them off to a friend who was staying. No fuss, waiting, or intimidation. They just took care of my honest mistake.

[Cthulhu_]

I flew into the UK once with a small nerf pistol. Going in, no problem. Going out I was asked to remove it, lol.

[subroutine]

I was flying out of Chicago and I had a big metal bolt that was hollowed out to store pills inside. They showed me the scanned image, and you could see everything clear as day - steel bolt, hollow core, Xanax.

[masfuerte]

I had exactly the same experience in 2008, the year of the Beijing olympics. It seemed futuristic then and I can only assume their technology is even better now.

[wakawaka28]

A lighter is very different from a weapon. I'm sure they can see everything they need to see with X-rays. Do you think they find a white guy flying out of China to be a likely terrorist? (I'm assuming you are white or asian.)

I've never had a bad experience with TSA but I hate taking off my shoes and all. I really question the value of those security measures.

[JasonADrury]

I routinely conceal large bottles of liquids on my person while going through airport security. I've probably gone through airport security in various places with a 1.5L bottle of water more than a hundred times now. Haven't been caught once, although of course the US-style scanners could presumably defeat this.

Same with hot sauces, perfume and the occasional bottles of wine. I really don't like to travel with a checked-in luggage, so this is a frequent problem.

Luckily I own lots of Rick Owens clothes with large hidden pockets.

[grepfru_it]

A plastic water bottle isn’t triggering a tsa pre check metal detector. I’m totally doing this next trip

[jasonephraim]

As for me, my our bags have been taken off the line to be inspected the last 3 times someone in my family forgot large toothpaste tubes in their carry on.

[graemep]

its very much about looks. Uk airports (used to?) seize aftershave in bottles that are the shape of grenades. Its very obvious what they are (made of glass, branded, spray out aftershave) but they are banned nonetheless.

[eigencoder]

Nice! I always bring razor blades (they're hard to buy on-location) and I've never had them taken.

[CGMthrowaway]

Where do you put the water bottle?

[bjackman]

Yeah I also regularly bring a razorblade (for my old fashioned safety razor). I have got caught once but it's worth the risk of wasting a few minutes.

If this was really about security, it would be set up so that just deliberately breaking the rules for the sake of minor convenience actually had some consequences.

If I wanted to blow up a plane with liquid explosives I would just... Try a few times. If you get caught, throw the bottle away, get on the plane, and try again next week.

[unclad5968]

> In the US, the TSA is just a government jobs program for the lowly skilled or unskilled. It's all security theater.

This matches my experience. I recently flew out of a small airport that flies 2 fairchild metro 23 turboprop planes up to 9 passengers. There were four TSA agents to check the 5 of us that were flying.

[bruce511]

You gotta love the TSA. They serve no real purpose, but its a monster too big to kill, staffed by people who desperately cling to the notion they're doing something important.

They don't stop hijackings (locking the cockpit door does that), they don't stop bombings (there are much better targets for that, which don't involve killing the bomber), they don't stop weapons (lots of airports outside the US have simple metal detectors for that.)

They do however cost the govt a lot of money, keep a lot of expensive-machine-makers, and in business, improve shampoo sales at destinations, waste a lot of passenger time and so on.

So... what's not to love?

[burner420042]

None the less, this is still effectively an entrance checkpoint to a 'secure area' aka the large airport you're flying to, as you've now already gone through security.

[morpheuskafka]

> Correct. In the US, the TSA is just a government jobs program for the lowly skilled or unskilled.

This is oft repeated, but as a federal job, the bar is at least slightly higher than those typical AlliedUniversal/Andy Frain/Etc mall cop guards you see all over the place. I have no doubt that many are incompetent, but I think it is a big unfair that it gets singled out as a "jobs program" given that the bar is on the floor industrywide for security.

An interesting comparison would be FPS, which is the agency that does security checks for federal buildings, also under DHS same as TSA. They are armed despite many of them having an indoor only role (a few do patrol larger campuses outdoors). Thus, I suspect the requirements are somewhat higher. They are generally more thorough in my experience, except for one time where they did not notice one of my shoes got stuck and didn't go through the X ray, which is funny because they insist on all dress shoes being scanned as they have a tiny metal bar inside. The same shoes go through TSA just fine.

[labcomputer]

> This is oft repeated, but as a federal job, the bar is at least slightly higher than those typical AlliedUniversal/Andy Frain/Etc mall cop guards you see all over the place.

Cool. So the TSA sucks up all the people slightly overqualified to be mall cops, which prevents them from outcompeting all the barely qualified people for those roles. And thus the barely qualified can have a job as a mall cop.

So, sounds exactly like a jobs program.

[mrguyorama]

It is a government agency spun up to use way more bodies and funds to do the same thing that was fairly effectively being done by private industry, has no penalty for being genuinely worse, is not popular, and is repeatedly used to funnel cash to connected people, groups and companies.

FDR himself would be embarrassed about this jobs program. Digging holes and refilling them would be more productive to our country.

>An interesting comparison would be FPS, which is the agency that does security checks for federal buildings, also under DHS same as TSA

This is not an interesting comparison. DHS didn't exist until recently either, and should be abolished. The private security we had before was much cheaper and not less effective. TSA would not have prevented 9/11

The point of all of the DHS was to oppress internal dissent internally. What do you think was Bush's plans if they didn't get served an opportunity to go screw around in the middle east? His administration was pushing using Predator drones domestically in the mid-2000s.

Read "Big brother" by Corey Doctorow, which laid this all out in plain english (to literal children no less) 20 years ago. It's free.

[BigTTYGothGF]

> as a federal job

Aren't they all contractors?

[pavel_lishin]

> They are armed despite many of them having an indoor only role

Are the outdoors more dangerous?

[bartread]

I don’t think it’s just the TSA tbh.

A couple of years before the pandemic I managed to make it all the way from London Heathrow to Auckland, New Zealand, passing through Dubai and Brisbane on the way, with one of those USB rechargeable plasma lighters and a Gerber multitool in my hand luggage.

Completely unintentional, of course, but due to #reasons I had packed in some haste and made the mistake of not completely unpacking my day sack, which I also used to carry my laptop for work, first.

I stayed in Auckland a couple of days and the items were eventually picked up on a scan before my flight to Queenstown. The guy was very nice about it: he had to confiscate the lighter, but he let me post the Multitool to my hotel in Queenstown.

A couple of years ago I did something similar flying out of Stansted but, that time, it was picked up at the airport and, again, I was able to get the items posted back to my home address.

Nowadays I always completely empty all compartments of all bags I’m taking before repacking, even when I’m in a hurry.

[ghaff]

I no longer keep multitools in random bags that I sometimes also use for travel. I figure it's just a matter of time before I forget it's there when I'm packing in a hurry. (I don't travel as much any longer but still.)

[PeterStuer]

"In the US, the TSA is just a government jobs program for the lowly skilled or unskilled. It's all security theater."

Over here, it's G4S pork barrel contracts.

[lostlogin]

> the US, the TSA is just a government jobs program for the lowly skilled or unskilled.

I thought that was the US military?

[thinkingtoilet]

I don't necessarily agree with the OP, but a lot of TSA is ex-military.

[askl]

I thought that was the US police force?

[ascagnel_]

I'd believe that. I was in a situation where a bag started smoking _in the security checkpoint_ (it was a camera battery failing), and the TSA agents all abandoned the checkpoint. As a result, the FAA issued a full ground stop and had re-screen every passenger in the airport.

[vablings]

TSA Is not great, I have been groped by TSA twice, I have never been pat down by any European airport staff

[schaefer]

> It's all security theater.

It’s so much worse than that. Because the department of homeland security was formed in the panic following 911, many of the laws meant to protect our civil liberties (which have existed decades/centuries before the DHS was formed) haven’t been amended to explicitly apply to DHS staff as well.

So what ICE is doing right now could only happen with the loopholes that apply only to DHS staff.

So if not for the security theater of the TSA, Stephan Miller might not have had a mechanism to get the ball rolling on his murder squad that is ICE.

[CGMthrowaway]

Can you be more specific? I have no idea what you're talking about re loopholes, DHS staff exclusions, etc.

[dboreham]

TSA is much more skilled than the security people employed by the airlines that proceeded them.

[ec109685]

Any large organization is going to have some terrible employees.

[aiisjustanif]

While still theatre to a degree, that was 11 years ago.

[kyralis]

Do you have evidence that anything has changed?