"Who would have thought of posting pictures of weapons and dogs?”
November 30, 2016 4:03 PM   Subscribe

 
There were two doggos on my flight this morning. It was highly exciting.
posted by grobstein at 4:06 PM on November 30, 2016 [4 favorites]


There should also be an Instagram for the DHS IG red teams that routinely sneak guns, knives, and mock explosives past TSA screeners.
posted by grobstein at 4:08 PM on November 30, 2016 [9 favorites]


I'd rather not ever get stabbed but if it turns out that it has to happen, I hope it's with an Eiffel Tower knife.
posted by turbid dahlia at 4:14 PM on November 30, 2016 [4 favorites]


Or a knife covered in enchilada so that when it punctures my stomach I can go "mmm".
posted by turbid dahlia at 4:16 PM on November 30, 2016 [1 favorite]


Previously. (Linked Instagram is broken now though).
posted by Slinga at 4:17 PM on November 30, 2016


The @asktsa Twitter is fun too - they highlight some of their asks on the Instagram account. At first I thought, I would never take any of those things in a carry-on, but then I thought, well, if I was transporting a pie, I sure wouldn't check it!


It's kind of amazing how many things you CAN carry on, when you think about it.
posted by chainsofreedom at 4:22 PM on November 30, 2016 [1 favorite]


Do they post photos of people being groped and crying? Why does TSA have the money to spend on a social media expert and yet not provide thorough training for those employed to do the actual security checks? Rolling Stone seems to have given up on the idea of actual journalism.
posted by Ideefixe at 4:23 PM on November 30, 2016 [15 favorites]


This incremental change is killing me. I wish we'd just skip to the point where everyone is stripped naked with no personal items of any kind and stacked like cordwood from back to front.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 4:41 PM on November 30, 2016 [3 favorites]


Good to know that your pie can fly, even if turkeys can't.
posted by drlith at 4:42 PM on November 30, 2016


As God is my witness, I thought pies could fly.
posted by Naberius at 4:49 PM on November 30, 2016 [6 favorites]


The fake suicide vest is pretty impressive.
posted by Slinga at 5:00 PM on November 30, 2016


Maybe when they start enforcing consistency in their employees and stop confiscating my safety pins and nail clippers I'll laugh at their bullshit.
posted by achrise at 5:01 PM on November 30, 2016 [3 favorites]


I'm just happy to know that a mummified human head is a legal carry-on item. They get lonely in the baggage compartment.
posted by JohnFromGR at 5:07 PM on November 30, 2016


I had to be taken aside and have my carry-on searched this Thanksgiving, due to a box of D&D miniatures. In retrospect, if the TSA is concerned about pen knives, they'd be crazy to just let a person fly about the country unquestioned with an army of tiny orcs hidden on their person.
posted by Phobos the Space Potato at 5:20 PM on November 30, 2016 [10 favorites]


The enchilada knife was what inspired my first (and so far only) post on the blue.
posted by noneuclidean at 5:46 PM on November 30, 2016 [2 favorites]


I got the extra special pat down earlier this month because I was flying to Vegas and had chapstick in my pocket that i had forgotten about in all my worry about sorting my computer, tablet and phone out. I don't normally use chapstick at all but desert... I was embarrassed that I screwed up the TSA routine because I normally am the guy who brow furrows at everyone else. But no real big deal. I can put up with an awkward pat down.

HOLY CRAP WAS THE TSA DUDE FURIOUS!
posted by srboisvert at 6:43 PM on November 30, 2016 [2 favorites]


About 2003, I had a layover in Charlotte. There was one of those awful enclosed smoking areas in the airport. I got a light from a pilot, who told me to go ahead and carry a lighter in my pants pocket, as it doesn't have enough metal to set off the detectors. Tried it out on the return journey, and, no problems. I thought about the time the two TSA agents in Boston scrutinized the little squeezable flashlight on my keychain for 5 minutes. The whole time they did that, people with deadly Bic lighters could have been just waltzing on through.
posted by thelonius at 6:49 PM on November 30, 2016 [2 favorites]


They keep on deleting my comments on their pictures of dogs, when I call them TSA's most capable employees.

But I keep commenting.
posted by entropone at 6:55 PM on November 30, 2016 [15 favorites]


I wish we'd just skip to the point where everyone is stripped naked with no personal items of any kind and stacked like cordwood from back to front.

I have that dream too.
posted by bongo_x at 7:12 PM on November 30, 2016 [2 favorites]


I should also point out that a block of fudge looks an awful lot like a block of plastique when you stop and think about it.
posted by Naberius at 9:27 PM on November 30, 2016


Reflexive TSA bashing is pretty stale at this point. It's good to see a government agency show a human side like this.
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 10:42 PM on November 30, 2016 [3 favorites]


Nine times out of ten it's an electric razor, but every once in a while... it's a dildo. Of course it's company policy never to, imply ownership in the event of a dildo... always use the indefinite article a dildo, never your dildo.
posted by adept256 at 11:07 PM on November 30, 2016 [7 favorites]


I used to be a TSA agent. It is a tedious, repetitive job.

They have to follow the standard operating procedure or they could be fired. I once assisted in a private screening of a lady who had been in a bad car accident on a trip. She was in a wheelchair with a neck brace. Welp, that gets you a pat down. I held her hands so she could lean forward more easily and her hands were shaking she was in so much pain. There were tears coming out of her eyes but she was so polite and thanked us when it was all over.

Most of the agents come from the lower side of the socio economic spectrum. It is a decent paying job with great benefits and you only need a high school education. If you promote you can do quite well for yourself.

During my training class, only about a third of the agents had flown before. That means the person barking at you to take off your shoes most likely has never gone through it themselves. One told me about how he used to work in retail and customers would order him around and now he got to tell people what to do. Passengers would move aside for me as I walked through the airport. Many passengers had incorrect notions of what agents could do. No regular TSA agent can do a strip search.

You get a group of agents together and what are the most likely things for them to bitch about? Not you the passenger- it is management. Not getting time off. That so and so was promoted but they are a total idiot. The bomb guys' paranoia.

I would respond to bag checks. I would wait for the passenger. Most of the time you have a good idea what the anomaly is, but sometimes you aren't sure. I would stand there, wondering, is this the bag that's gonna kill me? Boy, my mom would be *pissed*.

Then it is repertative. Imagine checking id and ticket after id and ticket. Or scanning people over and over. Then your whole day could be wrecked if you were put on a team with a lazy person. You would go to lunch late, breaks late. And there was nothing you could do. Usually the lazy person was buddy buddy with the idiot manager.

The vast majority of passengers were nice or indifferent, but some did everything they could to taunt me. Tell me I was fat. Or dumb. Or lazy. That I was violating their rights. That I should get out. Groaning when I pat them down. Farting when I pat them down.

The best thing I learned from the job was how to say no. I had a lot of practice saying no. No you can't take that bottle of water. But I also learned that the federal government has a lot of entitled people working for them.

Bring it back to the instagram account- stuff like this was really rare in an agent's day to day life. A gun was a big deal of course, but I was never at the checkpoint when one was found. I saw several bullets though. They were mostly from Military and Law enforcement.

Saw plenty of dildos.
posted by Monday at 11:13 PM on November 30, 2016 [31 favorites]




I would stand there, wondering, is this the bag that's gonna kill me?

See, that's the whole thing. No. No it is not. Because it has literally never happened.

Nobody at all was being stabbed by Eiffel Tower knives and vanishingly few were being shot or even threatened by actual regular guns that, judging by the number of weapons we know are both confiscated and missed by the TSA nowadays, were and are on airplanes all the damn time.

The TSA doesn't even fulfill its ostensible purpose. There was no threat in the first place and it is completely failing to protect us from that nonexistent threat.
posted by cmoj at 10:33 AM on December 1, 2016 [4 favorites]


Is anyone else wondering about the tupperware container full of bees?
posted by endotoxin at 10:42 AM on December 1, 2016 [1 favorite]


Protected religious implements.
posted by Naberius at 1:16 PM on December 1, 2016


« Older Incredible discovery of 40,000-year-old tools for...   |   Me: This is just clickbait from a week ago. Me to... Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments