TSA Strikes again

[mnn2501]

A Massachusetts woman who flew home from Las Vegas this week says an airport security officer confiscated her frosted cupcake because he thought its vanilla-bourbon icing could be a "security risk."
Rebecca Hains told ABCNews.com today that a Transportation Security Administration agent at Las Vegas- McCarran International Airport seized her cupcake, saying the frosting sitting atop the red velvet cake was gel-like enough to violate regulations.
The incident took place Wednesday.
Hains, a teacher, said the cupcake was a gift from one of her students. She was traveling with her husband and toddler, and thought her young son might get hungry on the long trip home.
The cupcake was packaged in a glass container with a metal lid, which was why it attracted the attention of the scanner in the first place.
The TSA agent didn't know what to do with the cupcake, so she called over her supervisor, Hains said.
"The TSA supervisor, Robert Epps, was using really bad logic - he said it counted as a gel-like substance because it was conforming to the shape of its container."
"We also had a small pile of hummus sandwiches with creamy fillings, which made it through, but the cupcake with its frosting was apparently a terrorist threat…I just don't know what world he was living in," said Hains, speaking of the TSA officer.
Hains said she had flown from Boston to Las Vegas with two cupcakes without any problems.
"The TSA at Logan Airport said the cupcakes looked delicious and told us to have a great trip. But in Las Vegas, they were dangerous. They shouldn't be delicious in one part of the country and a security threat in the other."

I am so glad these geniuses are protecting us from the evils of cupcakes. Why this woman could have gained a pound. Obviously the hummus they let go through was low cal.
TSA - Saving America: one cupcake at a time!

TSA is the biggest joke there is, the terrorists have won, the idiots are running the asylum.

[HillRunner]

Shakes his head this is getting ridiculous! When will it stop!

[willow_girl]

I can totally see the idiots I worked with doing something like this!

The ban on liquids, gels and aerosols actually is at least somewhat grounded in reality, because these items look identical to explosives on the X-ray. It would be virtually impossible to screen them all, hence the ban.

The problem is that when you give a directive like this to a bunch of dumb ... people (can't use the phrase I'd like to), they will seize upon it and begin ferreting out harmless banned items with the sort of vigor that ought to be reserved for looking for actual weapons. Part of this undoubtedly is due to the extremely boring nature of the job ... imagine if the high point of your day were finding a pair of scissors! Finding the occasional prohibited (or questionable) item breaks up the routine a little, and for the unintrospective, perhaps lends a smidge of significance to what is otherwise an excruciatingly meaningless job.

The ban on liquids, gels and aerosols had another unintended side effect. Regulatory testers found that all they needed to do to slip a (simulated) bomb through the checkpoint was to put a water bottle alongside it. In a high percentages of cases, the X-ray operator would spot the bottle, remove it and allow the rest of the bag (bomb intact) to roll right out of the X-ray and into the hands of tester/terrorist!

This also is human nature in action. Because so many passengers continued to bring in forbidden soft drinks and toiletries, X-ray operators became accustomed to seeing this "low-hanging fruit," and less adept at the sort of analysis necessary to spot actual IEDs. Apparently this possibility never occurred to the geniuses who devised the policy ...

[mnn2501]

So Willow Girl, as a former TSA agent, you're agreeing that TSA is pretty much a joke the way it is currently run?

[Ozarks Tom]

TSA is a joke alright, but it's a very expensive one, and it's on us.

[edcopp]

The public needs to stay home for a couple of weeks, as to say to the air industry; take the TSA and your aircraft and stuff it (them) where the sun will not shine.

Turn the USA into a "No Fly" zone for a couple of weeks and the problem will self-solve.

[willow_girl]

So Willow Girl, as a former TSA agent, you're agreeing that TSA is pretty much a joke the way it is currently run?

Hmm. I could write about this at length. Let me throw out a few random thoughts:

I think some TSA policies are good and make sense. I think some technology is good and useful.

I think a lot of policies which look good on paper do not work so well when translated by a squad of 65,000 front-line employees, many of whom are certified mouth-breathers.

It's been shown that some technology that may have worked adequately when tested in laboratories under sterile conditions performs less well when operated by mouth-breathers in the appallingly filthy conditions of the average checkpoint.

I believe some equipment has been purchased primarily for political reasons (because it was pushed by well-connected individuals), sometimes without adequate testing (for instance, explosive trace portals, a $29 million boondoggle).

I am astounded by how quickly the TSA grew into a gigantic, corrupt and incompetent bureaucracy embodying everything that is wrong with government.

I did notice a change in direction after 2007. Prior to that time, TSA was very much a “security theater.” After Janet Napolitano took the reins, I saw the agency move toward being more effective, rather than just going through the motions. Of course, “being more effective” generally equates to being more invasive, which certainly hasn’t further endeared it to the traveling public.

I do respect the way Napolitano cracked down on the time- and money-wasting nonsense (such as the near-constant redesign of screener uniforms, which consumed thousands upon thousands of man-hours of administrative effort).

We shouldn't pretend that terrorists don't exist and aren't interested in perpetrating attacks. We know that there are people testing the system to see if they can get bombs through the checkpoint. As a TSO, I used to hear about these incidents from time to time. Some reports of these attempts also have been made public; for instance: http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/val...ed_to_test.php

I’m not sure the TSA should be a federal agency. At the same time, I realize the stakes are high. Given the precarious state of our economy, another 9/11-style attack would be disastrous. However, I think the American people would be better off accepting a higher degree of risk while receiving a lower level of screening.

The whole concept of screening actually becomes meaningless when you realize TSA isn’t prepared to detect explosives concealed in a body cavity. At the end of the day, we're spending $8 billion a year to force any would-be terrorist out there to shove his bomb up his butt!

A final thought: Keep in mind that what looks like disastrous PR for the TSA may in fact be just the opposite when you consider its mission, which is to deter terrorism. Imagine how a terrorist would read the report of the confiscated cupcake. The natural reaction is, “Those people are crazy!” But terrorists really don’t want to deal with crazy people. Crazy is unpredictable. Crazy is much harder to outsmart, because it’s liable to do just about anything. From a security standpoint, TSA probably benefits from this sort of reporting.