TSA overwhelmed by sinister cleverness.

That's great. I like his note on his blog about putting it on throwing knives.

https://jedgarpark.wordpress.com/2016/03/17/tsa-compliant-multitool-mod/

I traveled successfully through a couple of airports recently, and even had one agent open every tool on this without any trouble. Some of my friends on Twitter have suggested etching this on machetes, throwing knives, etc. Your milage may vary.

Oh, great. Unintended consequences, folks.

Now that this guy has published this approach, including the ease with which anyone can etch 'TSA Approved' on anything, it will just give the mouth-breathers at TSA yet-another way to bother and inconvenience passengers - yes, I know that your (whatever) says it is TSA-approved, but that's being counterfeited now, so I'm just going to be capricious and witless and waste some more of your time.

I know they've been linked here before, but if we want to point out the ghastly uselessness of the TSA, might be time to link again to the videos showing the guy making improvised weapons (including an awesomely-effective grenade) from materials all purchased in an airport after TSA 'inspection'.

I flew out of DIA the other day. The main 'security' area is now in the ground floor of the main concourse. To get to it, you can walk in off the street, walk to the main concourse, and find yourself on a mezzanine level, looking 30 feet down on the security area. When I was there, I estimate that there were 1200 people waiting in line or going through the checkpoints. All completely open to above, on all 4 sides. All completely accessible, with no security checks whatever. And very poor exit routing, poorly signposted - it's obvious this area was never intended for this use. I'm frankly surprised that the fire marshal allows it - maybe he doesn't know.

You don't need to be a security expert to figure out that just 2 or 3 people could do some awful carnage in a set-up like that, using things that anyone could carry concealed. Vast numbers of people, many trapped in rope barriers and other containment means, with poor exit routes and signage. It doesn't bear thinking about.

I see things like that and realize that the madness that is the TSA often places us at much-greater risks than any possible terrorist threat to aircraft.

Incidentally, I alarmed the scanner when I went through. Some sort of 'anomaly' in the 'waistband area'. The 'pat-down' I received would not have caught much of anything - I could have been carrying a pair of grenades and a loaded 1911 and they would not have found them. A proper weapons search needs to be unpleasant and intimate, and this wasn't. I suspect that a combination of public backlash against the outrageous indignities seen on YouTube and the 'normalization of deviation' has rendered this process meaningless, as anyone experienced in security measures could predict. So even this has now become nothing more than a part of a full-employment program for TSA staff that does nothing for security and only wastes people's time.

llater,

llamas

The next attack almost certainly won't be done by someone sneaking stuff through TSA. Too much hassle. It's far more effective to bribe or blackmail someone who has access to the sterile side -- baggage handlers, store staff, airport maintenance techs. In STL once, I saw some fast-food workers wheeling a huge pallet load of supplies through security. The gate guard simply looked at their paperwork and waved them through.

Cracking a bottle looks easy in the movies, not so much in real life. I can bet she's never tried it. Better off buying a bottle of spray cologne and blinding someone with it.

http://twitchy.com/2016/03/17/tsa-in-action-is-this-art-or-a-fake-bomb-photo/

A smart terrorist would attack the TSA line. Imagine having to go thru security to be cleared for security to be cleared for the plane?

"A smart terrorist would attack the TSA line. "

Hasn't this already happened? I seem to recall something at LAX a few years ago... off to search...

Apropos to both this thread and the encryption thread we had last week, herewith we have, due to sloppy key handling, all TSA-approved locks have now been compromised. Of course, they were never very secure to begin with, but the general principle stands... if you give government keys to something, eventually the bad guys will get their hands on it.