WillCAD

I'm sure that the TSO in question was severely reprimanded and given a firm, overhead double slap on the palms as punishment.

saizai

Don't forget that the TSA has special machines whose one and only job is to screen bottled liquids.

They just refuse to use them unless you out yourself as having a medical condition and insist that they obey the law. I.e. they actively refuse to screen your liquids when they are perfectly capable of doing so. (It takes about 30 seconds.)

WillCAD

It's my understanding that these machines only work on liquids in transparent or translucent containers. So they'll work for bottled juices and baby bottles, but not for juice boxes and milk or formula in opaque containers.

I'd bet money that only one out of ten TSOs even knows the machines exist, let along is trained to operate them.

chollie

I wonder what former or current TSA employee(s) benefited financially from the purchase of liquids scanners that only work on transparent/translucent containers.

Someone who decided that stealing taxpayer's money with a useless gadget was OK because the previous head of TSA has already declared the entire war on LGAs unnecessary.

saizai

True, but note that your typical water bottle is in fact transparent.

I assume that the reason for this is that their underlying technology is a mass spectrometer — just like the ETD machines, but doing the spectroscopy directly rather than on a swab sample.

Then again, I don't see any fundamental reason why one couldn't make a machine that is capable of doing spectroscopy both on the stuff inside a transparent container, and the surface of a container, so that it'd work either way…

Boggie Dog

Seems to me that an ETD swab of the outside of a beverage container would be an effective means to determine if an item is safe or not. Opacity of the container wouldn't matter.

Just for the record I don't believe I have ever seen one of the liquid testers spoken of up thread. Wonder how widely they are deployed or if they even work?

saizai

Depends on how well it's been trace-wiped. If they can scan the contents, that's an improvement. If the contents are non-WEI but it has surface traces, then (in a hypothetical world where the false positive rate was a couple orders of magnitude lower than it is IRL) it could usefully-but-incidentally indicate that something else in the luggage might be WEI. /shrug

I've seen them at every TSA checkpoint I've been through.

They're typically roughly cube-shaped machines, about two feet wide, with a round-ish hole in the front center to stick the bottle in and a little display / control panel. Here's a typical example.

I've seen some different versions as well (e.g. ones where the bottle is placed vertically and the machine partially surrounds it), but generally they're pretty obvious because they're the one machine that has a bottle-sized hole (as opposed to e.g. the regular ETD machines, which have a swab-sized hole or the like).

As for whether they work, I have no idea. I expect the TSA considers that SSI, but the GAO might have a report on it. I don't feel like researching that at the moment but would be interested to read if you do.

mikeef

Apparently, my multi-quote isn't working today, so bear with me...

You and me both. I also found a similar thread where I had said the same thing. Added bonus: It was also ORD.

@SSI...I've grown pretty tired of all this SSI crap. SSI is the location of the SEAL team that is going to take out a terrorist. It is not a random piece of information about the dangers of almond milk that are known by tens of thousands people. As for how the body search detects hidden dangers because of sealed containers, well, I think we all know the efficacy of that policy. In this case, SSI is simply an abbreviation for "We have a stupid policy that we can't justify and, in fact, have no idea how it came into existence. Let's tell people that we know of secret dangers and we are trying to make them safer."

Mike

chollie

Interestingly enough, IIRC the US does have them at international entry points now.

Not to reduce confiscations, not to improve security, not even primarily to enrich a former TSO honcho.

Word was finally getting around (even being announced on some flights) that most US arrivals (even those terminating at their US entry point) would get expensive duty-free liquor confiscated. Result: declining duty-free sales of expensive liquors.

Now they have to be sealed in special tamper-proof bags (someone's likely making a bundle off of them) and pass a liquids test. Problems have arisen when pax had expensive duty-free liquor in opaque containers.

Meanwhile, why are we even still discussing this money-making opportunity? We have it on good authority, the former head of TSA has said that the LGA protocols should have been eliminated while he was still in charge. I wish our resident TSOs would indicate if they think Kip Hawley doesn't know what he was talking about. Unlike us, he IS privy to all those SSI secrets, so the "if you knew what I know, you'd understand" excuses don't apply.

Carl Johnson

[QUOTE=janetdoe;24874598]I'm going to say you're right, but for the wrong reasons. The problem is not that people are exaggerating their kids' allergies.

The problem is now that people are ABSURDLY PARANOID about stuff spoiling. It's a sealed carton of sterile product. It's a quantity designed for the length of the flight / travel day. It's almost certainly been UHT pasteurized with an expected shelf life of a year or more, unrefrigerated. There is no reason that can't be opened. There is no reason you couldn't pour it into a sippy cup or thermos before you left for the airport. Similarly, there is no reason a toddlers' juice can't be opened. It is sterilized when it is bottled and there is NOTHING that is going to grow on it in 24 hours. People who are all, "Oh no, my precious flower will wilt if a germ crosses their tiny pink lips" really do annoy me. And yet they are likely to be the same people who use the same filthy sponge in their kitchen sink until it falls apart. There is absolutely no concept or sense of perspective of the real risks...

Now if your child has been on chemo or had an organ transplant or has an otherwise severely compromised immune system, I'll give you a break on this one. Also, maybe the people pumping breast milk have a legitimate concern, that is unprocessed and would tend to spoil/degrade quickly. There are of course exceptions like that.
[/rant]

That is one of the most absurd arguments I've ever seen. Who cares what you think about people's motivations for wanting to keep their food and drink clean and who cares what their motivations are. Whether they think it will get germy, will get dirt in it, will get unappetizing, or whatever, is no concern of mine. The point is, it's their decision.

You are arguing that people sacrifice themselves so that a bunch of stupid, lazy slobs can kid themselves that they're doing something important. No thanks.