It's not just the TSA. My parents were in a lot of countries and many of the Soviet-block ones searched them at border crossings.

However IIRC I was never searched on our first trip when I was 9/10 and almost never on the second when I was 16/17. Furthermore, my mother was blind and carried a folding cane. It takes very little looking to realize that it's hollow by design (it's converted from it's folded form to a rigid form by taking up the tension in a cable that runs through it. While the exact mechanism isn't apparent the fact that it's basically tubing with a cable running through it is quite clear.) and was *NEVER* looked at anywhere.

Is a smuggler never going to hide stuff in their kid's baggage? The first trip I never packed it, the second I rarely did. In fact, once on our first trip I ended up with my father's bag. It was quite a struggle (it was nearly 50% of my body weight) but it was struggle with it or miss the plane. Our bags were strapped to backpack frames and wearing each other's packs was out of the question. (And that almost caused us trouble. This happened in Romania on the way out. The official took one look at me and sent me on through--with a push on the top of the backpack frame. Overloaded as I was there was no way I could keep my balance with that but I did manage to keep my feet under me for a few feet before I hit the wall. The wall turned out to be something awfully flimsy and I would have gone right through it had I not hit something behind it that actually had some strength. Imagine the ruckus it would have made had I crashed through one of their security barriers!)