Originally Posted by
RichardKenner
I think you're missing my point: from some perspective, every bag is suspected to have an IED in it until proven otherwise. I would assume (please correct me if I'm wrong) that there's some intermediate level of suspicion of there being an IED part which is high enough to perform a bag check, but not high enough to call the bomb squad. That's the situation being discussed in this case, as I understand it. And the TSO in question went too far.
You are entirely incorrect to beleive that "from some perspective,
every bag is suspected to have an IED in it until proven otherwise". No insult meant, but I would never check a bag I believed had part of an IED in it. I may be a TSA employee, but I'm not that stupid
(despite what some here believe!).
If the bag is believed to have an IED or one of its components in it, then a process starts, and at each level of that process if the result is positive, lets say, there will NOT be a bag check. At the end of the process, after multipe "positive" conditions are met, a bomb disposial unit is called.
However, many - most, or almost all - bag checks are NOT believed to have an IED or IED component in it.