Originally Posted by
InkUnderNails
I absolutely agree. The terminology is deliberately selected to make it sound like one has an explosive residue, when all that has occurred is that a chemical resembling explosive residue has been detected. The TSO's do not have the knowledge to understand the difference. If the machine generates an alarm, to them it is an explosive.
Yes, and not just "to make it sound..." but rather, the machine blinks out the message, "explosive detected" (!!!!!) That gave me quite a panic. I figure for the agents who see that all the time, they must either:
1. become inured to "explosive detected" and therefore not sufficiently on guard
or
2. view normal innocent people as highly dangerous from the first contact, and therefore become incredibly paranoid
--LG