Like I said, pretty clever of TSA. They are completely in charge, they call the shots, yet they want to make it sound like private security are a bunch of ham-handed rogues that got out-of-control and this would never happen at a gen-u-wine TSA-branded checkpoint.

Seems to me something similar happened shortly after Blogdad Bob started his piece. SFO was asking pax to take all electronics out - including cords, chargers. TSA 'stepped in' and straightened SFO's private security out and patted themselves on the back for doing so.

Just curious - do you know if the FSD at an airport with private security is a TSA employee? Because if so, it undercuts this bogus story even more, because you can guarantee that the FSD at this airport knew and approved what was going on (or should be fired if s/he didn't know what was going on).