I got a little more than I bargained for at Austin-Berstrom Airport this morning.

First, my backpack is filled with electronics and is routinely singled out for a search. While I mind, I've kind of gotten used to it. I have to carry a lot of electronics for work, plus being a gadget geek doesn't help. Fine, whatever.

Today, it was a little more extreme than it's been since the last time I had to go through LAS's screening. They pulled my bag aside and started wiping every single item and every single wire (I carry a lot of various chargers and USB/Firewire cables for my electronics) for explosives. I've had them check before, but never so intensively. At some point, one item or another signaled positive.

Now, I've never, ever had this happen, so I was curious what the protocol was. Apparently, it gets you a full patdown. The next wipe the guy put through the scanner alerted as well, which triggered "full on security alert".

A new guy appeared out of nowhere and started demanding articles out of my bag, saying, "I want to look at that, and that, and that" in a very authoritative tone. The items promptly disappeared from sight. I needn't mention that some of the items were very expensive, and my portable hard drive (which contains propriatary company data) also "disappeared". While they were spiriting my items away, they were also requesting my shoes (again) for whatever reason. Because of the distraction of asking for my shoes and everyone on "full alert", I didn't notice my items were missing until they were already gone.

Before anyone asks, it appears that nothing turned up missing -- this time.

I have a few questions though. The first is, what can I do to remove the "explosive residue" that signaled this whole process in the first place? The TSA agent was supremely unhelpful and actually upset that I'd ask such a question. I really don't want this to happen the next time I go through the airport, it's a waste of everyone's time.

The second is, what's the rate of false positives on these machines, can wipes be reused, and why isn't there a second test? The guy kept reusing the same three wipes over and over again, and even before the positive, all I could think of was that doing so many tests was bound to result in a positive, and the accumulation of "stuff" from each item could easily send the results past the "legal limit". It was pretty telling that every test he ran afterward was positive while every test his coworker ran was negitive. In some ways, I feel this was a manufactured positive.

Also, it seems like in the case of a positive, you'd use a fresh wipe and do the test again, just to make sure. This was never done, though I seem to recall it being done in Vegas.

Third, is the TSA allowed to carry items out of your sight? This is not the first time I've had them try to take my items away to a location where I could not see what they were doing with them. I've always managed to catch them before, but the speed at which my items disappeared this morning was incredible. The whole reason I don't check that bag is that some items in it are too expensive to lose and others simply cannot be replaced. I don't like having them out of my sight without some kind of documentation of what has been taken.

For the record, I did not have time to escalate this, as their intensive search very nearly made me miss my flight. I had to run to the gate for the first time in over 100 flights. They were paging me while the agents bickered over which of my items were "concerning".