So Whats This With The TSA Hand Swabbing
 

I got off a AMS-DTW flight last week, rechecked my luggage and went through the magnetometer without a hitch. Then a TSA guy comes up and sez he wants to swab my hands like they occasionally do the luggage. I let him do it but never had this happen before. It it a new policy?

MisterNice

Nope, random (unpredictable) screening for explosives trace. Takes a total of less than 60 seconds and you are on your way.

Wonder what the threshold is for a hand swabbing? Recently a guy in the UK was arrested for having 9 nanograms of RDX contamination on his hand.

So a person is a sport shooter who handloads their rounds.

If swabbed and shows positive just what has been proven?

9 nanograms sounds like an infinitesimal amount, but why else would you have trace amounts of RDX on your hands unless you were handling RDX? Did this person handle explosives as part of his job? Military/Demolitions etc? Could he have been cross contaminated? For such a trace amount it certainly sounds like cross contamination.

Hmmm, you go into a store. The guy in front of you does blasting for a living. He touches the door handle, leaving a few parts per million on the handle. You come along behind him and touch the same handle. You've just picked up some RDX even though you've never done any blasting at all.

This was in the UK and the point I was trying to make was why bother swabbing someone's hand? If he touched something then there would be traces on the luggage handles.

Cross contamination certainly sounds more plausible than a would be terrorist molding C4 into bunny rabbit shapes.

So, by helping people carry their luggage outside the terminal or smearing the door handles and contaminating them with traces of RDX, you could potentially cause disruption and delay flights for hours or days? I flew into ATL about five years ago during a bomb threat. The lines outside the terminal were, well, extensive. By the time I left, three days later, things were of course back to "normal".

Perfect time to do that stuff.

The CDC begs people to wash their hands and use hand sanitzers more frequently. What's the common element in hand soap, hand sanitizers and lotions? Glycerin.

That rings up on one of your outdated machines, and things are going to be a lot longer than 60 seconds.

The TSA -- winning the hearts and minds of travelers. :rolleyes:

50/50 sop for me when i get my shoe swab due to my not taking off my orthopedic shoes tho i can't figure out which 50% is the sop :rolleyes:

in the op's case, i'm gonna say it falls into the realm of the tso's randomly patting you down just after you go thru the wtmd as they have recently been doing at sfo (which imho, is just act DXII of the play ;))


n.b. if one is concerned about a hand swab and something giving a false positive (such as a combination* of hair gel, nicotine, cologne, etc), stop at the restroom and wash your hands throughly before going thru security. <--100% sop for me


*and before i get jumped on by a tso for saying the items i mentioned will not alarm, n.b. i said combination as the items i mentioned by themselves do not set off any alarms but there will be times where "ingredient a" combined with "ingredient b" will set off the bells and whistles

Random (unpredictable) screening creates Random (unpredictable) screening results.

In other words "ineffective"!

Plan B obviously
 

Today's Quiz Question: An Al Kidda tewwowist wants to blow up a US plane. To smuggle his bomb onto the plane, he carries it thru AMS security, risking detection, then flies a large US plane to DTW, without setting off his bomb, knowing he will go thru TSA entry security, risking detection, on his way to blow up a small US domestic plane. Why trash a NW A330 when you can go for a DL CRJ?

A. This the stupidist tewwowist on the planet, one so dumb even TSA might catch him.

OR

B. Any TSA types who believe this tewwowist exists have obviously been smoking something they confiscated from a pax on yesterday's AMS plane.

I too go through the shoe swab drill for the same reason. Recently had the experience of swabbing positive . . . had to remove my shoes for xray.

No one is arrested for an alarm on the etd, ever. An alarm does not mean an explosive was found, only that a checmial was found. I do no know the laws in the UK, but I have seen people alarm for rdx, and no arrest ever.

Why bother, then?:rolleyes: