Horrible TSA Experience at IND
 

Horrible experience at IND today with the TSA. I get through security have the back scatter and a light patdown. Bag goes through etc. I go to the Skyclub for 1 hour or so. I then am waiting for flight DL2913 with my daugher and S-I-L for the flight to JFK to connect to DL122 to SNN. 4 TSA agents are by the gate with the machine that does swabs. They stand around for 40 minutes and I even chat with them all friendly. The plane is running late and they ask for 1st class to board. So I like a fool try and board first. I get singled out for the random check. Lo and behold my hands show positive for explosives and the 2nd check is clear. They ask if I want to go somewhere private. I say no, lets get it over with. So I have the full body fondle, belt off etc. They now swab my bag, laptop etc, it also shows positive. Everyone has now boarded the plane and I am freaking out having never touched explosives in my life (well OK fireworks when I was a child). I am worried they will not let me on. I applogize to the GA. A supervsior is called and she explains they have to follow procedure. She asks me loads of questions including my line of work. I explain I am a resaerch chemist/material scientist and the laptop belongs to my company. I get asked for proof so pull business card and on a further search of my bag they see papers about chemistry. The supervisor calls her supervisor and recommends they let me board. I explain that I handle all sorts of chemicals on a daily basis.

I am absolutely shaking like a leaf and feeling like a real crminal. This was my 621st lifetime flight and this is the first time this has happened. Fortunately I remained reasonably calm and very respectful. I get to board having held the whole plane up. I appologize again to the GA then to the lead FA and then to the plane for holding it up.

Sorry about this. I am still shaking and had to share. The FA poured me a Gin and Tonic once airborne.^

No comments required. I am just hoping I dont get on some list somewhere.

Why on earth were YOU apologising? You act as if though YOU did something wrong.

But apparently you have no issue with the BSX?

Perhaps your experience will show you that there is no rational reason for what TSA does, and you will start to speak up and let people know that those of us who have bad experiences are not bad people.

I'm sorry on the one hand that it happened to you, but if it woke you up to the reality, then I am very glad that you are upset enough to voice what happened. Tell all your friends and family and colleagues, please.

So sorry you went through all that. I have a question - did they swab anything that DIDN'T alarm? Did they do a control test on a clean swab? I would hate to think you were put through that on a faulty test/machine (aside from the fact that things like hand lotion can set those off).

No need for you to apoligize to ANYONE due to the ineptness of the TSA. There are countless stories about flyers testing positive when there's no reason whatsoever.

Sorry about your bad experience.

I've found that if you don't talk to them, don't make eye contact, even go so far as to appear to be on the phone--they won't select you for the gate ETD.

If you appear friendly and less confrontational you appear pleasant to them, and a candidate for an easy search. Otherwise they get people that are ticked that they cleared security once before, why do they continue to have to be subjected to flawed tests.

Sounds as though this was all handled exactly as it should have been by TSA and the carrier. OP tested positive -- plausible explanation because he routinely handles chemicals -- was searched, cleared and flew.

No need for anybody to apologize to anybody and no need for OP to give it a second's further thought.

Yeah, I would think this sort of thing would be routine for chemists.

Sure. The problem, as most folks would agree, is that the test has nothing to do with actually carrying explosives at the airport.

And that TSOs aren't trained to follow scientifically valid testing procedures.

And that, in so many cases, the machine is detecting things similar to explosives or ingredients in explosives - not so much actual explosives. Things that are in medication. Or on golf courses. Or, you know, soap.

And thus, a predominantly worthless test subjects a normal person to physical inspection, effective detainment, and a subjective judgement from a "supervisor" on continuing onto a plane.

All to try to detect something that another inspection technique should have already found and that happens - maybe - once every few years.

So what if they followed procedure? Theatre belongs in a theatre.

...and everything to do with letting a bunch of untrainable/unemployable/thuggish idiots appear to the uneducated to be doing something useful.

It's not that TSA employees aren't trained to understand the methodology - if they were capable of understanding the whys and wherefores of trace detection they'd have real jobs.

except that he got his privates touched and publically humiliated, no, no need for any such emotions. Except that these are normal reactions to being publically humiliated and fondled by someone in authority.

He said he's shaking like a leaf. And you just brush it off like you don't give a d*mn. Which you don't.

How many times has this happened? thousands and thousands of times. How many times does this have to happen yet? Yet not once has it found real explosives. Not once.

621!

I'm generally pretty pleased with IND TSA - I think the morning crew (i.e. 500a - 700a) terminal A are all familiar with me as the opt out guy. I've also tested positive occasionally and agree its a pain.

Looks like your flight departed only with a 20 minute delay so that's not too bad.

Sorry for a bad Saturday.

Because, of course, no self-respecting terrorist who was smuggling explosives through a checkpoint would think to establish a cover story as a research chemist. :rolleyes:

This is the part of TSA's SOP that confounds me. If TSA is concerned that terrorists will try to bring dangerous items aboard an aircraft, why in the world would TSA believe anything a passenger says about a positive test for explosives?

Agreed. The OP did nothing wrong.

Right, he doesn't do anything wrong. He didn't get a trouble from TSA.

I do not feel any obligation, moral or otherwise, to make it easier for the TSA screeners to do their inspection. Also, I will not do anything to slow them down deliberately. They won't tell me what they are looking for, and do not employ any predictable or consistent procedures, so how can I possibly be of help?

Yesterday at MEM I went through the box, holding my wallet in my hand like I always do. When I offered my wallet to the screener, a different screener took it from me and told me I "should have sent it through x-Ray" and went to put it back on the belt. I then asked if I was supposed to keep any valuables in sight at all times. She didn't answer but gave the wallet back to the first screener.

He then went through and removed every card, every photo, every receipt, every paper and every piece of money one by one and dropped each one into a tray before handing the tray back along with my empty wallet and thanking me. I politely asked, "are you going to put them back?" "Yes, but they won't be in the same order." I waited there until everything was put back.

He told me I can find their procedure on their website.

By the way, www.tsa.gov does say you should keep your valuables "in sight" at all times. I would have been in violation of that instruction if I had let her take it away.

I am a trained scientist. I am anal about running controls. But NO the TSA did not. As an aside, my boss once complimented by saying "When they bury you GRALISTAIR, they will put on your headstone "Here lies GRALSTAIR and next to him lies the control""

I am not a scientist, but I inspect machinery with electronic detection techniques that to the average observer appear to be very complex and hard to understand. That is because they are. ETD and even the X-ray of bags is no different.

When my tools show a problem within the machine, I always first double check the operation of my equipment before I automatically assume the machine is bad. I run multiple non-evasive tests to confirm and determine severity. The absolute last thing we do is take the machine apart and look inside.

It seems with the TSA that they get one bad test, and it is hands on immediately. There is no question that there may have been a problem with the test, let's just take the "machine" apart and see what is wrong with no thought of the comfort or humiliation of the tested.

I follow meticulous procedures, as I am certain that you do as well, to minimize error from contaminated data, proper reading and measurement of samples and maintaining calibration of devices. In general, should an anomaly be reported by the equipment, it is my FIRST thought that the test may be faulty and that possibility eliminated. It seems with the TSA their machines can never be seen as fallible, just like their people. We must be led to believe in their perfection and if we question it or their procedures, it is further evidence that we are indeed the criminal that they suspect us to be just because we had the audacity to buy a ticket to get on an airplane.

Class A ***hole on a power trip.

That would have got me arrested right there, which is why I seldom endure the TSA any longer.

Do you have any pointers about how to explain the concept of scientific controls without using the word "control"?

And yet, at least once, they completely missed five pounds of undisguised, unhidden C4 high explosive, still in it's original wrapper clearly marked "C4 HIGH EXPLOSIVE", when an Army non-com somehow forgot that it was in his bag at Fayettville.

Though I am not a scientist, I prefer to use the word "baseline" when discussing control tests; it seems to be easier for the average person to understand the concept when I use that word.

I see it differently. If anyone should be humiliated for groping someone else in public, it is the groper, not the gropee.

If someone in authority insists on groping my genitals under the guise of "security", I don't intend to pretend that that's a normal transaction.

"Calibration standard," "Standard result," or just plain "Standard" works as well. "Standards" are used in machine tool and precision tool calibration.

Yes, if I was doing a medical trial with a new drug , I would do the trial with multiple people with some of them (blindly-not knowing) they were taking a placebo

But apparently not for TSA employment.

?

OP did nothing wrong but was humiliated in public, scared by TSA, and subjected to interrogation including intrusive personal and professional questions.

OP was fully within his/her rights to refuse to answer every single one of those questions, and probably would have been (illegally) denied travel if that right were exercised.

Just because the OP didn't get arrested doesn't make what the wannabe jackbooted thugs do right. Doing screening at the checkpoint, not the gate as the flight is boarding, reduces the time pressure and public humiliation. And the whole procedure after positive alarms on the ETD is way overboard given that virtually all alarms are false.

Standards

Precision

Tool

TSA

That mix of words brings so many off-color comments to mind...

They are not doing this to "protect" the flight or the public. It's all part of a dragnet where they hope to identify folks that may have handled explosives, guns/ammo, fertilizer, glycerine, or other common things outside of the airport environment. It is all part of a dragnet, collection of names/personal data for a database so they can check up on you later.

I doubt it. It's more likely to be simple theatre, as the current set of employees can barely be trusted not to pee on the floor, let alone do important tasks like "don't steal from the passengers," or "take down names of people who generate false alarms from the ETD swabs."

There is one thing I will always trust TSA to do well, and that is retaliate against anyone who annoys them in any way.

Oh, agreed. But I don't believe that retaliation goes any further up the chain than the immediate taking umbrage at the idea that some traveling peon is questioning their "authoritah" and making sure that person "feels some pain."

I dunno... there have been multiple reports (I even saw one caught on a YouTube video) of TSOs demanding travelers' ID and writing down their particulars to put into some sort of "report". While I seldom doubt the ability of a US government agency to completely lose citizens' personal data, I do have to wonder what happens with the info in those "reports" - wouldn't there be some influence on the watch lists from them?

Amen. My thoughts and opinion precisely. And I am a scientist! ;)