jcdill

A friend (fellow photographer) is overseas, and is flying back into SFO on Saturday, and then immediately taking a flight to southern California. His flight times don't provide for enough time for him to clear customs, exit thru security and meet with me and go back into security in the domestic terminal for his domestic flight. (Originally he would have had ample time to do this, but the flight times were changed.) He will have a hard disk of photos from his overseas trip that he wants to hand to me, for me to work on that weekend. Because of the timing, there's no way to have it mailed or shipped to reach me before Monday. Does anyone here have any ideas how we can get it out of the secure area and handed to me, without one of us having to go thru security? (The option of buying a fully refundable ticket and going thru security, meeting with him, then exiting and getting my money back does NOT appeal, this would waste a lot of time and be a huge hassle.) Is there any way to have TSA hand the item to me? Is there any way to have an airport employee hand the item to me? Or are we just SOL?

Cholula

Moving this to our TS/S Forums.

____________________

Cholula
CommunityBuzz! Co-Moderator

cparekh

I cannot think of any reliable manner in which to do other than:

1) Purchase refundable ticket and meet said person in the domestic terminal
2) Ask the airline for a gate pass for this reason, but they may not want to grant this.
3) Purchase a membership to an airline club inside security and get a gate pass to use the club even when not flying. You may be able to do this with a day pass.

Note that for 2 and 3, gate passes usually need to be cleared a few days in advance.

tkey75

Have him make nice with a seatmate who is ending at the transfer point who can pass off the HD? completely unreliable, unfortunately and potentially ending up in arrest if the seatmate is scared.

cparekh

Agreed the seatmate thing is completely unreliable, but if done voluntarily after clearing immigration and customs, hardly illegal in any manner.

Spiff

Your friend is going to be outside the "sterile" area after clearing customs and immigration and will then have to reclear "security". Meet him after C&I and before he goes through "security".

Otherwise just have him throw the disk at you from the airside of "security". Tell the TSA where they can go if they object. Or even notice.

tkey75

Of course it's not, excepting for the potentially scared pax reporting to the FA that a random guy wants a hard drive brought out of security to give to some other stranger. Fun would ensue.

Often1

+1 - Simple, easy, no shenanigans and it will actually work and not attract attention.

InkUnderNails

Find one of the wheelchair pushers that are always moving in and out of the secure area. Give him a generous tip and let him know who to look for on the other side. Call your friend and give him a heads up that it is on the way.

Moving something out of the secure area should not be a problem as it has been screened somewhere. Moving something in would be a big problem and would require a much bigger tip.

bchandler02

Agree that this is irrelevant because after the incoming international flight, he'll be outside of the secure area anyway. Meet there.

If this was a domestic/domestic connection, in most airports there is 1 gatekeeper by the exit going to baggage claim. I'd walk there, stand right in front of the TSA agent, and hand it off to him. You won't be over the "exit" line and your friend won't be over the "entry" line. The TSA may try to bark at it if he/she is stupid (likely), but I can't see anything illegal about this, or even concerning for that matter. All you are doing is handing a screened item to someone outside in public.

UshuaiaHammerfest

Maybe I missed something, but you said your friend is arriving at SFO, then has to clear customs.

Once your friend clears customs he will automatically be outside of security with all the riff raff and unwashed masses, including you.

Before he boards his domestic flight, he has to change terminals and clear security. Customs is always on the "land side" of security -- anyone clearing customs has to clear security to fly out of the domestic terminals at SFO.

You don't need to do anything fancy. Just meet him at the exit to the customs hall in the international terminal or at the entrance to security in whichever domestic terminal he flies out of.

Having said that, why on earth would you "SneakerNet" photos? You should check out DropBox (2.5GB free), Google Drive (5GB free), or some of the many other cloud based storage options. Hard drives are so 00s.

Zaynab

I fully agree. If the contents of the drive are important to you, back them up. And if you want to back them up, why not online. And if they are online, why do complicated things with a drive. Just download them.

If the reschedule results in a connection so tight that you think you will not be able to meet, you will probably have ample time with your friend as chances are pretty big your friend will miss the connection. The lines for passport control may take an hour or more. Unless the friend has Global Entry.

jkhuggins

1) Not every location in the world has fabulous bandwidth. Uploading to the cloud may not be a practical option. I refer you to Tanenbaum's Law: "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway." (As a student, I remember making this calculation and remarking how competitive SneakerNet was with traditional networks. I haven't done the calculation lately, but I imagine it's still pretty similar.)

2) The OP isn't talking about "photos", he's talking about "photography". There's a difference --- both in size and number --- between the few pictures I take of my cat with my phone for uploading to Facebook and the numerous HD-quality pictures a professional photographer may want to store and use.

3) The Terms of Service for various cloud storage companies might not be acceptable to a professional photographer. Putting your private intellectual property up onto someone else's site might not be a good idea --- no matter how many protections might be in the ToS.

And, of course, all this is speculative on my part.

In any event ... as numerous people have pointed out, the OP's friend will be outside of security after passing through customs. It should be straightforward to arrange to meet just outside of customs and hand off the hard drive without costing the traveler much time.

studentff

I can actually see the TSA gatekeeper freaking out over this as there is "contact" between the unscreened person and the passenger. Remember, this is the agency that won't let passengers awaiting grope-down touch their suitcase handles because they think every passenger is a Houdini going to somehow secret a weapon.

The best thing to do would probably be to box the item to be passed and literally shove it over the exit boundary from a distance of 6+ feet to the waiting recipient.

Darkumbra

I cannot imagine a TSA employee seeing someone pass something from the sterile zone out to the 'free world' NOT going berserk and causing all types of grief for those involved... Why? Because it's out of the ordinary and it would befuddle and confuse them.