TSA and Belts
 

I passed thru security at PHX last week prior to a flight to London. I had on a fabric belt with a metal buckle that can quickly be removed for passing through security. I had finished loading my stuff onto the conveyor when one of the TSA staff shouted at me to ask whether I was wearing a belt. I explained that the buckle was in the bin already.

Of course, that was a little too logical so when I went into the scanner I got shouted at by another TSAer to take off my belt because this "isn't using x-rays". Now, I know all about refusal and going for pat downs instead but I was really just up for a quiet life on this occasion.

Does anyone reckon this was anything more than an egregious example of security theatre or is a 1.5" wide strip of fabric a threat to humanity?

More silliness from PHX, if you you check the forums they've had a particularly bad record. Someone needs to drain that swamp!

When you say you "went into the scanner", do you mean the whole body imaging/AIT scanner? As opposed to the walk-through metal detector?

If you actually went into the AIT scanner, I think I understand why they want you to remove your belt.

Both variations of AIT scanner, the millimeter wave (MMW) and backscatter x-ray (BSX) versions, work by passing their energy through your clothes, then bouncing the energy off your skin and back to the scanner. By measuring the energy as it returns to the scanner, the computer in the scanner can determine whether it bounced of skin, or bounced off something else. Anything other than a "normal" skin return is considered an anomoly, which must be investigated because it might be a nuke, or an underwear bomb, or a photon torpedo.

But the dang things are glitchy. They'll return "non-skin" signals from heavy folds of cloth, rolls of fat on obese people, ANY medical prosthetic (artificial limbs or breasts, colostomy bags, etc), and even return "non-skin" signals from sweat. That's right - if you get nervous, or it's really hot in the terminal, you might get a pat-down!

Belts, even canvas and cloth belts, are often thick enough to bounce the energy back instead of letting it pass through to the skin beneath. This results in a "non-skin" signal, which the scanner will flag as an anomoly to be resolved, and thus results in a targeted area pat-down of the area that returned the non-skin signal - in this case, your belt line.

Now, I've never experienced it, so I can only theorize, but my gut tells me that if your beltline shows an anomaly which must be resolved, you're going to wind up with TSO's hands going into the waistband of your pants. Yup, that's right - government agents will stick their hands down your pants.

So the answer is, NO, your cloth belt represents absolutely no true danger, but it does represent a potential false positive, and while I cannot excuse the TSO's shouting at you, I can understand why they'd want you to remove your belt.

Still trying to "make sense" of TSA's bureaucratic illogic?
Don't even waste your time.

What I was told was almost the opposite. Go figure.

The belt will not generate an anomaly but you could still hide something metallic within the belt itself. They want to run it through the xray to check for artfully concealed stuff.

I go one better. Long before the CP I take mine off, roll it up, stuff it in the soon to be secured section of my carry on along with my wallet and such.

I've never had a belt trigger the AIT but am usually asked to remove it anyway. A TSO at MLB told me it isn't about concern for triggering the ATD SW but rather policy that belts get xrayed to make sure there aren't knives or something in/behind them.

I always leave my belt on and keep my shirt untucked when I go through the checkpoint. Out of sight, out of mind.... I've never had any problems when I do this.

Belts were and still are a new TSA obsession that started with the NoS. The "logic" behind belt removals applies to passengers going through the NoS, but it has turned into a 100% belt removal requirement at many stations regardless of whether a NoS is in play. Like most TSA obsessions, it gets worse over time and continues to lose whatever meaning it had at first.

I've been forced more than once to remove a belt (small buckle, never alarms) even when exempted from the NoS because I was carrying an infant. In one instance, the screener actually verbally went through his tortured thought process of telling me to remove the belt while he directed me toward the NoS, then realizing (and stating) I wasn't going through the NoS because of the baby, then telling me I had to remove the belt anyway (just because). You could almost see the guy's brain cell struggling to function.

Just wait until they start confiscating belts when someone figures out that you can strangle a flight attendant with a belt to threaten the pilot to let you into the cockpit so you can fly the plane into a skyscraper ... never mind, they'll never think of that, so I'd better not give them any ideas. ;)

He must have been a recent hire if his brain cell was still trying. :D

Belts off, just like shoes. Both can hide dangerous, non-metallic stuff. Belts need to come off and scanned when opting out for the pat down.

Is a shoelace or a necktie considered a belt if it is around your waist?

It was an AIT scanner that I went into. I understand your point about false positives, so I suppose they were reasonable to ask - although I do wish they woud learn common courtesy! (I also understand that my assurances that the belt does not set of any WTMD or AIT in my past experience does not help if they are trying to process masses of people, but on this occasion it was very quiet.)

We had one of out resident TSA people tell us one time that suspenders were fine but you had to unclip one side.

(No, I don't know why. No one does. It just is.)

Just take your belt off and roll it up in your carry-on bag before you get to the checkpoint, along with all your other stuff. It saves time in line, and then you all you have to do is take off your shoes and put them directly on the belt along with your bag. Saves time and jostling.

Not really new, and not just because of the NoS.

I remember all pax being told to remove their belts at BWI as far back as 2002, in the afterglow of 9/11 when our fear and paranoia were shiny and new. Why? Because more and more buckles - even small ones - were alarming the WTMD. The general consensus amongst the pax was that the WTMD had been tweaked to a higher sensitivity so as to find even the smallest bit of metal; there were stories going around of women with underwire bras alarming the thing and having to remove said undergarment before they could transit the c/p.

Bernard, expecting any TSA employee to exhibit common courtesy, respect, compassion, human dignity, or the slightest regard for any living thing other than themselves, is... expecting too much. It's somewhat like expecting a bird to say excuse me when it drops it's waste byproducts on your head.

The main difference being, of course, that TSA is dropping it's waste byproducts on the Constitution of the United States, and all of the rights and freedoms that said Constitution exists to protect and preserve.

I'm sure it's been done-to-death here already but neither the TSA nor immigration/customs officials project a good image of the US when they behave rudely. Mind you, I have experienced equally bad behaviour at British airports (and we don't even have a written constitution for them to crap on) just as I have experienced real courtesy and a friendly manner from the vast majority of the officials I have dealt with in both countries.

Come to think of it, the only other memorably bad experience was flying domestically out of PHX a few years back...and that was the TSA as well.