At the screening machines for cabin baggage, the TSA struggles to identify some molded explosives and bombs/bomb components when the explosives are disguised as food items (or even simply placed amongst food items of some sorts). By having the food items out separately for sceeening and being able to more easily make sure that there are no wires/metal connections to that which may appear to be food, the chances of the TSA missing a bomb may drop. The corollary to this dynamic is as follows: as the TSA knew it has this problem, food in bags with electronic cables and a motley of other stuff already had the potential of slowing down the baggage screening process and distracting/conditioning the image-reviewing TSA screeners in one or more adverse way.

In other words, this food removal from cluttered cabin bags practice was designed to make up for the TSA’s struggles with being effective on the hunt for explosives and bombs. Could the TSA ETD way more cabins bags instead? Yes.

After all that the TSA does with food, I must say a competent shoe bomb maker and shoe bomb user could still have a relatively easy time of getting explosives smuggled airside for use as a bomb even with these food-out demands: PreCheck passenger with shoe soles or heel filled with some kind of explosives clears the WTMD, while the detonator/fuse is in the screen bag and left detached until on board the plane. Now let’s just wait and see when TSA asks for shoes to be removed from cabin bags and again returns to all shoes off.

I’ve got Pre and my backpack still gets sent to secondary a fair number of times for food, cat treats (no Trader Joe’s where I live and my little Siamese girl loves their brand as much as life itself so I stock up on the road) electronics, thick book making it hard to see scans, etc reasons.

But it as long as it’s only my bag they want to look at in secondary, Pre remains worth it for me

Flew out of ATL yesterday and went through PreCheck in the South Terminal. Woman in front of me was traveling with three children probably ages 7-11. They had quite a bit of carry on with I suppose the typical assortment of electronics, etc. The one bag that got sent aside for inspection was what the mother said was the snack bag with apples, bananas, chips, etc. The TSA agent barely opened the bag and looked inside. I was collecting my carry on so didn’t catch all of what the agent said but what did hear sounded like she was a bit annoyed that the x-ray operator sent the backpack for inspection.

We went through TSA PreCheck about 1:30 PM. The South Terminal was its typical busy but I’ve seen worse. TSA PreCheck moved pretty quickly and the agents seemed to be focused on getting people through as quickly a possible. No barked instructions and the passengers going through with us all seemed experienced so they knew what to do. The airport line keeper momentarily wanted to hassle me because I didn’t have my boarding pass in hand but she had just checked my wife’s and I said she had mine and walked past her. She objected a bit but I just motored on. As an aside this was my first trip using my new retired Army CAC card. It’s easier to get out and in of my wallet than my driver’s license and I don’t carry my passport or GE card on domestic trips. Talk about minimum information on ID. It has my picture, name, and an expiration date and that’s about it. They have even removed your grade from the card for supposed security reasons.