I've had my luggage manually inspected twice on two different domestic to international flights. On both instances I had a laptop in the luggage. My other pieces of checked luggage, which did not have any laptops, were untouched

I have a good friend that workers in the adult toy industry. He said sadly and sorta of embarrassingly the one time he knows it'll be searched by hand is when he brings samples of a spade shaped pleasure toy. The machine sees the rubber/plastic material and thinks it's an explosive. He's decided that the local TSA must think he's some type of freak by now.

I doubt that's OP issue, but shows that certain items do indeed cause alarms to go off.

I dunno, I just brought back some large blocks of cheese, 6 bottles of wine, bottles of lemon oil, olive oil (in a metal container), chocolate in foil wrappers and didn't get searched.

Somebody must have been asleep on the job.

lol. maybe so.

All 3 bags from Singapore got searched last month, though. There was a bunch of cooking stuff thats difficult to obtain here in the US.

Yeah, it's not allowed to sleeping on the jobs. They could be fired. They have to stay barely awake.

TSA Bag Alarm: Salt
 

I should start off by saying that I knew I would need additional screening because of a 6 lb opened bag of salt I had in my carry-on. I am also Trusted Traveler, so what happened below happened in the TSA pre-check line. Specifically, STL international terminal.

What I didn't expect is for the salt to "alarm" when my case was tested with that little strip of paper and put in the machine. To clarify: the bag of salt was also subjected to two little paper tests (two inks: blue and clear) and it passed (in fact, I went through this process at 4 terminals in one day). What alarmed was the paper test that was wiped along the lining of my case, and when it was put in the machine, that's what alarmed.

This meant, my entire case was emptied out and all of my items individually x-rayed separate from the case. The case was also x-rayed. I also had to remove my shoes, put the shoes through the x-ray machine. And I got patted down.

The only thing I can figure is that the bag of salt may have leaked some salt granules, and that's what the little paper picked up.

So, question: to avoid my bag triggering the little paper test alarm, should I just clean the liner of my suitcase as best as I can, or should I dump this case and get a new case?

Reminds me of the incident when the college student had baking soda
in a condom, which she squeezed to get rid of tension.
A month in jail for a harmless bicarb rubber, now that's freaky.
Salt, bicarb, sugar, fuggetabout it, nowadays you're in trouble for any substance.

I had a can of lite-salt pulled out but once he saw what it was it didn't get a test. Any sufficient mass of material tends to draw their scrutiny.