1. Arrive at the checkpoint carrying...2. After putting your shoes and belongings in a tray, open your bottle of water and carefully (i.e., slowly) transfer its contents to the five empty 100ml bottles.

3. Cap the smaller bottles and place them in the one-quart Ziploc bag. Seal the bag.

4. Place the bag and the empty 500ml bottle in a tray and send it through the x-ray machine. Note: To ensure the 500ml has absolutely no liquid left in it, you may need to flick the open bottle very hard several times before replacing the cap, which unfortunately may result in some TSA screeners being hit with small water drops. Exercise caution here.

5. After passing through the metal detector, and before putting your shoes back on, stand at the bag reclaim area and carefully transfer the water in the 100ml bottles back into the original 500ml bottle.


Bonus Points:

All the while, loudly explain what you are doing, and tell complainers to take it up with the TSA because you're just doing whatever they say in order to make us all safer. Be sure to ask fellow travelers, "DON'T YOU FEEL SAFER?"


Double Bonus Points:

Place a frozen solid 2L bottle of water in the same tray as the Ziploc bag of small bottles to better underscore the absurdity of the policies. Note that you may need to stand there repeatedly shaking the opened frozen bottle into your mouth to ensure that there is no liquid in the bottle. Again, be sure to ask fellow travelers, "DON'T YOU FEEL SAFER?"


I'm sure other FTers can come up with a variety of fun methods of using the TSA's own policies to demonstrate/protest their absurdity.

Frozen is a funny twist .. it says "liquids or gels" .. but nothing about solids.

Don't forget your battery-powered portable freezer - or else the ice will probably melt by the time you get through the line at the checkpoint.

You know what it would take to end this? Someone putting a real explosive up a body cavity, clearing the naked scanner and pat down, and then turning him or herself into police while making it a media spectacle.

End this? It would make it worse. Janet would have cavity searches in place the next day. And people would be ok with it; after all, as I heard from someone yesterday, "there's no such thing as too much security"

Au contraire...

From the list of permitted items on the TSA's 3-1-1 page...

Frozen items are allowed as long as they are frozen solid when presented for screening.


Keep laughing. Don't you feel safer?

Or they just turn up the juice on the backscatter machines to get a full view of our insides. I wouldn't be surprised if that eventually happened, or even it were covertly tested on the public. (too much tinfoil hat?)

AKA the Britney Spears Rule. One of many TSA backtracks.

- It's a lie that the screener let her take a Big Gulp through
- Okay, the Big Gulp went through but the cup was empty
- Well, it wasn't empty, there was ice in there
*** Website Update ***
- See, ice is permitted