Departing RDU last month, the barker near the NoS/WTMD was telling pax to remove wallets for the NoS. Tming it correctly, I avoided the NoS and also kept my wallter in my back pocket. In fact, I always keep it back there. Phones are buried in the bottom of my bag after I clear TDC...

Was that Philip Burdette? I had a run in with him last year. He was just the DFSD then, but he is an egotistical, pompous jerk. Report him, I did.

^^^

I was yelled at in BWI last summer. The BWI TSA culture is the worst and most abusive that I've seen anywhere.

It is, but IAD is a very close second, if not a tie.

Why can't you just hold it in your hands in the body scanner? Your hands are above you anyway. I've been allowed to hold things in my hands before.

I'm not sure that would work. I'm in the camp that locks my carry on bags, but a good friend of mine was told that he would have to put his cash throughh the x-ray when he was holding it.

Same here. Before going thru security I put cell phone, cash, change, wallet in a pocket of my carryon and lock it. FWIW I also have a locked cable running from the carryon to my laptop.

Well, from what I have seen (technical info is hard to come by on these machines) the x-ray / radiation "gun" actually does do a sweep from head to toe on each side, with the compton scattered electrons indeed bouncing back to form "photo" of sorts on the detector. However, it is not an instantaneous dose, but indeed a sweep, or scan, from top to bottom, if you will.

It used to be and they asked, this is even pre-TSA for screening all metal out of your pockets. But now especially if you are going through the new machines they want everthing out, even money, not change bills which are a very dangerous thing to carry.

OK, once again I'm not getting it. At CDG. I went thru the metal detector. It beeped. I had already taken off all metal things, including my belt, that I was wearing. The guy wanded me. It went off at hip level on my left side. I reached down there and realized it was a security wallet I was using that hung inside my jeans. It had a clip that was metal. I pulled it out and threw it on the conveyor. The guy wanded again, all clear, we both laugh, and I proceed.

So now I'm wondering: You step into the scanner. The spook sees an "anomaly" in your pocket area. You pull out the wallet. Oh, that's all it is. You proceed?

What am I missing here? In searching for anomalies, they are trying to PREVENT ones that are totally innocent?

No, they see the anomaly and you go to patdown / gropefest, even after you "claim" it is just a wallet.

I don't usually read TS&S so I missed this topic. Last July, I went through a patdown similar to the one's everyone is complaining about. I didn't go through the metal detector because I was in a wheelchair. During the patdown the agent asked me to remove my wallet. He said that it had to go through the machine. I had to sit there and watch him put it in the tray and run it through the machine for me. I could not see from the place where I was sitting during the patdown. He brought it back, nothing missing. At the time there were no NoS Scanners yet he still said it was required. This leads me to believe that the request to put the wallet through in the OP had nothing to do with the scanner. Wouldn't they have done the same thing for him if he went through a pat down instead, or am I just special?

I went through the NoS with my wallet in my hand, since it was too late to shove it in my bag to be x-rayed. (I'd never taken off my wallet before.) After the NoS they examined every facet of my wallet by hand.

I have had issues with him too - what a jerk.

Yeah, it is pretty stupid. That is another area that the WTMD/xray would actually be better (could detect a razor blade at least, or one of those credit card blades). Flying through BOS yesterday I got groped and the guy just does a ridiculous cursory rifling through the wallet. What are they looking for?