I find it interesting to contrast this with my experience flying out of China. I was taken to a private room and shown the digital colored X-ray of my bag on which a box had been drawn around an empty lighter, I was asked to remove it myself and hand it over, and I went on my way. All in under 5 minutes, no pat down, no fuss, and no one physically rifled through my belongings. (Granted I was a tourist so that might well not be typical.)

I'm not sure what their success rate is when tested by professionals but the experience definitely left me wondering WTF the deal with the TSA is.

> Correct. In the US, the TSA is just a government jobs program for the lowly skilled or unskilled.

This is oft repeated, but as a federal job, the bar is at least slightly higher than those typical AlliedUniversal/Andy Frain/Etc mall cop guards you see all over the place. I have no doubt that many are incompetent, but I think it is a big unfair that it gets singled out as a "jobs program" given that the bar is on the floor industrywide for security.

An interesting comparison would be FPS, which is the agency that does security checks for federal buildings, also under DHS same as TSA. They are armed despite many of them having an indoor only role (a few do patrol larger campuses outdoors). Thus, I suspect the requirements are somewhat higher. They are generally more thorough in my experience, except for one time where they did not notice one of my shoes got stuck and didn't go through the X ray, which is funny because they insist on all dress shoes being scanned as they have a tiny metal bar inside. The same shoes go through TSA just fine.

I routinely conceal large bottles of liquids on my person while going through airport security. I've probably gone through airport security in various places with a 1.5L bottle of water more than a hundred times now. Haven't been caught once, although of course the US-style scanners could presumably defeat this.

Same with hot sauces, perfume and the occasional bottles of wine. I really don't like to travel with a checked-in luggage, so this is a frequent problem.

Luckily I own lots of Rick Owens clothes with large hidden pockets.

> In the US, the TSA is just a government jobs program for the lowly skilled or unskilled. It's all security theater.

This matches my experience. I recently flew out of a small airport that flies 2 fairchild metro 23 turboprop planes up to 9 passengers. There were four TSA agents to check the 5 of us that were flying.

I don’t think it’s just the TSA tbh.

A couple of years before the pandemic I managed to make it all the way from London Heathrow to Auckland, New Zealand, passing through Dubai and Brisbane on the way, with one of those USB rechargeable plasma lighters and a Gerber multitool in my hand luggage.

Completely unintentional, of course, but due to #reasons I had packed in some haste and made the mistake of not completely unpacking my day sack, which I also used to carry my laptop for work, first.

I stayed in Auckland a couple of days and the items were eventually picked up on a scan before my flight to Queenstown. The guy was very nice about it: he had to confiscate the lighter, but he let me post the Multitool to my hotel in Queenstown.

A couple of years ago I did something similar flying out of Stansted but, that time, it was picked up at the airport and, again, I was able to get the items posted back to my home address.

Nowadays I always completely empty all compartments of all bags I’m taking before repacking, even when I’m in a hurry.

"In the US, the TSA is just a government jobs program for the lowly skilled or unskilled. It's all security theater."

Over here, it's G4S pork barrel contracts.

I'd believe that. I was in a situation where a bag started smoking _in the security checkpoint_ (it was a camera battery failing), and the TSA agents all abandoned the checkpoint. As a result, the FAA issued a full ground stop and had re-screen every passenger in the airport.

TSA Is not great, I have been groped by TSA twice, I have never been pat down by any European airport staff

> the US, the TSA is just a government jobs program for the lowly skilled or unskilled.

I thought that was the US military?

> It's all security theater.

It’s so much worse than that. Because the department of homeland security was formed in the panic following 911, many of the laws meant to protect our civil liberties (which have existed decades/centuries before the DHS was formed) haven’t been amended to explicitly apply to DHS staff as well.

So what ICE is doing right now could only happen with the loopholes that apply only to DHS staff.

So if not for the security theater of the TSA, Stephan Miller might not have had a mechanism to get the ball rolling on his murder squad that is ICE.

Any large organization is going to have some terrible employees.

TSA is much more skilled than the security people employed by the airlines that proceeded them.

While still theatre to a degree, that was 11 years ago.