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I had an incident with the TSA in Austin where they silently removed my MacBook from the bin of my stuff and just wandered off with it. I was travelling for wo

by quasse 10y ago

I had an incident with the TSA in Austin where they silently removed my MacBook from the bin of my stuff and just wandered off with it. I was travelling for work so I was carrying two laptops, two tablets and some custom network hardware that all needed to be scanned. Luckily I wasn't too frazzled to notice that one laptop was missing from the bins, but it could have easily gone the way it did for the author here. I ended up having to walk around the checkpoint asking random agents if they had taken my laptop because no one thought it would be worth flagging me down or notifying me in some way that they had taken my property. In the end I spotted some random TSA goon messing around with it at a table all the way across the checkpoint.

ralfd 10y ago
And? You ended at the most interesting point: What happened then? What did he say when you approached him?
- quasse 10y ago
  It wasn't much of a climax, I was pretty annoyed at that point and he mumbled something about individual tests (probably he meant that little swab they do for explosives?) and then just handed it back without doing anything. I was pretty worked up because it was a brand new top spec MacBook Pro and I would have felt terrible explaining to work that I had lost it in an airport.
  - salesguy222 10y ago
    It's possible he was attempting to feign for the cameras that he was doing work on it, waiting for you to walk off, and then he would take it home. Or he's just severely incompetent when it comes to the honor and dignity that TSA agents should have when temporarily confiscating other people's items. I once had my hands swabbed at Raleigh Durham for a "random test" done by the TSA. The testing unit beeped very loudly and said my hands tested positive for explosive residue. I sat there "waiting for instructions" for 10 minutes until another colleague informed the person in charge, "oh yeah; that's been broken for weeks"

by quasse 10y ago

ralfd 10y ago

And? You ended at the most interesting point: What happened then? What did he say when you approached him?

quasse 10y ago
It wasn't much of a climax, I was pretty annoyed at that point and he mumbled something about individual tests (probably he meant that little swab they do for explosives?) and then just handed it back without doing anything. I was pretty worked up because it was a brand new top spec MacBook Pro and I would have felt terrible explaining to work that I had lost it in an airport.
- salesguy222 10y ago
  It's possible he was attempting to feign for the cameras that he was doing work on it, waiting for you to walk off, and then he would take it home. Or he's just severely incompetent when it comes to the honor and dignity that TSA agents should have when temporarily confiscating other people's items. I once had my hands swabbed at Raleigh Durham for a "random test" done by the TSA. The testing unit beeped very loudly and said my hands tested positive for explosive residue. I sat there "waiting for instructions" for 10 minutes until another colleague informed the person in charge, "oh yeah; that's been broken for weeks"