6 ms·

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 wh

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.

wakawaka28 10mo ago
A lighter is very different from a weapon. I'm sure they can see everything they need to see with X-rays. Do you think they find a white guy flying out of China to be a likely terrorist? (I'm assuming you are white or asian.) I've never had a bad experience with TSA but I hate taking off my shoes and all. I really question the value of those security measures.
- fc417fc802 10mo ago
  I haven't had any particularly bad experiences with the TSA either but I have been physically searched a few times. The entire process is definitely slower and more involved. The contrast of that coupled with the published failure statistics just leaves me wondering. I'd rather we got rid of them but if we must keep them I think we could do at least a bit better.
  - brewdad 10mo ago
    Almost every time I've had a secondary search I've thought "Yeah, I can see how that looks suspicious on x-ray". A large block of cheese as one example. My two favorite pull-asides were for a three inch toy cannon my son brought back from a civil war site and my 18 inch plastic roller I carried to the Boston Marathon. I was allowed to proceed with both but the roller required a supervisor's approval and the cannon actually had to go up two levels.
- teiferer 10mo ago
  > Do you think they find a white guy flying out of China to be a likely terrorist? What does skin color have to do with this? And yes, oppressed groups in China, like the Uyghurs, have support in the west. Among white people. Maybe the winning strategy is comprehensive mass surveillance which flags you in a database long before even showing up at the airport and then the security theater just provides a suitable pretense for an arrest.
  - 0x3f 10mo ago
    > What does skin color have to do with this? It affects their perception of how risky you are, obviously. Accurate or not. In fact, security tech in China will openly classify you by race/ethnicity.
    - sho_hn 10mo ago
      Of course according to the US government terrorists are now white US citizens, so you could say they have become more open-minded.
      - 0x3f 10mo ago
        Yes, although the US is genuinely one of the least racist places in the world, that's more about how bad the rest of the world is. In China the CCTV view just tags you up as Han/Uyghur/African/whatever. Nobody would even think twice about it. There's not even a forum to discuss it, not because it upsets people to be confronted, it's just so casual and matter-of-fact it'd be strange to even talk about. Like of _course_ the Uyghurs are the dangerous ones.
  - croes 10mo ago
    The same Uyghurs in the US would be judged by theie religion und be tracked down by ICE
- ExoticPearTree 10mo ago
  There are countries that for whatever reason do not allow lighters on airplanes. One time my bag was searched furiously because they saw a lighter on the machine, but had trouble locating it. Took two people about 15 minutes. Finally found it. It was very tiny.
  - Scoundreller 10mo ago
    Can depend on the lighter. A $1 plain lighter is fine in some countries while a $3 pressurized “jet” lighter is often prohibited.
- zwily 10mo ago
  You don’t have to take your shoes off anymore!
2muchcoffeeman 10mo ago
Once at a security checkpoint to a museum in Shanghai, they saw my water bottle, and then told me to take it out and drink from it.
- tasuki 10mo ago
  That is the way!
- imcritic 10mo ago
  Was it just you? Or do they apply the same policy for every visitor with a bottle of liquid?
  - fc417fc802 10mo ago
    Just a guess but at a museum I assume they're looking out for vandals. If it's a water bottle the counterpart would be something like concentrated sodium hydroxide in which case a single sip is sufficient. Not sure how they would handle dye in a paper coffee cup though.
    - imcritic 10mo ago
      I doubt that's against vandals I think it's against terrorists with liquid explosives/poison.
  - 2muchcoffeeman 10mo ago
    I saw them do this to a few others in line.
  - qingdao99 10mo ago
    This is/was fairly common, I've experienced it on the Chinese subway a few times and I've seen a few clips of it happening online. No idea if it's official policy or not, though.
- SapporoChris 10mo ago
  In the 90's USA was sensible. I was flying with a thermos of hot coffee in my carry on. As soon as they took out the thermos and felt the heat radiating from the lid the agent said, "I don't think they would heat it", smiled and passed me thru. Now when I fly I have to be careful. When they ask purpose of visit I say sightseeing. I used to say tourist, but with my accent that once caused alarm when the agent thought I said terrorist.
Cthulhu_ 10mo ago
I flew into the UK once with a small nerf pistol. Going in, no problem. Going out I was asked to remove it, lol.
- Scoundreller 10mo ago
  Heathrow is annoying in that you need to go through security every time you change terminal (or enter one for the first time when arriving internationally). Had to go through security 4 times in a day due to a colossal fuck up by an airline. Each time they flagged something different on a different person. Still no idea what they were looking for in a purse 3 of 4 times. It’s wildly inconsistent and I kinda doubt it’s intentional fuzzy logic.
  - insom 10mo ago
    The different Heathrow terminals have different security requirements. I suspect it’s based on countries they fly to from each terminal, but it could be age if equipment. It is frustrating for security to act like you’re a total idiot for following a process another terminal says is fine (like leaving very small electronics like Kindles in your bag). Oh, well.
    - red_admiral 10mo ago
      Indeed. Other airports in Europe even have separate terminals or areas for Schengen and non-Schengen destinations, with passport control and sometimes security scans again between them. Bonus points to Zurich (Schengen but not EU, just to test the edge cases) - I think they have an airside metro where each car is segregated for a different security category of passenger.
      - Scoundreller 10mo ago
        That was one of my jokes going between terminals (always by bus): has this country thought about discovering trains? Once leaving a terminal the staff said we’d take an internal bus and I asked if that meant we wouldn’t have to go through security again, but they just meant the same one as the rest. All of our trips were non-UK-entry but possibly some terminals do have heightened security to meet one-stop-security requirements. Didn’t seem like it but can’t be sure.
masfuerte 10mo ago
I had exactly the same experience in 2008, the year of the Beijing olympics. It seemed futuristic then and I can only assume their technology is even better now.
Zigurd 10mo ago
Flying out of HK after visiting SZ, I was quietly and quickly surrounded by men with guns after my bag was xrayed. I like nice clothes, especially neatly laundered and pressed shirts. I had an Altoids tin with a few brass collar stays for those shirts. Brass. With a pointy end.
- jandrese 10mo ago
  When I was kid long before TSA was even a thing my family flew up to visit the grandparents. My mom had us pack our own bags with some of our favorite toys. My brother decided to bring his Megatron, but sadly left it out of Robot mode. It was quite a scene at the X-Ray when every single agent in the area came running with guns drawn at once.
woolion 10mo ago
Flying back from Beijing, I had bought a lot of books. I filled my bags with it, so they were very heavy. When the agent came to try to check my backpack, he casually grabbed it, and fell on the conveyor belt trying to lift it. He looked at me with shock. "I'm done", I thought. He opened the bag, and saw a box of zongzi the university gave me, on top of the books. He instantly became radiant, gave me a pat on the back, and just indicated the way.
- stronglikedan 10mo ago
  If I were him, I'd have let you bribe me with a zongzi. Those look delicious!
  - marcosdumay 10mo ago
    I know it's a joke, and they probably get only a tiny minority of cases... but the Chinese government makes a huge show of executing people that do stuff like this.
    - nerdsniper 10mo ago
      > the Chinese government makes a huge theater of execution people that do stuff like this. This sentence has a critical grammatical error, but I can't figure out what it was supposed to say.
      - asielen 10mo ago
        Execution should be executing Also not sure about the usage of theater there. I'd probably swap it out for "show". Never heard theater used like that although it is pretty close to a standard idiom, "to make a show of something".
        marcosdumay 10mo ago
        Thanks, changed both.
Waterluvian 10mo ago
This sounds like my experiences in Toronto. It’s less adversarial than the experiences I've had in the U.S. My experiences were basically a form of, “Hey we saw something that caught our attention and might be an issue. Let's work through addressing this." One case it was a handful of 3.5" galvanized nails. "Whoops. Okay, so, this bag used to be my makeshift toolbag. My other one ripped and I had to get one last minute--" "No problem. Can you remove them? You can either surrender them to us or we can get them mailed back to you, but I'm guessing it's not worth it..." I was so defensive because to me it looked bad but they weren't actually after me in the way I thought they'd be. The second time was that I had an "Arduino Starter Kit" full of bundled up wires and random chips and such. Once they saw the box they didn't even ask me to un-shrinkwrap it, and unlike the nails, didn't re-x-ray the bag. Both times they rotated their screen and pointed to the box framing the item in question on the colourized x-ray.
- alistairSH 10mo ago
  Meanwhile, the TSA looks at me like I'm, at best an annoyance, and at worst a criminal, when I ask them to inspect my camera kit manually (film, not digital). And that inspection consists of swabbing 35mm film canisters - like, the shell of a 35mm roll is going to tell them anything useful?!?! It's a complete sham.
  - fc417fc802 10mo ago
    I guess they're probably operating on the assumption that at worst a few short nails stuffed in a small film canister are no worse than the metal handle from a rolling suitcase. The swab is for common explosives. The canisters are a bit on the small side but I guess could still pose a threat if packed with high explosive and a bit of shrapnel. The apparent annoyance (or worse) is the part that gets me. The entire process just feels needlessly adversarial. At least they didn't insist on patting you down or emptying out your bag!
  - ares623 10mo ago
    I think for film specifically it might be for drugs? Seems like a very convenient way to smuggle contraband. You can’t open it to inspect it, you can’t xray it either otherwise it will ruin the film.
Nihilartikel 10mo ago
Interestingly, I had the exact same experience leaving Shanghai - I had picked up some nifty lighters at the wholesale markets. They took me to the room, had me take them out, and I was lucky enough to be able to hand them off to a friend who was staying. No fuss, waiting, or intimidation. They just took care of my honest mistake.
subroutine 10mo ago
I was flying out of Chicago and I had a big metal bolt that was hollowed out to store pills inside. They showed me the scanned image, and you could see everything clear as day - steel bolt, hollow core, Xanax.

wakawaka28 10mo ago

A lighter is very different from a weapon. I'm sure they can see everything they need to see with X-rays. Do you think they find a white guy flying out of China to be a likely terrorist? (I'm assuming you are white or asian.) I've never had a bad experience with TSA but I hate taking off my shoes and all. I really question the value of those security measures.

fc417fc802 10mo ago
I haven't had any particularly bad experiences with the TSA either but I have been physically searched a few times. The entire process is definitely slower and more involved. The contrast of that coupled with the published failure statistics just leaves me wondering. I'd rather we got rid of them but if we must keep them I think we could do at least a bit better.
- brewdad 10mo ago
  Almost every time I've had a secondary search I've thought "Yeah, I can see how that looks suspicious on x-ray". A large block of cheese as one example. My two favorite pull-asides were for a three inch toy cannon my son brought back from a civil war site and my 18 inch plastic roller I carried to the Boston Marathon. I was allowed to proceed with both but the roller required a supervisor's approval and the cannon actually had to go up two levels.
teiferer 10mo ago
> Do you think they find a white guy flying out of China to be a likely terrorist? What does skin color have to do with this? And yes, oppressed groups in China, like the Uyghurs, have support in the west. Among white people. Maybe the winning strategy is comprehensive mass surveillance which flags you in a database long before even showing up at the airport and then the security theater just provides a suitable pretense for an arrest.
- 0x3f 10mo ago
  > What does skin color have to do with this? It affects their perception of how risky you are, obviously. Accurate or not. In fact, security tech in China will openly classify you by race/ethnicity.
  - sho_hn 10mo ago
    Of course according to the US government terrorists are now white US citizens, so you could say they have become more open-minded.
    - 0x3f 10mo ago
      Yes, although the US is genuinely one of the least racist places in the world, that's more about how bad the rest of the world is. In China the CCTV view just tags you up as Han/Uyghur/African/whatever. Nobody would even think twice about it. There's not even a forum to discuss it, not because it upsets people to be confronted, it's just so casual and matter-of-fact it'd be strange to even talk about. Like of _course_ the Uyghurs are the dangerous ones.
- croes 10mo ago
  The same Uyghurs in the US would be judged by theie religion und be tracked down by ICE
ExoticPearTree 10mo ago
There are countries that for whatever reason do not allow lighters on airplanes. One time my bag was searched furiously because they saw a lighter on the machine, but had trouble locating it. Took two people about 15 minutes. Finally found it. It was very tiny.
- Scoundreller 10mo ago
  Can depend on the lighter. A $1 plain lighter is fine in some countries while a $3 pressurized “jet” lighter is often prohibited.
zwily 10mo ago
You don’t have to take your shoes off anymore!

2muchcoffeeman 10mo ago

Once at a security checkpoint to a museum in Shanghai, they saw my water bottle, and then told me to take it out and drink from it.

tasuki 10mo ago
That is the way!
imcritic 10mo ago
Was it just you? Or do they apply the same policy for every visitor with a bottle of liquid?
- fc417fc802 10mo ago
  Just a guess but at a museum I assume they're looking out for vandals. If it's a water bottle the counterpart would be something like concentrated sodium hydroxide in which case a single sip is sufficient. Not sure how they would handle dye in a paper coffee cup though.
  - imcritic 10mo ago
    I doubt that's against vandals I think it's against terrorists with liquid explosives/poison.
- 2muchcoffeeman 10mo ago
  I saw them do this to a few others in line.
- qingdao99 10mo ago
  This is/was fairly common, I've experienced it on the Chinese subway a few times and I've seen a few clips of it happening online. No idea if it's official policy or not, though.
SapporoChris 10mo ago
In the 90's USA was sensible. I was flying with a thermos of hot coffee in my carry on. As soon as they took out the thermos and felt the heat radiating from the lid the agent said, "I don't think they would heat it", smiled and passed me thru. Now when I fly I have to be careful. When they ask purpose of visit I say sightseeing. I used to say tourist, but with my accent that once caused alarm when the agent thought I said terrorist.

Cthulhu_ 10mo ago

I flew into the UK once with a small nerf pistol. Going in, no problem. Going out I was asked to remove it, lol.

Scoundreller 10mo ago
Heathrow is annoying in that you need to go through security every time you change terminal (or enter one for the first time when arriving internationally). Had to go through security 4 times in a day due to a colossal fuck up by an airline. Each time they flagged something different on a different person. Still no idea what they were looking for in a purse 3 of 4 times. It’s wildly inconsistent and I kinda doubt it’s intentional fuzzy logic.
- insom 10mo ago
  The different Heathrow terminals have different security requirements. I suspect it’s based on countries they fly to from each terminal, but it could be age if equipment. It is frustrating for security to act like you’re a total idiot for following a process another terminal says is fine (like leaving very small electronics like Kindles in your bag). Oh, well.
  - red_admiral 10mo ago
    Indeed. Other airports in Europe even have separate terminals or areas for Schengen and non-Schengen destinations, with passport control and sometimes security scans again between them. Bonus points to Zurich (Schengen but not EU, just to test the edge cases) - I think they have an airside metro where each car is segregated for a different security category of passenger.
    - Scoundreller 10mo ago
      That was one of my jokes going between terminals (always by bus): has this country thought about discovering trains? Once leaving a terminal the staff said we’d take an internal bus and I asked if that meant we wouldn’t have to go through security again, but they just meant the same one as the rest. All of our trips were non-UK-entry but possibly some terminals do have heightened security to meet one-stop-security requirements. Didn’t seem like it but can’t be sure.

masfuerte 10mo ago

I had exactly the same experience in 2008, the year of the Beijing olympics. It seemed futuristic then and I can only assume their technology is even better now.

Zigurd 10mo ago

Flying out of HK after visiting SZ, I was quietly and quickly surrounded by men with guns after my bag was xrayed. I like nice clothes, especially neatly laundered and pressed shirts. I had an Altoids tin with a few brass collar stays for those shirts. Brass. With a pointy end.

jandrese 10mo ago
When I was kid long before TSA was even a thing my family flew up to visit the grandparents. My mom had us pack our own bags with some of our favorite toys. My brother decided to bring his Megatron, but sadly left it out of Robot mode. It was quite a scene at the X-Ray when every single agent in the area came running with guns drawn at once.

woolion 10mo ago

Flying back from Beijing, I had bought a lot of books. I filled my bags with it, so they were very heavy. When the agent came to try to check my backpack, he casually grabbed it, and fell on the conveyor belt trying to lift it. He looked at me with shock. "I'm done", I thought. He opened the bag, and saw a box of zongzi the university gave me, on top of the books. He instantly became radiant, gave me a pat on the back, and just indicated the way.

stronglikedan 10mo ago
If I were him, I'd have let you bribe me with a zongzi. Those look delicious!
- marcosdumay 10mo ago
  I know it's a joke, and they probably get only a tiny minority of cases... but the Chinese government makes a huge show of executing people that do stuff like this.
  - nerdsniper 10mo ago
    > the Chinese government makes a huge theater of execution people that do stuff like this. This sentence has a critical grammatical error, but I can't figure out what it was supposed to say.
    - asielen 10mo ago
      Execution should be executing Also not sure about the usage of theater there. I'd probably swap it out for "show". Never heard theater used like that although it is pretty close to a standard idiom, "to make a show of something".
      - marcosdumay 10mo ago
        Thanks, changed both.

Waterluvian 10mo ago

This sounds like my experiences in Toronto. It’s less adversarial than the experiences I've had in the U.S. My experiences were basically a form of, “Hey we saw something that caught our attention and might be an issue. Let's work through addressing this." One case it was a handful of 3.5" galvanized nails. "Whoops. Okay, so, this bag used to be my makeshift toolbag. My other one ripped and I had to get one last minute--" "No problem. Can you remove them? You can either surrender them to us or we can get them mailed back to you, but I'm guessing it's not worth it..." I was so defensive because to me it looked bad but they weren't actually after me in the way I thought they'd be. The second time was that I had an "Arduino Starter Kit" full of bundled up wires and random chips and such. Once they saw the box they didn't even ask me to un-shrinkwrap it, and unlike the nails, didn't re-x-ray the bag. Both times they rotated their screen and pointed to the box framing the item in question on the colourized x-ray.

alistairSH 10mo ago
Meanwhile, the TSA looks at me like I'm, at best an annoyance, and at worst a criminal, when I ask them to inspect my camera kit manually (film, not digital). And that inspection consists of swabbing 35mm film canisters - like, the shell of a 35mm roll is going to tell them anything useful?!?! It's a complete sham.
- fc417fc802 10mo ago
  I guess they're probably operating on the assumption that at worst a few short nails stuffed in a small film canister are no worse than the metal handle from a rolling suitcase. The swab is for common explosives. The canisters are a bit on the small side but I guess could still pose a threat if packed with high explosive and a bit of shrapnel. The apparent annoyance (or worse) is the part that gets me. The entire process just feels needlessly adversarial. At least they didn't insist on patting you down or emptying out your bag!
- ares623 10mo ago
  I think for film specifically it might be for drugs? Seems like a very convenient way to smuggle contraband. You can’t open it to inspect it, you can’t xray it either otherwise it will ruin the film.

Nihilartikel 10mo ago

Interestingly, I had the exact same experience leaving Shanghai - I had picked up some nifty lighters at the wholesale markets. They took me to the room, had me take them out, and I was lucky enough to be able to hand them off to a friend who was staying. No fuss, waiting, or intimidation. They just took care of my honest mistake.

subroutine 10mo ago

I was flying out of Chicago and I had a big metal bolt that was hollowed out to store pills inside. They showed me the scanned image, and you could see everything clear as day - steel bolt, hollow core, Xanax.