The Thing That Will Save Us All…
…is this little plastic baggie???? You have got to be kidding me!!! I took a roundtrip Southwest Flight from Sacramento to the OC this past weekend. In Sacramento, they checked my carry-on bag as usual. On my return trip at the OC airport, they informed me that I had liquids in my purse that were in the allotted limit, but they were not in a ziploc bag, so I would not be able to board unless I had them in a sealed Ziploc bag. My leftover ketchup packets and a couple of lipglosses were clearly unacceptable. The catch was that you could buy a bag from the Gift Shop…if the giftshop was open (which they were not on this typical Sunday evening). The TSA rep gave me her baggie and a stern lecture and let me on my way…problem avoided. She did miss one ketchup packet in my purse though…the T is TSA cannot stand for thorough!
How in the world does this policy make one person safer???? The only thing I saw it doing was helping the bottled water companies sine people had to leave their water bottles before going through security, but could purchase one in the sterile area after security.
Help me out here….I’ll take any explanation!
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Because there has to be a bright-line standard drawn somewhere, and, though it’s annoying, this is where it is.
The 3oz size limitation likely stems from most travel-sized items being less than that, and many other standard bottles of make-up, etc, being around 3oz.
The quart-sized bag (which is pretty small, granted) is simply a standardized way to make sure all your goods are in one place and no one has to physically search your toiletries kit or any other set of luggage. Imagine the lines at security then!
A coworker told me that her boyfriend recently got in a screaming match with TSA people over his bag being gallon, rather than quart sized. That would be an annoying stop - since he really was trying to comply. With better public education, though, I hope such altercations become less common.
How much must it suck to be a TSA agent these days?
There are logical reasons to these rules, even if they seem superficially nonsensical.
It’s called security theater, and it’s part of an expensive process our government foists upon us to give the appearance of security while actually allowing politicians to funnel money to their pet projects. It also typically results in us being less secure, but only security experts outside the arenas which are practicing security theater will tell you that. Search for Bruce Schneier’s comments on security theater and look up the term on Wikipedia.
It doesn’t make you any safer, but it does push you to reconsider travel via train, bus, personal or rented car, or not travelling at all. Apparently reducing the desireability of air travel is our government’s way of helping the airlines recover from the financial pain that was caused by the 9/11 attacks. I’m not sure how that makes airlines better off, but there must be some logical explanation, right?
Oh yeah, that’s right - logic and government policy have never met. Sorry about that.