This is more common than reported.
I’ve lost a semi expensive present, and have heard anecdotal stories of people losing handbags, jewelry, higher end clothing/shoes.
It seems to be more prevalent in the US/TSA than other first world countries.
This story from SFO where the luggage handlers stole a gun from a retired police officer is pretty funny, though the article leaves out the part where there were numerous earlier complaints that were ignored:
United Airline luggage handlers at SFO decided to steal and resell weed from smugglers, then got robbed on camera at the airport while moving trashbags of it to their car. They got caught because they decided to report the robbery to the police!
Most other countries don’t have such powerful agency behind airport security. I don’t see a politician who would dare to limit TSA powers or even put some pressure. BTW I myself had ~$50 item in luggage missing (and TSA card left) but was busy at the time and haven’t reported (also I had no hope to have the item recovered).
It seems pretty straightforward. The TSA doesn't focus on competence when hiring, resulting in a less competent workforce. They have an entire department dedicated to prioritizing characteristics unrelated to competence, such as skin color, sex, etc.: https://www.tsa.gov/civil-rights-diversity-and-inclusion.
This is not the case of most countries and in fact, it's illegal in many places to do so.
It does to me. The goal of achieving a workforce that is phenotypically representative of larger society (a goal of that department) is incompatible with the one of achieving a competent workforce. If the goals were compatible, there would be no need for such a department as it would just occur naturally through hiring the most competent workforce. The department exists because hiring the most competent workforce does not result in a workforce that is phenotypically representative of larger society.
Low status, meager pay, moderate authority, high opportunity. Almost a guarantee that the theft rate is very high.
Public awareness of this theft would be very damaging so there’s also a great pressure to cover it up.
I’m guessing 75% of actual theft is marked as a “legitimate banned item”. I’ve had TSA agents claim high value items were not allowed so they could be stolen ( the encounter was outside the main security area with less concentrated camera coverage.).
In other words if there are reports of ~ 100 thefts a year it’s likely 4x that amount.
In Europe, income is generally more evenly distributed across various skills, professions, and sectors of the economy.
IMO this makes society here much more pleasant. Personally, I wouldn’t be comfortable living in a society where people who grow, prepare, or serve food, educate children, or maintain the cleanliness of streets are on the brink of survival. Even ignoring empathy which is subjective, unhappy people rarely do a great job. The original article is a good example.
And they're not professionals, they're unskilled labor with extra steps.
I'd feel more inclined to empathy if TSA didn't turn every airport adventure into a souless anxiety spree for the sake of regularly failing to catch dangerous items brought onto aircraft.
I used to maintain a blog of arrests of TSA officers and baggage handlers. At its peak, there were on average 2 arrests/week for stealing from passengers. It’s actually gotten better (less theft) over the past few years. I no longer keep the blog, but it’s down to about 1 a month.
I think the TSA has made us less safe. If there are so many people desperate for money, what’s stopping them from accepting a payment to get something through?
We're each individually much more likely to be victimized by TSA than helped. Obviously they generally aren't killing us though, so at least there's that.
At the time the TSA was hired the majority of workers had previously been airport security which is was low-skill/low-pay job. When Bush Jr established the TSA, those same people were federalized. Meaning Federal pay, benefits, retirement, etc for the same low skill level.
They haven't improved much since then. The organization has essentially made Security Theater an event with audience participation. Yet they routinely miss threats -- like they have a 95% FAILURE rate at points.
I accidentally brought a full-sized 4th of July smokebomb through TSA and didn't realize it until I unpacked after I got home.
I'm not talking one of those small, spherical smokebombs. No, this was one of those 5" long, 1" diameter sticks, and it was by itself in a pocket of my netbook bag, which didn't have room for much else, so it's not like the xray image would have been confusing.
Seems like tons of other people have had similar experiences.
TSA's impact on safety is largely imagination and wishful thinking.
That sounds about right, I took a domestic flight from SFO to PSP this week. I had a full-sized tube of toothpaste going there, with no issues, and they took it away coming back.
Well, most intentionally-downed passenger aircraft in the last decade were apparent pilot suicides that were enabled by the post 9/11 cockpit security doors, so I guess we won.
> I think what's really preventing future 9/11 attacks is the attitude of the passengers.
I'm certain of this. The scheme used on 9/11 was a one-and-done affair. It cannot be repeated. We know this because only one hour after the first plane hit the north tower of WTC, that infamous "let's roll" line was overheard on a phone call from Flight 93.
Not only are future attempts at this unworkable, not even the 4th attempt of that day was viable!
Airport screening should be for bombs or other materials that cannot be countered by passenger resistance. Drugs, pocket knives, darts, etc. should be passed through without comment. This would also improve the effectiveness of the screening! With fewer items to be on the lookout for, the screening can be more effective.
I've been into blogs on aviation accidents recently and can confidently say that it's both the attitudes of passengers post-9/11 and locking the cabin by default that has prevented most hijacking attempts. Pilot suicides are a threat, yes, but they are much much much rarer than attempted hijackings, so they're less of a risk than the alternative (which is leaving the cabin unlocked for anyone to just waltz into and beat the captain up: https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/the-dead-mans-gambit-the...).
It’s a theater performance for the benefit of the unsophisticated public that happens to be a jobs program as a second order effect.
After 9/11, there was an overwhelming urge for government to “do something”, and this is the result. If you’re the one to dismantle the TSA, however strong your data is why it should be done, it’ll be your head to roll as soon as a negative event occurs. And so the show must go on.
> Josue Gonzalez and Labarrius Williams are facing grand theft charges.
> For the next six months, Gonzalez must pay $700 to the two victims involved and he must do 25 hours of community service and give up his airport security credentials.
For reference, grand theft in Florida is when the property stolen exceeds $750 in value.
Or is it proof of how well the TSA works in scaring off terrorists? On a completely different note, I have tiger repellent for sale. I can prove it works extremely well in that I have not once seen a tiger loose anywhere around me.
The TSA has been in existence for more than 20 years now. Can you find a single case where a terrorist has been convicted as a result of the actions of the TSA?
It’s a jobs program, that we all pay for three times over (in cash, in inconvenience, and for an unlucky minority, in harassment or worse). And because it’s a jobs program, it’s politically invincible.
The TSA is a welfare program for veterans. However, this is America, so we can't just give people money because something something socialism, so we have to give them pretend make-work.
The military is a welfare program for rural America - both via employing/housing/feeding hordes of poorly educated young white men as rank and file, but also employing all the people in the civilian sector who work for companies feeding the military's massive supply chain.
We don't have a draft because we don't quite need one; we just force people into poverty and leave the military as the only escape route.
If we had functioning social service programs, young men and women wouldn't enlist, and we wouldn't have enough "volunteers."
Actual social services are buried in endless red tape, regulations, restrictions, and endless challenges and demands to justify their existence....while the Pentagon will probably never pass an audit and is essentially an open fire hose where one can just say "JERBS!" and everyone is happy.
The farm bill is nearly as bad.
And guess who screams the loudest when coastal states want money for help with public transit, housing, etc? Rural America, which sucks from the teat the hardest.
And guess who the biggest single polluter / largest carbon generator in the world is?
The unsurprising part to me is not that it's "common", but with over 50k TSA agents, I'd be shocked if some small percentage of them weren't thieves. If only one in a thousand is a thief, that's still 50 thieves.
It's different: at Newark Airport there was a whole shift of TSA officers whose main target was Indians leaving the US - elderly people with language difficulties, just despicable. One wonders about the logistics, anyone who is familiar with Terminal B in Newark knows there are cameras everywhere. It must have been lucrative, and the airport police must have been in on the joke.
If you have 1 bad officer but 999 who go along with it, you have 1000 bad officers.
And remember, this is just one case.
"Instead of making headlines with reform, though, the TSA has become better-known for stealing money from travelers. In September, news reports called out the case of TSA working with other agencies to seize $27,600 from a Texas man, apparently because he was traveling to Oregon where marijuana is legal in conflict with federal law; he was never charged with a crime. Last year, the Institute for Justice reported that TSA and its sister agencies at Homeland Security "seized over $2 billion in currency at airports" between 2000 and 2016."
I don't get why every comment here is answering a different question than the one being asked. The question is "is it common for TSA agents to covertly steal from carry-on luggage", not "is the TSA bad" or "do TSA follow due process" or "is it risky to carry cash in checked luggage when traveling" or "is law enforcement stealing from people" or what have you.
Due to the way surface tension works, many fewer than 1 in 1000 water molecules are wet.
There’s a kids science experiment where you coat your hand in the right powder, dip it in water, and it comes out dry. I can’t find a link to it though.
I think theft was more common before, but thankfully less so lately. Nothing ever went missing from my checked bags (so far), and I don’t travel in first world countries.
None of those is the case of passengers' carry-ons being robbed as they go through security, AFAICT. They're stuff like lost-and-found wallets being stolen. And what you're posting is from several years ago (mostly from a decade ago). If anything you're making it clear the type of incident we were talking about doesn't seem to be common nowadays.
I posted examples from several years ago to overcome any possible recency bias. I also posted a Google Trends link with similar intent. The TSA deliberately does not break down where in the airport a given worker was caught stealing; given that they've fired an average of 25 officers per year for the past twenty years the idea that none of them were raiding carryons is ridiculous.
It is going to be nearly impossible to convince you, I can tell. The next phase is "well just because it happens often doesn't mean it's common" and other goal-post-moving exercises. I don't really understand why you bothered asking questions if you believed you already had the answers. I'm also not sure why it's so important to you that the TSA be regarded as trustworthy despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Good luck with your future endeavors; I'm done playing.
> The next phase is "well just because it happens often doesn't mean it's common" and other goal-post-moving exercises. I don't really understand why you bothered asking questions if you believed you already had the answers. I'm also not sure why it's so important to you that the TSA be regarded as trustworthy despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Good luck with your future endeavors; I'm done playing.
"Is this common?" was the very first comment I posted [1] in this entire thread, which started this whole discussion. The data you (and many others) posted in direct response showed that ~0.5% of TSA agents were fired for doing something else bad a decade ago... which neither exhibits the "is" part of my question, nor the "this" part, nor the "common" part. Going back to my original question here is the exact opposite of me moving my goalposts; it's me bolting them to the ground at their original locations so that others don't move them.
(And to be clear, I don't have intentions that the TSA be regarded any particular way. But I don't have the energy to continue.)
Has anyone noticed that TSA employees are overwhelmingly obese? Recently flew out of JFK and I was beyond shocked that every.single.employee appeared to be over 300 pounds. They also scream at you, are indifferent to helping, etc. You can say the same thing about the DMV staff. I have not noticed this phenomenon in other countries. The federal government sure knows how to hire winners.
It seems to be more prevalent in the US/TSA than other first world countries.