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.)
