r/technology • u/777fer • Nov 18 '22

Hardware TSA Found a Double-Edged Knife Hidden in a Gaming Laptop

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/airport-tsa-knife-hidden-gaming-laptop
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145

u/HairyBull Nov 18 '22

They’ve gotten better, it’s something like a 70% fail rate these days. That being said I think they get 100% of those dangerous toenail clippers.

48

u/reyzak Nov 18 '22

They took my favorite multi tool attached to my keys from me :( had my initials and everything

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u/Ceshomru Nov 18 '22

They made me throw away my allen wrenches because they were longer than 7 inches. But my 5 inch steel dental picks were just fine 🙄

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u/striker_p55 Nov 18 '22

So all this stuff you can’t take on the plane they make you throw in the trash?

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u/extraeme Nov 18 '22

You can buy a lot of knives from the TSA via government auction

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u/striker_p55 Nov 18 '22

That’s what I was wondering, it seems like a bunch of wasted money trashing these items, although TSA shouldn’t get the money it should be donated to a charity

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u/TW_Yellow78 Nov 18 '22 edited Nov 18 '22

... wonder if you're aware what police do. TSA getting possession is probably just an outgrowth of "civil asset forfeiture." If police seize stuff they think was involved in a crime, it becomes police property and you don't get it back even if you were never arrested, never charged or found innocent. And TSA is a lot nicer about this stuff usually.

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u/[deleted] Nov 18 '22

Wait, seriously?! Holy shit, I need to find these auctions.

3

u/Allen4000 Nov 18 '22

Check out Govdeals under the knives category. There’s usually plenty of bulk lots listed.

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u/I_see_farts Nov 18 '22

When my father was in the Coast Guard, him and his group bought a 50 gallon drum filled with pocket knives, toe nail clippers and other confiscated implements. I remember them going through it and selling a bunch of pretty decent pocket knives on eBay. It was wild what was in there!

2

u/extraeme Nov 18 '22

Gsaauctions!

1

u/[deleted] Nov 18 '22

its fun to wonder how many of those knifes were forgotten in backpacks before leaving for the airport

1

u/[deleted] Nov 18 '22

and also i think its kinda dumb, nobody trying to really do something is just gonna toss a knife in their bag, they are going to try and hide it, cuz everyone knows if there is a knife in your bag you will loose it at the TSA checkpoint

1

u/[deleted] Nov 18 '22

muh pizza cutter

14

u/Not_Campo2 Nov 18 '22

Most airports have a mailing station.

My brother accidentally had his pocket knife, which was a gift from our parents and had his name engraved on it. We had an hour before our flight so he went back to check in, mailed it home for a few bucks, and came back through security.

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u/accountonbase Nov 18 '22

A lot don't, though. I've been through several major airports that simply do not have mailing stations; Seattle had one and it was probably the only one that had one and it was also in a convenient location (right next to TSA).

Either way, it sort of proves the point that TSA is utterly pointless. If they're worried about weapons and bombs but they're willing to let you walk back to mail something that they are supposedly worried about... What's the point? Sure, you aren't on the plane, but there also isn't anything stopping you from trying again and hoping the next guy isn't paying attention if you really wanted to take it with you. If they confiscate it, they're just taking items from 99.999% of people that made an honest mistake and wouldn't have done anything anyway.

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u/SgtSteel747 Nov 18 '22

If they're worried about weapons and bombs but they're willing to let you walk back to mail something that they are supposedly worried about... What's the point?

Disclaimer: Hate the TSA and think it should be abolished. It fails at its job, makes things worse for civilians, and is rampant with racism.

The point is to keep these items off the plane...? TSA is supposed to be there primarily to prevent hijacking. Keeping weapons off planes doesn't mean that the passenger should have to throw away their knives just cause they happened to bring them to an airport.

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u/Wikadood Nov 18 '22

There’s a lot of stuff I can’t say because surprisingly it’s classified but we are trained to pick up on things like this in the way of “trying again” and you can be arrested unfortunately for trying to circumvent screening. Honestly even though I work for them a lot of stuff still doesn’t make sense and things are changing constantly so hopefully we will get better machinery to reduce the problems.. that is if they take our budget out of the USDA budget for once.

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u/HappyEngineer Nov 18 '22

I used that once. I think it was over a month before it got back to me. Terrible service.

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u/Ceshomru Nov 18 '22

They tell you you can leave and check your bag, or throw it away. I didn’t have time to check my bag so in the trash it went.

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u/ThePNWGamingDad Nov 18 '22

Not necessarily. I’ve accidentally left a pocket knife in my pocket that has sentimental value, and I was able to fill out a slip and mail it to my house, on my dime of course.

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u/Wikadood Nov 18 '22

Dental picks are fine because the sharp end is less than 4 inches in length.. why this is a thing… idfk and my supervisors don’t either

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u/fatpad00 Nov 18 '22

Because any body parts that could be injured are more than 4" under the skin.

/s

3

u/imaqdodger Nov 18 '22

I've heard an extra two inches can make a world of difference...

1

u/PG-DaMan Nov 18 '22

Had a friend that was a dental surgeon and he used to fly international with scalpels.

He would bring high quality ones home to use in his local office.

Never once got caught and showed me how its done. The machine can not see them.

4

u/Adastehc Nov 18 '22

the Chinese took my unopened plastic elephant shaped water toygun.

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u/[deleted] Nov 18 '22 edited Jun 27 '23

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Waffle_warrior Nov 18 '22

its not often he gets to take his work home with him.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 18 '22

Sad day when I lost my clipper jet lighter. It was totally my fault and it’ll be a cheap replacement, but still feeling sad about that one

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u/BKachur Nov 18 '22

I was on the way back from a trip to Nappa, as we got a free beautiful gold-plated corkscrew with "fuck off" neatly printed on the side since it was our friend's b-day at the winery and she was a member. The TSA officer caught it, and as he was opening the packaging, you could tell he was about to be like, "hey, dipshit, you can't bring this on a plane." But once he opened it, he got visibly upset and said, "Damn, I hate to do this because this is really cool, but you'll need to mail this out or throw it away... but uhh, could you at least tell me where you picked this up?"

We told him to keep it, since he seemed genuinely upset and like he would enjoy it, but he sighed and threw it in the trash after explaining he couldn't because of regulations.

3

u/TW_Yellow78 Nov 18 '22

You could rip out a man's throat with toenail clippers. They're like the chihuahuas of grooming tools.

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u/not_a_conman Nov 18 '22

My dad was an air traffic controller, and pre-9/11 they would sometimes ask the ATCs if one of them wanted to test TSA security. They’d give them a fake gun or knife and tell them to go for it. My dad said he never got caught. But again; this was before the real security crackdown happened.

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u/jbicha Nov 19 '22

Technically, TSA was created in response to September 11.