TSA Blog boasts of nabbing soup smuggler

Our close personal friend at the TSA, Blogger Bob, gave a rundown of prohibited items confiscated by his fellow officers on the front lines of the War on Terror.

Concealed Knife – A knife was found zip-tied to the inner workings of a bag handle at Cedar Rapids (CID). Clever, but no match for our officers and technology.

Chicken Soup for Your Pants? – Officers found a can of soup in a Las Vegas passenger’s carry-on bag. When told that it couldn’t go through because of the liquids rule (it was more than 3.4 ounces), the passenger said they would put the soup in their checked baggage. But when the passenger returned to the checkpoint, officers saw that the passenger had tried to hide the soup in their pants. No soup for them.

Derringer in a Dopp Kit – A Derringer was found amongst everyday toiletry items in a dopp kit at San Diego (SAN). I don’t think you could trim your nails, but I bet you could knick yourself if you shaved with it.

Stun Pen – I’ve often heard that the pen can be mightier than the sword. Well, in this case that statement is pretty close to being true. A stun-pen was found on a passenger at Chicago Midway (MDW).

Bad Kitty – Known as a black cat, or cat eyes, this seemingly harmless kitty cat becomes a punching weapon when your fingers are inserted in its eyes. It's cute little pointy cat ears are designed to puncture and rip flesh.

Belt Buckle Knife – A belt buckle knife was found was found on a passenger during screening at Akron (CAK). Holy utility belt, Batman, good thing you didn’t bring your batarang and grappling gun.

More Grenades – An inert grenade was found this week in a checked bag at Salt Lake City (SLC). Another was found in a carry-on bag at San Diego (SAN) and it had a 1" knife concealed inside it.

TSA Week in Review: Knife Zip-Tied to Handle of Bag

• [mccrum]

  So you took all these weapons from everyone, charged them with nothing and sent them on their way to try again?

  Well, that’s money well spent.

  • [HenryPootel]

    mccrum who’s saying these people all got let go? 

    • [mccrum]

      The article:
      “the throughput is slowed down and a passenger that likely had no ill intent ends up with a citation or in some cases is even arrested.”
      A citation.  Wow.

      If boarding a plane with this stuff is so dangerous, why isn’t there any punishment for attempting it?

    • [kjh]

       Yeah, they definitely should have arrested the soup guy.  Having soup under pressure on an airplane is a recipe for terrorism.

      • [NWA foodie]

        just having canned soup is a crime….period

  • [Krista Lipe]

    Actually, many people are charged with a crime for trying to bring a weapon through security. I have a friend on probation for forgetting about a pocket knife. The soup guy probably just got sent on his way, though :-)

• [OldBrownSquirrel]

  They’re cracking down on soup? Given the cultural reach of Seinfeld, this is gonna Godwin in record time.

  • [HenryPootel]

    “You’re pushing your luck, little man.” 

• [Aric Guité]

  Hey now, that inert grenade with the knife inside seems to be a good catch.

• [Charlie B]

  OK, so they can find soup and inert grenades, and they confiscated the blade out of my safety razor, but they missed the rigging knife with 5″ blade and 4″ curved marlinspike I forgot was in my shaving kit.

  Yeah, you heard that right, I accidentally flew from Philadelphia to Baton Rouge with a huge knife in my carry-on, AND they opened up the bag the knife was in to remove a double-edged razor blade.  Which has to be the world’s second worst weapon ever.

  • [Mike Marlett]

    Yeah? My sister-in-law just sailed through a flight with a can of soup. No kidding. TSA even nabbed her, but she told them it was a parting gift that a friend had just handed her (true), and they just said “whatever” and let her through.

    • [Dewi Morgan]

       ”So, you didn’t even pack this yourself? That’s fine then, carry on through.” :P

    • [Andy (Hide Your Arms)]

      Why are so many people taking cans of soup on flights?

• [Sarge Misfit]

  I wonder what they do about the guys that are trained to kill with their bare hands …

  • [Shinkuhadoken]

     There’s a Chuck Norris joke in there somewhere.

• [Ben Grogan]

  Who can take over a plane with an inert grenade and a one inch blade? It’s certainly no can of soup…

  • [Won Word]

    Al Qadea apparently can kill you and everyone you love with 3.01 oz of “liquid” and a 1″ emery board.

    He’s like an atomic-powered super ninja.

    • [liagirl]

      I weigh a 140 lbs, I am 97%  liquid just how is it am allowed on a plane?

      • [Won Word]

        Are you atomic-powered?

  • [Anonyman]

    Not so difficult if the other pax and crew don’t know it’s inert.

• [PathosBill]

  In all fairness, you did omit the part about the guns. But I don’t even think those would have been much use to terrorists/malcontents/nincompoops.  Some clever people learned ON Sept 11 to fight back. We don’t need these bozos baby-sitting us over ineffectual toys 10 years on.

• [AirPillo]

  Notice that every single offending item in the picture appears to contain enough metal that it would also have been screened out and confiscated (if necessary) in 1990 by normal airport security staff with metal detectors and baggage x-ray machines.

  • [jandrese]

     That’s not true, in 1990 the soup guy would have gotten onto the plane and could have caused some sort of soup related air terrorism. 

    • [Won Word]

      How would he open the can without a can-opener, smarty?

      That’s why terrorists will always fail because they forget the little details.

  • [Won Word]

    Shh!

• [vetnoir]

  And to think, all of these could have been brought on planes by taping then you the side…  Here is the facts though. 1) no one will ever be able to hijack a plane witha kinfe again.  2) everything here would have been caught pre 9/11  3) an inert grenade is not a grenade, it is a paperweight.  It has no threat value in checked luggage.
  4) Look out he’s got a sealed can of soup!!!

  • [Shinkuhadoken]

    3) an inert grenade is not a grenade, it is a paperweight.  It has no threat value in checked luggage.

    It does have threat value in the sense that I would personally not be able to tell an inert grenade from a live one and would assume that we were all about to die from it just the same. So, I’m okay with no fake grenades being on the plane with me. That one I actually agree with.

    • [EvilSpirit]

       You have yet to explain exactly how one effectively threatens somebody with vivid descriptions of the inert grenade down in the cargo hold. I don’t know about you, but I can’t tell an inert grenade in checked luggage from a watermelon in checked luggage. Because it’s *in checked luggage*.

    • [ǝɔʎoſ ʇʇɐW]

       1.  Blue handle means it was never a grenade ( in the sense it was explosive ordinance ).  Blue means training grenade.. it popped some smoke when used.  Most “inert” grenades are blue training grenades.  Otherwise they’d have been used and placed into an unrecoverable state.

      2.  Inert grenades have the bottom drilled out of them.  Fairly easy to spot.  But I suppose one could easily hide that from view.  However what does it say of the TSA that something checked could still be suspected of being a bomb after having passed through their screening procedures?

      3.  An inert training grenade is highly dangerous if thrown.  Those things weigh a TON.  Like you brain someone with that and they will likely be dead.  Seriously, I wonder how many people have been killed or injured in war just by actually being pegged by one of those things not even the explosive component of their attack.

      4.  I still they should be allowed to be checked.  They are not.  It’s kind of silly.

    • [Won Word]

      Do real grenades look like pineapples, or like, real grenades? (trick question)

• [ackpht]

  You know, all this security stuff is predicated on the assumption that you couldn’t fashion weapons from materials still allowed in, or found in, the aircraft cabin.

  • [Dewi Morgan]

     So that’s why they don’t serve soup any more.

• [Twilight_News_Site]

  beware teh soup of terror!

• [Itsumishi]

  Concealed Knife – Found by X-Ray (pre 9-11) 
  Chicken Soup for Your Pants? – What? Who Cares? Go to hell TSA. 
  Derringer in a Dopp Kit – Found by X-Ray
  Stun Pen – Found by X-Ray
  Bad Kitty – Found by X-Ray
  Belt Buckle Knife – Found by X-Ray
  More Grenades – Found by X-Ray…

  • [Tim Drage]

    “Ra-di-a-tion. Yes, indeed. You hear the most outrageous lies about it. Half-baked goggle-box do-gooders telling everybody it’s bad for you. Pernicious nonsense. Everybody could stand a hundred chest X-rays a year. They ought to have them, too.”

• [With a name like Blake, who&#3]

  YOUR GOOD FRIEND AT THE TSA, oh god now I want to bang my head, do you also have good friends in DHS, and the DEA and the Aryan Brotherhood. Damn Boing Boing you need to choose your friends more carefully!

  • [Henry Pootel]

    It’s code WANLB, it’s when they refer to “BB pal TSA Blogger” you should worry.

• [With a name like Blake, who&#3]

  No the way you go about taking control is you grab the littlest guy on the flight and swing him like a club. Then again you might rip out your tibia and sharpen it to a point. What of projectile vomiting? Funny the silly way we are going into a totalitarian state, kind of like the 3 stooges doing hitler and gang.

  Amerika uber alles!  

  • [voiceinthedistance]

    I believe we have a winner.  It took us three hours to get here, but we finally Godwined this thing.

    • [kjh]

       No, no, Godwin doesn’t apply if it’s a humorous assertion. 

      • [liagirl]

        I agree if the convo is about a totalitarian states tactics then who else might you reference.
         Snarky gallows humor at it’s best !

      • [Cynical]

        Definition-nazi.

• [panhead20]

  Uncontrolled search and seizure is one of the first and most effective weapons in the arsenal of every arbitrary government. Among deprivations of rights, none is so effective in cowing a population, crushing the spirit of the individual and putting terror in every heart. 

  Justice Robert Jackson, chief U.S. prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials

  I will not subject myself nor my family to needless radiation exposure nor TSA molestation. My family and I will not be flying until the TSA changes these procedures.

  • [With a name like Blake, who&#3]

     Amen!

  • [redstarr]

     It’d be nice if everyone had the luxury of being able to just not fly.  But for many, it’s not feasible.  If your job needs you to travel for business, they’re not going to be cool with wasting a few extra days to get there by car, bus, train, or boat, especially if the trip required is international.  Like my husband’s company has a lot of dealings with China and Germany.  They’d never be cool with him just deciding that the TSA sucks, so he’s going to take an extra week to go across the country by land and overseas by boat to meet with a customer or supplier. 

    Even for people who don’t have to fly for work, but have family that doesn’t live close, visiting them without flying isn’t always plausible.  If I live in AR, and have family in NY, if I fly I can have a reasonably decent length visit with them during a week’s worth of vacation.  If I drive, that’s 4 or 5  hard days on the road instead of 2 easy days in the air.  I’d see my family only 2 days of the week’s vacation rather than 5.  And heaven forbid something come up when you don’t have vacation time to be leisurely about the trip.  If  you mom on the other side of the country were to pass away unexpectedly, if you wanted to drop everything and make it to the funeral, driving might not get you there in time at all. 

    Sure, everyone technically has the option to boycott.  But for many it’s just not a reasonable option.  We need sensible laws since not everyone can really easily avoid flying. 

    • [Antinous / Moderator]

      That’s an argument for a week-long boycott with nobody flying anywhere for that week. They’d notice, and businesses could work around a single no-fly week.

      • [With a name like Blake, who&#3]

         Amen again!
         In this day and age, you do not need to go anywhere, teleconference, fax, email, snail mail, fedex, ups.

        We have got to stop wasting all this fuel, jacking up the air anyway.

        I flew one month after 911, none of this tsa b.s going, we all watched each other like hawks, let one of  them jump up a 100 would have taken them down.

• [Kris Åsard]

  Am I an evil, sycophantic supporter of the totalitarian regime if I think it’s actually a very good thing that someone was prevented from bringing a frigging STUN PEN on a plane?
  I agree with AirPillo’s point that these things would all have been prevented pre-911, but still, if we make TSA-bashing something we do just for the sake of it, then we’re really no better than them ourselves.

  • [With a name like Blake, who&#3]

     Kris as a courtesy to you, they’ll let you be the first one to go to the wall.

    Better to be killed by a man who hates you, then by a government that apathetically  despises you

    • [With a name like Blake, who&#3]

       How interesting if anyone  of the poor people on any of those planes had any of those weapons on them, they might have had fighting chance.
       Rather than disarming all perhaps we should issue each a weapon of their choice.

      Now let me eat a big ol’ bowl of rice and beans with sausage and wash it down with a glass of milk, and I’d be one armed mofo!

      An undetectable biological weapon, the pilots would nose it over with the applause of the passengers just to end the suffering!

      • [liagirl]

        Ha! Have your bags been with you the whole time, do you have any weapons? What have you eaten in the last 12 hours?

        I’m sorry sir you will need to step into the deflatuator, to be ventilated before we let you board.

      • [Won Word]

        “if anyone  of the poor people on any of those planes had any of those weapons on them, they might have had fighting chance.”

        Yeah, right. Because most people hit the range a couple-three hours a week to keep their skills up. Because most people go through a few cans of break-free a month keeping their weapons clean and clear.  Because most people, when discharging a weapon in a pressurized cabin know that one slip = potentially everyone dead, so they only fire when they’re sure they have a clean shot.

        Sorry, but your cowboy fantasy doesn’t hold up to reality. All it would do is make the cabin erupt in an orgy of gunfire, and anyone who didn’t get hit would die of asphyxiation/blunt force trama when the cabin decompressed explosively.

  • [Manuel Smirnoff]

    The deeper implication of your statement is that you should be afraid of every punk on the street  because you are probably surrounded by frigging STUN PENs and other evil things every day.  You have two options: panic and take civilization down with you, or learn to evaluate possible dangers in a reasonable way. Apparently, you and people like you have chosen to take the whole country down with your paranoia. Too bad for the rest of us, who still remain rational, and have to live in your sick world.

  • [kjh]

    I think it’s actually a very good thing that someone was prevented from bringing a frigging STUN PEN on a plane?

    What harm could anyone actually do on an aeroplane with 100 people on it with a stun pen?  “Stand back or I’ll attack you all with my PEN”?

    Terrorism?  I don’t think so, Annoyance perhaps.

    • [Won Word]

      How many pops is a stun pen good for, one? Five? 

      So some crazy person stuns the flight attendant and maybe two or three others. He/she will still get subdued and trussed up by the rest of the passengers, just like what happened to the Shoe and Underwear bombers.

      Like you said, annoyance, or at most an “after-lunch participatory show.”

• [Marc Mielke]

  Bad Kitty looks awesome. I want one. 

• [With a name like Blake, who&#3]

  ” Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety”.
  Benny F.

  • [Nathan Hornby]

    close enough.

• [EH]

  They only published this to take attention away from the TSA guy who stole at least 8 iPads.

  http://www.star-telegram.com/2012/04/13/3882741/tsa-inspector-accused-of-stealing.html

• [technogeekagain]

  There are plenty of things that are entirely legal to carry on a plane and far more deadly than any of these. I’ll just say that at least one of them is seen on a very regular basis.

• [Jason Garland]

  Bad Kitty looks more like a bottle opener to me then a weapon. How would you effectively hold it without hurting your hand?

  Edit: http://lightake.com/detail.do/sku.Cat_Head_Shaped_Multi_functional_Steel_Survival_Tools_Bottle_Opener_Silver-45632

  • [Thax]

    “…your fingers are inserted in its eyes.”  There, now you don’t have to go back and read it again.

    • [Manuel Smirnoff]

      And then when you hit something, it breaks the bones in your fingers, and smashes a couple of nerves on the way to doing that. It sounds like the perfect anti-weap0n to me.

      • [penguinchris]

        Well, no… the bottom curved section goes in your palm. No force gets transferred to the fingers that are put through the eye holes. I do think it would dig into your palm and hurt quite a bit if you actually shoved it into somebody though.

        • [Jason Garland]

          Because it was designed as a bottle opener that looks like a cat and not a weapon.

• [With a name like Blake, who&#3]

   ”All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. ” – Eddie B.

• [wrybread]

  Great writing with a clear and funny voice. More TSA officers like him please. And knocking him for “bragging” (cracking a joke) about finding that soup is a bit of a cheap shot imho, especially since its part of his job to do just that.

• [Henry Pootel]

  Oh – I wasn’t aware that only one religion produced killers.  I guess it must be like a rotating thing.

• [Rindan]

  No.  You have the choice of getting raped by the TSA, or you could just stop acting like a fucking coward and pissing yourself over the one in a few million chance that a terrorist is going to bored your airplane and not blow their own dick/foot/whatever off.

  The problem isn’t the scary terrorist.  The problem are fucking cowards like you.  I have to have my tax money pissed away and get double plus freedom fondles because pieces of shit like  you can’t contain your cowardice.  

  I have a better idea.  Instead of me having to get felt up by TSA agents, getting my fourth and fifth amendments rights pissed on, and paying for the privileged, how about cowards like you just not fucking fly?  If the thought of a one in a few million chance of someone blowing up your airplane causes  your bowels to loosen, instead of imposing your coward’s solutions of crawling on your knees begging the government to molest you and everyone else, how about you just fuck off and act like a cowered quietly in your house?  Also, don’t vote.

  The reason why we are wasting money on homeland security and the TSA is because when cowards like the parent mew to the government to protect them from something that is roughly as dangerous as a shark attack, we don’t stand up and shout them down as the cowards they are.  Don’t let these cowards dominate the conversation.  When someone acts like a baby over a one in a few million chance of death, call them out for being fucking cowards.

  America is pathetic these days.  Just think, a little over half a century ago Americans volunteered to storm beach heads where every other person was killed or wounded.  Now we soil ourselves at very thought of “scary” terrorist that kill fewer Americans than lightening strikes.  Pathetic.

• [Manuel Smirnoff]

  “. . . how about cowards like you just not fucking fly? ”
  In the last 11 years, this is the best solution I have heard yet, and I agree with every other word in your post, too.

  America has allowed the shots to be called by the lowest common denominator of bravery and brains. It’s pathetic.

• [Dewi Morgan]

   My personal favorite solution:

  “Ladies and gentlemen: for those of you over 18, who have selected not to be served alcohol, you will find a stun stick below your tray table. It is good for one shot. When you bought your ticket, you accepted responsibility for any assault charges and retaliations related to its use.  You may keep and/or use it, for a $100 surcharge, payable on landing.

  Remember our staff are the only ones trained in the use of our defibrillators: so you really don’t want to zap them.

  If the guy next to you is a jerk, remember that merely taking out the stun stick and handling it thoughtfully is completely free of charge.

  If the plane gets blown up by terrorists, you used your stun stick wrong.

  Enjoy your flight.”

  Of course, while delightful in theory, this idea would mean that on some flights, any middle-eastern people would spend most of the flight unconscious, repeatedly zapped by paranoid morons.

• [Won Word]

  HAIL YEAH!!!!

  Rindan for secretary of DHS!

  Image of Secretary Rindan: