What was the traveler who carried this gun-shaped toilet paper roller thinking? On every level, seriously, what were they thinking. Read the rest

Starting next year you won't be able to board a plane without REAL ID.

Last Mother's Day, grandmother Rhonda Mengert was subjected to a pat-down search at Tulsa airport, wherein a TSA agent felt a panty-liner in her underwear; she was then forced to strip down and show her panty-liner to a female TSA agent. Naturally, she filed suit against the TSA. Read the rest

Hilarity fading to horror, like everything else on the internet. NBC News reports minor injuries for the little boy who found his way into ATL's bowels.

The small boy walked away from his mother at the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport while she attempted to print out her boarding pass at a kiosk, according to an Atlanta police report. The mother told police she looked away from her son "for one second" and he disappeared. ... Eventually the boy reached a Transportation Security Administration baggage area where TSA immediately noticed him come through on the belt and a man picks him up off the belt and to safety. Emergency medical services treated the boy for a "severely swollen and bruised" right hand before he was transported to a hospital, according to the Atlanta police report.

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Back in 2012, Jon Corbett made headlines by showing that he could easily get metal through TSA checkpoints' full-body pornoscanners: his experiences fighting the TSA convinced him to get his law license and hang out a shingle, and now he has his first client: Rhonda Mengert, a grandmother who was illegally strip-searched by the Tulsa TSA because they felt a panty-liner when they patted down her crotch. On Mother's Day. Read the rest

Black women have long complained that they get flagged for secondary screening at TSA checkpoints after passing through a full-body scanner; after years of complaints, the TSA has admitted that its scanners struggle to with curled hair, and are prone to flagging anyone wearing an afro, twists, locks, braids, or other hairstyles predominantly found among Black travelers (though white travelers with long curly hair have also reported being flagged for secondary screening). Read the rest

It was non-functioning.

“It appears as though their effort to partially pay people screwed things up and they are still getting their act together.” — Anonymous TSA official who spoke to CNN

LaGuardia is closed and PHL and Newark are facing major delays because there aren't enough TSA workers willing to work without pay to keep them open. I'm supposed to be flying from Burbank to Oakland today for the Grand Reopening of the Public Domain at the Internet Archive and I'm getting really nervous. Read the rest

Say you work at the government agency with the lowest morale of any Fed job and then Cheeto Hitler decides to treat you like a casino contractor and not pay you, for thirty days, and recommends that you do chores for your landlord to stop from getting evicted -- what do you do? Get musical: playing Sicko Mode or No Sleep Til Brookly or Misery Business or perhaps the theme from Halloween? (via Reddit) Read the rest

A man carrying a firearm in his carry-on luggage got past the TSA screeners at Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport and flew with it to Narita International Airport on January 3. This occurred during the government shutdown, after "hundreds of TSA agents from at least four major airports had called in sick," according to CNN.

The man, flying on Delta Airlines, had apparently forgotten that the gun was in his bag. Once he remembered he was carrying it, he informed Delta, who then reported it to TSA. It's not clear when the passenger disclosed this information to Delta.

Via CNN:

"TSA has determined standard procedures were not followed and a passenger did in fact pass through a standard screening TSA checkpoint with a firearm at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport on the morning of January 3," the release states.

The security breach came two weeks into the government shutdown, during which TSA agents have been required to work but have not received paychecks. CNN first reported on January 4 -- a day after the breach -- that hundreds of TSA agents from at least four major airports had called in sick.

TSA, however, denies that the shutdown had anything to do with their security lapse, claims that they were completely staffed that day, and states that they will "hold those responsible appropriately accountable."

Image: US Department of Homeland Security/Flickr Read the rest

In four days, federal employees will suffer their first missed paycheck since Trump's border wall shutdown; it's hard to say who will be worst hit: the employees who are furloughed will never see that money (but who may have been able to pick up some other work while they were off the job to cover their bills); or the "essential" federal employees who've had to show up for work every day without pay, but who will, someday, get a paycheck to cover their forced labor. Read the rest

A new report summarizing three years of investigationsfrom the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on the TSA calls out the agency for its "toxic leadership culture, misconduct, mismanagement, whistleblower retaliation and obstruction," citing these as the reason for the agency's 20% annual attrition rates. Read the rest

The Transportation Safety Agency makes use of dogs to track down contraband, bombs and other stuff that we're better off never seeing onboard an airplane. It takes a pooch with a particular temperament to be trained for this sort of work. Not all dogs are well-suited for the job. Unfortunately, while you can make broad guesses, based on breed, on which dogs may be a good fit for identification or tracking work, there's no way to tell if an individual doggo will be any good at it until you put them to the task. In instances where dogs are found to be less than desirable for the sort of work the TSA has in mind for them, they're pushed to the side -- almost like any other animal you'd find at a local shelter. The only difference is that the TSA's castoffs aren't nearly as visible, making finding them a good home a difficult task.

If you're thinking about adopting a pooch from a shelter, maybe take a look at the TSA Canine Training Center Adoption Program. Where the agency usually makes our lives a lot more difficult than they need to be, looking to them to find your family's new best buddy could make the process of discovering the perfect pooch dead easy.

In order for potential dog owners to qualify for a pooch from the TSA Canine Training Center Adoption Program, they'll have to be able to fulfill a few reasonable criteria:

From the TSA:

-- You must have a fenced in yard at the time of applying.

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A new facial recognition technology screening system will soon be used on some travelers who pass through Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). Read the rest

Harvard grad student Zainab Merchant is detained and invasively searched every time she flies; she's tried extensively to end this harassment, applying for Global Entry and Precheck, writing to her members of Congress, and trying to run through the DHS's Redress procedure. Read the rest

Late last month, the Boston Globe published a blockbuster scoop revealing the existence of "Quiet Skies," a secret TSA program that sent Air Marshals out to shadow travelers who were not on any watchlist and had committed to crime, on flimsy pretenses like "This person once visited Turkey." Read the rest