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They came looking for your laptops. And for your liquids and your shoes. Now, the Transportation Safety Administration comes for your snacks
Passengers at the country's airports report that more and more TSA agents are asking them to remove their snacks and other foods from their luggage and place them in these ubiquitous plastics According to TSA spokesman Mike England, this is not part of the standard policy of the agency. It's just a recommendation issued by the agency last year to speed up the baggage verification process. Airport control supervisors have the discretion to decide whether, and when, to ask passengers to present their pretzel packages for a solo trip through the X-ray machine.
But the "recommendation" seems to take speed and quickly move the protocol territory de facto, according to travelers who have received snacks notices from their airlines, and who have been informed by TSA control officers that snacks controls are now a common practice.
Just like, Désolé Sorry. It's a new policy. Anny Gaul, 33, said of her recent interaction with a TSA officer at the Baltimore-Washington International Airport
Gaul, a frequent traveler, had never heard such instructions before. while waiting for an airport security line.But she was there in April, standing near the front of a long TSA line, with a bag crier screaming that all the passengers would need to remove their food and placing them in a separate bin.
She began to rummage in her bag to find the chocolate bar and the plastic bag of mountain mix that she knew how to float inside. Other travelers, visibly strayed, began to rummage through their bags to find packets of goldfish and crashed energy bars.The line, said Gaul, was moving noticeably slower than normal.
"This has certainly caused a delay – not huge, may It's at least five or ten minutes, "said the PhD student at Georgetown University. "Most of the time, it was just weird and absurd."
According to England, the snack removal recommendation is part of an effort to better detect explosives planes and limit the number of bags marked for special searches. England said that the concern is not that people hide explosives or other illicit materials in the food. On the contrary, it is that the food itself can look like components of an explosive – which makes it more likely that bags containing snacks are labeled for a tedious manual search. Officials thought that it might be more effective, in some cases, to get passengers to remove snacks from their bags in advance.
"Certain foods and organic materials may look like explosives," he said. ] England said it could not provide specific information on how a pack of pretzels could look like an explosive. He challenged the idea that new attention on snacks could be an over-detection measure.
"There is a very good reason for everything we do.He said that there are no immediate plans to standardize practice at all airports across the country, but the procedure is used at times when supervisors think it could speed things up.
not a requirement, it's a recommendation, "said England. "But you could see them recommending a little stronger during the busy times of the day."
It's unclear whether the protocol for eliminating snacks effectively reduces waiting times – whether the decrease bags marked for special exams offsets disturbance England has acknowledged that there could be "isolated incidents" by asking passengers to remove food from their bags, which could slow things down, but He pointed out that Nationally, 96% of regular travelers have a wait of 20 minutes or less.
Christina Saull, spokeswoman for the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, said that until now, the new procedure has not lengthened waiting times. Reagan National or Dulles International Airports
This has not stopped the complaints on social media.
"Of all the rules of the TSA, arbitrarily enforced rules" dig every snack of "Your bags are the stupidest," tweeted Anne Keller, after meeting the snack at National.
And passengers do not just notice in Washington. Travelers complained about the practice used at Dallas Love Field, Chicago's Hare, Los Angeles International, Newark Liberty and Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International. The recommendation is also gaining popularity at smaller airports – in Boise, Idaho; Greenville, S.C .; and Manchester, NH
"As it's weird," tweeted Cindy Armstrong at the Redmond Municipal Airport in Oregon
"A terrorist makes bombs on Frito-Lay," thought one passenger waiting at the Orlando International Airport. "It's a national policy …" said a traveler who discovered the practice at the San Jose International Airport.
"TSA asked me to take my snacks in my bag and I feel personally victimized "tweeted Thea Neal of Kansas City, Mo.
When Neal, a 29-year-old social media manager for a greeting card company, was asked to remove her snacks, she immediately panicked, had she missed a memo about the new security protocol and, more importantly, was TSA going to confiscate her food?
"I had a whole bunch of crazy snacks in my bag that I'd She was really excited to eat, "she recalls.
Fortunately, her snacks were returned to be x-rayed in their separate locker, yet she remains uncomfortable with the idea that this can become a standard practice for every trip through the security of At the airport, the procedure does not make her feel safer – "It seemed, honestly, completely useless," she said – and there are health considerations to consider.
"I was lucky that everything I brought was prepackaged. But if it was a fruit or something. . . She said shuddering to think of her food rolling in a plastic bin. "These things are pretty disgusting. People put their shoes and money in there.
Lauren Rosenberg, a 20-year-old student from Houston, wonders if the practice will help security lines go faster. When that happened to him last Monday at the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, the process of tracking down granola and Luna bars stuffed into his bag eventually delayed the line.
And Rosenberg started asking questions. Why did they need to watch his snacks? Was it a new permanent policy? The TSA agent in his line did not know. "I just need you to take your snacks, your Doritos and your M & Ms," she recalls, saying.
Rosenberg said that she worried that this was more than a mere inconvenience imposed on travelers. It's a slippery slope. Rosenberg, a college student, is young enough not to remember a time when liquids over 3.4 ounces have not been banned from the plane
"The next thing that they will make us get out of our bags is medicine, "she says. "And it would be a real invasion of privacy."
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