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TSA Employee Caught With $200K Worth of Stolen Property
The plane moves me or I move the plane? writes "After years of people complaining about their luggage locks being broken in the name of the Transportation Security Administration, and after countless properly-stowed utilities and tools had been scrutinized from a paranoid point of view, an employee of the TSA (which is part of the Department of Homeland Security) has been captured with evidence of over $200,000 worth of stolen property he was selling on eBay. With the help of local police and the USPS, a search of his house found a great deal of property pilfered from the un-witnessed searches that occurred after luggage had been checked, where the rightful owner was not allowed. 'Among the items seized were 66 cameras, 31 laptop computers, 20 cell phones, 17 sets of electronic games, 13 pieces of jewelry, 12 GPS devices, 11 MP3 players, eight camera lenses, six video cameras and two DVD players, the affidavit said.'"
After having my TSA-approved lock ripped off of my new suitcase on its very first trip and basically told to F-O about complaints over it (Oh, it might have gotten caught in the machinery, and btw, why are you locking it at all) this is vindication - but no better protection than yesterday - of what a lot of us have been saying for a very long time. Yes I want my flight to land as safely as it took off since I'm in it, but providing a secret open hunting ground for minimum wage employees doesn't cut it for me.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Yes, the no good thieves in the TSA will make sure that the bags they inspect will have owners called in to witness, etc... It's the bags that they "don't inspect" that all the stuff will disappear from. What's needed is 100% video surveilence of the checked baggage area, and a mandatory 2 person policy, where no one can be alone with the baggage, and the people are rotated so that they don't always have the same partner.
Note - Liberal use of <sarcasm> tags may or may not need to be applied.
Breaking an NDA doesn't land you in jail. It's just an agreement not to disclose information. No rights are waived in an agreement. There is no law that says you cannot disclose information under an NDA.
What lands you in jail is Misappropriation, "the acquisition or disclosure of trade secrets by improper means including theft, bribery and fraud." Which is a seperate thing altogether.
For $200,000 from one person, I wonder just how many travelors are victims of robbery there are since HSA versus the number of travelors turned victims from terrorists.
There have been 0 acts of terrorism in the US since 2001 unless you count the recent US$700^H^H^H850B bailout.
I am a victim of theft of by the TSA, sometimes they leave a little piece of paper saying that they took something and sometimes they do not. They do not say what they decided to steal.
And no, no matter how many times they ask me at the border, I never lived in Oakland and why do you keep asking me that every time I go through?
You're not prevented from locking your luggage. The TSA doesn't want you to lock your luggage because they're searching it after you check it. Therefore, locking it makes it difficult for them. However, if you lock it, they'll deal with it. You might not like the way they deal with it, but they'll deal with it and you've broken no law by locking your luggage. TSA does offer a compromise; you can use one of those locks they have keys to. It's not foolproof; there have been lots of reports of those locks being destroyed. However, it's worth a shot.
Some of us have been forced to learn the ins and outs of this crap in more detail than we wish. If, like me, you travel with firearms, you'll learn that the FAA is statutorily in charge of what can and can't be checked and the TSA can't order me to do anything that violates FAA regs. FAA regs mandate that luggage with firearms must be locked. Period.
There are some tips and tricks for dealing with this situation but they're beyond the scope of this discussion. My point is simply that it's incorrect to say that we're "prevented" from locking our baggage. We most assuredly are not.
You do not have a constitutional right to free speech. You have a constitutional right to not being censored by the GOVERNMENT:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
I could have advised that... in fact, I believe I have. If all of my comments are available for your viewing (I think paid subscribers can see them all) you would know that I am an ex-TSA screener. I screened both baggage and passengers. And in the case of baggage, some screening is done in the presence of the passenger and some is not. (It depends on the air carrier and the airport.)
In any case, the opportunities are very obvious and I have no doubt that temptation plays out as a huge contributor to the problem. Sometimes things are accidentally left out of bags when re-packing them. I know I personally failed to repack a toiletry kit with prescription drugs inside. Unfortunately by the time I realized what I had done, the bag was already loaded onto the plane. I could have simply pushed it aside, but instead I insisted that I be allowed to bring the toiletry bag to the carrier and ultimately to the passenger with my apologies. (I felt it was necessary because I had no idea how critical those drugs may have been.) Also, there are regulations about other things such as compressed gas containers (like hair spray and butane) and even hard liquor above certain volumes. (These are FAA rules, not TSA.)
So it is not uncommon to not put everything back... and because of this, other things slip through. And while I was with TSA, there was no rule about reporting items removed at the time. (There may be now, but there wasn't several years ago.) And while the items removed were "seized" it is unclear, even to myself, what was done with them... big ole bottles of whiskey? I have no idea... I didn't have the balls to want to take any home with me personally, but I am sure some may have.
Now with all that said, these expensive items... well, damn. I feel really bad for the passengers and for the innocent TSA screeners who will now be watched more closely or simply viewed with suspicion. I hope the guy gets nailed to the wall with all sorts of charges and that this story is paraded all around the TSA as an example. But with this said, the problem has always existed. Baggage handlers have been known to steal all sorts of things and even moreso as they often have access to vehicles for carrying things off. (I recall a baggage handler who was busted with a pickup truck full of golf bags and laptop bags... and he had, as I was told, been doing it for YEARS.) Furthermore, in the case of baggage claims, it is quite common to see someone randomly come up to the carousel and pick up bags and walk away with them... treasure hunting. LOTS of stuff goes missing in that way especially.
The short of it? Yes, it is better (and often cheaper these days) to send things via UPS or FedEX! Checking into a hotel? Send it a day in advance and let your hotel know it's coming. Visiting friends or family? Same thing. But if you can't depend on that, there are other rules that allow you to carry extremely valuable things with you in spite of the carry-on limitations. So camera bags and laptops can also go with you even if it doesn't fit in with your carry-on luggage. Simply put: You insist that it is going with you and that it is too important or valuable to be put in with regular luggage.
The Revolutionary War was started by a VERY small number of people. It was far from being a massively organized revolt... at the beginning. But when the British essentially decided to punish EVERYONE in retaliation, everyone effectively had no choice but to join in... some people did try to remain loyal to England but had their homes burned and family killed anyway. The more people saw that, the more they realized they had no choice and that England was most certainly the enemy whether they wanted to fight or not.
So would that or could that happen here today? I don't know. But that's why there is such tight control over guns and such pressure to have identification and tracking for everyone. If the government can get the individuals responsible for starting a revolution, no revolution will ever occur... just terrorists being brought to justice.
Minor nitpick: There are no Constitutionally-protected rights except through amendments, making the parenthetical a bit redundant.
Bullshit. This is why the Founders were leery of promoting the Bill of Rights, on the grounds someone would argue that "It's not in the Constitution, therefore the people don't have the right".
This is the purpose behind the Ninth Amendment.
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: Only when the TSA requires every bag to be ticketed with the screener's information and timestamp every inspection, including a key fob to keep track, and require every employee to be a two man team, will thefts cease.
I've had probably close to 2000$ worth of merchandise, DVDs, and company equipment stolen. I once had government owned assets stolen out of a travel case.
I now dupe all my DVDs before taking them out on the road and I pack notices in each bag of company equipment: Government Owned Asset. The serial is recorded and registered with the manufacturer. Value is over 1500$ and will be prosecuted as felony theft: The government has an infinite numbers of lawyers looking to nail your ass to the wall- why steal this sort of trouble?
Oddly enough I've only had one bag 'misplaced' since I started the warning notices and then it was returned, a week later, from Vegas.
thought I was nuts for checking my clothes and carrying my computer gear on business trips, many hard drives, two computers, some media, a PS2 slim, basically everything of small size and high value goes in my carryon luggage, the security check is a b*tch but its their job and I've (knock on wood) yet to lose anything; I have however learned not to use the bags that I use for shooting my rifles, the nut jobs actually picked up powder/residue of a foreign nature and flagged me to secondary search.....
Unix, an obscure operating system developed by bored researchers in an attempt to get a better game playing experience.
It seems to me that the ability to own shitloads of guns hasn't been used very effectively over the history of the USA to enforce the constitution or the rights of human beings. It still might in the future, but I'm not optimistic. [emphasis added]
Uh...the Revolutionary War, for starters? The one in which the citizenry was literally and very directly the militia? Or perhaps, if you want to pretend that the history of the USA started as a discrete event when the Constitution was ratified, the Civil War?
I don't mean to start an oft-repeated discussion, but come on. At least try a little bit first.
Don't forget the Virginia Tech massacre.
I've never once gotten a satisfactory answer as to what will cause the people to rise up.
Apparently this level of corruption will do it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Athens_(1946)
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No doesn't sound like someone who is stealing from bags...
"(I) have this unfortunate condition that causes me not to believe a single thing any politician says when a mic's on.
Wow, did you even read the wikipedia article you linked? Riiiight, you were too busy being a British elitist ass to concern yourself with reality!
The wikipedia article states this incident started the massive CCTV surveillance project which now permeates the UK. If 4.2 million cameras (most with vehicle tracking and some with facial recognition) isn't a reaction, I'm not sure what qualifies.
Alexander the Great was the son of Phillipus of Macedonia, and destined to be a king; he didn't fight himself out of the gutter to greatness or something, even though admittedly, he could have just stayed at home. And the odds for Saddam and Che weren't good. By today's psychological standards, you'd probably call them suicidal. For them, hundreds of their peers with equal chances at barbaric fame died. But they didn't, and that's why we know their names. Which, when you look at it again, is a perfect illustration for the scenario you have in mind for your little American Revolution 2.0: your chances are minimal and if you don't succeed you'll be immediately forgotten, and if you do, because of the things you have to do to succeed, chances are history will remember you as a bloody tyrant anyway.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
Air marshalls do it. They carry a stack of paperwork with them. It's tough for a foreigner to get a concealed-carry permit in most countries but it can be done. Where it can't, air marshalls don't fly.
Anyone on a diplomatic passport can do it. (Note that in some countries, this is frowned on and if carrying a gun isn't part of your job, you don't pull this crap with complete impunity.)
Head-of-state protective details do it. (They are also covered under the previous point.)
Hunters do it. Anywhere there's big game to be hunted and money to be made from rich Europeans or Americans who will spend multiple thousands of dollars to fly to your country and shoot your exotic animals, there will be some exceptions built into the law to allow the temporary importation of firearms.
Target shooters do it. Olympic rifle, pistol, and shotgun teams travel pretty much unimpeded (yes, there's paperwork and approvals to be completed long beforehand) to any place holding a competition. I have friends who travel to Brazil to compete every couple of years, each time carrying a pile of pistols. The world benchrest championships will see teams from all over the world going to whatever venue is selected. It happens *all* the time.
No, Europe and Japan are unlike the U.S. in that you don't throw a gun in your bags routinely just to get better luggage treatment. However, if you have a legit reason, you can take your guns with you to most countries. I'm retiring soon and the list of places I want to go to compete, carrying a couple of pistols with me, is too long for me to be able to afford them all. However, over the next few years I expect to take my guns to some subset of: Finland, France, Czech Republic, Spain, Russia, South Africa, New Zealand, Australia, and Brazil.
You make an interesting point, but you need to go back pretty far in American history to find it. The US had minor to major rebellions roughly every 10 years starting with the Whiskey rebellion during the term of our first president. The last significant one was the Civil War, but there have been others. Many union strikes were armed events that the union folks used guns to help protect their rights. The coal creek rebellion that occurred in Tennessee around 1895; i forget the exact year, was another. There was another one after WWI, in that same area; I saw a show on the History Channel a while back that talked about it, but I forget the details, but it was about unions and the coal industry. The US army was brought in to quell it. Many people died, but the laws did change.
In short, it takes an awful lot to piss us off to the point where we will risk our lives for something like that, but it does happen. The fact is, especially today, Americans live incredibly well. This TSA thing, which my GF's sister is a victim of losing a GPS, is not really that big of a deal. Sure it's annoying, but it doesn't involve loss of one's means to support themself or their family. That's what it takes, and that's why in the last 100 years or so, it's been mostly around unions.
Also, as an aside, what people often quote, about the "well armed populus" is from the writings of a famous; here anyway; American writer who lived in the 1800s. He, Henry David Thoreau, wrote a essay called Civil Disobedience, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Duty_of_Civil_Disobedience, about it. It's an interesting read, and one that most people that I know have had to read in high school.
- Mike
Once you've lost your temper, you've lost the argument - Me