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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.'"
"Sed quis custodiet ipsos Custodes?"
(But who is to guard the guardians?)
Juvenal, Satires, circa 120 AD
Parity: What to do when the weekend comes.
These are the modern day (government approved) highwaymen and the only solution I can think of is to label them socially ("you work in airport security? oh dear - is that the time already ...") as the pariahs they really are.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Yah, that doesn't always work either. I live in Egypt, and once your shit hits the border here it gets opened so that a tariff can be levied, but half the time you never get the tariff notice, because someone who works in the postal service, the trade bureau, or wherever just steals it.
You also face import tariff in almost any country if you ship certain items. That can make it very expensive.
Soon, it is only going to be safe and easy to take whatever you can carry in your pockets or shove up your ass.
If you don't know what you're doing, you can't make mistakes.
According to TFA, Brown has been employed as a screener since 2002. How much has he already sold?
Are there more sophisticated screeners in organized crime?
I'm so disgusted we pay people to waste our time, harass us, and steal from us. I'm looking at you, dept. of homeland security and TSA. Go out and get productive jobs, you leaches.
Here is Argentina ALL "TSA equivalent" employees, steal from travelers. If you came to Argentina, don't you ever put something valuable in luggage, carry it with you!.
...why the TSA is allowed to open up packages without the presence of the owner of said packages. If they were forced to page the owner to come back and observe the TSA performing a screening on the contents, that would cut down a lot on the opportunity for this type of theft to occur. If the owner doesn't respond to the page from the TSA, then the package simply is not allowed onboard is a fair policy I think. Also, make sure that the TSA personnel are required to fill out paperwork for every package they page the owners for will cut down on abuse of powers as well.
I remember reading a statistic recently citing that over 100,000 laptops were "lost or stolen" within the realm of airline travel. Now I wonder how many of these occurrences are inside jobs.
You waive your rights when you purchase your ticket.
Reading code is like reading the dictionary - you have to read half of it before you can go back and understand it.
I previously read on /. a method of shipping your camera gear safely.
A reader had said he'd purchased a larger aluminum suitcase / roadcase, with foam cutouts for his camera gear, and a flare gun.
Upon arriving at the airport, he'd declare he had a weapon, and check the suitcase as a weapon. It got stored, handled and inspected differently, and he never had any loses.
Seems to make sense to me...
And if nobody was supervising him to make sure he didn't steal things, what was to prevent him from introducing dangerous items into the luggage?
How hard would it be for someone with ill intent to get a TSA job?
... for traveling light. Avoid checking any luggage at all, carry on only! Not only do you save time by not having to wait around for your luggage (which may never arrive) at the belt, but you can also stay within view of your gear.
This works fine for me when I go on short personal trips, but most of the time I find it's not just not practical. I'm always carrying something prohibited. The carry-on restrictions with regards to liquids finally pushed me over the edge. I wear contacts, use hair gel, like deodorant, prefer to brush my teeth and actually shave. This pushes me beyond the one small clear bag that I can hold up while some goon pretends to be able to tell if it's potentially explosive.
Then there's the problem that when I travel for work, I'm usually carrying a firearm. Even if I'm not, being from southern Ohio I never go anywhere without my trusty pocket knife (which has to be checked).
Believe it or not I was once told by a TSA supervisor that by having a gun in my luggage I'm probably least likely to be ripped off. Since it's in a locked case in my suitcase, presumably the thief would think it's valuable and try to bust it open. Upon finding it's a gun if he's smart he'll close it up and run away. If I get to my destination and find my gun is missing, unlike say a stolen iPod, both airports will likely go on lockdown until it can be accounted for. Even a $7.00 hour grunt realizes that everybody down there will be searched and all the video tape will be immediately reviewed. As an added bonus, TSA hand screens my checked luggage in front of me when I check in. They then seal it up with the "Passed TSA Security" sticker while I stand there. Theoretically it then goes straight to the airline and bypasses the other checked luggage that has to be screened by some unknown down below.
You cannot waive your constitutional rights (or ammendments therein)
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
He should've at least used the stolen laptops to run BOINC projects, that insensitive clod!
How appropriate. Cameras ARE weapons. The pen being mightier than the sword and the picture worth 1000 words.
If I were in charge of things, there'd be security cameras recording the inspectors. Also, each inspector who opened a bag would be required to stamp his/her identity number on a tag affixed to the bag. If anything was reported missing, those inspectors would be the first ones looked at, particularly if their id number shows up on a lot of bags with missing items.
Try flying into Australia with no luggage - Customs staff suddenly get very interested in you when they realise, and only being in town for the day does not seem to satisfy their concerns.
So I have a good friend who is on the rather kinky side. Last year, he went on a trip to a certain event that involved bringing various "toys." So he packed various items into checked luggage, and went through the security screening. When he arrived at his destination and opened his luggage to unpack, he discovered a slip of paper that indicated that his suitcase had been opened by a TSA screener.
What he found remarkable was not the paper itself, but where it had been located. It was very neatly and securely wrapped around a large black rubber dildo.
The first thing that came to mind when he told me this was to ask whether he had put it in some kind of ziploc bag. (I am a big fan of storage bags.) He replied, "Why would I do that?" I then pointed out that perhaps the person who put that paper there would have chosen to "handle things differently" (gloves notwithstanding) had they given some thought as to where this object has been.
The moral of the story, my friends, is don't put anything worth stealing in your checked luggage. For example, I would never put computers or electronic equipment in checked luggage. That is like putting a giant bulls-eye on your stuff, saying, "STEAL ME." And sometimes, putting something a little...distasteful might even help prevent stealing. I imagine the TSA screener wasn't about to abscond with an already-used (though clean, my friend claimed) sex toy.
If you pick express overnight guaranteed and it does not show up, get your money back. I've done it. If it does not show up at all, file a claim. I've done that, too. I have shipped hundreds of packages over the years. The success rate is over 99%. I have NEVER lost a penny shipping stuff. CYA. I HAVE has computer equipment damaged and destroyed (never stolen) in checked baggage.
UPS might drop your package 3 feet (they specify this explicitly), but the airline might drop your bag out of the plane onto the tarmac. Ouch.
2 weeks ago I had a car part "overnighted" friday night from nanaimo bc to ottawa ontario (both places in Canada) they "guaranteed" noon on monday, tuesday they told me it was "on time" for delivery that day (a day late) wednesday they said they "might" have lots the package, but that it would take 8 days to check...
Thursday, desperate for the part as I was stranded at the other end of the country until it arrived I had a replacement sent, this time guaranteed by 10:30am friday (but UPS insisted I had to pay again) both parts arrived on friday at 10:28am.
UPS charged full price both times and refuses to reimburse even the shipping cost on either part (let alone my hotel bills and other expenses) because both arrived, even if it took 7 days for their "next day early morning" service.
Their guarantee is essentially meaningless.
All decisions on whether or not to open a piece of luggage should occur at the moment the luggage leaves the hand of the customer and enters the custody of the airline.
I liked the way they do luggage at Pensacola. The big fancy TSA full color x-ray machines are right there in the middle of the lobby, roped off. You check in, then take your luggage to the TSA goons, which scan it and tag it while you watch. I suspect the scanners are only out in the open because the airport is so small they don't have room for them elsewhere, but I think it ought to be like that EVERYWHERE.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
All the searches (yes ALL of them) should be videotaped and the videos held for a duration significantly long enough to permit any traveler to file a claim against any loss. This should be codified into law and rigorously enforced by independent oversight.
This has already happened in Australia. A baggage handler a few years ago stole a camel suit from a suitcase and paraded up and down the bowels of the airport. He was seen by the owner who reported it to security. The guy got sacked and from then on everything is now recorded.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,12850308-2702,00.html
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
You know, if he didn't erase those MP3 players he was stealing songs, wru RIAA?
Would it be possible for a TSA agent to add something to the luggage, rather than remove it? If not, what protections are in place to prevent smuggling drugs - or adding explosives.
Theoretically, yes, it would be possible. The screening that TSA screeners go through is the same as all other passengers. So screeners can more easily REMOVE things, but adding things would be a bit more challenging. Drugs could go in... explosives would be a little more challenging but also possible.
I think the original plan with TSA was to make it more of a police-type organization, to provide a more law enforcement feel to airport security.
What we ended up with was just a replacement for the shopping mall security that individual airports had used before -- a dead end, low-wage job, poorly performed by a statistically over-represented number of minorities, now featuring uniform attire from airport to airport, a more surly attitude and all the personnel efficiencies of government bureaucracy, unionization and hiring mandates like affirmative action.
Yuck. Every airport I've been they've always been total losers: surly, slow, uncooperative and sometimes uninformed of TSA procedures.
I wonder what impact the use of those big scanners on the ticketing concourse has on stealing. I think bags that pass those scanners get shunted directly to airport baggage handlers, where theft from luggage may be procedurally more difficult. If the scanning takes place once ticketing has taken your bag, especially if its done in a separate area, I think you're at much greater risk, since they can open bags largely at will.
Except, they're not being paid minimum.
The problem is actually quite similar to the education problem: we don't seem to be able to improve their efficiency through the use of machines very much. Possibly gains we do make are being eaten up by mission creep.
But anyway, that's the real problem: we "need" a lot of them, an significant portion of the working population, just to poke people's bags. If you had t ask me to pick a cause of our current economic difficulties, I'd put some serious thought into "giant govenment agency that doesn't actually produce a single bit of wealth" over "people who work hard, but payed too much for a house."
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
if you don't want to be criticized for the actions of your government, stop calling yourself a democracy. in a democracy, the people are responsible for their government's actions. we let things get this far. we re-elected bush. we let ourselves be lied to and manipulated again and again. and we stand by as corruption goes unchecked.
face it, political/social activism is unfashionable in our reactionary society. generally the more educated intellectual circles tend to be more progressive and are the ones who've been calling for reform. but our society has become dominated by anti-intellectualism. so the only people who are trying to stop the corruption and stand up for whats right are simultaneously alienated, ridiculed, and marginalized.
most conservative Americans are still crying about the right to bear arms thinking that they'll overthrow the government one day with their handguns and hunting rifles. meanwhile, the fight for democracy is already being waged through a war of words and ideas. as such, the media is arguably the most effective weapon in the fight for democracy, which has been consolidated by a handful of media conglomerates over the past decades. luckily the internet is changing that by decentralizing media distribution and changing people's media consumption habits.
the same technology responsible for the democratization of the media can also help us realize direct-democracy. the logistical problems previously preventing participatory democracy from being implemented in a country as large as the U.S. can be overcome by electronic voting. this means we could hold mass referendums to decide domestic policy and truly establish a direct democracy in the United States.
the bipartisan system and the political aristocracy have proven themselves corrupt and incapable or unwilling to represent the interests of the people. therefore it is up to us to make policy decisions that are direct repercussions on our daily lives. we don't need rich old men completely detached from the reality of the average working American to make dictate domestic policy--particularly when they don't even read the bills they vote on. it's easy for corporate industries to bribe a dozen congressmen, but it's much harder to bribe millions of Americans.
if there were a mass referendum on the U.S.A.P.A.T.R.I.O.T Act or Aviation and Transportation Security Act, i think most Americans would immediately vote it down. that's because we're the ones who have our rights encroached on. we're the ones hassled at the airport. and if we're voting on actual legislation instead of politicians to represent us, then i think the public would be less caught up on mudslinging and immature personal attacks, and instead public discourse would focus on the actual issues at hand.
this ersatz democracy and bipartisan system simply creates the illusion of choice while rapidly causing our society to degenerate into a corporate plutocracy. but instead of absolving ourselves of any blame, it's time for us to take responsibility for our government, and regain control.