TSA Ends Practice of Screening Individual Electronic Items

Dave Bullock just tipped me off to the fact that my blog post about TSA’s recent requirements for electronics items to be individually screened at SFO helped convince TSA to put an end this unusual practice. TSA has posted an update to their blog saying that they checked into the situation put an end to this practice at various airports. Wow, the system actually works. Now if we can just get them to let us keep our shoes on.

On Monday afternoon we began receiving questions about airports that were requiring ALL electronics to be removed from carry-on bags (everything, including blackberrys, iPods and even cords). This practice was also mentioned on several other blogs and left us scratching our heads.

So…we checked with our security operations team to figure out what was going on. After some calls to our airports, we learned that this exercise was set up by local TSA offices and was not part of any grand plan across the country. These practices were stopped on Monday afternoon and blackberrys, cords and iPods began to flow through checkpoints like the booze was flowing on Bourbon Street Tuesday night. (Fat Tuesday of course).

photo by Scott Beale