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Comment by vulcan1964 | Hacker News Reader

vulcan1964

I once had a copy of 1984 in my checked baggage returning home to the USA and when I was unpacking the bag at home, the book had a notice inside the book that my bags had been inspected by TSA...

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I hope the TSA agent got a chuckle as he put the notice in the book. I would assume his choice was deliberate.

They/their. Hmmmm.

I reckon they were just checking for money or hidden compartments. Sending books abroad packed with money is extremely common from the US, though not sure how frequently people do that with onboard luggage.

Only tangential but when I was an undergraduate studying philosophy I had Bertrand Russell's Why I Am Not A Christian in my carry-on, and the TSA saw that and had a field day.

Please elaborate - what did they do? And what airport was this?

Detroit airport, 2010. I was chosen for secondary inspection and got some snide remarks of "we've been seeing too much of this lately" in reference to the recently failed underwear bombing attempt on a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit.

I can only assume you meant they had a field day celebrating how much of Russell's philosophy matched the concerns about Christianity expressed by Jefferson, Paine, etc?

They wouldn't see it until they opened it, so clearly they didn't open it because of the book. And if they need to open your suitcase (not because of the book), they have a reason for that.

I was chosen "randomly" for secondary inspection. This was after a failed bombing plot and the TSA implied a lack of Christianity was the proximate cause of the attempted attack.

But did they see the book before you were randomly chosen, or after?

After. But then I continued to get selected for additional screening on the rest of the legs of that trip and the return. So either I was going to get searched every time I got on a plane already, or they flagged me for additional scrutiny after the initial search.

Probably just bad luck. TSA seems to have designated targets for abuse. My wife is one of them. Every time we travel, she consistently gets selected for secondary screening while I breeze on through. There is not a single thing about her which even a fanatically committed conspiracy theorist could spin as a justification, but it has been going on for years. She has a good sense of humor and the agents treat her well enough, but having your stuff rummaged through every time you go through security is grating.

Even paying for PreCheck doesn't get her off the hook. You'd think it would help, but no.

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