TSA officials warn of credit card knives at airports (2014) | Hacker News Reader

TSA officials warn of credit card knives at airports (2014)

tampabay.com

15 pointsedward13 comments

I have one of these knives. It's handy since it's always on me and it fits in my wallet. That said it would be easier to kill a man with a calligraphy pen than this knife. I need to remember to take it out of my wallet before my next flight though, I completely forgot it would raise an issue.

> That said it would be easier to kill a man with a calligraphy pen than this knife.

Obligatory xkcd: http://xkcd.com/651/

Pocket knives with blades up to 6cm have been allowed for over 2 years:

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/tsa-to-allow-pocket-knives-on...

Do these have longer blades? Or is this, like the above article's TSA director quote about razor-blades and box-cutters, a purely 'emotional' bit of security-themed passenger-harassment?

A standard credit card is 8.5cm*5.4cm, so a credit card knife blade could easily exceed the 6cm limit, especially if oriented diagonally.

Sadly, this never got implemented:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/flights/2013/06/05/tsa-...

It's a dumb rule, and I'd like to be able to carry a small swiss army knife when I travel.

That's terrible, and it also shows that the TSA isn't the sole source of ludicrous security theater. They made a move to take one small step towards a more sensible policy, and got rejected by other equally-wrongheaded stakeholders.

I have a, uh, "friend" who always carries a very small knife[1] through the airport. The trick is that it fits on a key ring, and is normally folded closed. Before going through the Perv-O-Tron™ 3000 machine at security, he just throws his keyring into his carry-on. It's been through over 100 flights in a row that way without getting confiscated.

[1]: http://www.amazon.com/Spyderco-Slip-Joint-Plain-Knife/dp/B00...

Could this Bug knife easily be swallowed and smuggled into prison?

A: Yes - Gage answered on February 20, 2015

Wow. That[1] does not sound comfortable.

(My own use case is opening Amazon packages.)

[1]: http://www.amazon.com/knife-easily-swallowed-smuggled-prison...

I have a credit card made from some sort of metal. I've little doubt that that will start getting flagged now, too.

As much flak as we give the TSA, I'm glad we have someone with a mission to secure airliners. I just wish they had a better user experience...

All that was ever needed to secure airliners was reinforcement of cockpit doors. Everything beyond that is just a bloated bureaucracy whose primary mission is its own growth.

Not only that, by making flying a painful and inconvenient experience, it has caused more people to drive and consequently get killed on the roads.

Yet another type of gadget that the thugs will happily steal for themselves.

What good was the NRA when we now need a National Tools Association?

Security theater.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com