Checkpoint Update- Batteries Not Included

July 16, 2014
TSA’s new enhanced security inspections regarding any electronics are underway

TSA’s new enhanced security inspections regarding any electronics are underway – laptops, netbooks, cell phones, e – readers, DVD players … If it won’t power up and operate, it won’t fly. This is primarily aimed at foreign LPDs (last point of departure; direct flights to the US), and some US selectees, in response to credible intelligence reports that Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen is planning to hide explosives inside battery-powered mobile devices.

 It has already caused a significant uptick in charger sales at airport kiosks, but as irritating as this may seem, it’s a good idea –they just don’t know what’s inside a hunk of inert plastic. It’s too early to judge the impact of the new rule, but in just one recent year, domestic travelers left behind 8,016 mobile devices at only seven large airports security checkpoints: ORD, DEN, SFO, CLT, MIA, MCO, MSP.  Laptops made up 44%; smartphones and tablets 43%, and USB drives 12%. That’s left behind, not confiscated – a self-inflicted injury – who forgets their $1,000 laptop that they are carrying for that very reason, that it not get lost?  70% were left at the checkpoint, 28% in the bathroom (I don’t want to know the answer to that). Roughly 62% of smartphone owners don’t use a password, a different kind of security problem, because for business travelers, that’s their mobile office – with proprietary contractual data, access to their company’s corporate networks, and credit cards used online to book hotels and cars.

OK, so you’re a business traveler flying into the United States from abroad, your batteries are dead, and your devices have been liberated – what next?  Nobody knows for sure, and the legal confiscatory answer may be different in each country… in some US cases, they are simply donated to a charity; end-uses unknown.   A survey by The Association of Corporate Travel Executives said most were concerned that no information had been provided about what happens to devices that are denied boarding, and that TSA has done a particularly poor job of informing travelers.

Some airlines such as British Airways, Virgin Atlantic and Lufthansa have their own checkpoints for long-haul flights where employees can hold a device, but the chain of custody is unclear, as is any means to reclaim them, particularly with concerns about foreign access to business or personal files.  BA says it can rebook a flight, have the device held until your return (still uncharged), or sent to a home address.  

Lesson learned: (a) charge everything before you leave home or the hotel. (b) Buy one charger with multiple plugs and USB ports for several devices. (c) Put it in your carry-on, not your checked luggage… extra usage during flight delays and long connections can drain batteries in a big hurry.

And finally, if you thought batteries, guns and explosives were the main problems at the checkpoint, consider this: how about 2 kg of rooster testicles– apparently a delicacy in Vietnam, but deemed a bio security risk in Wellington, New Zealand; a live chameleon hat – yes, hat - purchased in Saudi Arabia and worn on the head of a woman traveling to Manchester, England; two ladies apparently reenacting the film “Weekend at Bernie’s” by checking in the elder woman’s husband, 91, in sunglasses and sleeping in a wheelchair…. well, not exactly sleeping - he was dead; snakes and lizards galore, 44 of them in a young man’s carry-on headed to Bangkok; a seal’s head carried by a biology professor to Denver – he “didn’t want to waste an educational opportunity”; a sedated but live two-month-old tiger cub in Bangkok – bound luggage, and 18 – I say again, 18 small endangered monkeys under the clothing of a guy arriving in Mexico City from Peru.  And you thought those screeners had a boring job….