TSA steals traveler's pudding, leaves him armed with knife

I purposely copied the title of this post directly from BoingBoing because it's funny and worth repeating. Just read it: "TSA steals traveler's pudding, leaves him armed with knife." Seriously? Take a man's pudding away, but let him keep the knife. That pudding, after all, might have been explosive. Here's what went down:

"I was passing through Sacto airport security checkpoint. I sent my carry-on backpack through the Xray machine. The operator found something, and raised her hand for assistance. Another TSA person came over and pulled my bag out of the machine and commenced with a hand search. Inside he found a package of unopened Hunts Pudding Snacks in my lunch. He confiscated the pudding "it's a liquid" and sent me on my way. Absurd, but forgettable. However later in the day I had a layover, and was going through my backpack looking for a pen and came across my Swiss Army Knife with a 4" locking blade."

It's not that I think the TSA is doing a horrible job (or do I?) -- everyone makes mistakes and misses things -- but we're talking about pudding here. True, it is a liquid (right?), and I understand that....but if you're going to inconvenience a passenger enough to take his snacpac away, the least you can do is properly search his entire bag for items that could truly be a threat to flight security.

Pudding...

Filed under: Food and Drink, Airports