An "augmented" smartphone case discovered at Boston International Airport.
An "augmented" smartphone case discovered at Boston International Airport.
Bear mace discovered in a carry-on bag at the Anchorage airport. You can pack bear mace in your checked bags if the volume is less than four ounces and it has less than a 2% active ingredient of either CS or CN.
Bear mace discovered in a carry-on bag at the Anchorage airport. You can pack bear mace in your checked bags if the volume is less than four ounces and it has less than a 2% active ingredient of either CS or CN.
A handgun and loaded magazine caught at the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport.
A handgun and loaded magazine caught at the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport.
This dark knight shuriken was discovered in a carry-on bag this week at the Buffalo Niagara International Airport.
This dark knight shuriken was discovered in a carry-on bag this week at the Buffalo Niagara International Airport.
A pocket .45 discovered at the Dallas Fort Worth airport.
A pocket .45 discovered at the Dallas Fort Worth airport.
An Improvised Explosive Device (IED) training kit discovered in checked baggage at the Honolulu airport. It's not really an IED, but definitely looks like one.
An Improvised Explosive Device (IED) training kit discovered in checked baggage at the Honolulu airport. It's not really an IED, but definitely looks like one.
An inert 60mm mortar round discovered at the Washington Dulles Airport.
An inert 60mm mortar round discovered at the Washington Dulles Airport.
Some kind of...throwing star with six folding blades? Discovered in a passenger’s carry-on bag at the Las Vegas airport.
Some kind of...throwing star with six folding blades? Discovered in a passenger’s carry-on bag at the Las Vegas airport.
This novelty watch looked enough like an explosive device to get it seized at the Oakland International Airport.
This novelty watch looked enough like an explosive device to get it seized at the Oakland International Airport.
This comb-knife was discovered in a passenger’s carry-on bag at the Detroit Airport.
This comb-knife was discovered in a passenger’s carry-on bag at the Detroit Airport.
Samurai sword discovered in a carry on bag at BOS.
Samurai sword discovered in a carry on bag at BOS.
Throwing stars discovered in a carry-on bag at the Dallas Love Airport.
Throwing stars discovered in a carry-on bag at the Dallas Love Airport.
81 pounds of marijuana discovered in checked baggage at the Oakland International Airport.
81 pounds of marijuana discovered in checked baggage at the Oakland International Airport.
The Transportation Security Administration hasn’t endeared itself to the public by shuffling every airline passenger in America through full-body scanners and getting up close and personal with a pat-down search if they decline. It’s been accused of overreach, overspending, and redundancy. But one thing the bureaucratic behemoth has definitely done right is to create an always entertaining and occasionally unbelievable Instagram feed.
The feed is essentially a gallery of some of the craziest items people try to get past security checkpoints. There’s no shortage of material—the TSA claims an average of 40 firearms (often loaded) are seized at checkpoints every week. Nine-bladed super knife? Grenade? Everything you need to assemble a bomb? Yes, all that and more. Everything that’s seized is photographed for posterity, if not the spectacle, and then shared on social media to show people what’s what.
“We’re just using a new mechanism to reach an audience with Instagram,” says TSA Press Secretary Ross Feinstein. “We’re not trying to make a statement that people are trying to do anything nefarious with these items. We’re just trying to alert people that these are still prohibited items.”
In addition to the guns and other prohibited items, the TSA feed also features adorable drug-sniffing dogs, spotlights various employees and calls out programs and promotions. In the year since it was started, the feed has drawn more than 72,000 followers. Over that time, the agency has made some headway reminding travelers of the rules and making the case that the TSA’s work is meant to keep them safe. “Many often assume our officers are not discovering dangerous, prohibited items,” says Feinstein. The feed undoubtedly is part of a carefully scripted PR strategy to improve the agency’s image, but it’s hard to not get drawn in.
Bob Burns (known as Blogger Bob) is the guy who makes the feed what it is. Each week he reviews reports from some 450 airports nationwide, looking for the most interesting incidents. He works with the agency’s national coordination centers to secure the photos from the airports, which he posts with friendly reminders of what’s prohibited on a plane and why.
“I’ll ask for a photograph and a lot of times I’ll be surprised by what I see,” Bob says. “A lot of times I’m not even sure what the photo’s going to look like—the report might just say ‘a four inch knife,’ but for all I know it could be a steak knife or it could be one of these fantasy Klingon knives.”
Blogger Bob joined TSA one year to the day after 9/11. Before that, he did a stint in the Army and as a traveling singer/songwriter. He quickly ascended the TSA ranks and helped launch the TSA blog and Week in Review section in 2008. Even now, there is no dedicated social media team or budget, just Bob. As the TSA’s social media voice, he toes the party line, but knows from experience just how weird and interesting the stuff gathered at the front lines is.
“I used Instagram personally so I knew the kind of photos people shared, and I just knew that the photos we had from the week in review would be successful,” he says.
Beyond the blog and Instagram, the TSA also maintains an active Twitter account and says its social media channels were established strictly to improve communication. The blog has been the site of contentious conversations about the organization, and Feinstein says customer complaints have been addressed and resolved using Twitter.
When the government starts a social media account, it can draw a lot of attention. Look no further than the sudden popularity of the CIA’s first tweet. In the right hands, a social media presence can give personality to an otherwise inscrutable organization. Bob says the social media channels have helped to shift the conversation a bit.
“You change it from people complaining about TSA to people saying, ‘Wow look what TSA found, I can’t believe someone would try to come through with this,’” He says. “We like to show not only that our workforce is capable of finding these things, but we’d like to educate people.”
Despite its popularity, TSA’s Instagram account is ultimately something it really wishes didn’t exist. It’s fed by the mistaken and often dangerous oversight of passengers who at best slow us all down as we slog through security. At worst, they put people passengers in danger.
“We would love to put a blog post on our website every Friday that says, ‘We did not discover any firearms at checkpoints nationwide, we didn’t discover any prohibited items like knives or any suspicious items whatsoever,’” says Feinstein. “While we like utilizing social media, we’d rather not find these items.”
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