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Comment by ajross | Hacker News Reader

FTA: When you show us a bottle of liquid, we can’t tell if it’s a sports drink or liquid explosives without doing a time consuming test on it.

Right. Which is why all self-respecting terrorists won't bother to show you the dumb bottle in the first place. Am I the only one who has, on multiple occasions, checked my bags through the scanner to realize that I'm technically in violation of the "no liquids" rule because I'd forgotten something?

The rule is ridiculous. Just live with it.

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On one occasion I accidentally passed through security with with a Swiss Army knife in my backpack.

What's funny to me is that upon discovering so after getting to the gate I was much more worried about someone finding out I accidentally brought a pocket knife with me, rather than the possibility of someone else with nefarious intentions having also gotten past security with one.

Same thing happened to me; I had the Swiss Army knife in my backpack between a whole bunch of CDs. I wonder if the edges of the CDs somehow concealed the knife, or if the security person simply wasn't paying attention.

By the way, what's the likelihood of TWO people bringing a knife/bomb on board the same plane? Pretty small, huh? Hence, you should always bring your own bomb to fly safely! ;-)

I once flew both legs of a return flight with a foot long knife in my bag. I had put it in there while moving and forgotten all about it. Didn't empty the bag at my destination and never found out.

When I emptied my bags after coming home, I had one of biggest "oh shit, phew!" moments of my life, accompanied by visions of Guantanamo.

In the past year, I've accidentally left liquids in my bag multiple times, and every single time the scanner has spotted them. Perhaps I'm just unlucky, but the technology seems to have gotten pretty good.

I've taken more than 3 ounces of contact lens solution through a dozen airports in the last few years and never had a problem. I think there's an unofficial policy to let them through unless there's some other reason to be suspicious.

Contact lens solution is on the list of exempt substances - you should be able to carry a full-size bottle with you, separate from your 3-1-1 bag.

Like with all TSA stuff, however, it's somewhat at the discretion of the security officer on the spot.

Ah, thanks for the info. That's just further proof that it's security theater: if they can't tell the difference between water and liquid explosives, how do they know that what's in the bottle is actually contact solution?

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