[ASTalumna06]

I always travel with scissors. I forgot one time that I had them in my makeup bag, but I made it to my destination and back with them in my carry-on. I've taken them with me every time I've flown since... and that's been A LOT over the last 2 years between work and vacations.

About 2 years ago, one of my friends, without realizing it, had a huge pocket knife at the bottom of his carry-on. He noticed it when he started unpacking in Boston, but he then made it back to Minnesota with it in the same spot he found it.

Another interesting thing - taking pictures. About a year and a half ago, I was at the Newark airport, and my brother was returning home from Hawaii where he's stationed in the Army, and while my parents and I were waiting, my stepdad took out his camera to look at pictures he had taken earlier in the day. As a TSA agent noticed the camera, my stepdad accidentally took a picture of the ground. The agent walked over and forced him to find the picture, delete it, and go through all of the other pictures he had in his camera. The problem - we were standing near the security checkpoint. They didn't want anyone documenting security equipment and procedures.

However, a year after that I was in another airport (I believe it was Atlanta?), and I had just gone through security. As I came out the other side and was putting on my shoes, I saw a guy, dressed in a suit, with only a laptop bag, taking pictures (with a professional camera) of the security checkpoint. There were plenty of TSA agents standing around. Experiencing what I had a year earlier, I made it a point to say something to one of the agents about it. They basically shrugged it off and continued what they were doing. The guy eventually stopped taking pictures and just walked off toward the gates.

Security is obviously a lot tighter than it was 11+ years ago, but there are still a lot of things that are missed. It's tough to catch everything. In addition, you're relying on people for the most part. And as we all know, people aren't perfect.

But I also think that there are things that are missed over and over (like my scissors), and in that case, something should try to be done about it.