TSA: confiscating your property and passing it on for sale elsewhere
As we’ve written at TSA News before, when your property is confiscated at TSA checkpoints, that property ends up being sold at state-run surplus stores.
But it bears repeating, because so many people still don’t know about it. At a more recent story about this practice on CNN.com, commenter Dev said:
So they confiscate your personal property, acquired for nothing, then sell it for a profit, which is no different from stealing, but it’s all legal . . . sounds like a great business model.
Aaron Smith writes at CNNMoney:
Last year the Transportation Security Administration collected 888,000 items — from knives and scissors to snow globes and sunglasses — that were confiscated or left behind by airline passengers as they boarded their flights. But airport contraband has an afterlife.
It ends up in state-run stores, where thrifty customers can rummage through bins of objects from the TSA’s no-fly list. In warehouses around the country, bargain-seekers browse through crates of knives, tools, and even box cutters, the weapon used in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Everything is sold at a steep discount, sometimes for $1 apiece, and sometimes by the pound.
“These places actually collect what’s discarded at our checkpoints,” said TSA spokesman David Castelveter. “We are required to give those leftover items to the state governments, and then they decide what to do with it.”The “leftover stuff” includes not just items that can be used as weapons, like meat cleavers, ice picks, sabers, bows and arrows, nunchucks, hammers, power saws, and cattle prods, but also forgotten items like books and jewelry. Some of the items are sold at state-run stores and some are auctioned off in bulk on the website Govdeals.com.
For more articles check out: http://www.designed-perception.com/alternative-news-page-16.html
i want all my nice cigar lighters back… some places let them through.. other check points they take them