Puece (and you too, Compylot), you seem to misunderstand me. I worked in screening for several years and in other security areas for almost ten, so I understand the other side and am usually sympathetic to their cause, however the non-standardisation amongst staff was one of the issues that caused the problems, be it a previous screener who didn't know the rules, or the present screener going over the top.
I have never had a screener scatter my stuff through the tray and in my opinion it was purely because he thought I was trying to hide something. This was unnecessary and I was given a bullsiht excuse for it. His lack of care or even a "sorry about that" was my bugbear. And they wonder why people get pissed off with them?
We demonstrated how it was possible for a person to walk through the metal detector with a steak knife in the small of your back and it wouldn't be detected, however when asked if we could go further with a pax we suspected was doing this, we were told as long as they didn't set the detector off, we were not to do anything more.
The person sitting at the computer will ask if they can't see the tray clearly, but are you really agreeing that an x-ray can't see through a cap with the items listed?
Security is as much psycological as physical. You treat people like a person and it gets very hard to be angry with them. "Catch more flies with honey..."
Start throwing your weight around, especially in crowd control, and you make your job infinitely more difficult. Am I wrong? This is the difference between the TSA (now there's a reason to complain) and Australian screening, where you at least can have a civil/friendly interaction with the screener.
I also have no problem with a Security Officer searching inside your letherman pouch. Better safe than sorry...and I bet it didn't hurt a bit and took about 10 seconds.
When I started doing security in general, the regs were that if you were searching someone's bag, you asked the person to remove the contents and this practise was carried into airport screening. I understand how the rules changed in the last few years so that screeners removed the bag from the pax's posession to find the item (so the pax didn't utilise a potential weapon), however are you telling me you would seriously stick your hand into a passenger's pants pockets, let alone without asking them? You have to be kidding me.
Let's suppose there was a blade of some sort in the bottom of the pouch. Are you really going to jam two fingers in there to find out?!? Not very smart. The guard asked what it was and I showed her. There was no asking, "do you mind if I check?" Pretty sure the rules haven't changed about notifying someone before you put your hands on them.
