From Bruce Schneier’s August 2011 Cryptogram newsletter

This 2.5 minute video showing how to break into your suitcase without unlocking it got my attention. Like millions of travellers, I have a bag just like that.

My hard-sided suitcase was ransacked in the United States last March. I checked it at an airport. When I opened my suitcase in Singapore, a brand-new iPad2 was missing; its box was still inside, but empty. Nothing else was taken or disturbed. A thief can’t be that precise without inside help, probably from someone at an x-ray machine, right? I figure that narrows it down to baggage handlers or Transportation Security Administration personnel at CLT or EWR airports, where I changed planes. I filed a report within the U.S. and with the Singapore police. I eventually got SGD500 from my travel insurance company.

• If a TSA employee in Newark stole my iPad, I wasn’t the first victim: http://usat.ly/nRaLXC
• Because TSA screens things – bags, laptops, shoes, baby bottles, knitting needles – not people, it will inevitably find “bad” things but not bad guys. DHS Secretary Napolitano finally agrees: http://usat.ly/nxlCCO
• I’ve railed about American airline transportation silliness before: http://bit.ly/smhoiD
• A former U.S. Senator suggested last month that TSA be abolished http://bit.ly/sYiB39. Then he fell down and hit his head Probably no connection.

By Nathaniel Forbes, Forbes Calamity Prevention Pte Ltd, Singapore. Posted: 3 January 2012 at 3:03 pm (UTC +8 hours)