Enhanced security tips for photographers at TSA airport checkpoints

This week, far sooner than anticipated, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) began implementing new enhanced airport security procedures for electronics.

The new procedures, rolling out over the next few months at airports across the U.S., will enhance scrutiny of passengers' carry-ons, on both domestic and international flights. Travelers in standard TSA checkpoint lines will have to remove all electronics larger than cellphones from carry-on bags and place them in separate bins with nothing else above or below them, for X-ray screening.

Travelers in TSA PreCheck lines will be able to leave their large electronics in their bags as they do now with laptops.

TSA policy change affects Tripods in carry-on

TSA Administrator John Pistole, speaking at a conference in New York on March 5, 2013, announced a major policy change for carry-on items beginning April 25, 2013. While it doesn't name tripods themselves, it clearly implies a change in attitude toward them being taken into airplane cabins in the US.

The details of the policy change were detailed in a statement on TSA's website. In the statement on Changes to the Prohibited Items List it says,

“Through TSA’s layered approach to security, and to align more closely with International Civil Aviation Organization standards, effective April 25, 2013 TSA will allow knives that do not lock, and have blades that are 2.36 inches or 6 centimeters or less in length and are less than 1/2 inch in width, novelty-sized and toy bats, billiard cues, ski poles, hockey sticks, lacrosse sticks and two golf clubs as part of their carry-on baggage. This is part of an overall Risk-Based Security approach, which allows Transportation Security Officers to better focus their efforts on finding higher threat items such as explosives.”

Reduce your TSA and CBP airport hassle and angst with Global Entry

It isn't often I write a pure travel article in the blog, which has absolutely no photography content, but I felt that this information is so important for any traveler or travel photographer, that I had to include it here.

Like you, I'm decidedly not a terrorist!

Like many, I travel frequently for work and leisure, and like many air travelers, I'm unhappy with TSA's (Transportation Security Administration) and CBP's (Customs and Border Protection) approach to security, which lumps me together with criminals and terrorists to be scanned or frisked, in order to fly to my destination, as if I'm a public enemy.

I know many leisure travelers who have substantially reduced the frequency of their air travel due to the hassle of TSA's and CBP's “one size fits all” approach to security, they consider too onerous, too time consuming, too unpleasant, a waste of their time, and a poor utilization of taxpayer dollars.

There is a program, administered by Customs and Border Patrol, which can eliminate much of the frustration, angst, and hassle of going through TSA security, plus, if you're a US citizen or resident alien returning to the US, from another country via air, CBP passport control and customs.