David, my brother-in-law, works in commercial advertising
and as part of his work, he travels quite a bit. He and his camera crew were
going through airport security in New Orleans a few years ago. One of the
camera cases had plastic tie strips on it to prevent it from opening during the
flight. The TSA inspector seemed confused by the plastic zip ties.
He looked at David and said, "I'm going to have to
break these to inspect this case."
David said, "Okay."
Then the TSA inspector paused and asked, "Do you have a
knife so I can cut these off?"
David had just passed through the security scanner so he
said, "No. I'm not allowed to have one."
The inspector said, "Oh, yeah." And let them go
without inspecting the case.