"New baggage security brings greater threat of theft"

Sunday, February 9, 2003

New baggage security brings greater threat of theft
By Joe Sharkey
The New York (NY) Times


When we got to our hotel on St. Martin last month, my wife and I found our
suitcases' zippers had been locked tight somewhere en route with 6-inch
strips of tamper-proof heavy plastic ties.

No problem, we initially decided. A pair of scissors or a sharp knife to
snip the ties and get the bags open was all that was needed.

Oops. No scissors or blades allowed in carry-on bags, we remembered. After
some scurrying around the hotel, I finally managed to borrow a penknife but
had to do a lot of explaining to a very skeptical French desk clerk to get
him to lend me the knife.

A month after full-scale screening of checked baggage in airports, and many
months after federal inspectors began opening checked luggage in baggage
areas to look for bombs, this is one of the many problems confronting
travelers. Someone has pawed through your bag when it was out of your sight,
and it has been returned to you at your destination sealed tight.

"What am I going to do, borrow a squirrel when I get to my hotel?" asked
David Stempler, president of the Air Travelers Association, an advocacy
group. Like many frequent travelers, Stempler has been perplexed by the
procedures under which inspectors from the federal Transportation Security
Administration (TSA) open bags out of sight of their owners before sending
them on their way.

Getting into the bag is an incidental problem after it has been opened by
inspectors, who leave inside a note that says, "Your bag was among those
selected for physical inspection."

There are other problems, of course, including the question of possible
damage to or theft from those bags. Pilferage from bags was a small problem
before the wholesale opening of them in the bowels of airports. Now it's
likely to be more of a problem, especially since current procedures, drawn
up in emergency conditions, do not make it clear who is responsible in the
event of theft or damage.

'Break in chain of custody'

Stempler said it is too early for official airline data to be available to
indicate the extent of possible increases in pilferage, either by wayward
security employees or by airline baggage handlers aware that bags are being
routinely opened and can be quickly resealed with those
available-in-any-hardware-store plastic ties. Legal issues involving
liability have not been addressed, he said.

"To the extent that the TSA is doing bag inspections outside of the sight of
passengers, there's a break in the chain of custody of the bag that can
leave passengers and their luggage vulnerable," he said.

An airline that sells a ticket and a passenger who buys one enter a contract
of carriage that assumes that the airline, including the baggage handlers
who work for it, has custody of the bag once it is checked and is
responsible for it under the specified terms of its liability agreement,
until the passenger reclaims it.

"The only relationship you have at that point is with the airline," said
Stempler, whose group has joined the airline industry in asking the TSA to
help devise better liability measures for claims involving checked bags.
"They took the bag. You have a claim check. There is a contract in place.
Furthermore, the only people that have an office in the baggage-claim area
is the airline. But now if my bag is damaged, or if I say I packed something
when I closed it up this morning and now it's not there, the airline is able
to say: 'Oh, your bag was inspected by the TSA. Go talk to them.' "

The TSA has said it is going to install video surveillance cameras in
baggage areas to try to reduce theft.

Since Jan. 1, all checked bags are required by law to be inspected for
possible explosives by TSA employees. At many big airports, checked bags
were being opened for inspection months before the deadline.

Thefts on the rise

I have heard several anecdotal reports from business travelers of items
missing from their checked bags. Theft is definitely occurring. In
mid-December, for example, six baggage handlers at Miami International
Airport were arrested on federal charges of breaking into passenger' bags
and snatching jewelry, laptop computers, cameras and other valuables.

On its Web site, http://www.tsa.dot.org, the TSA provides advice for
passengers. The TSA strongly suggests that passengers not lock their bags,
because a locked bag chosen for inspection will be forced open.

The extent of the TSA advice on what it refers to as "missing contents" is
this: "TSA screeners exercise great care during the screening process to
ensure that your contents are returned to your bag every time a bag needs to
be opened." The Web site gives a toll-free number for the TSA Consumer
Response Center: (866) 289-9673.

"The TSA has done a remarkable job when you consider that they inherited an
airline security system that simply couldn't be fixed overnight," Stempler
said.

He added: "I really don't have a solution myself at the moment, and I don't
like to complain about something unless I can suggest a way to deal with it,
but what I've been concerned about is that the TSA hasn't even been giving
honor to this problem. They didn't have procedures set up when they went
into this, and all they have now is a toll-free number."

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