With apologies, I think your private response needs to be aired, because if your opinion were to be held widely and applied, then we could also justify any number of anti-constitutional anti-liberty retribution on "people who should know better."
He knew he was breaking the law and he deliberately broke the law by waiting until the incompetent guard wasn’t looking.
He’s 28 and a PhD student - not just a dumb kid. He was fully aware that he was breaching airport security and as a frequent international traveler he was fully aware of the implications of that breach. He just didn’t care.
- malice - desire to inflict injury, harm, or suffering on another, either because of a hostile impulse or out of deep-seated meanness
No. No malice.
He broke a rule. Had the TSA agent been there, they could've asessed the situation and merely told him no. Or, they could have perhaps even detained, or maybe arrested and charged him. Quietly, off camera, etc.
They are now trumpeting his 'capture' in order to save bureaucratic skin, to close the ranks...not to serve any security purpose. This effort is designed as a "long arm of the law" lesson for regular citizens. The "plenty of security holes available" for potential terrorists is long gone by, and didn't need this incident to show them that.
And one more thing, wideawake, because I travel, and I have to travel a lot, for years. Probably for the rest of my career, and so this incompetence directly affects my quality of life, and does demonstrably nothing for my security.
If you have any knowledge of checkpoint procedure, add one part mechanical aptitude, and one part imagination and one part malice....what do you see here?
Wheelchair bound persons are routinely routed through the open security exit passage that this guy went through.
Wheelchairs are made of hollow metal tubing.
The handicapped person is wanded down, and the wheelchair is given the once over by one of these "model employee" TSA boobs.
Once the wheelchair is through security, proceed to any roomy handicapped stall to retrieve your smuggled components and assemble them at your convenience and deliver them to whomever you choose inside the "secure area."
I think your assessment is pretty accurate that this particular guy should have known better.
Unfortunately, so do the terrorists, and all this should tell us is that the TSA is a barking junkyard dog which only bites the innocent, and ignores thieves because it's cold outside the doghouse at night.