Little book of travel

On July 1st The New York Times reported that under certain conditions it wouldn’t be necessary anymore to remove your laptop from your case when passing airport security (in the US):

“Get ready for a change. The Transportation Security Administration has given the go-ahead for passengers to use newly designed carry-on bags that will let them pass through security without having to take their laptops out for the X-ray inspection. Kip Hawley, the agency’s director, told me Monday that the T.S.A. would accept the new laptop cases as soon as they come on the market.

Two of the biggest luggage manufacturers — Pathfinder Luggage and Targus — say they are rushing to produce the new “checkpoint friendly” laptop cases and expect them to be available by late September or early October. “

Boy did that sound good! Immediately after that news followed about Targus, MobileEdge and others creating these special bags indeed.

Last update is from a few days ago. TSA is ready for ‘checkpoint friendly’ laptop bags and from August 16th they will start allowing passengers to pass through security with bags that meet the new ‘checkpoint friendly’ standard.

Since a few days though I’m wondering how much of this really is just smoke to disguise that other – and a bit more disturbing – airport security related news. Travelers laptops may be detained at border titled the Washington Post:

“Federal agents may take a traveler’s laptop or other electronic device to an off-site location for an unspecified period of time without any suspicion of wrongdoing, as part of border search policies the Department of Homeland Security recently disclosed.”

So when you combine these two news items you get: we’re about to take your laptop away from you and it would be more convenient if it’s still in a bag when we do so… you know so we can carry it to that off-site location we talked about. Traveling to the US just became even more pleasant.

In the meantime there’s an interesting discussion over on Lifehacker where Gina Trapani asked her readers what they would do to avoid laptop seizure on international trips, good stuff.