The Transportation Security Agency (TSA) – the government department put in charge of airline security after 9/11 – has quietly begun imposing fines on unwary passengers who attempt to board planes with prohibited items.

     Mojdeh Rohani of Boston discovered the new fines when she received a bill in the mail from the TSA for $150 for carrying a silver-plated cake service in her carry-on bag.

     She was lucky. The TSA can now impose administrative fines of up to $10,000 for violating its rules.

     Kathryn Harrington of Laurel, Maryland was also fined for carrying a "concealed weapon." The weapon was an 8 ˝ inch long leather bookmark.

     In fact it's difficult to know in advance just what is and is not legal to carry on a plane these days. Other passengers have been prevented from boarding planes and in some cases arrested for carrying paperback books with “violent pictures” on the cover . . . T-shirts with political comments . . . and milk for their babies. Even worse, rules can vary from airport to airport or even from screener to screener at the same airport. (For the TSA's latest list of prohibited items click here.

     Since thousands of passengers have items confiscated from them every day at airports, the new TSA fines should help to pay the salaries of TSA's "professional screeners" – which are triple the amount paid to private screeners in the days before the TSA.

     In addition, to the TSA legal confiscations and fines, dozens of TSA agents have been charged with stealing cash from passengers wallets, and laptop computers, cameras, jewelry and other expensive property from their baggage. Over 7,000 complaints are currently pending against the TSA. Many complainants will wait years before they receive a response.

     And to contest a TSA administrative fine, you will be required to travel repeatedly to the airport whether the fine was imposed – which means several trips across the country or across the world at your own expense. Then the several hearing will be presided over by a TSA administrative judge who works for the same agency that just imposed an arbitrary fine upon you.

     And if you are thinking of suing TSA thieves in a state or federal court, think again. As government employees TSA agents have sovereign immunity from lawsuit no matter how arbitrary their decisions and how much they steal.

     To add insult to injury, recent studies show that even more guns and knives are getting through security stations than before 9/11 – making the TSA an abject and very expensive failure.

     With mounting evidence that TSA does nothing to increase our security – but a lot to make the skies less friendly – it should be abolished immediately and the responsibility of security returned to airlines and airports.

To view back issues of Jarret Wollstein's Towards Liberty, Click here.