Perilous

Fireworks. Medical needles. Insect spray. Cooking fuel. Flammable gas torches. Ammunition. Yes, people forget they have cooking fuel in their travel bags. Or, amazingly, they thought it was acceptable in the first place to take cooking fuel onto an airplane. 

So what happens to all that bizarre crap security screeners have to confiscate? It doesn’t just disappear, after all. Turns out a mammoth defense contractor you’ve probably never heard of called Science Applications International Corporation gets paid a lot of money to dispose of it. They just won a contract worth $46.8 million for that very task from the Transportation Security Administration.

But unfortunately, the trade pub Government Security News had some difficulty getting the whole story:

SAIC, which was awarded a contract valued at $46,806,079 on Dec. 19, 2011, declined an opportunity to be interviewed by Government Security News on its plans to execute this contract.

Image: Niezam Sandakan