shahine.com/omar/

The laptop one is required because some batteries are super dense and can block xrays.

Do be aware that they reduced these restrictions so that they could do more random patdown searches. An interesting tradeoff. Will more people be shunted to the evil line at the D terminal at SeaTac? Hm.....

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002699215_webairport22.html

I would suggest you still take your shose off. Not very long ago I went through Sea-Tac and I did not take mine off because they said you were not "required to do so" -- I was wearing Teva sandals and it was clear to at least me I could not conceal anything. What I learned was that by not following this requirement they automatically put you through the full search. You hear the dreaded "I need a male screener" and they make you go stand in a small boxed out area on the floor and they make you do the full hand scan and pat down and they make you take off your shoes! I watch this happen to three other people while I was just waiting to be searched. What i thought was saving myself less than two minutes by not taking my sandals off ended up costing me about 15 as you go through the search.

As for laptops it really is a money issue. I am sure you know when you travel abroad they have better x-ray machines. Places like the UK you never have to take your laptop out of the case and their lines seem to move a lot faster and they have had richer security restrictions in place for many more years than the US.

From what I could read of the article, your swiss army knife would be theirs. Tools OK - Nothing about knives.

I can attest that they would indeed take your knife. I had a leatherman squirt on my keychain that got taken over the holidays. So while you can have 4 inch scissors, or screw drivers, all knives are still considered contraband.

p.s. the squirt has far less than a 4 inch blade.

The security procedures are a pain. When flying out of LAX, they put my laptop through the X-Ray machine three times. It's also annoying how they require digital cameras and camcorders to also be removed. Definitely needs to be taken into consideration when packing carry-on luggage.

Also, Brian's right - nothing about knives? The article only mentions shoes...

I'd be content with them patting down everyone in line and requiring you to have short fingernails if it meant keeping America safer. I flew quite a bit in 2005 and not once did I feel the security processes were too much of a burden.