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Remem­ber that lit­tle post I wrote a month or so ago about my morn­ing at Newark Air­port?  Well about 30 days ago, I get a let­ter in the mail from the TSA.  What did it say you might ask?  Well, they imposed a $250.00 civ­il penal­ty against me.  I am assum­ing this paid for the paper­work and back­ground checks etc.   They were gen­er­ous, how­ev­er, by allow­ing me to pay $125.00 with­in 30 days of the notice.  Sigh.

Now for my con­cern…  How is this going to affect my future trav­el?  How is this going to affect any and all CCW’s I am priv­i­leged with?  Am I going to get flagged every time I go through secu­ri­ty going for­ward?  I hope the TSA had a good time going through all my dirty laun­dry last time they searched my bag.  I called the num­ber on the let­ter…  I left a mes­sage… We wait, and wait, and wait, and wait four days…  Until, about 10 min­utes ago.  I get a call from a very pleas­ant young lady on the oth­er end who iden­ti­fied her­self being from the TSA and that she is respond­ing to my voice mail.  Actu­al­ly, I did­n’t expect a call back at all.  Here is what she told me, and she made no bones about the infor­ma­tion she was deliv­er­ing:

1. 1. I am still eli­gi­ble for the $125.00 reduc­tion in fine cost.  Out­stand­ing.
   2. This will NOT affect or give me a crim­i­nal record.  Out­stand­ing
   3. This will NOT affect any CCW’s that I have.  Out­stand­ing (but I will not hold my breath for the next few months)
   4. And final­ly, that this will not affect any future trav­el at all.  Out­stand­ing.  How­ev­er, I do know my bag was sift­ed through after the last trip I took… So we will see.

In all she assured me that this was not crim­i­nal in any way, just cov­er­ing costs and I am sure it is psy­cho­log­i­cal in nature so I should check my bag before I go to the air­port a lit­tle more thor­ough­ly going for­ward.

I write this as an FYI to all of you who may trav­el for busi­ness and have dual pur­pose bags like me…