© File pictureTerror!: Airport security staff confiscated two cupcakes claiming the icing could be explosive
Rebecca Hains said the Transportation Security Administration agent at McCarran International Airport took her cupcake Wednesday, telling her its frosting was enough like a gel to violate TSA restrictions on allowing liquids and gels onto flights to prevent them from being used as explosives.
'I just thought this was terrible logic,' Hains said Friday.
Hains, who lives in Peabody, just north of Boston, said the agent didn't seem concerned that the cupcake could actually be explosive, just that it fit some bureaucratic definition about what was prohibited.
She said he even offered to let her eat it away from the airport security area.
Hains, a 35-year-old communications professor at Salem State University, said she told the agent she had passed through security at Boston's Logan International Airport earlier in the week with two cupcakes packaged in jars, that were gifts from a student.
But she said the agent told her that just meant TSA in Boston didn't do its job.
The TSA, which is entrusted with protecting the nation's transportation system, was reviewing the incident, agency spokesman Nico Melendez said. Passengers are allowed to take cakes and cupcakes through checkpoints, he said.
© AlamyPassenger Rebecca Hains was flying home to Boston from McCarran International Airport, Las Vegas
'It's not really about the cupcake; I can get another cupcake,' she said. 'It's about an encroachment on civil liberties.
'We're just building up a resistance and tolerance to all these things they're doing in the name of security, when it's really theater. It is not keeping us safe.'
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