“These consumer products are convenience products that have nothing to do with TSA's aviation security regime,” an agency spokesperson said. At a later date, the TSA even admitted that these locks don’t necessarily protect your property. While the TSA felt that these locks would give travelers a greater sense of protection and would “prevent anyone from removing items” from their luggage, this has been questioned. Just two companies designed these locks: Travel Sentry, which outsources seven lock designs to other manufacturers, and Safe Skies which produces their own lock. As this created significant overhead, the TSA introduced approved locks that can be opened with master keys. As many passengers used ordinary locks to prevent theft, these needed to be cut off when the TSA wanted to check their luggage. These types of locks were introduced in 2003, in the wake of new security measures implemented after 9/11. This means that both brands of TSA approved locks have now been hacked.

If this story sounds familiar, it’s because some of these hackers previously made headlines everywhere when they hacked the seven Travel Sentry keys in 2015, also using 3D printing. All three were present at Eleventh HOPE, to underline their good intentions: to highlight security shortcomings and question the power the government has over our privacy. This remarkable hack was realized by a trio of hackers going by the names of DarkSim905 (New Jersey chapter of lock picking association TOOOL), Night 0wl (NYC chapter of TOOOL) and Johnny Xmas of RedLegg International's TradeCraft Labs. Even the TSA’s procedures, it seems, need to be reexamined. As a team of hackers just revealed at the Eleventh HOPE conference in New York City, they have used 3D printing to reverse engineer the master key used by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to check luggage guarded by Safe Skies luggage locks. But even our suitcases at airports aren’t necessarily safe. Just last week, we’ve seen how cargo thieves have adopted 3D printers to break into shipping containers in harbors across the world – necessitating a new generation of security measures. Is 3D printing a real threat to our safety and security? Leaving the 3D printed gun debate aside for a moment, 3D printing does certainly reveal some shortcomings in existing security procedures.

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