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Here's a tweet from the Canada Border Services Agency:

suitcase with some blurred items in it

The text reads:

#CBSA is warning international travellers to be aware of the threat of possible luggage tampering by criminal elements. Keep your bags secure when you travel to prevent the introduction of unauthorized items. #ProtectingCanadians

and the picture shows an open suitcase where some of the items are blurred.

Treating this tweet by a government agency on their blue-tick account, complete with a picture which implies documentation of an actual incident, as a notable claim, I ask:

Has it ever happened, even once, that a stranger has put contraband into someone's suitcase because the person failed to keep their bags secure? Is there genuinely an opportunity to prevent crime by watching your bag?

If this were to happen, how would the bad guys know where your luggage was going? It isn't checked luggage with a bag tag, because if it was, you would have handed it over to the airline right after you got the bag tag. And assuming they got past that hurdle, how are they finding your bag later and retrieving their contraband?

I'm not talking about "boyfriends" who trick young women into taking bombs on planes or other mule-type situations. I'm talking about the thing CBSA is so earnestly warning us of. You take your eyes off your bag in the airport and next thing you know a blurry plastic bag has been slid into it. Has that ever really happened to anyone, even once?

post close update:

To be clear, the following would not be "yes" situations:

  • planting something by security people as part of a security test
  • a fiancé hiding something in his fiancée's luggage
  • a person claiming his luggage was "broken into" and drugs planted, since that would have happened after checking the luggage in, and couldn't have been prevented by vigilance
  • being tricked into accepting a "prize" vacation that included luggage that turned out to have contraband in it
  • something being planted in a person's car

These are the 5 answers to Has anyone innocent ever been arrested because of contraband that was planted in their luggage? , which is not a duplicate of this one since it doesn't cover the situation the government agency is warning people about.

Kate Gregory
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  • Re the penultimate paragraph, perhaps they took the risk of waiting until the departure gate, where everybody is going to the same destination, and used distraction to put something in the hand baggage. At the destination they would take the bag. The whole scenario does seem quite thin though. By then, they need to get rid of the blurry plastic bag. But they might also try on the flight itself, since customs checks are on entry. – Weather Vane Dec 27 '23 at 21:21
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    @WeatherVane ok I'm on a flight with you and when you're not looking I move contraband from my carryon to yours. Now I can get past customs, since a search will reveal nothing. But I (or my local confederate who was never airside) needs to monitor your movements and somehow relieve you of your rollaboard (or at least my plastic bag from it) after you've sailed through customs unbothered since you don't look worried and don't match a smuggler profile. How do we do that? How is that a real risk that has really happened to anyone? – Kate Gregory Dec 27 '23 at 21:28
  • I don't know, but I suppose a distraction event when planting, and another when retrieving. – Weather Vane Dec 27 '23 at 22:15
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    @WeatherVane for planting an opportunity for distraction is plausible since passengers may sit still for a long time, reading/playing with phone/eating/drinking, but between the customs desk and what may be a waiting family or driver is a few metres of busy barren corridor often with cameras and armed officials nearby, so an unpromising place to demand that a stranger open a bag to prove they don't have "my luggage" or whatever while snatching out of contraband. – Tom Goodfellow Dec 28 '23 at 00:03
  • I figure tanim-bala doesn't count because secure luggage won't protect against that. – Oddthinking Dec 28 '23 at 00:31
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    Does this answer your question? – tink Dec 28 '23 at 02:14
  • @tink security agents and fiances are not random "criminal elements" who will be foiled if you keep an eye on your luggage – Kate Gregory Dec 28 '23 at 02:34
  • I guess custom officers don't count? (It doesn't seem likely this happened in view of the owners anyway.) – Laurel Dec 28 '23 at 03:33
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    @KateGregory - no security agents or fiances in this answer to the question linked to above. – tink Dec 28 '23 at 03:33
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    @KateGregory - not in this one, either. – tink Dec 28 '23 at 03:35
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    I figure these announcements serve a second purpose which is to make it more difficult for a traditional smuggler to claim that their luggage was tampered with using the Austin Powers defense, and a third purpose which is to allow abandoned luggage to be treated as automatically suspicious (if everyone is keeping a close eye on theirs normally, it makes some bag that is left behind with explosives more conspicuous). That doesn't invalidate the question, though. – Bryan Krause Dec 28 '23 at 14:50
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    Anedoctal, but a recent "airport security" show on Brasil had a guy explaining that sometimes some luggage will tampered with in such a manner that it will be easy to find. The rationale is that there is only so many dogs/staff, and the more busy they are with the less valuable payload, the easier is for the actual, well hidden one. A... "let them find the weed so the coke can slip past security" kind of deal. – T. Sar Dec 28 '23 at 20:17
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    I am voting to close as a duplicate as that question has several answers with examples of a third party hiding illicit substances in luggage which in some cases caused people to get arrested. – Joe W Dec 28 '23 at 20:26
  • Another possible reason for the advice is simply to keep passengers alert, while not scaring them with more likely problem scenarios. – Weather Vane Dec 28 '23 at 21:25
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    @JoeW not one of those involves a suitcase the traveler took their eye off. Instead you have security agents, fiances, dupes and fake contests, stuff being put into a car, and luggage being tampered with after it was checked in. I think even those cases are very rare, but the point of this question is to see if the scenario CBSA warns about is something that has ever happened. (Not for people to reason about whether it could happen.) The third parties in that other question did not commit their misdeeds in the airport when the passenger was insufficiently vigilant. – Kate Gregory Dec 28 '23 at 22:11
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    All of those involve a third party getting access to the luggage while the owners are unaware of it. Those are just simple examples of luggage being tampered with in order to get something illicit into them. These warnings are not being issued for no reason and like all other warnings are being issued because something has happened in the past. – Joe W Dec 28 '23 at 22:50
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    @KateGregory, if the contraband is worth enough money, then you just take it with violence after it's at the destination. Probably not directly at the airport because it's guarded. But outside of it. Follow the person and rob them later or break into their house. Or as others pointed out, to create a destruction and burden the guards with lesser serious contraband to smuggle something more precious. – SIMEL Dec 29 '23 at 02:44
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    @user1271772 the key question is "Is there genuinely an opportunity to prevent crime by watching your bag?", so instances of coercion, bribery, tampering after the bag is handed over, etc, aren't duplicates – Tom Goodfellow Dec 29 '23 at 14:16
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    @TomGoodfellow the suggested duplicate should make that clear as it shows people do look for opportunities to put illicit items in luggage. Warnings to watch your luggage don’t just apply to secure areas of airports. – Joe W Dec 29 '23 at 16:11
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    I would suspect that contraband inserted in a random passenger's bag by a bad actor is either a distraction or a bomb. These have no requirement that the contraband be successfully recovered. – Cristobol Polychronopolis Dec 29 '23 at 21:38
  • @TomGoodfellow I disagree, this question is as duplicate as it gets, and no one asked the question in your comment. – user1271772 Jan 03 '24 at 22:34
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    @user1271772 - it's a direct quote from the question text, in the bold-faced block following "I ask:" – Tom Goodfellow Jan 03 '24 at 23:06
  • @TomGoodfellow Question posts on StackExchange are supposed to contain one question, not seven. – user1271772 Jan 03 '24 at 23:21
  • "These are the 5 answers to Has anyone innocent ever been arrested because of contraband that was planted in their luggage? , which is not a duplicate of this one since it doesn't cover the situation the government agency is warning people about." I suggest to put a bounty on that question to try to get more answers, rather than asking the same question in a separate post. – user1271772 Jan 04 '24 at 02:18

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