This happened to me at the Atlanta airport in 1998 or 2000. It illustrates how things have changed since 9/11 in the USA.
As I was waiting to go to Costa Rica on a Delta flight, an unusual man came toward the gate. He looked to me as though he were not quite right mentally as he was dressed in a disheveled manner and had a face that spelled mentally ill. Somehow he had made it past security with an odd corrugated cardboard box that was taped with duct tape and was of an unusual shape. It was a shape and form that only a person who was mentally ill could make sense of.
He place the box at the gate and walked away. I could not get any guard or desk person to do anything about that box. I do not know what happened since my flight boarded soon after.
