The woman already had the milk bottled. What's the harm in drinking some of it to prove that it isn't any dangerous compound? I thought liquids from outside weren't allowed in the planes, ideally they shouldn't have allowed her in with it at all, though, but that's a different point.
> did she fail to see the connection to stopping terrorism
The connection is that she could have been a terrorist, and a compound dissolved in the milk could be used to make a binary explosive.
Why is making her drink breast milk incredibly stupid? Because TSA already have equipment to test liquids for explosives without having passengers sample their own liquids.
Not to mention, breast milk has always been counted as medication, although the rule to not make passengers sample their own liquid is probably new since that incident.
Liquids from outside are allowed on planes depending on how you bring it in. My dad travels with juice/gel exceeding 3oz (with a note from his doctor). I've gotten a Costco-sized bottle of contact lens solution past TSA (so if you want to know how to sneak in some vodka...) One winter I was traveling a couple times a month with some terrible bronchitis+sinusitis issues and I had a gallon sized bag full of cough syrups and inhalers. Whatever. The only two things I remember TSA specifically tested from my bags from, at this point, hundreds of flights, is one mega sized bottle of purple drank (if you split liquid meds into a bunch of smaller but still bigger than 3oz bottles they don't seem to care) and one bottle of shampoo.
Banning people from bringing liquids on board and halfheartedly enforcing the 3oz rule when they can be circumvented so easily even with TSA approval (see TSA precheck!) is so incredibly dumb it baffles my mind.
Oooh ooh bonus points: I put something like 10 quarts worth of homemade jam in my checked luggage on one flight and TSA didn't even look at them (and good thing too, because they were all canned and I would have flipped out if the seals were broken). I wonder what you could do with 10 quarts worth of jam-consistency material in a bag. BTW hey TSA I'm not a terrorist, just someone that doesn't like you very much for making me deal with those terrible massages every time I try to get on a flight.
Maybe she, like many of us, simply did not see a point to "stopping terrorism" through airport security checkpoints. All they achieve is inconveniencing passengers and creating extremely attractive targets by concentrating large numbers of civilians.
