You never can predict where and how things are going to go wrong, but you can have a good idea that it will happen eventually. I was going through security for my flight to Miami this morning and the baggage screener asked to send my bags back through the machine. This has happened to me dozens of times, since I travel with a fair amount of electronic stuff packed in my computer bag.
This time, however, the screener did something unusual – he unpacked a bunch of stuff from my bag and sent it through separately. He did this without telling me, and out of my sight. Worse, there were some other bags between my zipped-up case and the tray full of expensive camera gear going through separately. I picked up my bag, slid the laptop back in, and headed down to catch the tram to the gate.
As I was about to step onto the tram, a security officer appeared at the top of the escalator shouting my name. He informed me that they had unpacked the items from my bag, and that I needed to go back to security to pick them up.
If my name had not been on the camera and wireless receiver, they would not have known whose name to call, and that could have been the end of this gear (more than $4k – ouch).
Moral of the story – put you name on your stuff. Metadata for Physical Asset Management.