What the He** was TSA at MSP doing asking questions like this anyway? (Even accounting for bad reporting and mis-identification of parties by the media, there's no other government agency that could have contacted Emerson at MSP like that unless he had been flagged by federal LEOs and they sent one for him specifically.)
Emerson was traveling on a *domestic* flight to Washington, presumably IAD. And I'll stereotype a bit based on the name, the college, and 30 seconds on facebook, and assume that "Jeff Emerson" is a white native-born US citizen. The article and everyone here seems to be missing the point that the issue is TSA acting way out of scope, not airline policy.
This case is a perfect example of why one should never play the 20 questions game with TSA and why one should never show TSA any onward boarding pass, especially an international one.
The kid's "mistake" was probably being too enthusiastic about what may have been his first overseas trip, probably using his passport as ID and taking the occasion to boast to the TDC about where he was going. Any smart East German would have not volunteered such information to the authorities, and it seems Americans have to learn the same lesson.
Question: Does MSP use boarding pass scanners at the TDC? Is it possible that the SecureFlight information (which would include destination and might note a 1-way ticket) is being processed and then a flag sent to the scanners about who to question at TDC? That would be a substantial and disturbing development if so.