da_erazo

Today..8/8/13..I am taking a flight from sps-dfw-lga. The last 3times walking to security tsa ramdonly selected me!! Well the metal detector selected me for a ramdon check. Today it happened again. I truly don't believe that it has been the machine that selected me. This is the fourth time that happens to me in my last 4 trips. I proceeded to ask the agent about what is the process
And he sarcastically said that I well have to talk to the machine. I filed a complain that I will drop at dfw because I know here they may just put it in the trash can.
I had never been selected this way in big airports like lax, dfw, ord or jfk, only in sps.
Any comments? Has anyone had a similar experience? Recommendations?
Thanks


Please feel free to move this comment to the right forum.

jkhuggins

Keep in mind that in a "small airport", they may select a higher percentage of passengers for "random" screening, so that the total number of passengers selected meets some particular hidden quota. So your chances at being selected at random might be higher at a small airport than at a larger airport.

On the other hand ... because so much of what TSA does is mysterious, there's really no way to know if you've just been incredibly unlucky or if you've been targeted for some particular reason ...

TheRoadie

Ever seen the Australian underwear commercial where the female screener has a remote control fob for the WTMD beeper? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=km6tGDlYsew

Punchline after the hot guy is made to strip to his undies to pass through, is another screener whispers:"Someday you're gonna get caught."

MAMOHT

I am a white male and I've been "randomly selected" a lot. I am pretty sure they are equal opportunity "discriminators".

Boggie Dog

Profiling by TSA? How could that be?

Loren Pechtel

If it's the machine picking it could be based on something else.

Soon after 9/11 we were drawing a very high rate of gate checks--I finally realized it was because the travel agent gave a discount for cash.

lovely15

I am a white female and have a much higher incidence of harassment at small airports. Like 99% vs. 1%. So I don't think it's racial profiling as much as it is small town losers on a power trip.

Oh, just read it was the WTMD. I think you just have bad luck.

puddinhead

Maybe it is set so high it detects the iron in your blood. Anemic passengers don't get targeted.

skidv25

It's been my observation that the WTMDs at WTMD-only checkpoints have been set to random alarm extremely frequently lately.

chollie

I wonder if that's happening more often at airports that lost their BSX and haven't gotten MMW replacements yet?

If they just have to rely on real WTMD alarms, they won't have nearly as many opportunities to stick their hands down people's pants and between their legs and to rub people's buttocks.

Increasing the frequency of random WTMD alarms keeps the gropers happy.

JDiver

In my experience some WTMDs are not calibrated properly - the TSA will deny that can happen, they have certain standards, etc. etc. but as an example, at one airport, I always set the left channel WTMD off, the right one never - I learned soon enough to autoselect the right channel.

Perhaps the measurements were similar on both, but perhaps manufacturing gave these two devices different sensitivity. And I can believe a WTMD may be set to a higher sensitivity in some locations.

(Funniest WTMD experience I had was actually in Egypt - as we approached one archaeological site we had to go through the entire pantomime of WTMD - though it was not plugged into anything, merely sitting out there in the desert.)

GUWonder

There is racist profiling that takes place at airports, small and large, in the US -- but that doesn't necessarily explain the OP's experience although it may, as with some using a slight physical shaking/knocking of the WTMD to create a "random" alarm.

Even with truly random alarms at some WTMD screening checkpoints, being selected 4 out of 4 times is possible albeit rare.

In some places around the world -- airport or otherwise -- WTMDs are placed and used to channel people, perhaps for frisking (selective or otherwise) rather than for the WTMDs' functioning as metal detectors (if they are even functional at all). Quite ordinary to observe this across parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America.

da_erazo

Well, everyone comments are very interesting. I am flying again from the same airport on August 30th. I will be posting here if I am "randomly selected" again.
This airport has only 4 flights per day and are operated by american aegle. This will give you an idea how small the airport is. May of you may be right about not being oriented to be a racial profiling case, but to try to meet their weekly/monthly quote.
Or the WTMD has been calibrated the right way like JDiver said. I am strongly inclining to this option already.
Lets see what will happened on 8/30.

vickersja

Its probably a quota thing, with only 4 flights daily. Im a 30-something white guy and i am rarely "selected" at a large airport, but have been several times at smaller ones.

eyecue

Contrary to the comments on here, the sensitivity is never changed. The WTMD is calibrated and set when it is installed. That value has never changed. The randomizer on the WTMD can be changed, it is a percent of people walking through it in a given time period. So if no one is walking through it and it has a setting that dictates a percentage of throughput in an hour and you are the next one, you are going to get selected by the machine.