Originally Posted by
jkhuggins
Actually, "every Nth person" isn't random at all. It may be "arbitrary", but "arbitrary" and "random" aren't the same thing at all. One element of randomness is unpredictability, and picking every Nth person is completely predictable. Not to mention observably predictable ... imagine the chaos in the line, when people who have figured out today's value of N are jockeying for position in the line to make sure they're not selected. ....
CBP has been using every 'nth' for years. There is no problem with what I proposed, and yes, this stupid device should be abandoned forthwith.
Firstly, random patdowns are useless. Either patdown everyone or no one.
Second, the 'n' number can be changed frequently and vary between WTMD queues - it's far easier and cheaper to spend 30 minutes coming up with an understandable and fair randomness policy than spending millions of dollars to buy someone's high school science fair project.