Originally Posted by
dgcpaphd
Bottom line, there is a time and place to "pick your battles" and en route to your airplane is not the time nor the place.
That mentality is exactly why TSA gets away with so much. If en route to one's flight is never the time/place to battle, then TSA can get away with unjustified confiscation/theft of non-threatening items, overly intrusive searches, assault/battery, verbal abuse, and other arbitrary, capricious, and malicious actions. Because en route to one's flight is pretty much the only time we face TSA.
TSA knows this is a key source of their power and has embedded it within TSA's culture informally, if not formally. Hence "D Y W T F T" and a myriad of other veiled and not-so-veiled threats.
If TSA had to compensate the airlines and/or the passengers for rebooking flights missed due to TSA action (with reasonable restraints such as pax had to be in line for the checkpoint 45 minutes prior to departure or at the WTMD 35 minutes prior to departure), preferably with the compensation 60% from TSA's operating budget, 25% from the offending TSO's salary, and 15% from the TSO's supervisor, then you can bet this sort of abuse would screech to a halt.
I have little doubt that the OP's story is true, and that the traveler somehow triggered suspicion in the BDO's mind (maybe blinked the wrong way, twitched, sneezed, whatever
, or maybe her ID had scratched lamination or an address-change sticker
) and that the TSA employees (probably off the cuff and not out of any SOP) decided to use the ID verification procedure as a means to resolve their suspicion, and possible as a means of observing her reaction. The OP's story is completely believable given the mentality of TSA, our knowledge of the ID verification procedure, and TSA's consistent refusal to advise passengers on TSA's procedures and passengers' rights and obligations when at a TSA checkpoint.
As an aside, I suspect that using the traveler's father's partial SSN or even the traveler's SSN for identity verification is an illegal use of SSNs and possibly subject to some sort of criminal prosecution. IIRC there are pretty serious restrictions on use of SSN's, and the travelers' father certainly never consented to the the use of his SSN for this process.