Originally Posted by
janetdoe
Random selection is the opposite of thinking. It can be done in a couple of lines of programming in any modern language. You want 3% of all passengers to receive a random patdown? Generate a random number, x, between 1 and 100. If x is less than or equal to 3, blink the yellow light.
I've been through customs in Mexico, and everyone has to push a button. If you get a green light, you go through, a red light gets additional hand-searching. I've seen a thirty-year old man with a 70-lb suitcase patiently holding the hand of a 3-year old as her tiny backpack is searched. Totally random, and it may not make sense from a 'logical target' perspective, but if you wanted to sneak in something illegal, why not put it in the 3-year old's bag?
Mexican Customs is about as uniformly polite as you can get. The press-the-button deal makes Customs far more comfortable, as a computer picking randomly is doing the selection. I've had my things hand-searched in Mexico and it was speedy and respectful.
+1 - As long as there truly is a randomizer and not an excuse for a non-random selection by a TSO.
If 3% of passengers need to be hand-searched to generate uncertainty, (arguable, I know) I would rather have 3 randomly chosen, rather than 3 chosen by a TSO. The TSO might profile by choosing only dark-skinned young men. (Whether or not this is acceptable/desirable is up to your personal ethics.) Or they might choose targets that are unlikely to protest, like young mothers with children or elderly people. Or the TSO might randomly choose "cuties" and "hotties". I've heard reports of all three.
I don't think the TSA is ready for something this random, as it will be hard to sell to the public, as the public wants things that make it uncomfortable to get extra attention, whereas the Mexican system really makes it completely random.
Also, if you've ever been patted down in Mexico, and I have, you know they use the back of the hand from your chest to your crotch and pat lightly, but with enough gusto to hit a foreign object if it were concealed. No freak-on-display action. India was the same way. Swift, polite, rational. In India, it was gender-segregated, which was the only difference.
While I'm sure there are many TSA agents who are swift, polite, and rational, and heck, there are a couple of them on FT, I think we can all agree that they're the exception and not the rule. That's the biggest problem: the culture of the TSA that has gotten us here and the people who enable whatever the TSA wants.