I suspect this is the beginning of the punishment for the self-inflicted embarrassment the TSA experienced over the Nigerian guy. The contractors at SFO have been doing this for quite a while now and there is a lengthy thread about peoples' experiences.

The TSA has no comprehension that a person (still) has the right to pronounce their name however they want. Your boarding pass could spell "Schlobotnik*" and you could, when demanded by the clerk, pronounce it "Smith" if you choose. One poster wrote of his experience by saying that he said his name was "Smith" and by the time he got to the RCC, it was going to change to "Jones."

The justification for all the ID checking nonsense goes back to a previous TSA Administrator, a mental giant named Edmund "Kip" Hawley. When asked the rationale for instituting TSA ID checking, he declared, in Congressional testimony and on the famous TSA Blog, that "ID matters." Between this stuff and the antics of the Nigerian guy, the intellectual depth behind that justification is finally coming home to roost.

By the way, my name is "John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt" if anyone in a TSA uniform asks.

(*Anyone else remember that Charlie Brown's favorite baseball player was Joe Schlobotnik???)