Thanks for your post! I thought you made some good points, and it's nice to see a desire for improvement from within the TSA. I do have a few issues with the practicality of some of your suggestions...
Originally Posted by
spacev1986
To scan and ID and a Ticket with a machine reader would be alot quicker than staring at it with a magnifying glass.
The 2D bar codes on tickets only encode the information that's already printed on the ticket in human readable text (passenger name, flight info, etc.). In fact, these bar codes follow a standard that is published online for free download (
link to PDF). In order for scanning these bar codes to be effective, the scanner would have to validate the passenger name and flight info against the airline's own database (the same way the info is validated at the gate). I imagine the same is true for photo IDs. Unfortunately for the TSA, a standard interface to every airline's ticketing system to confirm a BP is legitimate would probably be cost prohibitive (not to mention the increased screening times...). All of this being said, adding a note for SSSS to the bar code that alerted at security would probably help keep the TSOs from missing it, but I suppose if you knew the SSSS was coming removing it from your BP and bar code would be trivial.
Originally Posted by
spacev1986
Rather it would be fairly easy to concoct a race/gender neutral statistical system that consider other factors- how the person paid, how many bags they checked, travel history, age, travelling companions, watchlist status, etc. Not to mention behaviorial considerations.
All I have to say here is that its easy for "behavioral considerations" to become racial profiling (For some people, an Arab in an Airport will always be suspicious). As long as the system includes elements based on a person's intuition, that person's prejudices will inform their evaluation of passengers. I'm not saying that TSOs are more racist than you or I, simply that "Everyone's a Little Bit Racist"
