studentff

Don't forget that BOS is part of an acknowledged "pilot" program to interrogate passengers about their travel that goes well beyond the run-of-the-mill BDO program, which I assume is where you participate. A colleague of mine was subjected to 20-30 min of intrusive and IMO harassing questions on his residence, work, family, education, etc., by your pilot-program colleagues at BOS.

So, either by official policy or made up by the local management policy, BOS may have some sort of quotas beyond what you experience. Perhaps for no other reason than to ensure that the pilot is "successful."

I seriously doubt management told TSOs to go single out minorities. The leaders are stupid, but not that stupid. What I find plausible is that management told TSOs to generate some number of referrals, and the individuals involved started using their own experience and intuition, both right and wrong, as to which passengers were more likely to help fill their quota with drug finds, etc. It's completely non PC to admit this, but there is a statistically higher chance of "finding something" on certain ethnic/class groups relative to others (just look at conviction stats relative to proportion of population--no way that is *all* bias). But TSA and LEOs (rightly) aren't allowed to use that as selection criteria, because it leads to a very bad place. The problem is that if you set people loose with the BDO mission and a quota, human nature will kick in and use of inappropriate criteria is virtually inevitable. This is exactly the same scenario that has led to major racial profiling cases among state highway patrols.