Somehow, I lost both my govt. issued ID's while traveling this week and wound up having to go through secondary screening at SFO today.

I approached the ID checker and told her I had lost my ID. She directed me to a second checker who in turn directed me toward the checkpoint. I put my laptop and liquids in the plastic bins and waitedoff to the side. A TSA agent told me I could go straight ahead to the metal detector. I told her I had no ID. She misunderstood what I said and told me I didn't need to show ID twice. "F this!", I thought and went through the metal detector, picked up my things and began to leave the checkpoint. At that point I thought my actions might cause a terminal dump, and while I would like to make a monkey out of the fake security measures, I don't want thousands of people to be delayed/inconvenienced on my account.

I walked back and waved to the TSA agent that sent me through, motioning her to come towards me. I told her that I was trying to tell her that I had no ID and needed to go through whatever process they had in place for people like me. She seemed embarrassed but took me to the designated secondary screener and asked if it would be ok if she passed my bags through the x ray machine one more time. I agreed. She was very nice, asking if I had been secondary screened before and told me exactly what to expect, except the pervy stuff which we'll get to in a minute. When the bags were brought back to the secondary screening area, one agent began swabbing every electrical, battery operated gadget in my bag. Ipod, back up drive, laptop, phone chargers, phones, flashlight, bp monitor, spare batteries, electric toothbrush, laptop power cord, camera, everything got swabbed. Meanwhile, I got the most thorough patdown I have ever had. Hands all over, special attention to buttocks, belt area, groin, legs and, well everywhere really. It was quite obtrusive so I started shouting random words in spoof Cantonese at the agent whenever he touched what I considered to be a sensitive area. He was not happy that an apparently respectabe looking "fully grown adult" was making fun of him but he put up with it, probably figuring I was not happy about the obtrusive touching.

I was told to take a seat while practically everything in my bag was swabbed. The whole screening episode took 25 minutes which was quite a long time, but the agents were very polite, repeatedly apologizing about keeping me so long - especially the pervy one.

At the end of it, one agent asked me if I wouldn't mind repacking my bag, thanked me for my patience and cut two little man shapes in my bp to signify I had been screened.