With all due respect to those who feel the searches are not random, have you ever waited until the end of the boarding process to see the whole thing through? I have at ORD and I observed that the screeners would pull someone out of line at random intervals. And, my read of many of the examples cited in this thread support the random nature of the searches. I support profiling, and I also want the searches to have a random component. Remember Pan Am - Lockerbie? The "terrorist" was an unwitting woman accomplice. Yes, it was checked baggage but the lesson still applies.