"Random" screening at YYZ
 

I recently traveled through YYZ Terminal 1 heading transatlantic and observed a CATSA agent conducting random swabs of passengers in the security line, prior to the actual screening. No big deal, except that he was ONLY pulling out men! I observed him for a good 15 minutes and counted twenty men and zero women pulled aside for "random screening". How random is it if 50% of the population is left out? Is it not unconstitutional?

15 minutes is too small a sample! I was there last Wednesday night. Since I used the priority line, I only observed him swabbing one passenger's stuff but it was a female.

That happens at all the security checkpoints ( domestic and transborder as well), and
is as random as can be when one person makes a subjective decision as to whom to swab. I have seen women swabbed as well as men ( and myself).

It does not appear to be as random as " every 7th person". The priority lane also seems
to be picked on less than the regular line.

MrsCA was chosen earlier this year and the swab came back positive for something or other. The agent and supervisor were puzzled and didn't know what to do. Apparently she was the first person that had tested positive in all the time the two of them were doing this. A more senior person came over and asked my wife what she did before coming to the airport (it was an early morning flight). She went over her routine and they think that when she did the washing that morning something in the detergent or softener or whatever caused the false positive. She was sent on her way without any further ado except for swabbing her purse. I wonder if it would have been as quickly resolved if it was Homeland Security rather Toronto people. That was the last time she went near a washing machine in the 24 hours before our flights.

I doubt this anything more than a coincidence, but if it wasn't, I say "good."

When it comes to security the notion that "everyone is equally dangerous" is ridiculous theatre.

Stop swabbing grannies, boys playing with batman toys, women pushing strollers and concentrate on males like me.

Apologies to all as this thread now gets bumped to checkpoint policy debates.

What you're saying is ridiculous. It won't take a Muslim extremist more than five minutes to figure out that female agents can be used successfully. I saw men who were obviously not dangerous - white men, Hindu men, Jewish men wearing yarmulkes - all pulled aside for random screening, so why not extend this random screening to women as well? Don't forget that it was a Muslim *woman* who killed an American schoolteacher in Dubai. Men or women, they are equally dangerous.

You observed for 15 minutes and now are trying to extrapolate hard data for your small sample size. You have been told by others than they have seen the opposite of what you have described, but yet you keep drawing at straws. Just let it go, unless you are willing you to go to YYZ for about a month and 12 hours a day and provide a much larger sample size.

More kabuki theatre by the clown show that we have become....

I've been swabbed there, tested positive for something, had to have a secondary screening of the bag (everything out and checked). No idea what set it off. I've also been randomly selected for secondary bag checks by an agent, so it certainly isn't a case of men only - I don't know what guidelines they are given to ensure they are random, maybe that agent on Sundays in December picks men during 01-30 mins, and women 31-00 mins? That would be a fairly 'random' way of doing it. Maybe on Tuesdays he picks people with gold jewelry / watches for the first half hour and silver jewelry / watches for the second half hour. It's very hard for people to really pick people randomly, so maybe they have little checks / balances to help them make determinations that are not predictable to those who want to act maliciously. Or, alternatively, maybe they had a credible threat about a male passenger so there was nothing random about it. As for "I saw men who were obviously not dangerous " what utter garbage, you cannot possibly make such a determination from looks, and I am glad that security personal don't make the same assumptions.

I was pulled for random swabbing at YEG during holiday travel a few years ago. Security personnel either had criteria to decide who to pull or a quota to fulfill without causing more delays because I was pulled out of line near the front before the x-rays but asked if I was travelling alone.

I am female, answered yes, got swabbed and was prioritized to the front afterwards. I have no idea who else was being checked because I wasn't paying attention but got the distinct impression they were trying to avoid delaying families.

The swabs go into a gas cromatograph-mass spectrometer that gives the molecular weight of things that are volatile enough to enter. I would assume if the weight is close to that of a substance that is explosive or a potential component, or a drug, it is noted. Then the question is whether it is present and in what quantity. A good article is here:
http://theconversation.com/the-scien...trometry-35201

They have no reason to test for drugs, so I doubt the GC measures that.

If you do get swabbed you move to the front of the line. That was taught to me when travelling with a late twenties brown male who had been 'randomly' screened a few times before

The last two times I have been swabbed at YYZ it has been after me and my bags have been through the metal detector / xray, so had absolutely no advantage, as otherwise I was clear to just keep walking.

It's this kind of politically correct thinking that causes us to waste millions on 'security.'

You choose who is most likely to be a security risk and target them. The Israelis have this down to a science. Sorry if it offends people, but that's the way it should be.

Actually, I'm not sorry if that offends people.

The odds are someone blowing themselves up on a plane will be male, that is true, it is where the numbers point. But the use of women (and the elderly, and children) to smuggle weapons and explosives goes back decades (probably centuries). One of my roles as a woman attached to an all male army unit was to conduct searches of civilian women, as they were used to smuggle guns and things used to make explosive devices, because they were rarely stopped by security patrols (given, in part, that at the time most patrols were all-male and thus couldn't search women). Sometimes the women were entirely complicit, other times they were under duress, forced to do it by husbands and brothers.

The second airport security are told to think women / old people / children as zero risk is the second those airports become less safe.

To add, Israel already had a pretty accurate profile of who they considered a risk - male, muslim, arab - in today's world, especially in a country like Canada or the US where there are many potential threat vectors, you cannot work on such narrow assumptions - or you will miss things.