What's the big deal with handing over your boarding pass? I just don't get it. I can understand fighting TSA over a principle but what are we fighting for here? We might as well hold our breath and stamp our feet. :confused:

Because this has nothing to do with security. It's annoying theater. We need to stand up to this baloney whenever and wherever it appears.

Privacy. WHY are they taking your BP? WHAT are they going to do with the data once collected? WHERE is the data base they're putting your data into and HOW is it being guarded?

All other government agencies have to tell you when they collect personally identifiable data and what they're doing with it.

TSA gets to collect data in little paper notebooks, copied down in back rooms outside your view, and you NEVER KNOW that's it's going to be properly safeguarded. You have no guarantee it won't be used (along with your picture from the security tapes) to brief staff at that airport that you're a "troublemaker" to be singled out for future hassling.

Lots of burglars would love to have records containing your home address and airline destination. Lots of investors would love to know what city you're visiting, if you're in the M&A business or the like.

What are they hiding that they can't conform to the Privacy Act of 1974?

I'm not sure if I should congratulate you on your fight for privacy, or call you paranoid? Maybe both are equally true?

So you believe that each passenger should have the right to decide what security measures are necessary, and comply only with those?


Your boarding pass doesn't have any information that TSA doesn't already get from the airline.

Sometimes, TSOs demand to take your driver's license out of your sight. I'm sure the DHS has my Secure Flight identification, and that data base IS covered by a Privacy Act exemption.

However, this rogue attempt at intimidation where individual TSOs remove your ID from your sight is NOT covered by an exemption, and I'm very sure that the lowest level TSO is not granted access to the Secure Flight data base. The screeners in the customer-facing jobs have no "right to know" Secure Flight data, just as they have no right to copy down my home address and destination for an unknown paper notebook or laptop data base collection "hobby."

They do it merely as a behavior modification bullying tactic to make sure you'll behave as a good little sheeple next time. I'm not playing that game unless forced.

Completely agree with you, but I thought this thread was about boarding passes.

Challenging a particularly ineffective security procedure is not a challenge to the existence of any and all security procedures.

People who know what they are doing should decide what security measures are necessary. Not civil service rejects.

Works for me.

So why are they asking for it again?

A few weeks back, I was flying from ELP-HOU and there as some flight delays. I asked the agent downstairs to get standby on an earlier scheduled, yet delayed, flight. In short I had my regular boarding pass, and a second one for standby on the earlier flight. When I handed it to the ID checker, he got very confused why I had 2 boarding passes for different flights out of ELP. He didnt know which one to squiggle on. He had to call the supervisor, who told him to scribble on both.
Applaud any effort to disrupt the whole worthless TSA process. The X-ray baggage and metal detectors are all we need. We don't need people with low IQs asking us our names. Not security

I admit I have no idea what makes for good security or bad, I can only go by what I see and from my vantage point many of the TSA's actions SEEM silly and useless.

I fail to see how a boarding pass being inspected is enhancing my security, if for onc second TSA thinks that a would be bad "dooer" is not capable of 1) purchasing a ticket, 2) ensuring they have the proper ID to match that ticket and 3) being able to memorize the name written on the boarding pass and ID, I am afraid they have lost the game already.

But granting them that they know something more about boarding passes and ID than I do, and they have somebody inspecting them already, why must they be inspected again after going through whatever method detection is in use? Moreover, if two inspections are needed and it would SEEM that they are, than why are mobile boarding passes only inspected once? Clearly, if a would be bad dooer is able to get by the first inspection and a second is required to ensure the first is accurate than what prevents the would be bad dooer or me who finds the process annoying from saying, "I have a mobile boarding pass" and getting through with only a single inspection?

Do you see where I am going with this? As I see it, useless activities just make whole thing seem silly, I realize that TSA probably believes they are doing the right thing, but it just looks bad.

That is why I protest in my way, no I am not going to change anything, but at least I am exercising my civil rights.

Dan

Um... learn to read much?

Yes, inflammatory [and I accept responsibility], but really, it isn't that difficult to think critically, and look at other possibilities, or simply ask for clarification instead of presuming something - and something absurd to boot.

A coworker flew out of Terminal C yesterday with an electronic BP and said they gave him a laminated card to present to the redundant BP clerk (do we have a special name for him yet?).

My coworker proceeded to lose this card and says they berated him fiercely but apparently did not delay him at the checkpoint.

I have two comments:

1.) A laminated card is still better than carrying secret message squiggles, which is why I have started going paperless lately, anyway.

2.) Thus recheck of boarding passes is still completely asinine.

Where are you guys flying out of that they're asking for BP's twice? I can't remember that happening to me in the last few years (except boarding international flights, and that's by the airline agent, at the gate).

Nonetheless, I think I will start printing duplicates in case I run into this.