Supposedly that's just to verify that your story is consistent and what not.

The natural TSA response
 

The only response you can count on - as told in the DL forum:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/delta...r-liquids.html

Casually dressed caucasians traveling alone seem to get hassled the most

Managers’ demands, hmmmmm

The story is also in USA Today:
http://travel.usatoday.com/flights/s...terstitialskip

And the comments below the article are the typical mix of stuff that sound like it came from FT, and the AFS crowd using the same tired, lame old argument, "You would be the first one to complain about TSA not doing enough if something bad happened!"

The equivalent of "reverse discrimination" with regard to racial profiling. Instead of doing the right thing, which in this case would be to abolish the pseudo-science BDO program, they simply decide to target extra white people to get their ratios to look better. Casually dressed travelers are likely perceived as more cooperative and less likely to file complaints, yet another form of assumption-based profiling.

Anyone who believed this program would not lead to forms of profiling considered inappropriate in the US, particularly race and apparent ethnicity, was in complete denial of human nature. The profilers are inevitably going to use all of the information available to them, even if they are not supposed to, and draw conclusions both correct and incorrect based on their common experiences and beliefs.

The mythical "reverse discrimination" wasn't goosing the numbers the way racist discrimination against non-ethnic European minorities was "accomplishing".

Compared to "black" and "brown" minorities, the European-American passengers wearing jeans, T-shirt and sneakers were far less likely to be singled out for extra hassling by these TSA clowns "profiling" than the mentioned ethnic "black" and "brown" minorities.

Profiling -- racist profiling as it continues to be -- by "security" screeners at an airport is but a euphemism for invited bigotry against classes of ethnic and/or religious minorities that relies upon some prevailing, emotional narrative of (group) guilt by association.

While they may attempt to mask the racism by goosing up the numbers of persons from primarily European ethnic background, the harassment has not been equally intense for all groups.

Knowing the TSA's overreaction and SOP, I'm guessing it's going to be a bad time to be white and flying out of BOS for the next few days. I have a feeling their "solution" will be to scrutinize white travellers more thoroughly.

I don't like the racial profiling, but the quota system really bothers me. Drugs, fake ID's, and immigration issues are not a danger to aviation, but the TSA is going out of their way to find them instead of concentrating on actual threats. I'm not surprised that they are doing this though.

I already quoted above what a libertarian writer argued, and IMHO she makes an excellent point that bears repeating, including the sentence I've bolded:

Doesn't the tacit admission of this kind of behavior put the entire "Administrative Search" schema in jeopardy? It should.

IMO, possibly another reason to privatize.

TSOs consider themselves 'federal officers' (and in many cases, the local police do their bidding, sometimes under pressure from their own management to 'cooperate', sometimes probably because they are bored and in a mood to escalate and bully - Yuki Miyamae, for example).

Would this still apply to privatized TSOs? Are they 'federal officers' in any sense of the word? Are security guards allowed to conduct the type of 'administrative searches' that TSA currently conducts? Or would there (possibly) be more protections for the public? Would privatized security still have the leverage over local airport police that TSA does?

(I'm pessimistic about the outcome, but I still can't believe a private security guard could stick his hands in my pants and between my legs with impunity. I'm probably wrong.)

This article is linked at the top of Drudge at the moment, along with this one.

A couple of words in one line from the USA Today piece jump out at me:

This is actually good news, because it may lead to a wider examination of TSA vastly exceeding the scope of their authority.

As others have noted, TSA has no business looking for drugs, outstanding arrest warrants, or immigration problems unless it has serious reason to believe that the person involved poses a serious threat to air safety.

I can't wait for the next time TSA tries this crap on me.

?? Hasn't TSA already addressed these issues? Including an alleged TSO who used to post frequently on this forum?

They do not 'look' for drugs or porn or suspicious documents or large sums of money, but they may 'stumble' across evidence of same during the course of their duties, at which time they summon LE.

Once LE has been summoned, LE will check for arrest warrants, immigration violations, etc. LE's mandate, of course, is not limited to air safety.

My reaction to all of this...

Last summer: Yay! Profiling! Look for threats, not weapons! :D

Last week: Oh man, mission creep. Not that kind of profiling. Who cares if someone has drugs? That's not aviation security. :confused:

This week: Crap, here comes the blowback and now we're back to "everybody's a threat." :mad:

FWIW, not sure if it's been mentioned, but Terminal A is also the only terminal where there's a Precheck lane. So now I'm really playing the lottery when I go through there.