You do the best you can. I would cooperate to my best ability. Somehow I have always managed regardless of language barriers.

You might be right. I work with a couple of fellow retired officers who have told me that signing up for Medicare A+B is mandatory if you have Tricare For Life. (Full disclosure: I never signed up for Tricare for Life and chose to use the federal civilian health care system.)

I sometimes make a point of speaking Japanese with TSA. It's only ever failed once, in Denver, but in that instance the TSA drone and I chatted about how stupid TSA was and what he really thought of his coworkers before he declared I'd answered all their questions and sent me on my way.

And if the terrorist was a foreigner, who didn't speak English, and the TSA didn't know how is name was suppose to be pronounced?

Do you really think a terrorist wouldn't also "cooperate to the best of their ability"?

The procedure is useless.

My understanding is that it's actually to get the clerks to pay attention to what they're looking at. If that's true, the procedure would have some use (if checking documents actually contributed anything to security, which it doesn't)

My understanding is that requiring the TDC "agent" to ask pax to state their name is a punishment for failing the "red team" test of the checkpoint procedures. No matter why they ask...it is still a useless "layer" of "security.":rolleyes:

I don't support the TSA name game or any other TSA scheme that is not a limited administrative search for WEI.

The question asked up thread is what one would do in a foreign country. When I am a visitor in another country I give them the benefit of doubt that the screening process is understood by the screening people. Also notable is that language skills outside of the U.S. are much better and many people can speak two if not more languages. They certainly seem to be head and shoulders more qualified to screen people than our sorry excuse for baggage screeners.

I think a terrorist would do everything they could to fit in and go unnoticed. Which goes to show that the interrogations games TSA plays is another useless act not to mention that it exceeds the limited administrative search for WEI.

Even in the UK, there is no name game silliness. Nor are you generally required to show photo ID at the checkpoint. In fact, if you're flying domestically you don't need photo ID at all on some carriers.

Agreed, I started pronouncing my name by dropping very other consonant from it. The TDC really never batted an eye. Did that twice, then refused.

I am a bit of a contrarian on this. As they have two documents with my name, I feel it is a trivial matter to discreetly say my name. There are bigger battles to fight.

I still disagree that they have the authority to do this, and I will unequivocally support anyone that wants to fight this battle.

It ends there. With the exception of my destination airport (also on my already handed over BP) any request for personal information such as the purpose of my trip, where I will be staying, how long will I be there are out of bounds are not open for discussion. The PIPI will be a fruitless exercise.

This battle will be engaged and I will defend this hill.

I agree completely.

Indeed. As the saying goes: If you "get it", no explanation is needed. If you don't, no explanation is going to be enough.

Here, for the most part, we "get it."

Of course it is. Why TSA keeps using it shows just how stupid their management really is.

Pretty sure that applies only to front-line employees and low-level managers at private companies. FSDs are fairly high-profile public employees (on the level of public information officers) and many of their names have been published here before.

I'm right with you on this. I opted out once on principle at SFO just to know that I could. I did my best to not verbally/emotionally escalate and remained calm until eventually a "suit" came over to verify my docs and wave me through. I haven't opted out of the name game since.

I'm curious as to how you handle flying back into the U.S. Do you also refuse that information for the CBP agents? I'm wondering because I'm about to fly back into MSP and am thinking about how I should approach some of those same questions.