The words TSA and "new program" alone is enough to make my skin crawl. Personally, as someone who seems to be regularly targeted at one particular airport by a BDO who doesn't understand that the IRA doesn't operate out of Italy and that I'm not a twenty-something Irish blogger who's the grandson of a well known Sinn F�in attorney, I cringe every time the TSA gets to extend its behavioral evaluation program. Unlike the Israelis, we do it wrong.

The TSA was trained by Israelis to do it as the Israelis do it at TLV. What happens is the TSA does it as the TSA does things: inconsistently and in an inappropriate environment.

(emphasis added)

oops

Better put and well said, Sir.

This program sounds like an excuse to cover up the failures of PreCheck. Not enough airlines are participating, not enough people are signing up for Global Entry, name mismatch problems are keeping people from using it, and so on. Setting aside a lane for PreCheck at each terminal results in congestion in the other lanes. This program seems to be designed to remedy that by shifting more people into the PreCheck lanes.

I would be interested to know on what basis people will be pulled into the PreCheck lanes. My guess is that it will be based on crowd level. If the checkpoint is congested, a few people will be "invited" to go through PreCheck, just like they currently open WTMD lanes to reduce congestion. Of course, there is going to be a racial bias to it, regardless of what anyone claims.

I wonder what happens if you are 'selected' and you decline and say something like "No thanks, I feel safer going through the regular process" with a big smile.

Sort of like some Americans at European airports who insist on taking off their shoes (and blathering loudly about it) because they believe in safety.

That's only true at a handful of airports. Most use the strip-search regardless of line length.

I will note that JFK T8 is one where the practice has been to use WTMD with long backups.

I don't see this being a good thing for me. I usually make it a point not to talk or even look at TSA during the screening. I do watch my goods going through the xray pretty careful though. Also, I'm the guy who will forcefully push the trays backwards through the xray when they are all pilled up on the other side and the agent keeps running the belt along. I've gotten some nasty looks from them on that but it just seems very rude of them to keep the belt running, making trays bunch up and spill over when clearly they just need to wait a few seconds for people to grab their stuff and move on. I'm all for hurrying things along but that irks me to no end.

Ahaha nice

So do TSA 'officers' and well, you know MY opinion as to which is smarter...

The TSA wants to make a lot more use of commercial database (mis)information and use that to determine which currently non-PreCheck-enrolled individuals should be given the LLL treatment going forward even if not enrolling in PreCheck. This will be in some ways a return to the stupid CAPPS(II) system ways that the TSA wants.

This pursued change is a tell that the TSA isn't satisfied with just (In)SecureFlight and being limited to using just primarily government-created-and-administered blacklists. Rather, the TSA wants its own enlarged fiefdom and expanded powers.

The system the TSA wants will indeed have a racial bias to it. The commercial databases mess up individuals who are ethnic minorities far more frequently than it messes up individuals who are part of the ethnic majority. Then there are those in the TSA who are bigoted, and that will also further the racial bias under any new system relying upon "questioning" of passengers.

True, but it can be thoroughly entertaining if you've got the time to mess with their minds.

In order to be scientific it will need to be a double blind study. By which I mean a third airport will need to be used where the TSA agents and dogs are all blind. And then we check after ~6 months to see which one catches the most terrorists. LAX should fit the bill - all the TSA agents there are clearly blind already. Now we just need 50+ blind, explosives-sniffing trained dogs: how hard could that be?

I love science.

Don't forget Facebook. We've already seen a couple of well-publicized incidents where someone in the media shot his mouth based on the wrong Facebook profile (someone with the same/similar name).

TSA (all of DHS) starts from the viewpoint that all pax are guilty, until conditionally proven 'OK' for one checkpoint passage only. That kind of thinking prevents them from admitting that perhaps, just maybe, they've got a mismatch between information and the individual in front of them.

When you refer to those that are bigoted in the TSA, are you talking about racial bigotry? Who are you imagining as those that are bigoted? What if a TSA officer is black? In such a work environment is there some sort of progression somehow given the circumstances that lead them to adopt the same racial biases as white TSA agents? What about Arab TSA agents? Do they exist? So many questions. I'm sorry to get off track; these thoughts crossed my mind.