Yet ANOTHER money grab by the TSA and it's security industrial complex vendors!

The security-industrial-Congressional complex (to sort of borrow from Sen. McCain), with a dash of Executive to the revolving door between the public and private sectors.


Indeed.

This will be used to increase the number of people who end up with PreCheck LLL screening outcomes. Underutilization of PreCheck lanes seems to be a concern of some sort.

I have had the red-light go off at MEX where customs did no hand search of my bags. They did get an x-ray examination.

A tacit admission that the SPOT program is no more effective than simple randomizing?

Didn't some people offer such an opinion here a long, long time ago? ;)

Many problems with this...

• Highly questionable value given (a) effective lack of terrorists, (b) the other "layers" of TSA security, (c) the numerous loopholes that allow people to bypass the NOSs anyway, and (d) the millions of sheep who don't care about privacy and Constitutional rights
• Doesn't address SDOO through alternative gate selection
• Not a priority (e.g., not as important as scanning airport employees and vendors and not as important as scanning cargo)
• Potential to add yet more delay and confusion at checkpoints
• Excessive expenditure of public funds (for equipment procurement, additional staff, training, maintenance, etc.)
• Confirms that the current TSA process is flawed (which we already knew but TSA apparently just figured out, despite years of NOS infestation in our airports)
• Ignores relevant public comments on NOS (e.g., designed to support NOSs when most of the comments clearly indicate NOSs are offensive)

Where is the cost-benefit analysis? Which vendor is this lined up for? And has TSA already decided that it will ignore the public comments on the NOS NPRM?

EDIT: Will this randomizer split up families? And how will the TSA ensure that I go to the designated lane? Will the document checker keep an eye on me? Will the randomizer keep a record of what lane I was assigned to so as to prove that I did not go to the designated lane?

^:)

If it's really tamperproof by TSA employees, it would prevent them from deciding to send (young, attractive) women to the nude-o-scopes.

I can see the price of 8-sided die soaring. The poor Dungeons and Dragons players will have a shortage induced by the TSA :)

Aren't there already "randomizers" that generate pseudorandom outcomes on the WTMDs? Such as the ones that randomly say that people need to get their hands swabbed, etc.? It seems like the TSA could save money by just making the WTMD the default and using its random feature to determine who is randomly selected for something else.

But, but, but....That wouldn't allow them to overinflate their budget at all!! Bad idea! Bad. Bad. Bad.:rolleyes:

Our friends at the TSA have come up with yet another "let's screw the pooch" toy :rolleyes:

That one was in Spanish. This new randomizer will require completely new design, testing, and a guaranteed purchase amount. Minimal cost of course.

When your SOP fails to impress, randomize!
Go Team Blue!

Guessing the Chertoff group manufactured a "need" for this sort of technology.

Note that it's a pretty challenging problem to devise the geometry for a fair seven sided die with flat sides.

A trivial practical solution is to use a higher number die and re-roll when the number is out of bounds.

You could ask a mathematician to help you out. But any reasonable one would say "With approximately zero terrorists trying to get through the security lines, statistically none of this matters". (I had "and practically" in there, but had to remove it because we are talking about mathematicians, who can talk about 'richer infinities' with a straight face.)