So… how many of you have heard that line, under what circumstances / plausibility, and with what result?


IMHO: actual totally random secondary screening would probably be a good thing for security, but AFAICT TSA just lies and claims as "random" whenever they want to profile you.

I have a cheap suggestion for fixing it though: give people two six-sided dice just before they get to the WTMD/NOS.

Roll snake eyes (~3% chance), and you get secondary screening.

Roll a seven (~17%), and you get a lollipop or something.

That way it would, at least, be clearly random. Make 'em big, really high contrast dice, so that it's visible on the CCTV.

Not that I expect TSA to do this; then they wouldn't get to lie to you.

As someone with actual mathematical training, I cringe whenever I hear people talk about "randomness". Most of the time, people who think they are acting randomly (including TSA employees) are actually acting arbitrarily. "Randomness" implies all sorts of things about the mathematics of the results which simply aren't true about human-directed activities.

I'm not willing to go as far as others who want to claim that TSA employees are "lying" when they tell you that you've been "randomly" selected. I prefer to think that they simply don't understand how randomness works.

But TSA is hardly unique in that regard. Nevada is filled with many large buildings that were built from the proceeds of playing "random" games of chance.

FWIW, I have personally been lied to and told I was "randomly selected" when in fact other evidence showed that I was selected based on some specific thing (e.g. my episodic mutism, which is one symptom of my neurological motor system disability).

And yeah, ditto re randomness. There's some joke to be made here about not knowing the difference between uniform, Gaussian, exponential, power, & Tracy-Widom distributions, but I think we'd be getting too geeky for the thread.

I believe that other federal agencies that rely on "random" screening will employ procedures as simple as deciding ahead of time that, say, every 5th person will be selected for additional screening.

That is random. The passengers coming thru is the random variable.

� IF they are counted reliably, and the screeners have no influence on the order of the passengers, etc.

Which isn't the case.

Influenced in part by shuttle busses from hotels, tour groups, flight times etc.

Having a working grasp of what you're talking about, I can't think of any way it would be a funny joke. Especially not if it involved TSA.

With all due respect ... this is absolutely NOT random.

Part of what it means to be a truly random process is that the results are unpredictable. Choosing every fifth person for additional screening is completely predictable to anyone who observes the process. It is also, therefore, trivial for anyone with ill intent to arrange to take their place in line so that they won't be one of the folks selected for screening.

This reminds me of the old days immediately post-9/11, when gate screenings were much more common, and lo-and-behold, the first person who ran up to the gate when general boarding was called was always selected for "random" screening. Seasoned travelers learned not to jump up when the general boarding call was made, in order to allow the "kettles" to be picked for screening while they breezed by.

I seem to recall a FlyerTalk participant relaying an amusing anecdote about one flight where, when general boarding was called, absolutely nobody moved to the gate, because there was a gate screening team there. The gate agent was perplexed because absolutely nobody moved. Finally, one person stood up and announced to the crowd that he would volunteer to be the "victim", stepped up, and ... lo and behold, was "randomly" selected for additional screening.

TL;DR: part of being "random" means being unpredictable.

Yup. There are screening points in Australia where they "randomly" pick for explosives checks the first pax through after a gap with no passengers. Most times I can avoid the inconvenience but sometimes it is unavoidable (e.g. I'm the only transit passenger or can't wait long enough to let someone else go through first). I make a point to explain to the screener that their "random" selection is anything but random. Most of them don't get it but sometimes (rarely) you get one who understands.

At many airports, TSA has a "randomizer" that points an arrow in one direction or another to decide who goes through Pre-check and who gets regular screening. I believe this is truly random.

Other than that, they are confusing random with arbitrary.

Or perhaps it's not even arbitrary.

Is this actually a problem? Unless...
You are late for your flight. In which case, your problem not theirs. Or...
You are trying to take something through security that you shouldn't. In which case, good for them. Well spotted.

It's 5 minutes of your time - smile at them and cooperate. They may even smile back.

It is a problem in that we have a government agency that can limit or restrict ones liberty under the rubric of the administrative search doctrine, excluding them from the niceties of The Constitution, and they do this employing either false pretenses or while being ignorant of what they are actually saying. The process they use is a serious process made legal by very specific application of case law and they apply it in a frivolous and and inconsistent manner by employees that are poorly trained or refuse to be trained, and are supported by management that is neither responsive to problems nor do they seem to care.

In which case, not good for them.

Which is precisely the problem. If there's no objective standard for making the "arbitrary" selection (e.g. every Nth passenger), then the TSOs will end up using subjective standards ... and those subjective standards are subject to bias (conscious or subconscious).

Yeah, they aren't random when they just grab the next person out of the primary checkpoint when they're done with their last "random" subject.

Which airports?I've been through a number of airports (SFO, LAX, SEA, ORD, RDU, JFK, CLT, PHL, BOS, DTW) since they reportedly started using them. I've never seen one.