Boggie Dog

There is one report of gate screening and in that case it is said that 80% of the passengers on that one flight were female. TSA will not do a pat down by opposite sex screeners except in limited situations and that wasn't reported to have happened. With 80% of the passengers being female it is very likely that more women were selected on this one flight and that screening could have been no more than an ID and/or bag check.

The point I have been making all along is that there is not enough information from that tweet to determine if it was TSA business as usual or not. I doubt there is anyone on this forum that believes I am a TSA supporter but if we are going to throw stones lets have enough information to make them hurt. TSA is badly flawed and it wouldn't surprise me if this flight was in fact targeted but we need more evidence.

NYTA

<deleted>

OP - what exactly were they checking for? Were they doing pat-downs? Bag searches? Document checks? What?

s0ssos

Hmm, never encountered that in statistics class. You must be referring to a different statistics, where they believe correlation is causation and statistics can prove things. The courses I took taught that statistics is just a numbers game, it doesn't prove anything, and they usually use an arbitrary cutoff (5%) to determine whether something was more likely due to chance or not. That is it.

To show how farcical your example is, imagine you go to a place and you meet x number of people, which compromises y percent of the population, and 98% of the people you meet are men. You conclude that most of the population is men.
And thus you conclude India has 98% men in their population.
It is absolutely wrong.

Firstly, you didn't mean statistical. You mean anecdotal. Secondly, statistics is about trying to account for different variables that you don't know about, usually trying to balance them out so they neutralize each other, to get a sense of what is really going on.

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TWA884

It is time for the periodic reminder!
Posts have been deleted.

TWA884
Travel Safety/Security co-moderator

Randyk47

http://federalnewsradio.com/commenta...15th-congress/ Considering the incoming Administration is not Federal civil servant friendly I doubt they'd be doing something in support of Trump.

rickg523

I think you seriously underestimate how politics - especially inbred politics (my granddaddy was GOP, my daddy was GOP, so I'm GOP) - can make people work against their own best interests.

GUWonder

Sometimes when there is a lot of "unusual" activity in terms of flight booking patterns or who is booked on the flight, the flight will be kicked up for gate screening. The TSA screeners doing this stuff at the gate are most often clueless about the factors behind scoring involved to select flights for such screening. Is the scoring applied unbiased? Almost never, from what I can tell.

nexttime

Tens of thousands of checked bags go through Hobby on a daily basis, and you are claiming that TSA specifically targeted bags of a very specific group of people.
How do you suppose TSA could target those bags based on Sorority membership or race of the property owner? Related to this is that for the Superbowl in Phoenix TSA issued statements that Superbowl programs should not be placed in checked bags, because the Program would be flagged? Didnt the Sorority Sister have a thick book in their bags that were flagged? Trying to find evil intent or racist intent or sexist intent does not hold up.

A question for you, is it harrassment against those women in Denver if all flights headed to DC were subject to gate checks?

petaluma1

Excuse me, but whoever said anything about checked bags being searched? Not me.

Global321

Given that the vast majority of people have cell phones - probably close to 100% of flyers - no photos of this? No video? No audio? No multiple tweets/posts/etc?

Safe to assume this is entirely made up to promote a cause/push an agenda.

GUWonder

I have observed a lot of gate searches by TSA, and a lot by CBP, and some done by both. It's very infrequently the case that people film the TSA or CBP doing all of these search activities at their own flights' gates or even at the flight gates for other people subjected to this. If you haven't noticed, filming people in law enforcement style uniform sometimes gets people hassled or worse.

Flights to D.C. airports getting extra gate screening attention has been going on for years. But it becomes more extensive around big event periods.

nexttime

You brought up checked bags being searched when you attempted to validate the claim of harassment against the women in Denver by using the experience of the Sorority. The Sorority Sisters checked bags were searched. The checks were conduct due to a thick book that alarmed the machines for checked bags. The Sorority experience does not support claims are of harassment against the women in Denver.

chollie

Wrong. You might want to review the facts surrounding the sorority sisters episode. It was abundantly clear what was going on.

nexttime

You want nefarious intent where none existed. And if we are going to discuss facts, please use the facts to prove me wrong. I offer you a statement from the Airport.

""We had a large group with a large number of bags to be checked and because of a certain item in those bags there was additional screening necessary," said Bill Begley with Hobby Airport.

A spokesman for the airport says the sorority members were apparently given thick booklets at the convention that could be mistaken for explosives when packed into checked bags. The booklets forced TSA officials to hand check most of the luggage."

nexttime

Here are the facts:

Sorority Sisters put a thick book in their checked bags.
These thick books caused bag checks.

Do you have different "facts" about the incident?

Here is a statement from a Hobby Airport representative "Apparently at the convention there were items they were given, which they had packed in their bags," said airport spokesman Bill Begley. "And as they were going through a check in process prompted a secondary search by the TSA." And from usatoday ""We had a large group with a large number of bags to be checked and because of a certain item in those bags there was additional screening necessary," said Bill Begley with Hobby Airport."