Have not seen this, at least not too recently, Europe to USA.

Had ICTS, not once, but twice at OPO today. Standard questions about baggage prior to being allowed to the UA Premier counter and received the sticker. Again at the gate, same interviewer, same questions. Not a big deal.

Noted my passport was scanned the first time. I asked, knowing the answer, 'so is this passport control?' First his answer was 'yes'. So you'll stamp me out here? ' 'No, not that passport control.' I asked 'why the passport scan then?' 'Record that you were here.' Just an example of yet another entity, Securitas in this case, that gathers personal data for unclear reasons; personal data that has been provided to UA and will be provided to EU border control upon exit.

ICTS scan the passport to protect themselves in the event you are deemed an inadmissible passenger at your destination. If you destroy your passport enroute, ICTS needs a copy to show to immigration at your destination that when you boarded you had a valid passport and visa. Without this, ICTS could be liable for a substantial fine. ICTS should delete all scans once a flight arrives. It kind of needs to to save space on the drive as the drive can fill up quickly. Not sure what ICTS policy is on that though.

ICTS guy somewhere in Europe once took my passport out of my sight and went to take a photo copy of it. I was traveling to the US. I asked him and his colleague why they took a photo copy of my passport but not of most others and the guy lied about having taken a photo copy of it. The schmuck didn’t do a very good job of covering up what they had done and so I said to him that his petty lie is a stain on his own reputation and doesn’t increase my confidence in his “professional” capabilities but he already knows I am cleared to board by the USG.

Not quite sure how you know he took a copy of your passport if he took it out of sight.

In reality, an airline may tell a security contractor like ICTS to scan every passenger passport and visa or ICTS may mandate this. In reality, ICTS or, in cases where an airline provides the scanning equipment, only one scanner is likely to be provided. I used to buy one of these scanners from Air France Industries called ID Shield. It cost about EUR25,000 and you had to pay a subscription for software updates. Hence at this price you can't feasibly give each agent a scanner. Also it isn't always practical as check in areas can be small and congested.

in reality when profiling and verifying travel documents a Supervisor may decide just to scan the passports and visas of passengers whose profile has a suspicious characteristic. If you have an A380 or other large wide body with 400 plus passengers it isn't realistic to be able to scan all passenger passports during a check in window of 2 or 3 hours. A supervisor needs to get the agents to concentrate on those passengers who present one or more suspicious characteristics.

It is conceivable you may have had one or more suspicious characteristics for that route/airline.

If airlines and profiling companies did scan every passport unfortunately that would reduce airport capacity and increase costs.