this is actually a serious post.

folks - i actually had a screener act kind of rude to me. i didnt like it, and i had a TON of time before my flight (you know, get there two hours early, then zip through in about ten minutes) so i thought i would push the envelope a bit. i did what i do whenever i have any trouble with customer service people, i said, "i would like you to get your supervisor here right now." the person stiffened, and i said, "i'm serious, you are being rude, and you are out of line. get your supervisor here immediately." the person said, "i'm sorry, it's been a long day." and i said, "i'm sure it has. you have a hard job, and get no recognition except when you fail. but that doesnt allow you to be rude to me. just wand me, and speak politely, and this will be over, and i will go to my gate." he says, "cool." and then it was soon over.

these people have a reporting structure and bosses like anyone else. you dont have to stand there and be treated poorly. get the supervisor. when they come over, explain in a calm way that you feel you were treated rudely, and would like a different person to screen you please.

regardless, be nice and polite and CALM to them at all times, and dont talk too much. just ask for their boss.

I'm amazed I haven't been selected yet. As a male, 30 yers old, brown hair and eyes, olive complexion, traveling alone with only 1 carryon and/or 1 laptop; I've haven't been subjected to any addittional searches. I did have my carry-on swabed and "sniffed" once for explosives, but no body or physical luggage searches since 9/11.

I think they are looking for easy searches rather than probable targets.

Yesterday at BWI I stood in line behind a mother with 4 children under the age of 5. Ther mother handed the security guard ,in front of the screening area, the 5 passports with the 5 boarding passes inside the appropiate passports. It took the man 13 minutes to check ID's to passes to bodies.
Not to mention getting thrugh the metal dectors...arrghh!

If the more matches you have, the more likely you get searched, I guess this explains why I get searched fifty percent of the time. I match fifty percent of the items and would match a majority of them if the ninth one added was a male. Pray tell, why are my travelling habits so suspicious? Well, it's a direct result of my employer. I work for the airlines. I'm young, I travel without luggage because my flights aren't guaranteed, so I always carry on, I travel alone because when I travel it is to visit family, and I have short notice travel arrangements because all it takes is a phone call before departure to make a "reservation." Three weeks in advance I'm not even thinking about travelling. But gee, I have my fingerprints on file with the US Postal Service, the FBI, and I've got a ten year background check completed. I guess I am a real threat because I travel a lot at the last minute.

As far as the sample threat assessment is concerned you are higher on the list than a 70 year old widow from Dubois, Iowa travelling on her once a year pilgrimage to graceland. And thus more likely to get searched. Or would you say she's as likely to be a threat as a young male travelling alone on a short notice ticket with little or no luggage?

which is it? We either treat them as identical threats or we don't. Right now the airlines treat these as identical threat levels.

And that, is just plain dumb. We need to stop being dumb about security. Terrorists aren't impressed by dumbness.

Regards,
-Bouncer-

[This message has been edited by Bouncer (edited 12-04-2001).]

bouncer - good point. i think they need to add elvis fans to the list of flags.

Everyone who talks about profiling is neglecting feedback effects. Any time a class of people is identified as a lesser threat, you can bet that such people will be used for terrorism. Some of us may have difficulty imagining an elderly caucasian woman carrying out a terrorist attack, but I'm sure that one can be recruited if they looked hard enough.

While this may be true in theory, these middle eastern terrorists have the lowest regard for women. These women clearly would not be impressed to sacrifice themselves for suicidal missions in the promise of being surrounded by 70+ virgins. Women are sequestered, heck they're basically slaves to their beastly masters.

Really?

Do me a favor and point out a SINGLE terrorist attack that has EVER used elderly woman to seize an aircraft or vehicle of any sort.

The average age of 74 suicide bombers in Israel is around 22.

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/livin...ind010920.html

The average age of the captured Taliban members is around 23.

http://www.afghanradio.com/news/2001..._findings.html

Mohammed Atta was 33, and considered in the upper age bracket for terrorists.

Those are the facts. Not hypothesis about what terrorists might do. How do you recruit people who don't want to be recruited? How do you train the elderly to physically seize control of a vehicle? You have no proof they could even accomplish this. You would think by now, if it were easy to recruit retirees there'd have been one or two involved in attacks. But we're not seeing that.

Understand, it is fair and reasonable that we all go through some basic security. That I have no issue with, and never have. I'm not saying that the old or infirm don't go through basic first level security.

What I'm saying is that secondary or third searches of these people is a waste of time and resources if they don't raise any flags at the first level or by profile. Time and resources better used elsewhere. We do not have infinite resources, and every second we spend looking through grandma's purse is one second we're not paying attention to other, far more likely individuals.

Once past the basic security, we should be narrowing the field down until we are concentrating on the most likely group of individuals.

To be fair, unlike some I don't discount women. This is why I didn't put "Male" as a criteria. As long as they are physically capable I see no reason not to include women. I am well aware that women are capable of violence (having been hit by more than one in my time as a Bouncer). Ulrike Meinhof of the Baader-Meinhof gang was a female and perfectly capable of murder. If you look it up you will find women terrorists and women combat soldiers, including 23 female US Marine combat veterans from Desert Storm.

A great source for more information, and to me a decisive answer, as to whether women can be in combat is right here:

http://www.gendergap.com/military/Warriors.HTM

6000 years of history show that women can wield the sword. Let's not be dumb and ignore them.

Anywhoo, we do need a concentric series of security screens and profiling. The closer you get to the aircraft the more you should be scrutinized, and the more any flags should be noted. The idea isn't to panic over someone who sneezes but rather to focus on the people with the most likely combination of background and ability to try and seize the aircraft.

Regards,
-Bouncer-
(edited for spelling, as usual. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif )

[This message has been edited by Bouncer (edited 12-05-2001).]

You gotta love these "security professionals." Let's see...who's the most likely person to be looking to cause trouble?

And yet they are patting down elderly women and so on.

Ridiculous, but it's what you have to expect when you have a $7 an hour felon who got rejected from Starbucks doing security.

The feedback effects that Grandmasterflash mentions are a real concern and shouldn't be dismissed so trivially. I recall that there was a discussion some time ago about the sheer absurdity of searching Hasidic Jews for drugs. It turns out that drug runners were using Hasidic Jews as mules PRECISELY because they thought customs would pass them over as unsuspicious. That's the fatal flaw of racially-based or even criteria-based profiling. If you start searching people who look a certain way, Arab for instance, it's hardly likely that terrorists will use someone who looks Arab. It's not like the Taliban doesn't have white-looking or even white American zealots to use, as the case of John Walker Lindh or whoever demonstrates. Furthermore, if it becomes evident that little old ladies are not subject to search, they may be targeted as unwitting carriers of weapons or explosives by terrorists. As was mentioned before, terrorists are not dumb people -- to exempt certain classes of people because they don't seem suspicious is to invite terrorists to exploit the holes we create. The only way to combat this is to have some element of randomness in who gets searched, even if harmless little old ladies get searched as well. That way, terrorists know that no matter what they do, there is a considerable chance that their plot may be foiled. If you want to use criteria for profiling -- fine, but we need to keep in mind that profiling cannot be performed to the exclusion of random checks, and that certain criteria (including race) can be easily avoided by the terrorist of even average intelligence.

[Edited to insert a "don't"]

[This message has been edited by robinhood (edited 12-05-2001).]

I didn't meet ANY of the criterea mentioned by Bouncer.

I do not lightly dismiss the possibility, on the other hand I balance it against what is far more likely. You said:

"If you start searching people who look a certain way, Arab for instance, it's hardly likely that terrorists will use someone who looks Arab"

My response. Show me any proof you have this is more than pure conjecture. Here's what we know and is not a guess. We know that terrorists are small closed cells, usually ethnically very tight units. Not only the same religion, but indeed the same small towns. We know that almost all have some sort of familial or immediate personal connection with each other. We know there are THOUSANDS of Taliban members. So far we've seen exactly ONE Anglo-Saxon American. we know it took NINETEEN terrorists to seize those airliners. We know NONE of the terrorists was an older woman. We know they didn't use smuggled explosives. We know they were all of Arabic descent.

Now, however, you're presupposing an ability to recruit among the white elderly female crowd, and that such recruitment would be successful with no chance of compromise. I don't see any such ability and I've never seen any such ability and they've been at it for the last 30 years. At least.

The days of people carrying things for others basically ended on Pan Am 103 (excluding drug traffickers). We are all constantly reminded and asked if we're carrying something, did we pack our own bags, have they been under our control the whole time. There is an awareness there and if someone came up to you at an airport and asked you to carry something I daresay you'd run like hell to the nearest cop. I know I would.

Do you know what I want to see? I want every person walking through that metal detector and X-Ray machine to then walk right by a bomb sniffing dog. Once they've been X-ray'd, wanded and sniffed for explosives I want us to stop doing the whole second "random" (not random) search at the gate unless you are among a more focused group of people. More focused than being first in line or more likely to comply with less fuss.

I want to see some coherency to the security, and not this phoney baloney 'feel good', "Search the same person three times" crap. The only people they're really making 'feel good' are the terrorists. They now know that if they can get past the first layer of security they're NOT the focus of ANY more scrutiny than an elderly white female.

Think about it from this perspective. They and their buddy speaking heavily accented english and with passports from a foreign country known to support terroism just walked up and bought two first class one way tickets with cash and no luggage.

Do you really want to ignore these two fellows in order to check out the female retiree because she was "randomly selected"?

Regards,
-Bouncer-
PS: I want to thank everyone for the polite tone in the discussions. I may not agree with some of the views expressed by others but I do respect the honesty with which they hold them.

Anyone cleared scrutiny in CLE...it's a trip!

I knew I was in for it when I got there and no one was ahead of me except 2 very bored looking rent-a-wanders...(don't even get me started on the GI JOES flirting with the female strutiny staff off to the side)

No beep, buzz, or flash of light from metal detector.

"Sir, step over here for random screening."(I sigh my biggest sigh and comply.)

Hold your arms out, wand wand wand...

<<Notice step stool...is he going to step up there and scan me for lice?>>

Sir, please place your left foot on stool for a pat down...I comply by placing my right foot on stool...throws him a bit but he continues...then asks for "other foot"...at least he didn't say "your other left foot" in a feable attempt at humor.

Then he wands me again up and down my front...

SIr, fold your belt down.

I stick by thumb in there and reluctantly expose myself by pulling belt buckle away from tummy 1/2 inch.

He proceeds to touch me in "that" region somewhere between my navel and nether regions

I look him straight in the eye and assertively announce...

"NO NOT TOUCH ME THERE!!!"

Rent-a-wander suddenly becomes very sheepish and apologetic..."Oh, OK, Oh, I'm Sorry...." hurries through rest of wanding just wanting to get me out of there...

One last indignity...

"Sir, would you please stand on your tiptoes?"

I look at him and raise my heels 1/2 inch off ground which seemed to please him because he moved on to his next fondling opportunity.

Very weird and what is this standing on your toes all about?...What's next...spin like a top and sing "I'm a little teapot short and stout"?

Went immediately to bar and had a beer...

My experience at SJC ticketed-passengers-only BS checkpoint today:

I hand over my ticket.

Screener: "No, you need boarding pass."

I: "This is a ticket. It's enough. All I need is a ticket."

Screener: "No. Go get boarding pass. You need boarding pass."

I: "May I see your badge please? And I'd like to speak with your supervisor."

Screener: [waves me on]

The lesson? Stand up to these people. Take them off their power trips. If nothing else, do it for the sake of infrequent flyers who are too intimidated to stand up to this stuff.

Bouncer -- thanks for your comments about the tone of the thread, and I indeed hope that it will continue.

I wanted to make a few more points. I would suppose that under your schema a pregnant middle-aged white woman would merit less scrutiny than a scruffy dark-complexioned male. But that would have been a fatal mistake if it had been the policy in place at Heathrow in 1986. You probably are aware of the case in which a bomb was planted in the baggage of a pregnant Irish woman by her "boyfriend" in an attempt to destroy an El Al flight from Heathrow to Israel. Fortunately, the plot was foiled when El Al security DID find this woman suspicious and searched her bag.

I think to assume that people should merit less scrutiny because of what they look like is a terrible mistake. No, I don't have "proof" that terrorists would turn to unsuspicious-looking substitutes (where would one obtain this proof short of asking Osama himself?). But the fact that it has happened before is suggestive, and I don't think it takes too much of a stretch to find it a reasonable "conjecture." And the sad thing about this is: it didn't take any recruitment. All it took was one guy and his sex appeal.

And to presume that the apex of terrorist strategy would be to do female recruitment pitches on Oprah or hang around the airport giving perfect strangers packages to carry aboard is significantly underestimating their intelligence, which you yourself warned against! In the case I mentioned above, the suitcase had a false bottom with a thin layer of plastic explosive underneath it. The girlfriend could have honestly said that she packed her bags herself and it had been under her control the whole time! There are numerous such imaginative schemes, which I won't outline lest it give anyone any ideas.

Ultimately, whether terrorists actually decide to commit an act hinges largely on its probability of success. By engineering weaknesses into the system (like giving grandmas (who incidentally may be carrying a "gift" from grandnephew just back from a "vacation" in Northern Pakistan) or pregnant women or whomever freedom from searches), we provide terrorists with opportunities to make their plots more foolproof. All they have to do is plant bomb on granny or pregnant girlfriend or American "jihadi" masquerading as white businessman. But if you have random searches, there is NOTHING a terrorist can do to increase the probability of success past the probability of not being randomly searched * the probability of being otherwise detected. And if the probability of being randomly searched is high enough, terrorists may choose to avoid terrorism in the air. Of course, by random I mean TRULY random, not whoever the screener wants to feel up plus the first person in line.

And nobody objects to appropriate profiling as a supplement. If someone shows up at the last minute buying full-fares using cash etc., they should be searched more rigorously. No one disagrees with that! But we should keep in mind that no matter what criteria we use, they can be circumvented. Terrorists have credit cards, and do advance purchase ticketing, just like anyone else. Therefore, profiling cannot totally supplant random searching. But most importantly, when we choose to use criteria for profiling that have implications for civil liberties -- we should recognize the marginal value these criteria have for enhancing security and weigh them accordingly against the rights we lose as a society.

If we truly had a system where everyone is x-rayed thoroughly and sniffed by a 100% accurate dog (I personally love those dogs and would be happy to see a bunch of them hanging out at the airport), I think all this would be moot. Until then...