Some of you may agree, some of you may not, but at one airport right now a new RBS procedure is being test concerning children 12 yrs and younger. Citing a few new procedures, children 12 and under will not be required to remove their shoes unless they alarm the WTMD, nor will they be screened by AIT unless the parent ask.

If this pilot program is successful, it will go national. Some of you may complain about this, but I think in general the public will like it. As noted in this article, which I am sure will be dismissed here, this is a step in the right direction.

http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/...a-common-sense

Bicker away!

Nobody should have to remove their shoes.

Or diapers.

What is RBS?
If they are not screened by AIT will they get a pat down or will the WTMD be used first then if an alarm a pat down?

I think it's a step in the right direction, but why limit it to 12 years and younger? Nobody should be forced to remove their shoes. Is the x-ray machine able to determine if shoes contain explosive material? I haven't heard of anybody being caught at the checkpoint with explosive shoes.

RBS - Risked Based Security.

WTMD. And if they alarm, multiple tries, like anyone else, to remove anything metalic before any secondary. No different than those who are screened by WTMD now.

This is what is happening at just one airport concerning a pilot program regarding how children 12 and under are screened. And what I am telling you here is not SSI. It has been in practice for a few weeks now. I am surprised no observant FT member has noticed...

But I can confirm that many passengers will be able to leave their shoes on once RBS is fully implemented. And I will also confirm that it appears more than a few passengers will not be screened by AIT, either.

What about when the WTMD alarms?

If I had to guess, RBS is "Risk Based Screening."

On the surface this sounds like a baby step in the right direction (a big step would be implementing this policy for everyone or nearly everyone), but I have little doubt that TSA will find a way to screw it up. Things that came to mind immediately:

Individuals under 18 are not required to provide ID, so age will be "determined" by TSA, right? Are they going to, "out of an abundance of caution," decide that anyone bigger than a toddler might be 12 and is thus not exempt?

I assume MCO does not have NoS-only checkpoints. If this goes national, what happens at places where there is no WTMD? Automatic groping would not support the unstated TSA goal here, which is to reduce public outrage triggered by patdowns and scans of children.

^

The article you pointed to said this was new this week at Orlando.

I think anything done to get TSA hands out of our pants and to move WBI to a secondary screening role is a small step in the right direction.

None of this would be happening unless TSA HQ wasn't feeling some heat. So I suggest that we stoke the furnace a bit more and keep the heat on.

I suspect an "unofficial" official version of this program has been in place for a while. I can't see how the AIT would be anything but trouble for scanning children. "Stand like this", "Now hold still", "Oh looks like you moved", "Assist for diaper inspection..." "YouTube here we come!"

TSA probably made a list of most likely to outrage majority of American public and screening of children probably made the top of the list.

But it is the first time I think we've seen an admission by anyone from the TSA that the threat level is not high: "Children have been used in terrorist plots, Pistole noted, but he said he believes the current threat level is low enough to test the new protocol". (One other time might be when they decided to lift the ban on lighters).

This seems run counter to the current trend to simply add on layers. In this case they truly are removing a layer, and for that much I agree with SATTSO that it's a step in the right direction. Now if only they could admit that the threat of bombs in underpants is low enough...

I do understand what you are saying, yet TSA already has procedures where age is based upon what a person appears to be and when stated by that person. In fact, you you site identification: well no one 18 and under has to provide identification at TDC and it has been that way since the beginning - and it already works well. Juice/certain foods are allowed for children of an "apparent" age, and that works pretty well too.

Again, those policies allow for 2 different things to happen: the passenger/parent to say they are under a certain age, without providing proof, and the screener to, lets say, guess, the age (and I can tell you most if not all screeners guess in favor of the child).

So all the proof is that a policy like this works.

Incorrect.

And we all know how reliable the media can be

No, its been in place for a few weeks. I personally know.

ADD: I should point out that the article is almost 2 weeks old...