What triggers secondary screening? My husband and I travel often, are grandparents, have no criminal records, have never carried anything illegal and yet we are subjected to secondary screenings? Is this the airline's fault or some higher power? If we are on some list of suspicious characters, how did we get there and how can we find out?

jad1,

Welcome to FlyerTalk!

There are a number of things that cause secondary screening. Not getting in a frequent flyer number to your reservation prior to ticketing is probably the biggest reason. After that, last minute changes to tickets, particularly one-way tickets is next.

Whose fault is it? It is the TSA's fault for using these ineffective, un-American methods to harass the traveling public. However, it is also the airlines' fault for not standing up to the government and telling the TSA to go to hell.

I don't have a record. Knowing nothing about me, would you pick me up on the side of the road and give me a 5 hour ride with your family?

Ok.... Thanks for the non-sequitur.

Pre-9/11, SSSS almost never happened. All this SSSS harassment post-9/11 has not prevented even one act of terrorism.

here Officially, there is no way to find out if you are on the watchlist of suspicious characters. I actually thought that my name was on the list because I got repeatedly SSSS'ed for a period of 6-9 months. There is a supposed "procedure" to go through if you think your name is there mistakenly.

EPIC was able to obtain some information about the watchlist through a FOIA request. Their results are available here:

If you do suspect that you are on a watchlist (you are not on the "no-fly list" because you were able to get a boarding pass) you should fill out a complaint at the ACLU's website: No-fly or watchlist complaint The ACLU has filed a lawsuit seeking the discontinuation of the no-fly and watchlists until such time as the government provides transparent procedures for finding out whether an individual is on one of the lists and for being removed from the list if your placement there is in error.

You should also send a complaint to [email protected], demanding to know whether you are on the watchlist. They'll send a form letter back and refuse you the information you seek, but it's good to do this anyhow.

Are you political activists? There have been repeated complaints that activists are being placed on watchlists. For example, see here and here.

Give me a break - if that were the case, everyone would be going through this nonsense.

Everybody is going through/or subject to this "nonsense." We don't have a poster of you in our break room.

One thing that is important to remember here: One of the biggest reasons for long "SSSS" lines is this:

When a flight is cancelled and you are re-booked, you are an automatic selectee. This is a computer glitch that the airlines are supposedly working on.
If it weren't for all of the unnecessary selectees, the "SSSS" line would be faster than the regular lines.

Not true!

It's not a computer glitch, it's because a last-minute, one-way reservation without a FF number is a factor for SSSS harassment.

One can make one's own re-accommodations and greatly reduce the risk of getting SSSS harassment by making sure one's FF number is in the record of the new reservation prior to ticketing.

This isn't the airlines' fault. It's the TSA's fault for forcing the airlines to select some of their passengers to be harassed, though the airlines are to share the blame for not standing up to the thugs who run the TSA.

Thanks - that's what I wanted to know. Our flight was cancelled and rebooked, but no one told us that. It would have made the procedure much more tolerable - for the time being anyway.

Once again, you know more than I do Spiff.

By the way, I've been trying to stay calm, but it's hard to do with the way some of you act around here. Thugs, Nonsense, BS, Workfare, Rape, Harassment blah, blah, blah...

Not that you guys will care, but I may have to make an exit. I deal with enough of you people at the airport. Why should I deal with you on my off time?

In some areas, I do know more than you do because I travel a lot more than you do. I am on the receiving end of your agency's ridiculous, un-American policies of harassment and I'm a pretty quick study. I have no qualms at all about sharing my experiences in the hopes that others can avoid this idiocy.

Sorry if you don't ilke to hear it, but those in charge of the TSA are indeed thugs, and that's putting it mildly. Whether you feel that the insults directed towards management also apply to you is your call. And if you're getting treated so poorly at the airport, hasn't it dawned upon you that many people despise what your agency is doing? Perhaps a better application of your talents elsewhere is in order.

I'm happy with my job. I've seen the TSA go from crawling to walking. It's getting better. I do my job well, and take pride in what I do. I work with many others that feel this way.

I've said it before, but I don't expect everybody to agree with what we do. It's a necessary evil. When I was in the Army, I was told that I had to sacrifice my freedom to preserve it for others. I've sacrificed my freedom before, and I really don't think it's asking too much of passengers to sacrifice a little of their own freedom to ensure the safety of themselves as well as others.

You think our checkpoints are bad? We had a Serbian woman come through our checkpoint not too long ago and she was in hysterics and crying. Shaking too. We took her to the side and after she calmed down a little, she said that it wasn't us she was afraid of. She was just having flashbacks of the horrors of other checkpoints she had been through in her life.

Screening at airports is indeed an necessary evil, however most of what currently passes for screening is unnecessary, un-American harassment.

Giving up freedom for temporary safety (paraphrasing Franklin) is a symptom of someone who simply doesn't appreciate or understand what freedom truly is and why it is so important not to compromise it.

I'm glad that you treated her with kindness and dignity. I'll admit to, once, after getting my tenth consecutive SSSS, breaking down into tears at a checkpoint. The screeners there at BWI's selectee lane took turns laughing at me and yelling at me, calling me a baby and offering to bring me a diaper. There were at least four screeners involved in this incident.

However, the Serbian woman's response begs the question: why did your checkpoint remind her of the ones at which horrors had occurred? What do internal checkpoints have to do with security? Internal checkpoints are great for government control of people's movement, but these internal checkpoints seem to have high failure rates, according to recent reports, at what they are ostensibly supposed to do: find concealed weapons.

Your employer is the bane of my daily existence. Deal with it or find a new job.