As I lugged my self, my carry-on and my laptop bag/laptop out of the bag thru the screening area, I had no less than 5 different people ask to see my B/P. All within the confines of the screening area. What do they think, that somehow, someone will sneak into the middle of the line between BP checks 3 an 4?

They also were pretty bad about pushing our stuff out of the x-ray and crashing it into other people's stuff.
It could use some work.

SJC screeners are highly aggressive about grabbing and pushing people's stuff. That's the spot where I had a screener physically try to pull my purse out of my hands!

I was once asked for my bp and/or id 5 times at SNA. To this day I swear there must have been a hidden camera somewhere.

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@ RDU, if you're a selectee, and get by the CP without getting your BP stamped, you'll be escorted back to the CP, where you will be screened accordingly, and most likely miss your flight. We do not gate screen anymore. It seems on the surface to be overkill, but to COA, and try to make sure you make your flight, we will continue to check BP's @ the WTMD, and when you're leaving the lane. Sorry

I want all selectee screening eliminated. No haraSSSSment for anyone at anytime.

@:-) Bart,
I usually appreciate you thoughtful, informative answers here, and next time I'm in SAT, I'm going to look for you just to say "hi", but from what you're saying, the TSAers don't seem to think their employees can do a very good job of seeing SSSS on the BP, so they need 5 people to look at it. Maybe they need to make sure their screeners can read english.
I've only experienced this at SJC, so I guess they are less competent than the other airports. I haven't had this happen at your checkpoint, ever.

What happens if the 5th screener misses it too? Maybe they should add a 6th and 7th BP verification as well.
Or maybe, instead, send 4 of them home and quit wasting our money.

Agreed. I'm just a citizen; not privy to the wide range of secret security knowledge of those in authority, but it seems that if I were an evil doer, and I had SSSS on my BP, I'd either:

A. give my dangerous goods to a co-conspirator who wasn't SSSSelected, or
B. wait for another day.

And automatically selecting people on one way tickets or who made last minute changes, using soley those criteria, is rediculous.

As stated on this forum before, the ticket checker is contracted by the air carriers. Depending on the set up on the queue there may be a TSA queue person to ensure selectees are directed to the correct lane, the WTMD scrreener will double check to make sure a selectee wasn't sent to the wrong lane. On the selectee lane the last screener (usually a Lead Screener) will stamp the BP which tells the GA that the selectee was secondary screened. Without the stamp the GA will call for a TSA Gate team which usually means screeners need to be taken off the checkpoint to perform the screening. So having the gate team screen a selectee not only delays the flight but also delays passengers at the checkpoint by having less screeners which usually means a lane is closed.

The screener doing these checks are on positions so as you say send them home is not an option.

So what would you rather have, a few seconds where you wave the BP at the screener or several minutes of wasted time?

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Thanks Bart, I'll do that. and thanks again for you insight. I always read your posts, which are full of information, not name calling and smart remarks.

Hmmm, maybe, maybe not. Facing the chance of a random extra screening might act as an additional deterrent, much like the chance of a random IRS audit deters people from lying on their taxes.

But the current SSSS system is like having the IRS send out a "You will be audited this year" notice with the 1040s. The people who get it won't try anything funny and get caught, and the people who don't know they are that much less likely to get caught (after all the IRS, like the TSA, has finite resources).