SSSS, no problem, just circle it and initial it
 

Yesterday, I had a boarding pass reprinted beyond security.

The dreaded SSSS appeared.

From previous experience I knew this could be a problem upon boarding the aircraft.

I mentioned it to the agent, she just circled the SSSS and initialed [and smiled].

That's probably some misleading information. Some airports have a specific punch symbol, some write stuff on it.

If the 450+ airports that the TSA run their dog-and-pony show can't operate under the same SOP, then I sincerely doubt there's a uniform way of letting you slide like that.

I know you said past "security," but again, I doubt all the protocol are the same.

You are probably right, but I think this adds to the silliness of the whole system, because if you were a terrorist there would be a 80% chance this would work.

Yes, I know if I were a terrorist there would be simpler ways to get through security without the SSSS.

If you were a terrorist, you would just print your own boarding pass from home and alter the HTML to remove the SSSS.

Boarding passes from home no longer print if you have been chosen for haraSSSSment.

If you get an SSSS BP inside "security" tell the agent to remove it. Presumably you were already screened and not a selectee. Under this circumstance, the agent IS authorized to remove or ignore SSSS.

Not sure you can print an on-line boarding pass if you are selected for that.

You can certainly fake your own boarding pass to get by the checkpoint, but you might be caught at the gate.

I believe you wouldn't be able to print your bp from home if you were SSSS'd - but I could be wrong.

You can't check-in online anymore if you have SSSS - trust me, I enjoyed over a year of using liquid paper and a photocopier to remove offending SSSS tags from my office printed BPs.

To add along the same lines as your post:

Amusingly, the security idiots think that preventing online checkin of haraSSSSment selectees would stop haraSSSSment selectees from getting through the airline security checkpoints without the additional haraSSSSment screening. These changes don't prevent someone from using a similar method -- of manually adjusted boarding passes from a prior trip or in someone else's name -- to accomplish the same. These changes don't do anything for security.