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Old Sep 26, 2007 | 10:36 am
  #1  
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And now for something different...

Rather than bash TSA (which is sort of like shooting fish in a barrel) I thought I'd point out a humorous incident with a screener at SFO yesterday. My wife and I had just cleared customs after arriving from Sydney and were going over to terminal 3 to catch our flight to Seattle. TSA people (rather than contractors) were checking ID and boarding passes, and the screener checking my wife's ID spent a lot of time flipping through the pages of her passport. Nothing on the pages, but they had her attention. Seems the brand new passports have nice illustrations of scenes of the US and each page is different and this screener hadn't seen one before. My ratty amost 5 year old passport with added pages didn't rate a second glance. Some of them are human, too.
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Old Sep 26, 2007 | 10:39 am
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Originally Posted by Ghery
Rather than bash TSA (which is sort of like shooting fish in a barrel) I thought I'd point out a humorous incident with a screener at SFO yesterday. My wife and I had just cleared customs after arriving from Sydney and were going over to terminal 3 to catch our flight to Seattle. TSA people (rather than contractors) were checking ID and boarding passes, and the screener checking my wife's ID spent a lot of time flipping through the pages of her passport. Nothing on the pages, but they had her attention. Seems the brand new passports have nice illustrations of scenes of the US and each page is different and this screener hadn't seen one before. My ratty amost 5 year old passport with added pages didn't rate a second glance. Some of them are human, too.
Likely just checking the authenticity of the new Passport through loking at the other pages.

Procedurally smart, inherently ineffective when it comes to security.
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Old Sep 26, 2007 | 11:21 am
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When did SFO get TSA ID checkers? Or is it just Covenant stepping in the same as TSA to check ID's?
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Old Sep 26, 2007 | 11:30 am
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Originally Posted by Superguy
When did SFO get TSA ID checkers? Or is it just Covenant stepping in the same as TSA to check ID's?
I believe that it is the latter as SFO uses non-TSA employees under TSA rules.
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Old Sep 26, 2007 | 12:06 pm
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The screener was probably amuzed with the pictures, seems fitting for the TSA and TSA-related "professionals."
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Old Sep 26, 2007 | 2:00 pm
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Last edited by mikeon; Feb 4, 2011 at 6:24 pm
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