http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/08/23/what_israeli_security_could_teach_us/

this is a great way to enforce the random selection, but you lose the intuition of a good screener. a skilled and experienced screener should notice the behaviour of the people (sweating, nerviness, etc.). having a beard or being a woman is not random and not a suspicious fact.

Going through screening I was “randomly” selected. They ran a cloth pad over my carry-on and put it into a machine (haven’t seen this for a couple years now). Whatever they were looking for came up as a hit. The person running the machine was shocked and therefore ran a new cloth over the same location like 10 more times. All of them set the machine off.

She took EVERYTHING out of my bag and felt along everywhere in it to see if there was a hidden area or anything. She then went through everything that was in my bag and didn’t find anything. She then called a supervisor over and told them what was going on. They ran a couple more cloths over different parts of my bag and identified and exact location that was alerting the machine.

While they’re testing my bag and going through my things, but flight is repeatedly announced over the loudspeaker.

Eventually they start questioning me. Do I own any firearms? Have I been near any firearms or to any firing ranges? Do I deal with chemicals? I answered everything they asked and told them I had no idea how anything like that could have gotten into my bag. The only thing I could remember happening is that on my last trip some of my conditioner had leaked out of a bottle and gotten on the bag. They stepped away for a bit to confer. I mentioned to them that my flight was on the final boarding call and I didn’t want to miss it. They told me, “This is about national security.”

Finally they came back to me said they were going to have to pat me down and make me sign something. They did the pat down (honestly I don’t remember how thorough it was) and made me re-answer all of the questions they asked me before on a form. Then I had to explain that I had spilled conditioner in my bag and try to remember what brand it was. I went ahead and signed it – only because I was REALLY afraid I was going to miss my flight. They had started paging me, using my name.

The screeners were happy with my filling out of the form and wished me a nice day. The airline gate person read me the riot act for holding up the plane.

I just remember thinking at the time: “How did making me sign something make anything any safer?”

A few years back, I was at Tampa late at night, with a child, for our return trip to Milwaukee. Tampa is a nice airport, with a little shuttle train to the terminals. However, the brilliant TSA placed the security screening checkpoint right after you got off the train; we got off and proceeded to wait through a crowded and cramped queue line for about a half an hour, all the while being yelled at to keep packing in, since the trains seemed to be delivering people more rapidly than TSA was clearing them.

I was thinking it was hard enough to do this with a kid. However, directly in front of us was a group of seniors, who patiently waited through the whole thing. They got to the first TSA agent. She eyeballed them, and told them to remove their shoes. Two of them did without trouble, but the oldest lady could not. There was no place to sit. We ended up watching her companions hold her under her armpits while she bent over to remove her shoes.

Worse? These were summer sandals. You know the kind. They’ve got cardboard-thin soles and some basic straps to hold them on the foot. There’s literally nothing substantial to them. After watching this drama unfold for several minutes, I turned to the TSA agent and asked if that was really necessary to make her remove her shoes.

She gets this very indignant, pompous look on her face and says to me in a loud voice “Well, you know we had a shoe bomber, SIR!” Like I’m an ignorant idiot who is interfering with her protecting us from the old lady’s sandals.

I mean, come on. I don’t really mind being asked to take off my workboots too much. They’re steel-toed and they have thick soles. Possibly a threat.

However, the threat model is all wrong for the old lady.

Terrorists are more likely to be interested in attacking during the day, when they can leverage live media coverage.

Terrorists are more likely to be interested in bigger, fuel-laden planes, not a regional’s little MD-80′s.

To assume that a group of grandparents is actually a dangerous terrorist cell that’s developed a new super-thin explosive that is embedded in the lady’s wafer-thin shoes is much less likely than the possibility that you’re just a real ass for making her remove her obviously non-dangerous shoes so she can get on her late night low risk flight.

But I can see how you might think that… if you’ve had a total lobotomy.

what’s the point of getting pissy and rude over something you have no control over? do you think THEY like searching you? Everyone knows it’s a 99.999999% waste of time…so dont torture them, and they’ll probably put you on their “good boy/girl” list.