Ridiculous Airline Security Story N+1 and N+2...

[Rohit Khare]

Executive Summary: I am near my limit of anger with the "random",
"neutral" FAA passenger profiling algorithm. I have every reason to
believe some programmer has coded some strictures into it which would
truly offend American civil society if translated from mathematics
back into the ugly politics from whence it came.

Soon after my last installment, I had to turn back around and fly out
of Denver. They made me X-ray my *shoes*... This time, the problem
was *too much* time on their hands. The second story is how I missed
the last flight back home on Thanksgiving eve because the security
supervisor wouldn't show up to process me at the gate in time. That
snowballed into a series of Catch-22 situations trying to find a lost
pair of glasses along the way.

First, Denver. A tip on avoiding the Disneyland-like lines at the two
main X-ray posts -- even though, strictly speaking, that's an insult
to Disneyland, since even they've instituted a take-a-number pass
system for the most popular rides.

Rather than take the train to one of the outlying concourses, ignore
the main signage and *walk* to Terminal A over a bridge on the
ticketing level. That's the X-ray post to Continental, British, etc.
Much less popular, even though many a savvy traveler knew that was
the way around United's silly carryon sizer templates (Contintental's
machines don't use them). Then take the train to wherever you really
need to get to.

A co-worker and I arrived at DIA together, and I was able to purchase
a new ticket, and even with the foolishness of fellow business
travelers in stocking-feet waiting for their shoes back, I caught up
with him in the same train car... he spent the entire time in United
lines.

Now, for the real outrage.

Today, I was warned about massive Thanksgiving delays at Sea-Tac, so
I cut short a beer with a buddy in Bellevue to race back two and a
half hours in advance. I returned the car, picked up a boarding pass
from a pliant robot kiosk, and got through security in a wink. Two
hours in advance... no problem, right?

Well, I was a selectee, presumably since it was a one-way ticket. So
I sat through yet another embarassing tearing-apart of my bags, and
this time they found a pocket screwdriver. A promotional pen-style
screwdriver that I've had for ten years (it's a NeXT repair shop :-)

1. They think you are not allowed to board with a three-inch,
1/8-inch wide screwdriver.

2. You are not allowed to ask the aircrew to hold it for you on the flight.

3. You are not allowed to leave the selectee table until a "GSC"
supervisor comes to look it over.

At this point, there's twenty minutes left.... tick-tock... now, the
flight is almost completely boarded. You're still waiting. And now
you suddenly realize you've lost your $400 prescription sunglasses.

4. You keep all your metal -- everything -- in your jacket at all
times, so that you can x-ray a jacket rather than begin to empty out
pockets. Your sunglasses have fallen out at some checkpoint.

At this point, you start tracing back your steps. It's 7 minutes or
so to push-back.

5. If you leave the selectee table, you will have to be searched all
over again when you return to the gate

6. They do not have walkie-talkies to ask security if your glasses
were stuck in the X-ray tunnel

7. See #3: You are not allowed to leave at all until the mythical GSC arrives.

Finally, a GSC arrives. Two minutes or so to departure, you haven't
been given any chance to run down and solve the mystery.

8. The screwdriver must be confiscated or bags must be checked.

9. Just because you have been flying with it all week means nothing.
"We're supposed to randomly change what the FAA is looking for every
day". Parse that, if you dare!

10. Any carry-on bag may be gate-checked *except* those containing
"forbidden carry-on items". Catch-22 #1.

So now you're finally free to run back to the X-ray post and miss your flight.

11. With about fifteen uniformed personnel of various stripes
(National Guard, Argenbright, Alaska, and United), none of the first
half-dozen people you ask claims to know about lost articles.

12. Before you can find a supervisor, the GSC has wandered back to
warn them you are carrying a screwdriver.

13. So at this point, instead of any sympathy for a harried traveler
asking for a supervisor, it's time for a lecture about "having
committed two federal crimes, bringing a forbidden item into a
screening area, lying about it to a ticket agent, two fines at
$11,000 each" -- which they take the pompous time to warn you adds up
to "a potential total fine of $22,000" since you're not paying enough
attention to the supercillious bastard who won't admit to knowing who
to ask about lost articles.

Note that A) you are not allowed to leave your bags unaccompanied;
and B) the only way for a solo traveler to speak to a security
supervisor is to enter the screening area. Catch-22 #2.

14. Sufficiently alarmed, I am ordered to walk around, get back in
line, and wait to be escorted back to the *front* of the metal
detector to be handed my bags back.

At this point, my interest is in going back to the Rental car desk
and asking if I left the glasses there. At no point has anyone
volunteered a back-up flight alternative for how I might every make
it back to Northern California tonight.

Ultimately, when rebooking my ticket for a later flight to SFO, I
mention that I missed my flight because as a selectee, the personnel
needed to inspect me were not available in time. I get snapped at for
suggesting I was at all inconvenienced. And I'm marked as a selectee
again.

And when I finally wade through security for the fourth time, the
same super is there to claim that the glasses must have been swept up
to Port of Seattle Lost and Found. But that he doesn't know what
their phone number is.

15. Seattle is the only airport in the world without white courtesy
telephones :-)

But while looking for those phones, the wandering GSC comes back
around and huddles with the supervisor, staring at me. She's
obviously asking him how I could have come back in without having
checked my bag - and my dreaded screwdriver. Gingerly, they begin to
follow me back out of the screening area. I decide to placate their
fears that I got back through their infallible dragnet with
contraband.

"Oh, I mailed it to myself, first-class air-mail!"

...

Clever solutions aside, the outcome of this story is that a very
harried, very frequent traveling US citizen was at no point treated
like an innocent person anxious to solve a problem. Instead, every
contact is an opportunity to be treated like a suspect criminal. In
three hours, I was patted down four times, had my bags X-rayed twice,
hand-searched twice more, and went through metal detectors six times.

The irony of it all is that the selectee program was created by the
FAA for those passengers who choose NOT to provide photo
identification as a matter of right.

CAPPS, the Computer-Assisted Passenger Profiling System, deserves to
be sued out of existence. I'm almost ready to join the ACLU. These
so-called "confidential" criteria are not convincingly as neutral as
the cheery pink "You have been randomly selected"! flyers in your
ticket indicate. And the time-filling additional random searches by
the gate security supervisor were even more visibly biased towards
brown young men. Even one Army soldier on Thanksgiving leave.

I am sick of being treated as guilty until proven innocent!

Not least by such a patently fallible and placebo-driven security
system... The Feds will be *such* an improvement. -- not!

Yours,
   Rohit


http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork

--- end forwarded text


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