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

[Trei, Peter]

Rohit (whom I know slightly) is too much a gentleman
to suggest that he may be being hit due to racial 
profiling.

Peter Trei

> ----------
> From: 	R. A. Hettinga[SMTP:rah at shipwright.com]
> Reply To: 	cypherpunks at einstein.ssz.com
> Sent: 	Sunday, November 25, 2001 9:38 AM
> To: 	cypherpunks at einstein.ssz.com; cryptography at wasabisystems.com;
> dcsb at ai.mit.edu
> Subject: 	Ridiculous Airline Security Story N+1 and N+2...
> 
> 
> --- begin forwarded text
> 
> 
> Status:  U
> Delivered-To: fork at xent.com
> Date: Wed, 21 Nov 2001 22:44:04 -0800
> To: FoRK at xent.com
> From: Rohit Khare <Rohit at KnowNow.com>
> Subject: Ridiculous Airline Security Story N+1 and N+2...
> Sender: fork-admin at xent.com
> List-Id: Friends of Rohit Khare <fork.xent.com>
> 
> 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
> 
> 
> -- 
> -----------------
> R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
> "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
> [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
> experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
>