Ed Hasbrouck tells a chilling Kafka-esque tale of Washington Dulles’ airport security. It’s a long but worthwhile read that raises important questions about the authority of airport personnel and the rights of travelers in American airports. Who is authorized to demand your identification? What are these people looking for? And why can a person’s private papers be removed and photocopied by the TSA?

Besides the interrogation that Hasbrouck received before even officially being inspected at the security checkpoint, he was “SSSS’ed” — anointed as a “secondary security screening selectee.” I had the same pleasure myself just three weeks ago. The warning signs came early, when I was unable to check in online for a flight the next morning. Immediately, I suspected that I had been SSSSed. Sure enough, the check-in kiosk at the airport spit out my boarding pass as usual, but “SSSS” was printed in the bottom right corner. I walked to the shortest security line in Terminal 1 at O’Hare and mentally prepared for the pat-down. After a few moments in a small roped-off corral, I was hand-patted and had my carry-ons inspected by hand. As a bonus, one inspector threw a heavy bag onto my unprotected laptop, resulting in a sharp snapping sound. Great.

So why was I picked? I’ll never know. It was likely a random selection, since triggers that set off an SSSS are apparently things like changing your ticket at the last minute (nope), buying your ticket in cash (nope), having a one-way ticket (nope), flying for the first time ever (heck no), being on the no-fly list or terrorist watch list (nope, and nope, to my knowledge), calling in a bomb threat to keep the plane from taking off so you can catch it when you’re running late (definitely nope), or questioning the authority of some guy at the airport without a uniform, like Ed Hasbrouck did (nope).

One other route to an SSSS is to simply refuse to show any identification at the checkpoint. While airlines require you to show identification before handing you your boarding pass, the TSA’s court-upheld policy (in theory, at least) is to allow you through security with a boarding pass but no identification, as long as you submit to secondary screening. Anecdotally, this is not always enforced identically at all airports, however, and one organization is collecting data on whether or not the TSA is allowing travelers to enter security without ID. At SFO, the policy was recently tested and the result verified by a reporter for Wired.

But this policy is not published. In fact, U.S. appellate court judges in Electronic Frontier Foundation co-founder John Gilmore’s losing battle against the TSA reviewed the federal government’s identification policy in secret, since the policy is not public information. Basically, it’s a secret law. This is democracy!!?

Why on earth is an identification policy not public information? To allow unfettered use and abuse of secondary screenings, no-fly lists, and other restrictions on movement? And what do these secondary screenings hope to find, anyway, that metal detection and the baggage scanning cannot? In Hasbrouck’s case, they took issue with documents — documents!! What kinds of documents endanger inflight security??

Feel free to use comments to offer your own rants on airport security, both philosophically and in practice…

(No, that’s not actually my ticket. image)