TSA screening program in spotlight
The Transportation Security Administration’s “behavior detection” program made headlines this week as screeners caught a man trying to check luggage containing pipe bomb-making materials in Orlando. The Associated Press looked at the program recently and found that in four years the most common catches have been those with fake IDs — no suicide bombers yet. Of some 104,000 travelers pulled aside for more intense screening, the AP found, fewer than 700 were ultimately arrested. The Screening Passengers by Observation Techniques program, or SPOT, will receive $45 million in federal funding this year. Barry Steinhardt of the American Civil Liberties Union, has his doubts about the program’s efficacy. “Whether this is anything more than profiling under another name, we don’t know,” he told the AP.
The TSA invited the AP to Kennedy Airport last month to watch two agents at work. Here’s some of what the reporter observed:
To the untrained eye, the man looked like any other traveler as he waited in line at Kennedy Airport. But something about the way he was acting caught the attention of two security screeners.
For 16 minutes, they questioned him, scanned every inch of his body twice with a metal-detecting wand and emptied his carry-on bag onto a table. Out came a car stereo with wires dangling from it.
The man was eventually found to have done nothing wrong — he said he had pulled the stereo out of his car because he was afraid it would get stolen — and he was sent on his way.
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Hello,
I am wondering if a continuing problem I have with United Airlines is unique to me and to a friend of mine.
Over the past year, my frequent flyer account at United has been repeatedly shorted miles. After I bring the matter to the attention of United, the problem sometimes takes as long as six months to correct, but it gets corrected.
I hold 1K status with United which, I believe, helps me get the errors corrected. However, I wonder how successful other passengers are in getting errors corrected who have a lesser status with United?
I travel a lot and have been a loyal customer of United Airlines for many years and have noticed this problem with my account only over the past year or so.
Needless to say, it is unproductive and time consuming to repeatedly correspond with United over the errors. Most of the employees as United with whom I spoke have been pleasant and helpful. Each eventually agrees there is a problem and corrects the error. However, I have three pending errors outstanding at the present time.
The most recent error with my account happened only last week. I was on the return leg of a round-trip flight taking the exact routing in my return. I have taken this same flight for several years. For reasons that make no sense, my return flight was shorted 841 miles although the return flight was an exact retracing of my outbound flight. Another passenger on the same flight had the same thing happen to him (shorted 841 miles on the same round trip and routing). United is “looking into the problem” at the present time.
Is United’s computer system really incompetently programmed, thus causing these errors or is United intentionally shorting passenger miles to reduce the number of frequent miles outstanding?
Initially, I did not think the problems were attributed to something intentional. Considering all the errors with my account (together with the other passenger on my flight who also had his account shorted by 841 miles), my opinion on this issue is now open to any answer.
Please do not regard this communication as a complaint. I merely would like to know if you have had other correspondence from other people having a similar experience with United Airlines.
Thanks for your time.
David M Graham, Ph.D., CPA