Delta CAPPS-2 watch: decrypt boarding passes!

[John Ioannidis]

On Thu, Mar 06, 2003 at 01:50:44PM -0500, Derek Atkins wrote:
> [...]
> 
> When I flew on US-Airways out of BAL last year, they had a marking on
> the boarding pass that signified "search this person".  If your
> boarding pass had the mark, you were searched as you tried to board.
> If it did not, then you were not searched.
> 
> [...]
> 
> -derek

Are you referring to the "SSSS" string on the boarding pass?  That
indicated that you were going to be searched by the boarding gate TSA
people whether they were going to decide to search you or not (they
still picked up "random" people without the search string on their
boarding passess).

Both JFK and SFO have stopped gate searches.  Searches at security are
still decided by the TSA personnel there (they don't get to see your
boarding pass).

LHR still has gate searches, and the mix of people they were searching
looked fairly random.  I don't know if any of them had been flagged by
the computers, or if the gate security personnel had picked them out.
I wasn't searched, either going through security or at the gate, but
when I tried going from the gate area back into the duty-free area
they were pretty thorough (but exceedingly polite).

/ji - KC2IER

--
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