SSSS
I just had the privilege of having been singled out for some Secondary Security Screening Selection at JFK Airport. Interestingly, they actually mark your ticket SSSS when this happens and at least at my terminal it meant I got to stand in a special line specially designated for potential malefactors such as myself. Well, it’s also the special security line for families traveling with kids in strollers. So basically it’s a small children and suspected terrorists, together at last kind of scenario.
The thing of it was that I couldn’t quite tell what the Secondary Security consisted of. I had to stand in a special machine, but it didn’t seem to be one of those machines where they hit you with a burst of air and check for explosive residue. It looked a bit like they were giving me a full-body X-Ray in case I was trying to smuggle a ceramic knife on our something.
52 Responses to “SSSS”
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November 15th, 2008 at 4:17 pm
Hey Matt,
Guess who oversees the security at airports – yep, you guessed it, that great, big, highly efficient FEDERAL GOVERNMENT you love so much!
November 15th, 2008 at 4:17 pm
Maybe the TSA agent just thought you were ssssexy.
November 15th, 2008 at 4:20 pm
Who in their right mind thought it was a good idea to name this measure a phrase whose acronym incites one to think of Nazi Germany?
Or maybe they are all just laughing at us lemmings.
November 15th, 2008 at 4:23 pm
Kyocera actually includes a bit of metal in the zirconium ceramic powder mix that they press into the knife shapes before firing and sharpening. The standard airport x-ray will catch them.
- A
November 15th, 2008 at 4:25 pm
A few years ago, but still post 9/11, I was travelling with someone who was given a couple of hours notice he was going to be screened at the gate. Security theater in action.
November 15th, 2008 at 4:25 pm
You do sort of look like a shoebomber.
November 15th, 2008 at 4:28 pm
Might have been a Rapiscan Secure 1000 ( aka rapescan)
Do a google image search for samples.
TSA probably got a good look at your junk.
November 15th, 2008 at 4:29 pm
i have heard different from asa dotzler (but i don’t work for kyocera, so what do i know).
1) kyocera *does* include chunks of metal into their handles, not into the knife blank itself.
2) zirconium ceramics are inherently radiopaque, i.e. they are dense enough to show up on x-rays even without metal.
so the metal is included to give them a *magnetic* signature.
the x-ray signature they already have on their own.
and, no, you don’t want to experiment to find out what you can get past tsa.
November 15th, 2008 at 4:30 pm
Last week I earned that special status plus two separate up the yin-yang body searches and two complete excavations of my carry-on bag. My body lotion and shaving cream cannister were confiscated and later in the flight waiting room my bag was checked again. I was clean-shaven, freshly coiffed, and wearing a sport jacket over a clean, new, white button-down shirt and clean khaki pants. Blue eyes, fair skin, and not even a hint of a deceptive twinkle. What’s the fuckin’ deal?!
November 15th, 2008 at 4:30 pm
Do you mean the full-body scanner that’s starting to appear in various airports and that’s just loved by the ACLU?
November 15th, 2008 at 4:31 pm
I’ve gotten special scrutiny (a pat down or similar) on every flight for a couple of years and I have no idea why.
November 15th, 2008 at 4:34 pm
yeah. they have machines like that. I saw one at an airport once with an explanation, saying that it did do a full body scan, but that images were viewed at a remote source, & deleted after use, & that the machine blurred out private parts.
November 15th, 2008 at 4:40 pm
That’s nothing. You’re not cool until you’ve gone to the “special room” where the people with rubber gloves reside. That happened to me once. The amazing thing is that, despite a strip search, they still didn’t find my pot. But it did convince me to never bring pot on a plane again. The other amazing thing is that that’s not the most extreme thing that has happened to me in an airport. I spent three hours being interrogated by New Zealand and Australian customs officials on suspicion of international methamphetamine smuggling. I was innocent, but man, you don’t want to go through that. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever see my country again.
November 15th, 2008 at 4:43 pm
Hey memo what on earth makes you think that Matt Yeglesias thinks the Federal Government is highly efficient. Have you not been reading the things he has written about bailing out the auto industry?
November 15th, 2008 at 4:52 pm
It looked a bit like they were giving me a full-body X-Ray in case I was trying to smuggle a ceramic knife on our something.
Not exactly. Suffice to say, the device was not intended to thwart any nefarious acts you might have been planning that day. Rather, it was intended to thwart the actions of any little Yglesiases you might someday conceive. Or, I should say, can’t conceive anymore.
Think of it as a generational strategy.
November 15th, 2008 at 4:53 pm
I’ve traveled with my 5 year old son and we tend to get to the Airport with plenty of time. I’ve had several instances of the boy’s ticket being stamped SSSS (and my own). The airlines have to flag a certain percentage of passengers for further harassment and have done what you should expect: hit the people who check in early because they still won’t miss the plane.
November 15th, 2008 at 5:01 pm
Regarding Kyocera’s knives, these are excellent utensils but the company does mix metal into the zirconia. This is standard for ceramic knife makers.
To see the making of these knives, see this video, especially 6′50” into it where they discuss the security steps.
November 15th, 2008 at 5:04 pm
Who in their right mind thought it was a good idea to name this measure a phrase whose acronym incites one to think of Nazi Germany?
Commander Stor: We are an advance force of the Sontaran Special Space Service.
The Doctor: The S.S.S.S.? That’s carrying things a bit far isn’t it?
November 15th, 2008 at 5:08 pm
Indeed, all applications of zirconia have metal mixed in with them. Generally, they mix in zirconium.
November 15th, 2008 at 5:18 pm
peter wray–
thanks for the video link–it was fun and entertaining.
but it doesn’t change my mind about what i said at #8 above.
notice that the stage of the production at which they have the metal “mixed in” is after the blanks have been sharpened, and after the handles have been put on. the scene you direct us to shows a knife with a handle setting off a metal detector.
i stand by my earlier claim: the metallic slug is in the handle, not in the ceramic blank. (you can also see this when the knife-sharpener in the earlier scene holds the blank up to the light: it is translucent all the way across).
the ceramic itself does of course have a metallic element in it, since (as ifv points out) zirconium itself is a metal.
but it’s in the wrong form to be picked up by magnetometer-based metal detectors.
doesn’t really matter, since, again, zirconium ceramics are themselves radiopaque, and are use as additives in tooth-filling material exactly in order to ensure that the filling will show up on x-rays.
November 15th, 2008 at 5:18 pm
That happened to me when a flight was canceled and I had to buy a replacement – a last minute one-way. In addition to the x-ray thinggy, they took every last item out of my carry-on and waved this little wand with paper on the end of it over each item. I suppose the paper was some sort of explosive detector as well.
November 15th, 2008 at 5:31 pm
fostert: Well, where did you stash it? This is valuable info.
November 15th, 2008 at 5:57 pm
I don’t think “terrorists and small children” is such an odd pairing. Try asking some frequent plane travelers, “For whom should the TSA create special difficulties in getting on board a plane?” Both groups will probably be mentioned.
November 15th, 2008 at 6:03 pm
I am suprised that this is the first time you’ve been selcted for the SSSS screening. As a thirty something year old male who often travels solo and with last minute tickets (e.g. hotwire), I have been selected nearly every flight I’ve taken in the last 5 years. I would think as a twenty something year old male who often travels solo and on last minute iteneraries you would be selected pretty often as well.
November 15th, 2008 at 6:06 pm
fostert: let me second that request; where’d you hide it?
November 15th, 2008 at 7:31 pm
SInce the body is salt water, I doubt that X-rays can pick up carbon composite knives hidden in body cavities — the new airport scanners go through clothes to the surface of the skin –not under the skin.
Carbon composite knives ..er.. letter openers –such as one sees at gun shows: e.g.,http://www.defensedevices.com/cialetop.html
November 15th, 2008 at 7:33 pm
Hmmm. Maybe Matthew is on TSA’s list because of the company he keeps — i.e, the commenters on his blog.
November 15th, 2008 at 7:38 pm
Re carrie’s comment “In addition to the x-ray thinggy, they took every last item out of my carry-on and waved this little wand with paper on the end of it over each item. I suppose the paper was some sort of explosive detector as well.”
————–
Nah. They probably were just running a scam on you so that they would have something to laugh at later over beers with their buddies. If you give people boring stupid shit jobs, they find ways to enrich them.
November 15th, 2008 at 8:57 pm
Probably trying to find out what you were smuggling up your five hole. I would guess either loads of pot or a miniaturized copy of Atlas Shrugged
November 15th, 2008 at 9:21 pm
Blue eyes, fair skin, and not even a hint of a deceptive twinkle. What’s the fuckin’ deal?!
Despite their protests to the contrary, TSA certainly uses racial profiling in who to choose how to search. They’d be dumb not to do this IMO. They try to disguise it by taking a few white people as well. I had a lecturer who looked like the stereotypical Arab and he got pulled for “random” screenings every time.
November 15th, 2008 at 9:36 pm
Terrahertz wave scanning. Sees right through your clothes. Doesn’t harm you google is your friend
November 16th, 2008 at 2:56 am
Well, here’s my, I mean “our”, story:
Traveling with a six week old puppy in a sherpa bag through Pittsburgh, PA, we got pulled out of line three times.
Each time it was the puppy that was subjected to the cavity search. Finally, I figured it was an unopened can of dog food that triggered the hysterics, so I offered to just dump the dog food so we could board the plane. …. Not a good idea. You’d have thought I had just thrown a bomb into the trash receptacle.
Eventually, we made it to our destination California and Betty, the puppy, actually thought we’d just had one of those Left Coast adventures.
November 16th, 2008 at 10:55 am
The purpose of security theater (doing things which obviously do nothing to improve safety) is to get people used to the idea that they must yield to police or quasi-police intrusion without raising any objection.
Combine that with the movement to issue universal ID cards (aka internal passports) and the US is well on the way to becoming a police state. That is a place where people’s right to remain unobserved is eliminated.
This sort of intrusive behavior is easy to counter, all it takes is for a large fraction of those being screened to object. They can raise an objection which requires the participation of a supervisor, or a large number of them can refuse to submit to the examination and then refuse to fly altogether.
You can be sure that a customer rebellion which hits the airline’s bottom line will bring about a change in procedures. It already has for big shots who get to bypass the whole thing.
People can only be enslaved if they allow themselves to be. People elsewhere in the world are literally dying for freedom (Burma, Zimbabwe, for example) and we, in the US, can’t even muster a bit of complaint about excessive impositions on our civil liberties.
November 16th, 2008 at 1:27 pm
I have a question regarding this/ If you are being consistently singled out for an SSSS, can you argue for “profiling” and demand it to be stopped? I understand that males of certain nationalities will always go through this security check, which by the way, involves a close search of all your carry-on luggage (thereby, rendering useless loads of work that was put in fitting all those last minute items).
It feels vaguely reassuring to notice the process in place after you are singled out for it, but being constantly subject to such search is very offensive and annoying.
November 16th, 2008 at 4:31 pm
A millimieter wave scanner, no doubt. Let’s them see your genitals too.
November 16th, 2008 at 6:02 pm
I’m guessing fostert shoved the pot in his ass. I know a guy who got away with that once.
November 17th, 2008 at 1:57 am
In addition to the x-ray thinggy, they took every last item out of my carry-on and waved this little wand with paper on the end of it over each item. I suppose the paper was some sort of explosive detector as well.
They take the paper swab and drop it in a machine that heats it and attempts to detect residue of explosive compounds through spectrometry or chromatography. The most common ones are probably ion mobility spectrometers. It is not a bad idea, though unclear if the existing machines are sensitive enough to be useful and reliable.
The machine Matt had to stand in was probably a terahertz (frequency) or millimeter (wavelength) imaging machine – two words for the same thing. Next time, look at the frame of the machine and it will probably say something about millimeter wave technology.
November 19th, 2008 at 3:58 pm
I got SSSS status this weekend when traveling with my two small children out of Pittsburgh. Mainly, it meant I was wanded and they had to go through my bags manually. But they kids weren’t designated SSSS, so the security people asked me to tell them which of the bags were theirs and which “mine”, so they could decide which to search. This ridiculousness has to stop.
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