Security Fast-Pass

Dallas, TX –

She did it. Don’t ask me how, or why, but Dore’s gotten herself on the TSA Pre-Check list.

The thing is, she doesn’t know how she did it.

And, to be honest, I’m a bit jealous.

The first time, on a flight up to Rhode Island for the weekend, we thought it was some random check thing, like when you are randomly selected for a more thorough screening.

Like when I was “randomly” selected to have my bag hand searched for a half-dozen flights in a row.

We were going through the security line at the Dallas-Ft. Worth Airport, when the TSA officer checking her ID told her that she didn’t have to remove her shoes (she also forgot to remove her liquids from her carry-on but they didn’t say anything).

On the return flight, I noticed that she had TSA PRE printed on her boarding pass, and once again, no removing her shoes.

A couple of weeks later, when she was flying up to Ohio, there it was again, printed on her boarding pass. Then, on her return flight, in the Columbus airport, she was going through a security checkpoint that had the separate TSA Pre-Check line, and she was directed into it.

At this point, we know it’s not a random thing. She is on the list. The thing is, we don’t know how she got there.

See, the TSA Pre-Check list is something that we’ve been told was coming for quite some time, and is finally being rolled out. It’s an airport security fast-pass, where you get to bypass most of the scrutiny that us regular folks (a.k.a. peons, riffraff, etc.) are subjected to.

The people on the list don’t have to remove their shoes, take out their laptops or liquids from their carry-on, or face the attitude that we’re all guilty until proven innocent that has pervaded the officers that stand between us and the plane that we’re holding tickets to board.

In order to get on this list, you are supposed to go through a rigorous screening gauntlet, where you apply to get on, go through a thorough background check, sit through a lengthy interview, and who knows what else, all so you can prove to the Homeland Security bureaucracy that you are not a threat to the traveling public.

It’s not something that just “happens” to you at random.
At least it’s not supposed to.

Dore claims that she didn’t go through all of that. And I believe her, because she’s a terrible liar (and she doesn’t want me to write about this, because she likes being on the list, and doesn’t want to jeopardize her status.)

So how did she get on the list? Is this part of the NSA’s spying on us, and they have decided that she should be on the list? Is she one of these deep under-cover government spies, maintaining her cover convincingly for decades? Or is it a government screw-up, and someone accidentally put her on the list, and we’ll never know how or why?

Lets take a look at these, one by one, starting with the NSA.

Yes, I know that they’ve been listening to all of our phone conversations and reading all of our emails. But there is no incentive for them to do anything to make any aspect of life easier for anyone.

Besides, I know a little about the difficulty involved in creating the algorithms that would be necessary for this task. It’s a relatively easy task to listen for key words that indicate that someone needs additional scrutiny, which is what their stated mission is. It is a near impossible task to filter through the massive amount of data that they deal with and identify someone at random and determine that they need less scrutiny than everyone else.

They would have needed to be focused on her to begin with, examining every aspect of her life, in order to make that judgment call.

Besides, just what does it say about someone that a government agency would decided, unprompted and wholly on its own, that person A presents no threat to anyone, and therefore should not be subjected to the normal level of scrutiny that every other one of their citizens have to go through.

That just doesn’t happen.

We’re talking government workers here. They don’t normally do anything they aren’t asked to do, no matter what part of the government they work for.

As for Dore being some deep undercover agent? While that is in the realm of possibilities, it’s not very probable.

She has trouble keeping her story straight when she is trying to relay something that happened earlier that day. She’s also one of the most gullible people I know. And I doubt it’s all an act. She’s not that good of an actor.

And anyway, I consider myself reasonably good at detecting when someone is not what they are making themselves out to be. And considering how long we’ve been together, the prospect of her having deceived me to that extent for so long would so completely destroy my self image of how good I am at detecting deceit that I can’t even entertain that possibility.

So, that leaves us with it being an accident, a bureaucratic error that no one knows how it happened, or who did it, and there’s no incentive to correct. This is the most likely explanation.

And unless someone complains, it’ll probably never be caught and corrected.

Of course, now that I’ve written about it, the chances of it being corrected just went up significantly.

I’ve maintained for years that Dore has very good travel karma. When I mentioned it to her, she pointed out that she also has very good people karma as well, so let’s just say that she has good karma, period. Whenever things have gone wrong when we’re traveling together, which they inevitably will, they work out fine.

Actually, they usually work out better than fine. It’s something I’ve always loved about traveling with her, if I just allow things to resolve themselves, and don’t try to force the outcome that I want, we’re normally as pleased, if not more so, with the results than if things had resolved the way I had wanted them to. It’s something I appreciate and don’t take for granted.

Now if only I could magically get myself on the list, without going through the bureaucratic hassle…

Sorry, I rarely take photos in or around airports, so I don’t have a gallery of photos to link to for this story. If you want to view a variety of my photos from around the world, click here.