Received a New York Times news alert a few minutes ago detailing changes to screening procedures. Long story short, if you are a citizen of traveling from our through certain countries suspected to be sponsors of terrorism, you can expect a full pat down and bag search before you board a flight to the United States. However, if you are an American Citizen, you will no longer be automatically subjected to a pat down (and whatever else they were throwing at us) before boarding a flight heading to the US from other countries. But don’t be surprised if you are randomly subjected to extra scrutiny. You can review the New York Times article here for more details. Here is TSA’s press release on the change.
I doubt very many people realize it, but citizens of certain countries have been subject to extra security for about as long as I can remember, even pre-dating 9/11.
I read elsewhere (in a NY Times blog) that citizens of those countries as well as anyone traveling from or through them would be subject to the search. As I said, good luck to the TSA figuring out who came from where.
That same blog post has some interesting commentary from security experts on the new approach:
http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/04/will-profiling-make-a-difference/
Well worth reading, IMO.
Where in the TSA statement does it say that citizens of certain countries will be subjected to extra security? The way I read it, they are talking about individuals traveling FROM or THROUGH certain countries (for some reason they use the term “nations”). To me that implies a US citizen traveling from, say, Syria to the US would be subject to the same screening as a Syrian citizen. Do I miss something?
The TSA statement doesn’t say that. In truth, I added the link to the TSA statement after I made the post, and didn’t reconcile it with what was being said in the papers. While I believe citizens of those countries will be receiving extra attention, I think the most correct way to state things is as you have suggested. I’m going to update the post ever so slightly to reflect.