Going by safety is without doubt one of the issues most of us dread about heading to the airport. Will there be lengthy queues? Should I’ve separated my liquids or not? Will a carry-on even match within the baggage sizer? But if you’re involved about being held up when passing by the physique scanner, it is value checking your boarding pass for a selected code that would point out you’ll expertise extra delays. For these flying to the United States, the letters SSSS would possibly seem on their passenger documentation.
What does SSSS stand for?
SSSS stands for Secondary Security Screening Selection. When it seems on a boarding pass, it means the passenger has been chosen for extra screening earlier than boarding the plane.
This further screening can embrace:
- More detailed bag checks
- Additional identification verification
- Explosive hint detection swabs
- Pat-down searches
- Extra questioning on the gate
SSSS was launched by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) in response to the September 11 assaults in 2001. According to their web site: “The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is actively working to raise the baseline for aviation security across the globe by requiring the implementation of enhanced security measures, both seen and unseen, at approximately 280 foreign airports with direct commercial flights to the U.S., in more than 100 countries around the world.”
“This enhanced screening may result in longer wait times, and travellers are encouraged to arrive early for flights,” provides the Homeland Security web site.
Why would possibly I be chosen for SSSS?
While the TSA would not publish precise standards for assembly SSSS, attainable causes might embrace:
- Those with one-way tickets or last-minute bookings
- Those who’ve paid money for his or her ticket
- Those who fly by a vacation spot deemed “high risk” by the US authorities
- Those whose names are comparable to names on authorities watchlists
- Random choice
Although aviation authorities describe SSSS as a safety measure, the system has confronted criticism over time from civil rights teams, travellers, and privateness advocates. One of the largest considerations is that the extra screening course of can disproportionately have an effect on individuals primarily based on ethnicity, nationality or faith.
In 2023, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) launched authorized motion searching for to finish the SSSS screening course of, arguing that it unfairly singles out Muslims for what they described as repeated “harassment and humiliation” whereas travelling. Referring to an professional evaluation of leaked sections of a 2019 watchlist, CAIR claimed that greater than 98% of the names recognized had been Muslim. In a statement, the group argued that such a excessive share “doesn’t happen by accident.”
Some travellers who report seeing SSSS printed on their boarding passes a number of occasions have utilized to the Department of Homeland Security for a redress quantity, which may also help cut back the possibilities of being flagged for extra screening on future journeys.