Reply #72: There's a pretty good reason which is not as nefarious as you imagine

[MajorChode]

When someone is selected for secondary screening they must be isolated in order to prevent them from handing a potentially dangerous object to someone else. You could do this by having additional manpower at each checkpoint, or you could shut down the entire checkpoint so that additional manpower could be redirected. Both of those options are pretty inefficient. Remember that it's your tax dollars that is paying for that extra manpower to just stand around most of the time or it's you waiting in a stalled line while TSA clears the secondary screening que. The other option is to que them in a glass booth until the next secondary screener is available.

I am OK with it, and no I don't think the country is "going down the tubes" because someone has to wait in a glass box for 2 minutes.