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 Photograph by David Paul Morris/Bloomberg Photograph by David Paul Morris/Bloomberg 
 
 When you want to get through airport security faster, the screeners have an app for that. To clear waiting lines more quickly, the Transportation Security Administration uses a “randomizer” app at about 100 U.S. airports to sort which travelers get directed into the PreCheck lane, the one where you don’t need to doff your shoes, belt and jacket. 
 
 The app is part of a risk-based approach called “ managed inclusion” that the TSA began using last year and includes behavior-detection officers or canines on duty to smell for traces of explosives. (The agency says its dogs don’t sniff for illegal drugs.) In a much slower process, TSA agents also swab travelers’ hands or suitcases and run the tests through machines before letting passengers board. 
 
 The TSA uses software to randomly choose whether travelers in the PreCheck lanes go left or right, making it harder for potential terrorists to detect any patterns. The randomization also helps to prevent accusations of racial or other profiling. The program is used at peak travel times when queues increase, such as early morning and evening. The agency says PreCheck lanes can screen 300 people per hour, about twice the number at its regular lanes. Over time, as more travelers enroll in the $85 program, the agency expects its use of the managed inclusion techniques to decline, spokesman Ross Feinstein says. 
 
 “The whole premise of risk-based security is that the vast majority, if not everybody, traveling every day…are low risk, and so how can we differentiate between those people based on some prescreening, based on information that they share we already know about them such as certain government employees?” TSA Administrator John Pistole said in March at a House hearing. 
 
 The TSA, which asked Congress for a $100 million cut in its 2015 budget, promotes its risk-based security techniques as one way to save taxpayers money. The agency plans to eliminate more than 1,400 employees and close six of its 26 federal air marshal field offices. Bring on the apps. ||||| The United States government paid tens of thousands of dollars to IBM to create software so simple, it could have been created by nearly any beginning-level app developer. 
 
 Documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act by developer Kevin Burke show the Transportation Security Administration paid IBM $336,413.59 for "mobile application development," of which $47,400 was used to develop randomization software for the TSA. 
 
 SEE ALSO: Now complaining about the TSA on Yelp might actually help 
 
 The app, which you can see in action the video below, is essentially a random number generator — assigning passengers to right or left lanes at airport security. 
 
 If the app looks simple, that's because it is. 
 
 As others have pointed out, such an app could easily be created by any beginning-level coder. (In fact, creating a random number generator is a commonly used beginning programming lesson.) 
 
 Yet this app was apparently worth tens of thousands of dollars to the TSA. 
 
 While the documents don't mention the randomizer app by name, documents detailing the $336,413.59 contract were provided to Burke in response to a FOIA request for documents relating to the randomizer software. Other publicly available records show the app was part of a larger contract with IBM worth more than $1.4 million. 
 
 The total development cost for the randomizer app was $47,400, a TSA spokesperson told Mashable, which was part of the $336,413.59 contract. The spokesperson declined to elaborate on what else the contract entailed. 
 
 It's possible it also included the tablets themselves, which could account for some of the additional cost. 
 
 The app was used by TSA agents to randomly assign passengers to different pre-check lines as part of a now-discontinued program called "managed inclusion." The goal of the program was to make it more difficult for terrorists to predict patterns in security lines and to reduce potential of racial profiling, according to a report in Bloomberg that said the app was used in more than 100 U.S. airports. 
 
 The TSA is no longer using the randomizer app. The agency ended managed inclusion in 2015, after coming under fire for putting a convicted felon in a PreCheck line. TSA is also scaling back its practice of randomly assigning passengers to PreCheck lanes over security concerns. 
 
 UPDATE: April 4, 2016, 3 p.m. PDT Updated to include clarification from the TSA on the portion of mobile app development costs that was earmarked for the randomizer software. 
 
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– Today's SMH story comes courtesy of the TSA, who Mashable reports paid IBM $47,400 for "software so simple" that creating it would have been well within the reach of a novice app developer. The revelation comes by way of Kevin Burke, who filed a FOIA request in December 2014 regarding the "TSA Randomizer" iPad application, which was basically used like so: A TSA agent holding an iPad would tap the app. If a left arrow appeared, the traveler went in the left security-check lane; a right arrow, right. A 2014 Bloomberg article explained some of the reasoning behind the software, which mainly related to the use of the speedier PreCheck lane and the selection of the fliers who would randomly be directed there from the regular lane. The randomness would make it tougher for would-be terrorists to identify security-screening patterns they would use for their benefit, Bloomberg explains, and help dispel the appearance of profiling. Cost-wise, Burke's headline is a little more jaw-dropping: "The TSA Randomizer iPad App Cost $1.4 Million." But a TSA rep tells Mashable $336,413.59 was paid to IBM for "mobile application development," with the aforementioned $47,400 earmarked for the randomizer software; Mashable reports the $1.4 million is the total of the overall contract with IBM. As for the app, it's no longer in use. Though it had been employed in more than 100 US airports, the "managed inclusion" program was axed last year after a convicted felon followed the arrow ... into a PreCheck lane. (An angry dad raised a stink over his 10-year-old daughter's airport patdown.)