Walking through TSA scanners, I always get that unnerving feeling I will get pulled aside. 50% of the time they flag my cargo pants because of the zipper pockets - There is nothing in them but the scanner doesn't like them.
Now we get the privilege of walking by AI security cameras placed in random locations, hoping they don't flag us.
There's a ton of money to be made with this kind of global frisking, so lots of pressure to roll out more and more systems.
How does this not spiral out of control?
To be fair, at least you can choose not to wear the cargo pants.
A friend of mine once got pulled aside for extra checks and questioning after he had already gone through the scanners, because he was waiting for me on the other side to walk to the gates together and the agent didn't like that he was "loitering" – guess his ethnicity...
How is it fair to say that? That's some "why did you make me hurt you"-level justification.
No, it's not.
I have shoes that I know always beep on the airport scanners, so if I choose to wear them I know it might take longer or I might have to embarrassingly take them off and put them on the tray. Or I can not wear them.
Yes, in an ideal world we should all travel without all the security theatre, but that's not the world we live in, I can't change the way airports work, but I can wear clothes that make it faster, I can put my liquids in a clear bag, I can have bags that make it easy to take out electronics, etc. Those things I can control.
But people can't change their skin color, name, or passport (well, not easily), and those are also all things you can get held up in airports for.
That's true, if you're saying "I can at least avoid being assaulted by the shitty system", I just want to point out that it is a shitty system.
I fully agree with you on that, it is a shitty system :)
> guess his ethnicity...
Not sure, but I bet they were looking at their feet kinda dusting off the bottoms, making awkward eye contact with the security guard on the other side of the one way door.
Speak up citizens!
Email the state congressman and tell them what you think.
Since (pretty much) nobody does this, if a few hundred people do it, they will sit up and take notice. It takes less people than you might think.
Since coordinating this with a bunch of strangers (I.e. the public) is difficult, the most effective way is to normalise speaking up in our culture. Of course normalising it will increase the incoming comm rate, which will slowly decrease the effectiveness but even post that state, it’s better than where we are, which is silent public apathy
If that's the case, why do people in Congress keep voting for things their constituents don't like? When they get booed at town halls they just dismiss it as being the work of paid activists.
Yeah, Republicans hide from townhalls. Most of them have one constituent, Trump.
Get Precheck or global entry. I only do a scanner every 5 years or so when I get pulled at random for it. Otherwise it's metal detector only. Unless your zippers have such chunky metal that they set that off you'll be fine. My belt and watch don't.
Note: Precheck is incredibly quick and easy to get; and GE is time consuming and annoying, but has its benefits if you travel internationallly. Both give the same benefits at TSA.
Second note: let's pretend someone replied "I shouldn't have to do that just to be treated...blah blah" and that I replied, "maybe not, but a few bucks could still solve this problem, if it bothers you enough that's worth it to you."
"Just pay to not be harrassed or have your rights/dignity stepped on" a typical take to find on the orange site.
...maybe not, but a few bucks could still solve this problem
Sure, can't argue with that. But doesn't it bug you just a little that (paying a fee to avoid harassment) doesn't look all that disimilar from a protection racket? As to whether it's a few bucks or many, now you're just a mark negotiating the price.
The brownshirts will never get my money.
I don't often fly, but back when I went to germany on a school trip, on the return flight I got pulled aside into a small room by whatever the german equivalent of TSA is and they swabbed the skin of my belly, and the inside of my bag. I'm guessing it was a drugs check and I must have just looked shifty because I get nervous in situations like that, but I do find it funny that they pulled me aside instead of the guys with me who almost certainly had something on them.
Also my partner has told me that apparently my armpits sometimes smell of weed or beer, despite me not coming in contact with either of those for a very long time, and now I definitely don't want to get taken into a small room by a TSA person (After some googling, apparently those smells can be associated with high stress)
I already adjust my clothing choices when flying to account for TSA's security theater make-work bullshit. Wonder how long before I'm doing that when preparing to go to other public places.
(I suppose if I attended pro sports games or large concerts, I'd be doing it for those, too)
I was getting pulled out of line in the 90’s for having long hair. I don’t dress in shitty clothes or fancy ones, I didn’t look funny, just the hair, which got regular compliments from women.
I started looking at people trying to decide who looked juicy to the security folks and getting in line behind them. They can’t harass two people in rapid succession. Or at least not back then.
The one I felt most guilty about, much later, was a filipino woman with a Philippine passport. Traveling alone. Flying to Asia (super suspect!). I don’t know why I thought they would tag her, but they did. I don’t fly well and more stress just escalates things, so anything that makes my day tiny bit less shitty and isn’t rude I’m going to do. But probably her day would have been better for not getting searched than mine was.
Getting pulled aside by TSA for secondary screening is nowhere in the ball park of being rushed at gunpoint as a teenager and told to lay down on the ground where one false move will get you shot by a trigger happy cop that probably won’t face any consequences - especially if the innocent victim is a Black male.
In fact, they will probably demonize the victim to find sn excuse why he deserved to get shot.
I wasn't implying TSA-cargo-pant-groping is comparable. My point is to show escalation in public facing systems. We have been dealing with TSA. Now we get AI Scanners. What's next?
Also, no need to escalate this into a race issue.
Yes because I’m sure if a White female had been detected by AI of carrying a gun, it would have been treated the same way.
You have no evidence to suggest this, just bias. Unless you are aware of the AI algorithm, then it's a pointless discussion that only causes strife and conjecturing.
It’s not the AI algorithm, it’s the police response I’m questioning would be different.
How many audit the police videos have you seen on Youtube? There are an insufferable amount of "white" people getting destroyed by the cops. If you replace the "white" people in these videos with "black" then 99% of viewers would assume the cops are hardcore racist, when in fact, they are just bad cops - very bad cops, that have some deep psychological issues - probably rooted from a traumatic childhood.
https://www.sentencingproject.org/reports/one-in-five-dispar...
https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/fryer/files/empirical_anal...
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2022/12/22/policing_survey...
But it was a black man they harassed.
Why don’t you pay the bribe and skip the security theater scanner? It’s cheap. Most travel cards reimburse for it too.
I'm sure CLEAR is already having giddy discussion on how they can charge you to get pre-verified access to walk around in public. We can all wear CLEAR certified dog tags so the cops can hastle the non-dog-tagged people.
I got pulled aside because I absentmindedly showed them my concealed carry permit, not my driver's license. I told them I was a consultant working for their local government and was going back to Austin. No harm no foul.
If the system used any kind of logic whatsoever a CCW permit would not only allow you to bypass airport security but also carry in the airport (Speaking as both a pilot and a permit holder)
Would probably eliminate the need for the TSA security theater so that will probably never happen.
You can carry in the airport in AZ without a permit, in the unsecured areas. I think there was only one broo-ha-ha because some particularly bold guy did it openly with a rifle (can't remember if there's more to the story).
The point of the security theater is to assuage the 95th percentile scared-of-everything crowd, they're the same people who want no guns signs in public parks.
No.
Right from the beginning it was a handout to groups who built the scanning equipment, who were basically personal friends with people in the admin. We paid absurd prices for niche equipment, a lot of which was never even deployed and just sat in storage.
Several of the hijackers were literally given extended searches by security that day.
A reminder that what actually stopped hijackings (like, nearly entirely) was locking the cabin door, which was always doable, and has not ever been breached. Not only did this stop terrorist hijackings, it stopped more casual hijackings that used to be normal, it could also stop "inside man" style hijackings like that one with a disgruntled FedEx pilot, it was nearly free to implement, always available, harms no one's rights, doesn't turn airport security into a juicy bombing target, doesn't slow down an important part of the economy, doesn't invent a massive bureaucracy and LEO in the arms of a new american agency that has the goal of suppressing domestic problems and has never done anything useful. Keep in mind, shutting the cockpit door is literally how the terrorists themselves protected themselves from being stopped and is the reason Flight 93 couldn't be recovered.
TSA is utterly ineffective. They have never stopped an attack, regularly fail their internal audits, the jobs suck, and they pay poorly and provide minimal training.
> regularly fail their internal audits
Not even. It's that they rarely pass the audits. Many of the audits have a 90-95% "missed suspect item/s" result.
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That may have been true 25 years ago. All the rules are now mostly an annoyance and don't reassure anyone.
There weren't a lot of people voicing opposition to TSA's ending of the shoes off policy earlier this year.
You're right not a lot of people objected to TSA ending the no shoes safety rule, and it's a shame. I certainly objected and tried to make my objections known, but apparently 23 or 24 years of the iconic custom of taking shoes off went to waste because the TSA decided to slack off
The TSA scanners also trigger easily on crotch sweat.
I enjoy a good grope, so I’ll keep that in mind the next time I’m heading into the us.