Just go get pre check?
I can't imagine why everyone isn't leaping at the opportunity...
"If the government ever gives you the chance to bribe them, do it immediately and with a smile. Pay double if they'll let you. You'll always come out ahead in the long run."
Precheck/Global entry is clearly unrelated to actual security; instead, it's an obvious shakedown, plain and simple. The TSA has given you a chance to pay them extra to be harassed less. From this perspective the GP is correct in practice - you'd be dumb not to pay up.
It's a difficult decision, one that I've been wrestling with for a while.
Imagine if everyone (and I mean everyone) collectively said "This is bullshit." and refused to pay for PreCheck. The TSA would have no choice but to stop the program. This is probably the only way they would stop it (beyond legislation, ha.).
Unfortunately this will never happen. People don't want to stand in line. Corporations have the money to shell out to give their travelling employees special treatment. Many will refuse step back and see that the only way to stop this shit is to make some personal sacrifices for the eventual reward of getting another lane back for everyone to use.
Perhaps others and I are "dumb" to not want to pay up, but we do so in the hopes that others will follow suit. We refuse to be a single drop in the rain on the TSA's fields. Perhaps one day those fields will dry.
I personally believe that we have the TSA and the pre-check program because the majority of Americans want something like this, just like a near-majority of Americans really think that putting a temporary moratorium on Muslim immigration is a good idea.[1]
Pre-check, or some way of harassing "them" without harassing "Us," I think, is rather a lot like what Americans wanted when they gave George W. Bush a second term.
I think we have the government we asked for. I mean, certainly, it's irrational, and of course, the profiling ended up being a lot less race based than expected, and, of course, it's now unionized, so some of the people who originally asked for it are now opposed to it, but that doesn't change the fact that this is what America demanded, that the man who gave us this got two terms.
[1]http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/ques...
(yes, yes, bias. But according to Silvers, we're talking under 5% bias, which still gives us some pretty scary numbers.)
What we're seeing with the hours-long lines right now is that this simply isn't true. The TSA has no particular incentive to reduce the number of hoops you have to jump through: if anything, a summer like this will probably increase their budget.
So, indeed: pay up for PreCheck and smile because they've given you the opportunity.
You miss an important concept (that I used to see all the time from administrators in India): Divide and Conquer. They will target some groups of people individually, and dangle some carrot/stick (Free/ Extra Harassment/ you don't have to stand in line with "them"). That's how "everyone" stops calling bullshit.
I'm not sure if that's true. So much of security is statistical (this is where profiling and stuff comes in, racial or otherwise). If you can spend some time doing a more thorough check beforehand[1], then you can (stochastically) assume that there's a lower chance of them being a threat and thus a lower need for screening each and every trip. The idea being that you're far less likely than average to get radicalized and hijack a plane if you're [insert features like type of job]. Frankly, I find it uncharacteristically intelligent of the TSA.
[1] My global entry interview required me to go in to the airport and show a bunch of documentation proving my place of residence, place of employment, etc.
It's supposed to be within the US, though, just like in Schengen. That's due to law, not some magical "right", though.
edit: what is a "basic right" supposed to be, anyway? I missed that day in philosophy class.
Fundamental rights that are inherent to all humans by birth and cannot be justly alienated. It's a major philosophical topic you've probably seen reflected in the universal declaration of human rights, american declaration of independence, french revolutionary declaration of the rights of man etc .
There's a terrible and anglocentric wikipedia page devoted to this topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_and_legal_rights
You might think it would be arguable but John Gilmore discovered you can't even argue it -- the law is secret and cannot be discussed in open court, thus he had no standing to sue over it: https://papersplease.org/gilmore/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilmore_v._Gonzales
The wikipedia entry is slightly misleading on one point: the ninth circuit said he could travel without ID (this case came about because I had been flying without ID and discussed it with John) -- his suit was that he had no choice due to a law he was not permitted to read (yet ignorance of that law is no defense!) and he argued that that was a violation of free speech + free assembly. Without being able to discuss the law in open court, the justification for the decision was a fig leaf.
Do we really need to keep widening the gap between the haves and have-nots?
I can certainly understand that the family of four who only gets to travel once per several years might find $85 per person to be a burden, but I still can't believe that for most people who travel it's that much of a problem. I mean, a US domestic transcon flight is going to run you at the cheapest $300 round trip (and that's only by shopping around like crazy, having super flexible travel dates, and taking advantage of travel deals). Do that once a year, and your $300 flight becomes $317 with precheck. I know many Americans are frankly terrible at personal finance, but... c'mon. Even something shorter like a SFO<->LAX trip is going to run you at least a hundred.
The only way this fast lane can function is if it's exclusive to a small segment of flyers.
If there's only one fast lane, sure. My hope would be that as more people enroll in precheck, they'll be able to turn more and more "regular" lanes into precheck lanes, keeping the efficiency (or lack thereof) of both lane types the same.
The cynical and nihilistic me says 'yes'. Let's push it to see at what point it crumbles.
That is what the U.S. is all about.
It makes it personally more convenient for you, while simultaneously ignoring or condoning the waste of millions of person-hours without consent, which basically equates to mass murder if you squnt hard enough at the math.
That's why first/business class tickets cost so damn much - to blind the traveler into believing that they're actually paying for something worthwhile. As it turns out, for many of them, it is worthwhile just to have shorter lines.
Theme parks do the same thing: pay more for shorter lines. Many attractions, such as the Sears Tower (still can't bring myself to use its official name) Observation Deck, do the same thing.
It's a money grab for sure, just not by the TSA. and why should the TSA give a shit about it if the first class passenger gets the same screening?
Wait, what? I am always frustrated at seeing the folks in those shorter lines (though I settle down at roughly the point of view others have expressed in this thread, that paying for shorter lines is a fact of all parts of life and doesn't seem to abrogate any fundamental right of mine), but it has never occurred to me to think that someone in one of them is lengthening my wait time. If anything, then he or she is shortening it by not being in my line.
Maybe your point is that the screeners for those short lines could be re-deployed to relieve some of the pressure on the longer ones, if the shorter lines didn't exist at all; but, given that they do exist, no-one's use of them seems to me to have any effect on my wait time.
On a side note, I've noticed that, given the speed that the first agent checks your ID and boarding pass, it's clear to me that they're only looking for three things: 1) you physically have your ID (not that it matches), 2) you have your boarding pass looks vaguely legit, and 3) if you have a precheck or priority marking on the pass that lets you go in a different line. That's really it; they're not really doing anything security-related. #1 and #2 are really more about making sure you don't get in the security line, wait who knows how long, get to the front, and have to get kicked back out for lacking your ID and BP.