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SFO is terrible. My girlfriend and I were forced to go through it on our way to Taipei in October. Rude and discourteous TSA staff. One even shouted "This is America. You have to take your shoes off!"

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FWIW, SFO uses a private contractor to conduct security in lieu of TSA. I've noticed that they do not have the "TSA" shoulder marks on their uniforms that actual TSA have at other airports. Presumably SFO hired them because they were better than TSA in some respect, if that tells you anything. :)

It looks like several airports that were contracting them have since switched to another contractor, though:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covenant_Aviation_Security#For...

And.... yet, 2 flights in the last few years, I explicitly did not have to take off shoes/belts, and the TSA agents were rather annoyed that we didn't somehow intuitively know this.

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