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Comment by ForrestN | Hacker News Reader

It completely depends if you are white or not. If you are white, and speak politely, the agent will care deeply about your concerns, including potential firing as an example. If you are not white, and especially if you appear black, Latino or Arab, then your comment will definitely hold true.

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Recently delayed by the TSA to the point of missing my turn to board. Was subjected to additional searching. Upon finding nothing, I discovered the extra searching was what they do when you fail the hand swab test. I had not had the test administered. So they administered the test. I passed. They then searched my things again and I was questioned regarding the quantity of business cards I was carrying.

Oh also I'm white.

TSA is not the same agency as CBP. They don't receive the same training, encounter travelers in the same situations, enforce the same laws, or execute the same authority.

I've had similar experiences with CBP too. It's still a pretty silly unqualified comment. They tend to be on power trips any chance they get, brown or black or white.

I didn't mean to comment on the use of racial profiling; I've just noticed that there's a lot of confusion about the difference between TSA and CBP.

Pretty sure parent was just saying that it's way more likely to happen to you if you're not white, not that 100% of white people will pass through unaccosted.

Well given that parent used phrases like "entirely depends" and "definitely", I didn't get that at all. And given my own experience of being consistently delayed in most locations and being white, I think there are clearly more factors. And if true, those factors affect more people and amplify the effect of racially motivated factors.

[citation needed]

You are absolutely the worst kind of person.

> You are absolutely the worst kind of person.

What? I'm not sure I believe the grandparent's post, and it would be nice if it were sourced or clarified as opinion rather than stated as fact (as briandear (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14406689) and Banthum (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14407293) urged), but your reaction seems grossly hostile and unconstructive.

We've banned this account. No one is allowed to post like this here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

All: upvoting such blatant violations of the site guidelines also causes accounts to lose voting privileges on HN.

Wow, quite an accusation!

Is there any actual data source on this, or is it just a narrative you prefer?

Two seconds of Googling: https://www.aclu.org/blog/speakeasy/dangerous-precedent-why-...

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