Comment by TallGuyShort | Hacker News Reader

Comment by TallGuyShort | Hacker News Reader

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Generally speaking, law enforcement can do whatever they want as long as they can give their superiors a reasonable explanation of their side of the story and there isn't overwhelming evidence. Most people can't get the EFF to file lawsuits. Many jurisdictions can just charge you with resisting arrest, even if they can't file other charges that justify the arrest in the first place.

As a far less dramatic example, this morning I had a TSA agent called me "stupid" because I left my toothpaste in my luggage, which I did because the last time I took it out of my suit case, I got yelled at for following the sign instead of heeding shouted instructions to the contrary. 10 feet away a different agent also called me "stupid" because I had removed the toothpaste from my luggage instead of the small Kindle which is obviously bigger than a small iPhone. I guess that's the new threshold for devices that must be removed. And what recourse do I have against verbal abuse over arbitrary judgments? Well if I want to keep flying without excessive effort, none.

edit: I should add, generally speaking I've found American LEOs to be very polite and pleasant, ESPECIALLY compared to some other places I've lived. They have to deal with some truly shitty situations and I'm not anti-police at all - but systemically there is large potential for abuse and some places where that abuse is clearly happening.

I've stopped flying in the US simply because I can't go through the line without being molested in some way. It's only in the US.

No other security agents in the world require you to take off your shoes, or do anything more than a standard leg pat down (if they do one at all. Most places just make you turn your pockets inside out).

The TSA is absolutely beyond horrible and Americans have just stopped fighting them and accept this as the new normal. You can get past it if you pay the extortion price for pre-flight checks and have them finger print and background check you.

Tangentially related, but I normally wear boots and I'm asked to take them off every time I fly inside EU. But that's the worst what can happen, have never been ordered to unlock my devices or asked personal questions.

I've taken to wearing shoes that I can slip on/off easily, and a carbon fiber belt buckle. Well worth it.

> No other security agents in the world require you to take off your shoes, or do anything more than a standard leg pat down

False. At least when flying from Schiphol (Amsterdam) you'll be taking off your shoes and you'll go through an X-ray. Not sure about other airports but it wouldn't surprise me if this was a European thing instead of just a Dutch thing - I can't recall if they required it in Spain as well.

We sometimes have to do that in the UK too, so I think it is European.

This is factually incorrect. I fly through Schiphol 10+ times a year and never had to take off my shoes. Neither did I in Paris, Berlin, Barcelona, London, Copenhagen, so "it's not a European thing" either.

I did see officers asking specific individuals to take off their shoes, with a specific justification: when either the shoes obviously contain metal, or the individuals go through the X ray machine and it complains and there is no obvious other metallic item.

I’ve on 2 different occasions called the TSA complaint number due to unprofessional behavior by the agents.

No idea what consequences there were for this to the agents but in both cases it was easy to do and I got follow up calls a few weeks later asking for more details.

>Generally speaking, law enforcement can do whatever they want as long as they can give their superiors

The accountability lies with their superiors. They are brhaving the way their superiors want them to.

People don't behave like you want them to. "What you want someone to do" is a story, and in my experience, people respond to incentives, not stories.

If you want people to catch rats to curb the rat problem and you pay for rat tails, people end up lopping tails off rats and releasing them so they can breed and provide future income.

It's not as simple as making sure that TSA management has the right desired behavior out of agents.

Yep. And when an agent reports excessive force, or corruption, they are often fired. Sometimes those firings create terrorists, like Christopher Dorner. So I'd say the police have the incentive thing figured out, even at an expensive cost to society.

>Christopher Dorner.

"Dorner issued a single demand: a public admission by the LAPD that his termination was in retaliation for reporting excessive force. He also asked journalists to pursue "the truth", pointing out specific lines of investigation for reporters to follow under the Freedom of Information Act, and said that "video evidence" was sent to multiple news agencies."[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Dorner_shootings_a...

Usually I don't side with people who go on murderous rampaged but Dorner went on his rampage because he was pissed off by the LAPD's use of excessive force.

I think you'd have to say that the fact Dorner killed people is unquestionably wrong. However, his superiors shouldn't even be allowed to fire him for reporting excessive force, and whatever evidence there is should have been examined and gone high enough up the court system until the LAPD was completely overhauled with staff who didn't find it so expedient to use such incentive structures to to get away with behaving in such awful ways.

Not only that, the subsequent response to Dorner seems to add a lot more credence to his allegations than his deranged behavior would suggest.

TSA agents are not LEOs. They are security guards. They do not have the same rights and priviladges, protections or responsibilities as police others and other sworn Peace Officers.

But in every other aspect of what I said, they are the same. For all practical purposes, most people must simply cooperate with whatever they say in the moment because simple not cooperating will land you in big trouble with big consequences. So although on paper they have limited power, they really don't.

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