TSA “Quiet Skies” surveillance program targets innocent U.S. citizens

This is a dupe of the much more thorough Boston Globe article from two days ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17635761

I'm not a huge fan of all the borderline off-topic political articles, but if we're going to do it, it'd be nice to choose the original source that was referenced four times. As it stands, we're not even adding anything new to the conversation.

I have not understood the purpose of anything about this that I have read. I have heard (NPR) that any data they collect does not roll up into other three letter agencies records. They also mentioned that it in no way could prevent someone from boarding a flight. All it could pretty much do would be to pull you out for "random" additional screening. It really seems like an example of a solution searching for a problem.

I've been telling most of my tech friends, especially the ones in tracking/adtech jobs, to start paying what I call the "Orwell Tax".

You pick a number of anti-surveillance nonprofits (EFF, ACLU, RestoreTheForth, etc.), and sign up for a recurring donation of $19.84/month or $1,984/year (whichever your budget allows).

If you're working in a surveillance/tracking job and don't want to quit, the least you can do about the spread of the surveillance state is to pay the Orwell Tax.

Some previous discussion:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17635761

My guess would be that this is going to establish a 'baseline' for passengers to be fed into learning models as labeled data set. Unclear how much that would help since there really isn't a baseline of true positives (that I'm aware of).

Not trying to be rude here, but this is basically what the U.S. does to anyone else in the world by default... and they don't like it either (using anyone instead of everyone on purpose here)