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Comment by zachberger | Hacker News Reader

I agree.

I went through the TSA checkpoint at the United Premier Access this last Tuesday. They have the new automated bin return system. Some of the people who travel less frequently were leaving the bins behind instead of putting them in the machine to be returned to the front. The TSA agent shouted at them repeatedly, "do any of you read English? Can't you read the damn sign?" While he pointed at the instructions. He did this for the entire time I was near the checkpoint.

This is belittling. Not everyone flys frequently and knows this process. How about respecting them and teaching them the new way?

I wanted to say something to one of the other agents, but why risk ending up on a list especially when it's this hard to get through now.

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I had this at Gatwick last year...

"Hey idiot, get your goddamn bags off the (expletive) belt! Hurry the hell up!"

At which point another passenger decided to take advantage of the confusion and tried to steal my phone...

"God (expletive) damn you! Are you trying to make my (expletive) life hard?! Just take your bags and go, you're holding up my line!"

Approached the airport, "we do not comment on security matters".

"How can I take this complaint further?"

"You'll need to ask your solicitor to contact our legal department."

And then there was Stockholm Arlanda...

(On the way in) "Good morning Sir. Welcome to Stockholm."

And on the way out...

"Sir, is this your bag? Can you please turn the laptop on for me?"

'Do you need me to log in, it's for work...'

"Oh no, I just need to see it turn on."

The laptop thing is actually common.

Confirming the functionality of laptops (especially larger or older ones) is within the guidelines Just making sure it's not a bomb.

Easy to bypass though, just like all security theatre.

Helsinki: "why am i being checked?" smiles looking stupid "no really, why am i being checked" "i don't know, i just work here" "so you just follow orders blindly? can someone explain what's going on" no one could explain anything because Helsinki airport is a piece of..., same as Gatwick or Luton.

regarding TSA, since I don't have facebook, snapchat, instagram it's always scary talking to them.

> since I don't have facebook, snapchat, instagram it's always scary talking to them.

why?

Stasi thinks he's hiding his real accounts

because they assume everyone has at least some account and if you say you don't have any, they will think you don't want to provide it

There could be a problem also with legit accounts with the same name as you or, even worse, fake accounts created with your name for some reason (from bots to exgirlfriend revenge to I'll reserve this name "just-in-case"). You don't know that those accounts exist, but they can take a quick look and think that you are a lier. They do not have the time or the desire to verify that. I remember a twitter "pvaldes" account created minutes after declinate to upload a photo of my face to a popular freelancer platform. The account showed a naked guy seen from behind showing his bottom in a pool, a location similar to mine, and not much more. Maybe is still opened, I really don't care.

So, probably a better answer would be "I had seen accounts in facefook/twitter/whatever with my name but aren't mine. As you can see, are mostly inactive or is clear that I'm not the same person shown in those party photos".

A solution is not forcing yourself to pass by this cattle-treatment if the country is so unfriendly to foreigners.

> Helsinki: "why am i being checked?" smiles looking stupid "no really, why am i being checked"[..]

In Helsinki, and in a lot of European countries, there's a little gadget in the security check which will randomly select someone for a manual search. It takes the security officer out of the equation.

If it's actually dice-roll random, I can see that working pretty well. It's actually fairly common to use "random coin-flip" type machines in retail -- you do random bag-checks of staff, and they push the button on the machine. Either "search" or "no search" lights up.

The probability is set according to the risk factor of the store, anywhere between "nobody gets searched, this is just to scare you" and "everyone gets searched, no buts".

In my experience, it usually gets set to about 15% probability. Just enough that a few people get searched every week, not enough that everyone has to stay behind for an hour waiting for bag searches.

In Norway we can click on smiley faces after security to say how the experience was, going from good to bad, there was an article in the news the other day about how they used the results from this survey for setting bonuses for the agents working in the different airports

I am American, living in Norway. I got searched while coming home from Amsterdam. Its OK, I understand, it is Amsterdam, after all, and they want to make sure I'm not smuggling stuff. And I pack very lightly, which doesn't help matters at all.

I've never been treated so well while being searched. The guy was kind and polite and smiled a little. I also learned that in his opinion, Americans were usually pretty easy to deal with, but more nervous in general. He thought it was because we (Americans) were used to a more authoritarian-acting police.

I used to get searched all the time in Seattle because I was coming in from Beijing and must have looked suspicious or something. Anyways, I was never treated poorly in the red line by immigrations and customs. Just one point of anecdata, Seattle is a sleepy place and the airline staff is usually a bit nicer.

I’ve never had to go through an extended customs search in another country, however.

> because I was coming in from Beijing

> and must have looked suspicious or something

Can it not be that you were coming from Beijing?

No, my Chinese colleagues on the same (direct) flights were never searched, just me.

Random searches should be the norm. Same for tax evasion, for example.

No. Just like every fucking where they should have a very good reason to search you, and they should receive a giant fine for searching for no reason.

Fuck this authoritan border shit.

Why not? If it is completely random, it is actually fair, and it'd filter out the people who seem suspicious but who are not. If there has to be a very good reason in order to search (probable cause) then people who understand the pattern can avoid it. If there is a completely random chance you get the special treatment, people will always have to be careful; not just when they're being suspicious.

Because you should not have less right on the borders than elsewhere.

I know the courts don't recognize it; I will be dammed before I let laws determine justice.

Except you're between borders. You do have the very same rights airports as borders as well. Customs can check every person who decides to pass the border. That they don't is their choice; not yours. Don't like it? Don't leave your country.

I've gotten searched every single time I've went to Canada.

The last time they searched my car, stripped searched me, threw all my stuff on the ground, and after finding nothing told me to "pick up my garbage."

The bright side is, I was only held for 5 hours that time, but I did have a gun pointed at me. The first time was 9 hours, so maybe next time it will only be 3 hours.

Some people are just pathetic humans who get off on being above anyone else.

/I never had anything illegal any of those times and tried to be very respectful. I worked with law enforcement for many years, and know the type of people that they can deal with.

Also, everyone involved was white, so at least there wasn't racism...? I don't know, it's all dumb. None of my complaints went anywhere, and last time I called they said I "had nothing on file anywhere."

Going to Canada or coming back from Canada?

I’ve never experienced that either way across the Vancouver area border crossings.

Going to Canada. I can't remember the exact locations, but the two that gave me the most headaches were the one in northern Minnesota and the one in Montana. The one in North Dakota did look through all my stuff, opened bags, but let me be on my way in an hour or so. That was my best experience so far.

Every time I went from Canada to America, they looked in my trunk, moved some stuff around back there, and said I could leave.

I still haven't been given any reasons why that happens to me, but my name must be somewhere important.

I just learned to get used to video chatting instead of seeing relatives up there. Much less of a headache.

I have seen those in multiple countries, and couldn't really say there is any correlation with friendliness.

But they do have managed to vastly improve my mood, via a different sort of mechanism: when I'm being treated rudely, I tend to linger at the machine, usually waiting for fellow passengers to clear security. During that minute or two (or five), I train my Nintendo skill on the :( face. My high score must be in the thousands.

They probably filter out such data. But maybe not–I kind of prefer not to know.

I get lots of cheeky smiles from other travellers noticing me, so the happiness even spreads. Only got yelled at by security once.

I always assumed it was for travelers to be able to give a quick feedback to get the frustration out of their system and be done with it. So was a bit surprised to see that they where using the data, of course when workers know how much money they get depends on them providing a good service, they will try to give a good service

I always find it funny when they place them outside of toilets. Like, who in their right mind would push them? Heck - some of them are even touch interfaces so you can't use your elbow.

I use a paper towel to touch them, just like with the door handles

just to clarify ... a member of gatwick airport security staff said that you?

>"Hey idiot, get your goddamn bags off the (expletive) belt! Hurry the hell up!"

>"God (expletive) damn you! Are you trying to make my (expletive) life hard?! Just take your bags and go, you're holding up my line!"

That all sounds so un-british I can't imagine this playing out. Which part of security were you in?

I've flown through heathrow, gatwick and other uk airports loads of times and never seen anything approaching that level of rudeness.

Really? I've gone through a good number of British airports and I've seen similar scenes play out (typically not directed at me, though.)

British security/police seem to take their power a bit too far very often, in my experience. They have absolutely no problem with a little shouting. Of the first-world immigration officials I've had to interact with I'd rank them perhaps second worst, for general cluelessness and authoritarian behavior.

The typical British "don't say or do anything, just tut" behavior does apply often: Public displays of racism? Civil liberties being taken away? A simple tut will do. But if you're British immigration, then shouting incorrect or confusing instructions is just part of the job.

The number of times I've seen this is too high, and that's not even including the number of patronizing and wrong instructions I've gotten, either. For example, getting shouted at that I should have presented my American passport when I presented my Dutch passport (...what?)

"British security/police seem to take their power a bit too far very often"...

And that is the actual problem here as well. At the airport you end up in a "your rights end here" zone. According to the original story, the questioned person had no right to a laywer as he was not arrested. But he was also not free to go. So there you are: stuck between a rock and a hard place... Sure, you have every right not to unlock your phone. But you will go nowhere, miss your flight, your connecting flight, etc. And all the officers just go home when their shift is over and forget your case ever happened...

> That all sounds so un-british

Consider in your calculations that a queue was being endangered by the behavior they were complaining about.

I can absolutely imagine this at any airport besides Heathrow in the U.K. Heathrow tends to be a bit more polite and more efficient.

Can confirm! London City, as I said, is a hair nicer but that's primarily because it's a business airport which generally caters for a small number of flights (compared to Heathrow or Gatwick).

Can confirm.

Heathrow terminal 4 staff is one of the rudest I have encountered. They have not been rude to me personally but every time I have been through that terminal I have seen staff being rude and racist to travellers. I have seen folks being physically pushed around to form queues, to make them hurry. This is not a one time experience. Dont recall if they were British Airways staff or airport staff.

I assume your quotes aren't verbatim, because those are some very un-British colloquialisms. Having said that, I know that TSA agents have worked at Heathrow and Gatwick before. Maybe he/she was one of those.

It's not a direct quote. One because I can't remember the exact words verbatim (this was last year) and two because the ones I could remember, I translated to American for the benefit of the HN audience :)

I think that the primary reason is psychology. People wanna feel safe. I was flying to Gatwick from Bilbao (EuroPython) and I walked into the plane like into a train. I was stunned. No one has checked my bag, no scanners. What is the point of all this fuss with security in UK if I could just pick another airport as a my entry point?

I travel frequently and those machines at lax always throw me off. And they expect you to stand right up next to someone else while you empty your pockets. Literally feels like I’m cattle.

> Literally feels like I’m cattle.

That might actually be the intent - make people feel uncomfortable so they get more uncomfortable if they're up to no good.

I think you overestimate the competence of TSA. Last I had read, TSA had never prevented a terrorist attack, and has an abysmal record in tests where people try to get things like guns and knives past them.

TSA is security theater. Nothing more.

No, it's a liability transfer from the airline industry and a subsidy to various contractors. Sure, security theater is the cover for all that, but it's not just security theater.

I refer you to Hanlon's Razor.

I think it has more to do with lax not having space for huge security lines (see terminal 3, what a freaking joke that is).

Unfortunately this kind of behavior probably stems from their upbringing, not saying it's right, if you feel insulted report it: https://www.tsa.gov/contact-center/form/complaints

TSA is a jobs program for people who aren’t willing to do real work.

Harsh, but agreed. I have a relative who is older and retired. Got bored sitting around the house, so got a job with the TSA. He'd never held a job anything remotely to do with security, research, or investigation...

> TSA is a jobs program for people who aren’t willing to do real work.

The overt function, employing in many cases the exact same people, existed before it was federalized, so, no, that doesn't really explain what was new about TSA vs the status quo ante.

Isn’t the attitude intentionally intimidating, and a core part of the screening process? If someone is nervous and intimidated they may show cues that earn them additional screening.

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