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Comment by acabal | Hacker News Reader

I wish I had the means to do what he's doing. But the problem for me, and for many other people I'd imagine, is that when I'm at an airport, chances are I've paid a very large amount of money to be at a certain place at a certain time for what is probably an important reason. Risking losing that much money and the possibility of not getting to where I need to be, even for the noble goal of civil disobedience to protest a ridiculous and screwed-up system, is just too daunting for me. All it takes is one TSA officer having a bad day and misinterpreting something I've said to send me and my bags home--and even if they're in the wrong, the only thing that can decide that is an expensive court case, and I'll still have missed my flight.

I applaud people like this who remind the system that it works for us and not the other way around. I sadly can't take the risk of doing it myself.

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In all the TSA discussions on Hacker News, people seem to have settled on a procedure which is maximally inconvenient for the TSA but should still allow you to catch your flight: opt out of the backscatter scanning, request a supervisor to be present during the pat down to make sure you're not sexually abused, and make sure they do the pat down in the public screening area rather than a private room. You do get groped, but it makes an impression on the other travelers, slows down the system, and makes the groping agent uncomfortable, which are all positive outcomes in terms of protesting the system.

The notion that a TSA pat-down is in any way, shape, or form equivalent to "sexual abuse" is an insult to anyone who has been a victim of the real thing.

"Sexual abuse" is a very wide spectrum. Unwanted touching is where is begins. That is not to cheapen those who have suffered at the other end of the spectrum.

I disagree.

It's a spectrum that is as wide or as narrow as you wish it to be. I personally think it's more narrow than many others do here on HN, for example. I think a real lame effect that happens though is that the instant someone uses the word assault or abuse it suggests much more evil or sexually explicit or intimate acts than what an actual specific situation may have involved. The phrase "sexual assault" can start off being applied to a hand on the back or kiss on the cheek, and then as the description of the event propagates across many people or channels, suddenly it can morph into "rape" or "molestation" -- even though traditionally those words refer to much more serious and specific, intimate and/or violent sexual acts.

It's one of the things I think we as a society, in any general public forum, with no serious moderation or curation or participant filtering (like HN, in my judgment) cannot discuss intelligently or productively because it's always vulnerable to this particular thought error, among others.

Unwanted touching is where is begins.

More specifically, unwanted sexual touching. I don't like people jostling against me in crowds but that isn't "sexual abuse."

Oh really? http://pncminnesota.wordpress.com/2010/11/08/rape-survivor-d...

Beware of the big fat simile in that post. A personal impression does not an offense make.

The offense of "sexual assault" requires "sexual behavior" to take place. A security pat down delivered in the appropriate, formal manner is not a display of sexual behavior though it could become such. The mere touching of "intimate" areas does not make it "sexual" per se, however.

And nor does voting this down change the letter of the law. Think about it for a minute. If any unauthorized touching of one's genitalia is "sexual assault", a surgeon performing an emergency operation could be in serious trouble. Thankfully the law in most nations distinguishes between sexual and non-sexual touching, even if the subject of the blog entry does not.

I didn't say it was--I said that you should ask for a supervisor to be present during your pat down to prevent sexual abuse. How you could have interpreted my comment otherwise is mystifying.

No, but the parent article did: "I felt what they were doing was a sexual assault."

This is a systematic invasion of what could only be described as MORE than just "privacy". It's a humiliating public encounter with someone touching your genitals. The fact that there could be worst executions of sexual abuse doesn't make what's going on in airports any better.

Do you consider the forms of cancer which are curable and treatable not a "real" form of cancer?

While I certainly agree with you that it's nowhere near as bad as rape or sexual assault, it's certainly something I'd go to jail for if I did it to someone. Heck, if a cop did that invasive a search without probable cause, he'd face repercussions and probably a lawsuit.

Note that "sexual abuse" does not equal "rape". It would certainly be an insult if one were to compare it to rape, but that's no the case.

But the problem for me, and for many other people I'd imagine, is that when I'm at an airport, chances are I've paid a very large amount of money to be at a certain place at a certain time for what is probably an important reason

Freedom does not come cheap.

Imagine how difficult it would be if you had to fight for your liberties in the first place. Consider situations like these the cost of maintenance. If you don't have the financial means to bear risk like this man did, there are certainly other ways to participate like calling your representatives and writing letters.

I feel the same way. As a non-US citizen, I essentially have zero rights when it comes to many things in this country, and probably can look forward to seeing the inside of a cell if I tried asserting any peaceful disobedience at an airport (not to mention say goodbye to any chance of citizenship).

It does seem, however, that the dam is about to break on the TSA. The number of stories I see on the net seems to show dissent skyrocketing, although I admit this is a limited sample.

> It does seem, however, that the dam is about to break on the TSA. The number of stories I see on the net seems to show dissent skyrocketing, although I admit this is a limited sample.

The trouble is, increasing dissent by 100x still doesn't make much of a dent if it just means 99.9% of people are willing to be abused instead of the 99.999% it was before. From the comments by security staff typically quoted in these articles, it sounds like almost everyone sucks it up in practice, whether because they don't care or because they're too worried about not being able to make an important journey to protest the point.

I don’t think the percentage of people who won’t opt out is all that important. It would be a nice additional argument but it’s not really essential for the fight.

A few thousand outraged people with good connections, good stories and media that picks them up is sometimes all it takes.

It's important from a practical point of view. If 99.9% of people will consent to a certain government abuse, even if they do not condone it, then the government can commit that abuse and deal offensively with the other 0.1%. If 9% of people will consent to the abuse, dealing with the other 91% offensively doesn't work. This is what civil disobedience is ultimately all about: enforcing a law that most people don't agree with is not a sustainable approach, because there are always a lot more people than law enforcers.

Civil disobedience is luckily not the only way to reverse policy decisions. The topic seems to pick up a lot of steam even without masses of people refusing to be scanned. (I was very surprised to see that Spiegel Online [1] – one of the most popular if not the most popular news website in Germany – has the planned Thanksgiving boycott as its top-story [2] at the moment. That’s irrelevant for the discussion in the US but it shows that it’s a hot topic.)

[1] http://www.spiegel.de

[2] Pilots and Passangers Revolt Against Check Lunacy: http://www.spiegel.de/reise/aktuell/0,1518,729012,00.html

Agreed. I think organized synchronized boycotts would be much more effective than doing "civil disobedience" and/or drama queen shenanigans at the airport. Hit airlines in their wallet (and the related travel industries), and that will have a larger effect. Money talks. Large amounts of money talk loudly, especially to Congress.

What I always wanted to know is whether non-US citizens (tourists, people with a visa) can opt out. The TSA website doesn’t seem to make any distinctions, it just says “imaging technology screening is optional for all passengers.“ [0]

[0] http://www.tsa.gov/approach/tech/ait/faqs.shtm

I don't believe the TSA, at the routine level, make distinction between domestic and not (unless you fit a racial profile). It's when things heat up that the problems begin. Being arrested in the UK as a citizen of the UK is not a big deal IMHO, a night in a cell is a bummer, but not the end of the world. In the US, on a visa, I have no idea what is and isn't being recorded about me, and a reasonable amount of paranoia is required.

As the OP said, the other aspect is that you are flying because you need to be somewhere and flight is the only option. This more heavily biases international travelers towards compliance, because they have a lot more to lose in time/money if they don't board their flight.

Get the cheapest fare you can get out of your local airport to where-ever. Go there, do this, go home. If you make it through, just don't get on the flight.

Be nice to the airline though, they're not a fault (in this issue, at least). Get there early, let them know (afterwards) that you're not flying. Don't trouble them with a refund. Keep in mind that you're probably violating the T&Cs by not intending to get on the flight.

there's a real risk if you do this that you'll end up on the no fly. at least take a flight someplace, earn some miles and come back. Otherwise you may be seen to be performing surveillance, and that can land you in hot water.

And you know this because of the 0 documented cases of this happening, and your years of experience in counterterrorism operations?

That's tricky because there's a big possibility you won't even go through the backscatter. So anyone wanting to do this is not guaranteed to get their chance. Unless you have a printer toner cartridge with you. Fight on.

Donate to the ACLU so that when someone who does have the means to do something like this and gets taken to court, they get the legal help they need to win.

You don't have to be an activist to take action.

I'm in the same boat as you. I probably wouldn't go so far as to refuse both and get kicked out of the airport (although I would like to), but opting out of the scanner and going for "the grope" is probably the next best thing.

i travel every few months and do have the means to do what he's doing. my main concern is that if i get kicked off the flight and my ticket refunded, what will happen to my checked luggage?

You could always inquire with the airline.

Checked luggage will not fly on the plane without the passenger. Especially if he refused screening! They might want to search it some more but it will stay at the airport where you are.

Incorrect. If you get a bite to eat and miss the last boarding call (flying US domestic) the flight will leave without you but with your luggage.

The system would grind to a halt if this was not the case.

I accidentally downvoted you (phone). You're perfectly correct, as anyone who's just missed a flight will attest.

I'm not sure, and it's an interesting question.

I've been on international flights where we've been waiting on the tarmac to depart and a flight attendent has announced on the PA system that "we're just waiting to have the bags removed of someone who missed their flight".

I believe the current policy is strict for international flights (no bag without a passenger, must remove it if passenger misses flight), but looser on domestic flights. Not 100% sure that's true, but digging in some air-travel forums comes up with airline employees claiming the same thing as of late-2009.

There are lots of cases where baggage gets delayed or waylaid, and so the passenger ends up flying without their luggage. They then send that luggage onwards on the next flight — obviously without the passenger.

Yes, it would be hard to engineer that to happen, so it's not very useful to someone planning to do something nasty with it — but it does mean there can't be a strict no bag without passenger rule.

I can confirm from recent personal experience that on U.S. domestic flights, luggage can and will be carried on the flight without the passenger on board.

1. Flying back to SF from the east coast on AA - got to JFK a trifle late and just missed the check-in deadline - mainly because the lady at the counter took an inordinate time and appeared to be flirting with the guy just ahead of us in line - yes I tried to check-in online but that wasn't possible because my outbound flight was on a different airline. Go figure. In any event, we were put on standby for the next flight but didn't get into the flight. I was resigned to take my luggage back and find a place to stay overnight in NYC when the gate attendant informed me that our bags were going with the flight and I could collect them at the SFO AA office ! We finally got back that night to LAX (after not making it through a wait on another flight) and then managed a Southwest flight back to SFO the next morning and sure enough our bags were waiting for us.

2. Last weekend, we were on a SW flight from SAN to SFO. Flight was delayed because of bad weather, and there was an additional delay close to the destination where we were not cleared for descent. By the time we were allowed to land, they had run out of fuel (!!) and landed the plane in SJC. Unbelievably they fueled up and took off and landed in SFO - about 3 hours later. Thankfully they let anyone who wanted to get off at SJC deplane and that's what we did. Gave us the time to get home, pick up my car from SFO, have lunch, etc. and went back to SFO to pick up our bags soon after the flight eventually landed. So in this case too, the flight took off with our bags and without us.

Now, see, that's insane. If they were serious about security, as opposed to security theater, they would never let baggage fly without its passenger. Even if they search everything, you can't tell me you couldn't build plastic explosives into the wheels of a suitcase or something.

That's a very good point, but I'm pretty sure that in response to Pan Am flight 103 a lot of work was put into making cargo holds and containers able to withstand a decent sized blast.

[Edited after fact checking. I know I've seen a documentary on this, but I can't find any further info at the moment. I've probably also been added to some watch list based on my searches over the last half hour]

Like you, I can't find the exact info, but I'm pretty sure it was an episode of Aircrash Investigations. I saw a repeat with that episode a few months ago.

I didn't come away with the impression that they'd actually implemented blast-proof though, just that they'd redesigned so that some blasts wouldn't dramatically cause airframe failure.

Well, but that's still pretty cool. I didn't know this at all.

indeed, and this is part of my worry. i know that all luggage will fly the path of least resistance. if you check in 2 hours early and a flight leaves before you (and there's room for your luggage), your luggage will fly on that earlier flight.

hell, it might get blown up by a bomb squad, for all i know. i'm not into that.

The only airline that I know of that will absolutely not flu luggage without a passenger is ElAl. From personal experience I know that US airlines will fly your luggage without you.

The bigger problem, I think, is ending up on some black list.

So next time you want to fly and don't choose to participate in the "enhanced" version of the security theater, you might find yourself pulled out of the line "randomly" every single damn time.

Also there is no way to get off the black list, possibly ever. That is a pretty high price to pay.

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