You are no longer free to move around the country | Hacker News Reader

You are no longer free to move around the country

reason.com

84 pointskenjackson48 comments

The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution explicitly protects the people from unreasonable searches.

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

One might say that you submit to this as part of the deal to get on the plane. But if that were true, it would be between you and the airline, not the government. That means it really should be the airlines that decide how intrusive searches should be. And you would be free to choose an airline whose policies you agree with. And the airline would be free to reject you as a passenger.

The government has hijacked the relationship between you and the people you've hired to get you from point A to point B. Just because of previous lapses in their intelligence efforts enabled some people to do something terrible doesn't mean you lose your rights.

The Fourth Amendment only protects you if you aren't inside the "constitution free zone". And as it happens, about two thirds of the US population live within this zone.

See: http://www.aclu.org/national-security_technology-and-liberty... and http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/10/24/197215

Frightening. They've officially run amok.

The only good news in all of this is that it won't be too long before they've consumed every available resource and will have to cut back on the drugs that are making them act this way.

Not particularly relevant, since that's not the justification they are using for the TSA.

Could the term "search" be tested? (e.g., "we're scanning, not searching or seizing") Or perhaps "reasonable" vs "unreasonable"?

"But if that were true, it would be between you and the airline, not the government."

Apparently the airports can choose to opt out of the TSA and provide their own non-governmental security, like before 9/11. http://www.examiner.com/libertarian-in-national/florida-airp...

This is true (and SFO in San Francisco does not use the TSA). However, even the 5 private agencies airports may choose to use must follow the exact same procedures set by the TSA.

So, while the TSA may not write the paychecks for those airport screeners, they do set the rules.

Let's say that we had machine vision software good enough to not need a human to look at the scanner images unless it discovered undesirable objects on the person (I don't think that's so far fetched technologically). What percent of people who currently oppose these machines would do so if they were completely automated?

Personally, I still would, as I am more concerned about the government scanning me and finding other things that it finds undesirable. I have no intention of blowing stuff up, but if these things become widespread, I think they might well be used to search for things other than weapons. Constantly being searched for illegal objects when I go out in public would disturb me. That's why I don't like these things. But I bet most of the people are just opposed because of the naked pictures.

I don't have a problem with the scanners. I have a problem with:

    • Inconclusive reporting about the health effects.
    • Conflict of interest with Deepak Chopra.
    • Inconsistent attitude and treatment by TSA officials
    • Firm statements that the machines do not store images,
      and then stories about images being saved.
    • Policies such as banning TSA employees from wearing
      radiation measurement badges. 
    • Threats of $10k "civil lawsuit"
    • Pat-downs for children. 
    • etc, etc.

The scanners are not the problem. The problem is the TSA.

I'm quickly becoming disturbed with what is happening in the US.

I was reading the last few chapters of 1984 last night, for fun, and with what has been happening in the past few months, particularly with the TSA, I am starting to feel as though we are headed toward an Orwellian future. I really do not want to be unnecessarily inciting, but these incremental changes that are occurring are becoming more unsettling as time passes.

Absolutely. The state isn't expending all this energy (the development of the DHS, warrantless wiretapping infrastructure, etc.) for no purpose. The purpose is likely counter-insurgency, not terrorism.

I've said it before- take a train, bus, or don't visit (or live in) the USA. Well, looks like the last option will soon be the only one. I'll say it again- Americans, fix your government. The rest of the world is laughing at you. (and again, yes it's a nervous laugh. You scare us a bit too).

We're trying to fix it, problem is that the people who actually make decisions are more powerful than we all thought.

Just "fix it"? Care to elaborate on how ordinary citizens can pull that off?

Racism! Just fix it!

Never underestimate American zeal for non-public transportation.

edit: some biographical information might clarify this comment. I'm a 21 year old male from the midwest and budding car enthusiast. Additionally, I have a thing from making tongue-in-cheek comments that are absolutely non-obvious to everyone besides myself :)

I'm sorry, but even though I'm an American (or USAian, if you prefer) and support public transportation, wish it was better and more widespread, &c.-- it's simply shortsighted and simplistic to ascribe it to zeal for private ownership of automobiles. Although enjoyment of the private auto is a distinctly American and capitalist thing, the fact is that it's drastically less expensive and challenging to leverage public transportation in Europe, which is a much smaller land mass.

That statement was very tongue in cheek. I'm from Ohio originally and love driving. I brought a car with me to college, and will be living in Northern California with a car (I actually plan to buy a new one soon). Having lived with a "convenient public transit system" in NYC for 3 months, I can safely say I far prefer driving, if only for the purely selfish and capitalistic reasons :)

You're hitting on what I was getting at though, which is that it's just not that big of a deal to the average American, because we drive. Next time I will leave being clever to the professionals :P

Be as clever as you wish and do not worry about downvotes.

I see that argument a lot but am not really convinced by it. Sure the US has a bunch of land for the population it has, but that is mostly because it has a lot of unpopulated areas in the middle. There's no reason that the actual urban areas need to be less dense and that's where most of the trips happen. There's plenty of countryside outside London or Paris to expand into, so European cities aren't denser because space is at a premium.

I think the real difference is that even in urban areas the US has a much larger tendency to build suburban, single-family housing whereas in Europe apartment buildings are much more common. People prioritize living close to the city center and having a 5 minute commute over having a house and a garden and spending 1+ hours on the highway every day. So it's much more about local density and that is a function of urban planning decisions/preferences and has nothing to do with TotalPopulation/TotalLandMass.

Cars are amongst the easiest of things to track - cameras with license plate recognition, and potentially with the capability to also photograph the driver are widely deployed, in many places in Europe; I don't know about the US. With an infra-red flash, you'll not necessarily know you were photographed.

I live in Europe and never heard of this. Care to share a link?

I don't have a link handy, bit it's been widely discussed on Bruce Schneier's blog (http://www.schneier.com/blog/) in the past, especially in the context of the UK.

'Average Speed Cameras' in the UK use automatic number plate recognition technology. They 'read' your licence plate at set intervals and use that to work out how fast you're going on average, rather than at a single sample point like a traditional speed camera.

A few years back the police were agitating to get these cameras on every motorway and A road with a camera every half a mile.

The stated reason was specifically to allow tracking of vehicles after crimes had been committed, but everyone was suspicious that it was just to raise revenue by catching more people speeding and I think the scheme has been scaled back.

I'll say it again- Americans, fix your government.

Where are you from? I bet I can find some problems wrong with your country that could be solved with "Well, just fix it," too. Especially if I get to be vague and use a 1 minute newsclip as proof.

// edit: After watching the clip, it sounded more like they performed an exercise, in the event of a real situation. Not that they planned to do checks at greyhound stations everywhere, every day. And its good that they're performing exercises, rather than treating everything as a real situation.

I honestly don't think I could live in this country if this sort of thing became the norm for bus and rail travel. I take the train every day to work, each way and back, and given the crowding and delays, it would be so infeasible to have this sort of security theatre when no such threat to these transit systems exist.

I heard the same thing said about the atrocious security theatre at airports, especially the really busy ones like O'Hare. It was going to be temporary, I heard, because there was no practical way it could be permanent. It's been 9 years. Feels pretty permanent to me, as much as I wish that it didn't. I'm afraid at this point the question is whether we're too late with our outrage (or perhaps if the present outrage is sufficient, which it probably won't be.)

If you think the naked picture machines are going to be limited to airports, you're just not paying attention.

I've already been opting out of flying. If these checkpoints were everywhere, i'd opt out of citizenship.

> If these checkpoints were everywhere, i'd opt out of citizenship.

Bullshit.

That might be abrasive, but it's realistic. These changes (as always) will come gradually so that each increment is not quite so bad as to spark riots, but when viewed as a batch change over 30-50 years will be something amazing. Scanners will be the norm for all public transport, possibly private transport and potentially many public spaces over the coming decades.

The idea that this will be limited to the US is rather charmingly naive too.

For sure. I think it will feature in the US, then Europe, maybe Northern Africa?

Australia would love to follow the lead of the US but not sure if we'd be able to justify the cost too early.

In the Netherlands your only option to move around 'untracked' is to use a bike or to walk, any other mode of transportation is monitored. And better leave your cell phone at home because telcos are required by law to keep location information for quite a long period.

> any other mode of transportation is monitored

Could you please elaborate? You don't have to show your ID or to be checked to board a train/bus.

The police are present at railway/bus stations, but I think it's the case in any other country in the world.

Any other country? Police certainly aren't stationed at railway and bus stations here in New Zealand.

I don't care about monitoring, if that's just having my picture being taken. Anyone can take my picture when I go out already.

But having my person scanned or groped or fingered is another matter entirely. And it does violate the fourth amendment which protects us from warrantless searches.

I'm not sure where I stand on it, but I do see a qualitative difference if the government were routinely using cameras in public areas with facial-recognition software to track people's movements around town, versus just using the cameras as security cameras. Given good enough computer vision, and ubiquitous enough cameras, the end effect can be very similar in tracking effect to the government being able to attach a GPS device to you.

It's true that it's all pieced together out of snapshots that would individually be unobjectionable (someone taking a photo of me in a public place), but the end result seems rather different. If a private party attempted to do it, we'd normally consider it a form of harassment, and it'd be illegal in a lot of jurisdictions. You can photograph someone in a public area, but you can't hire an army of photographers to photograph them all around town as they go about their daily routine and plot their movements on a map, because that'd be weird/objectionable.

its still not a search

What do you mean by untracked? You can buy a single ticket to any place without showing your ID. I don't think I even needed one for an Amsterdam -> Brussels train.

Since a few months we have the "OV Chipcard" which requires regular users of public transport to check in / out when entering / leaving the public transport system.

On a large number of stations the tickets are only sold using electronic vending machines that do not accept cash.

In the US, one can purchase pre-paid credit cards with cash. Is that option easily available to people in the Netherlands?

Well you can always travel without a ticket. I am showing the controllers a ticket that expired on 17th November and so far nobody noticed. (of course I do have the new monthly ticket under it...)

Hehe, cool :)

This is not hacker news. Leave it on reddit.

When only the state is free to do what it wants, only the state will hack.

Since when has legality had to matter for hackers when hacking?

i speak of freedom, not legality. If the gulag awaits you if you're caught, that's a completely different story than it would be if you hack in a society governed by rule of law. But don't take my word for it. Ask the North Korean hackers.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com