Americans Shocked to Find Their Rights Literally Vanish at U.S. Airports | Hacker News Reader

Americans Shocked to Find Their Rights Literally Vanish at U.S. Airports

theamericanconservative.com

132 pointspseudolus55 comments

I fear that within another 10 years it won't just be airports. I wouldn't be surprised to see this type of "security" at train/bus stations, stadiums, movie theaters, churches, etc.

My understanding is that the definition of 'border zone' that CBP and others use includes anywhere within 100 miles of the border, which covers roughly two thirds of the US population.[0]

So you mightn't even have to wait 10 years!

[0]: https://www.aclu.org/other/constitution-100-mile-border-zone

And if you include all international airports as “borders” it’s even worse.

Maybe it will be automated through facial recognition and other sensors. All public places will be monitored for deviant behaviour.... crimes caught through CCTV and AI.... sir you were seen littering on July 10th 2031

sure, fear is being used to allow government to control more and more sectors of society. there is always enough fear to go around and be used to justify more intervention, whether security or services.

if somehow you run out of fear, just declare it a right that all are by being human entitled to and fall back, its for the children.

people are easy to exploit, that is why both corporations and politicians have marketing teams. they might call those teams by different names but the end result is the same, to get the public to go along with the desire of those who want money from, support of, or control over.

It's already been beginning: https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/realid

A quote:

> If you fly within the United States or enter secure federal buildings and military bases, you will need a valid passport or other federally approved document, such as a REAL ID driver license or identification card, beginning October 1, 2020.

So, we need a passport to go between states, or a REAL ID...

Have you seen these places? Then taken a look at the funding for these places? Then how much this level of security actually costs? The only way to do it would be to greatly expand the TSA staff; I'm not sure you can even hire fast enough. Airports are this tight on security because they are international ports above all.

Aside from stadiums which are almost as ridiculous with their security protocols solely to get lower insurance bills (usually by contracting security staff on event day with the cheapest contractor at the time), security is shit enough at these places and there's zero money to do anything about it.

Many LA metro stations don't even have turn styles or staff beyond the guy sitting in the front of the train; people walk onto the train and sit down without paying. Bus stations are commonly just a tiny metal sign attached to something already upright. Churches can barely afford their buildings as they stand. Movie theaters, not much better situation there. These places can't even afford a mall cop.

Fascism starts at the borders/ports of entry for a couple of reasons. First, these measures aren't meant to protect you, they are meant to keep you from leaving. See no fly lists, the Soviet Union, Berlin Wall vs Trump's wall.

Second, it's an experiment to test practices that are later implemented on American soil against every citizen. The public is acclimated slowly over time to the point that they will be completely apathetic once the same policies are officially dictated at a national level.

Literally

Title is misleading; this is taking about border control at airports. Electronic searches way up.

How is this misleading?

The headline implies it's about the TSA, or about airports.

Welcome to Fascism, ladies and gentlemen.

No rights, no respect for due process, nobody to call for help.

"Papers, please" was an invasion back in WWII, and here we are being scrutinized in every modern-conceivable way. Nobody bats an eye?

Security/safety trade-off. You read a lot here about rights, intrusion etc but this site doesn't cater for people who are representative of most people. Most people aren't the least bit concerned about the authorities checking their id, scanning their bags etc at the airport.

It's not a trade-off because there isn't a shred of proof that it makes things safer. We have a term called "security theater" for a reason, and that reason is this.

X-raying belongings and scanning for guns/knives and swabbing luggage for explosives is absolutely not security theatre and provides a non-zero chance of detecting bad actors.

This isn't a response to what I said, but if you do have something to contribute to that I would love to hear it. It would be very interesting.

Sure. When it's done well. I once got on a plane with a folded tv antenna as my carry on (it was aluminum and I worried it would get bent if checked)

Sure it was wrapped in luggage plastic film. But it still was a meter long tv antenna. And I clearly asked at every step.

Another guy apparently accidentally went onto a plane with a loaded gun (https://abcnews.go.com/US/tsa-lets-loaded-guns-past-security...)

And don't get me started on the security guys pretending to check backpacks at big public places.

I have kept a cheap pocket knife in my backpack for the last three years of traveling and TSA has yet to find it. I don't do anything special, it's just sitting my my bag, and I fly maybe 10-20 times a year, domestic and international. It's definitely theater to a certain extent. Is there a nonzero chance of catching a bad actor? Sure, but it's not much higher than zero. They did find and confiscate a 3/8" driver socket wrench though because it was longer than 6". Thank God they kept that off the plane...

Funny to read that, I forgot my folding knife which has a reasonably big blade inside my backpack. Went through the security of 3 different countries, no one found it, was mortified myself to find that huge blade when I arrived.

On the other hand, they are extremely good at finding bottles of water and taking those away. Either the TSA agents are always dehydrated, or they figured out that all terrorists drink water.

TSA’s tests show 95% failure rate.

If it’s the non-zero chance vs. privacy trade off you’re interested in, strip everyone naked at TSA, and get your clothes back at baggage claim at the other end, that’s better odds.

If you disagree with that, then you also don’t think safety beats privacy. You just have a different line.

>TSA’s tests show 95% failure rate.

Yet in 2018 they

- Discovered 4,239 firearms, 3,656 of which were loaded

- Smoke grenades

- An inert grenade

- Lighter fluid

- Fireworks

- Five replica mortar shells

https://www.tsa.gov/blog/2019/02/07/tsa-year-review-record-s...

In 2015 TSA seized knives from just ONE airport. 22,044 'dangerous items' total at U.S. airports that year.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/how-many-weapons-did-the_b_11...

Yes stuff is going to slip through but uh, 3656 loaded firearms last year... I'd call that a victory. I'm very, very, pro 2a. I am very, very, very against people carrying loaded firearms on a thin aluminum can at altitude.

5% detection rate means: If I get shot 20 times, I won't be happy if my bulletproof vest stopped one of the bullets, and that happening 5000 times won't make me happier.

That's not very much. There are close to a billion air travelers per year in the U.S. alone. If they discovered 22,000 dangerous items, that either means that only 0.0022% of passengers are carrying a dangerous item, or they're letting a large number of dangerous items through. It's perfectly consistent for them to have a 95% failure rate and still have < 0.05% of travelers actually carry a dangerous weapon.

A more likely reason why we we haven't had any air incidents since 9/11 is that most people have little interest in blowing themselves up (let alone other people) at altitude.

And reinforced locked cockpit doors.

In the context of firearms? Sure that's great from preventing someone that gets a gun in the cabin from shooting the flight crew. Someone shooting the sides of the plane however is still going to penetrate and at best cause a rapid depressurization of the passenger area (and under the right conditions, a catastrophic failure of part of the fuselage) as you're talking about a 1/8 inch thick bit of aluminum with some fiberglass and plastic between you and it, if one round doesn't fully penetrate from common handgun calibers then a second round in the same spot (and at point blank range that is trivial) will almost certainly get through. Someone that was so inclined could easily fire multiple rounds into the same spot, from their seat, before anyone could react if they were motivated. Even under optimal conditions, you'd probably experience some loss of life purely from the oxygen deprivation in those with preexisting conditions as the flight crew took the plane down low enough for passengers that didn't get masks on to be able to get adequate oxygen.

Some people are absolutely crazy and simply want to do harm to others, or just to be infamous which doing harm to others will potentially result in. If TSA only manages to find 1% of hidden firearms/knives/explosives/flammable liquids in baggage, that 1% could be the difference between 0 deaths and 10s or hundreds of deaths.

TSA needs to change, sure, a lot of what they do is ineffective. People need to get over their delicate sensibilities and be more comfortable with profiling, profiling works in security settings, just look at El Al.

El Al gets thrown under the bus for racial profiling but they just aren't looking at people based on race or accent, they're looking at many things and putting it together big-picture to determine who to look at closer.

TSA lacks this training and unfortunately are guilty or racial profiling, like when they detained YouTube personality Jus Reign some years back when he (most likely) was selected for secondary screening because as a Sikh he was wearing a turban. And yes, TSA gets carried away with searching elderly and children quite invasively at times, and this needs improved considerably but x-ray, back scatter, chemical testing, dogs, metal detection, I'm quite fine with this for air travel.

If an hour or two of extra inconvenience saves me 8, 16, 32 hours of driving then it is fine. It's an aircraft travelling at tens of thousands of feet above the earth, were something as simple as mercury introduced to a scratch in the aluminum fuselage can cause a catastrophic failure. Where a small fire can easily get out of control and be fatal for the entire flight at worst or just cause respiratory issues from burning plastics for multiple passengers and result in an emergency landing. Or where someone with a small blade can easily take out multiple passengers tens of minutes, or an hour or more from emergency medical response.

> Someone shooting the sides of the plane however is still going to penetrate and at best cause a rapid depressurization of the passenger area

A clean shot through will be barely noticeable and the pressurisation system could easily compensate, people likely wouldn't need oxygen even at FL400 while descending.

>A clean shot through will be barely noticeable

A (likely) golfball size hole is something the aircraft's pressurization system can 'easily compensate' for? Common handgun rounds punching through soft aluminum isn't going to leave a small hole, especially with a bunch of higher pressure air following right behind it.

Genuinely asking here, I have no idea what sort of volume they can pump at.

Myths section:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depressurization

Back when my wife was a wedding coordinator I used to joke how everything wedding related was absurdly overpriced and kiddingly asked "What, next? Wedding water?" Then some bright light applied the idea by custom labeling bulk-purchased water bottles with the date of the wedding and charging a huge markup.

So when my cynical side envisions selling disposable tyvek lab suits [1] as Travel Wear, maybe with a discreet frequent flyer status logo embossed on the breast to save everyone some trouble I think no, hell no. I don't want that to actually be a thing. Then again if the whole suit is just colored gold, platinum, etc, perhaps it saves a little time boarding and prevents queue jumpers. Heck maybe we just print the suits with a giant boarding number on the back. No suit? You board last, except on Southwest, of course.

[1] https://www.coverallsdirect.com/product-category/dupont-tyve...

Just going to leave this here:

https://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/news/2015/02/27/ex-delta...

I'm an advocate for security screening. I'm even fine with a bag swab or pat down. I've been flying all 30 years of my life to many parts of the globe.

What's going on in this article, if true, is not ok, it is not productive, and it is spreading a culture of fear and surveillance TO OUR OWN CITIZENS.

We are not China, Russia, or any other country that would create such a situation, but we are letting it happen.

I don't think people are against the accepted forms of surveillance you are mentioning, I think we're against the excessive stuff that's been going on.

"We" don't have a shred of proof because that information is highly sensitive and not shared with the general public. I see a lot of people linking articles in the thread: the numbers range from 30% effectiveness in tests to 5% effectiveness based off of vague statements made in a closed press meeting. Every article reported a different one... from the same meeting?

The MSM is full of arrogant morons desperate for clicks, hating the government is popular, reporting on classified programs is hard, and the TSA has every incentive not to release accurate information - I would bet good money those numbers are wrong. The government does a lot of dumb things but I do not think the entire TSA would exist if it was only 5% effective.

> The government does a lot of dumb things but I do not think the entire TSA would exist if it was only 5% effective.

What if it's 95% effective at providing jobs and funnelling money from the government to private enterprises (who just so also happen to lobby for more laws and such that just so happens to also support the expansion of the TSA, or purchasing, or hiring, or...).

Basically - you assume that the purpose of the TSA is about security.

You also make the assumption that, even if it were about security and everything was on the up-and-up (yeah, right) - that if it were only 5% effective that it would be shut down. I am almost 100% certain that there are and have been many, many programs in the past that have lasted for a far longer period of time than the TSA has so far, which were/are less than or equal to 5% effectiveness for their supposed purpose.

Again - likely because their primary purpose has no connection to their actual purpose, which is the funnelling of money from the public coffers to the private sector.

What a wild assumption, that the Transport Security Agency's purpose is security...

> I am almost 100% certain that there are and have been many, many programs in the past that have lasted for a far longer period of time than the TSA has so far, which were/are less than or equal to 5% effectiveness for their supposed purpose.

Why is it OK to make this assumption but not assume that the TSA is trying to to their job, even if their success is disputed?

Fun fact: often the same people here who are concerned about rights, intrusion, privacy, etc in meatspace are not concerned when this happens in their turf (software) with modern practices taking control away from users in the name of security in giving it to developers and big companies.

Right. You want to see my papers? I'm flattered, here you go. Oh, I don't have them? Then I'll just throw a hissy-fit like any self-respecting American would and then move along my way.

Oh. Since full body scanners are now everywhere, why do we still need to take our goddamn shoes off?

These things happen slowly, over a period of time. People will be up in arms if it happened overnight, but since it is happening (relatively) slowly, people often don't take notice, and if they do notice, they kinda brush it off. There is also the mentality of "I did nothing wrong, it won't happen to me ever"

Also, most people are just trying to survive, with their mediocre pay and boring jobs. It is not like the 50s and 60s where people had the time and energy to protest

>It is not like the 50s and 60s where people had the time and energy to protest

It has more to do with the lack of education than free time. We live in a society obsessed with entertainment, and completely ignorant of basic civics and logical/scientific reasoning.

Straight out of Confuscian textbook on governing the masses.

Alternatively, liberal democracy was never really so liberal or democratic as it was supposed to be. People look at local suspensions of rights, and see it as fascism, but I feel like the truth is a bit more subtle. It can be fascism. The Nazis extensively used 'exceptions' to persecute their enemies. On the other hand, it's really hard to imagine a functioning capitalist society where all of the rights people have in theory were actually upheld in all cases. Federal or local agencies blithely ignoring the law when it suits them is absolutely not new. The FBI disregard for privacy under Hoover, for example, extended to wiretapping a sitting president. (Also after Hoover, but that's another story).

I think realistically, there's no clear divide between fascism and liberal democracy. People like Orban, Duterte, etc, live in the middle ground. Fascism is what capitalist states do when they are threatened. Sometimes that's on the micro level, when a police officer who's job is basically to harass homeless people is more brutal than strictly required by the job. Sometimes that's on the macro level, when we decide felons shouldn't have voting rights, or that privacy is an alienable and even occasional right.

There is a rant/comedy clip where George Carlin explains why nobody has rights.

If needing to walk through a scanning device, having all of my items go through x-ray, have a dog sniff my crotch, having someone wipe down my stuff for explosive residue, so I can get on an airplane and reasonably expect to not have someone hijack it with a gun, bomb or box knife to hold me hostage for a year or slam me into a skyscraper, then so be it.

I'll walk through the entire airport naked as the day I was born if it deters even one would-be hijacker or finds one mentally disturbed individual that wishes to do us harm (example Federal Express Flight 705 where an employee facing termination flew jump, entered the cockpit with a guitar case containing hammers and a speargun with the intent to kill the flight crew and suicide with the plane so his family would get the insurance payout, fortunately the flight crew managed to subdue him despite suffering serious injury and safely land the plane).

An airport isn't a place where I expect privacy, or generous freedoms. I'm getting in a manned missile with tens to hundreds of strangers. Flying on an airplane is not a constitutional right, it is a privilege. If I have to show photo ID and go through all the above to be able to get anywhere in the country in hours, I'm wholly fine with that. If you don't like it, you're more than welcome to drive hours or days across the country or get on a boat and spend days and days travelling across the ocean and more days travelling across a continent by car or train to get to your destination without most of the security measures.

You can reasonably expect that without any of this nonsense since it is so rare that things like that happen.

Last year alone TSA discovered 4,239 firearms, 3,656 of which were loaded.

https://www.tsa.gov/blog/2019/02/07/tsa-year-review-record-s...

What's your point? Keep in mind the TSA's own internal testing has found them to be largely ineffective.[1][2]

[1]https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelgoldstein/2017/11/09/tsa...

[2]https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/investigation-breaches-...

My point? My point is there were 3,656 less loaded firearms in airplanes last year in the United States than there would have been without TSA, and 20-something thousand 'dangerous devices' total kept off the flights.

That's 3,656 less chances of a hijacking, or accidental discharges depressurizing a cabin and causing an emergency landing. Really, the number of chances is likely higher than that considering many of those instances likely came with one or more connecting flights.

You can still catch those firearms with a simple metal detector. You don't need device searches or indefinite detention.

If the TSA is 95% ineffective, that would mean 20x the amount of loaded guns made it through (in reality guns are probably found more often). This would still be tens of thousands of loaded guns that made it through without any incident. People forget about guns in their bags all the time. This statistic is orthogonal to what I said before.

> You can reasonably expect that without any of this nonsense since it is so rare that things like that happen.

Deterrence is certain to play a part in the lack of incidents.

Is the real deterrent the exercise before we board a plane that apparently only stops 5% of the weapons people bring, or the observation that given people know their lives are forfeit once the bad guy shows his intentions, the passengers will rise up to thwart the bad guy?

There's a lot of problems with this statement and the "freedom vs. security" thing is not even the main one.

Why stop at flights, why not expect this in every facet of your daily life if deterring even one would-be hijacker or finding one mentally disturbed individual that wishes to do us harm is so valuable?

Why not be required to drive or walk naked? A car is simply a missile with wheels and no wings, and cars are also not mentioned in the Constitution.

Why are people who ride trains or drive cars deserving of less protection?

This article is about CBP (landing in the US), not TSA (boarding a plane).

I'm normally exceptionally thick skinned but reading this has left me offended on so many levels that I'm unable to formulate a high quality response. And yet I'm emotionally compelled to express my outrage anyway. I'll just say that some things are more important than human lives.

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