TSA tries out another biometric system
papersplease.org
papersplease.org
I can’t even reason about cost or burden to benefit trade offs without knowing a benefit, and I have never seen any clearly stated. Just vague handwaves (“obviously this makes us safer” or circular justification.
* I am not asking for legal justification, which is itself unclear as explained elsewhere on John’s site.
It doesn't have anything to do with the transportation safety; that's what the bag and person searches are for.
TSA should be identity-agnostic. Leave IDs to Immigration.
Otherwise, it is unlawful in most US jurisdictions and for most things to prohibit ticket resales.
Sometimes the reason is really stupid. Like with liquids, it's as basic as selling more concessions.
"accurately" -- rolls eyes.
Put a small bottle of silicone lube in your carry-on and watch the slapstick.
Apparently silicone lube comes up as a totally unusual color on TSA carry on screens. At least in Austin, TX--nobody recognizes it (I bet SFO wouldn't have this problem).
I had 4 fairly small, young ladies mulling over a bottle that I had forgotten about (normally my luggage is totally air travel optimized but I had been doing a lot of driving travel with my wife and didn't do a good enough purge). I was like, look, it's under the limits, but just throw it out. I'm not in a hurry but I also don't want to be held up forever and miss my plane over an $8 dollar bottle of liquid.
In spite of the quite obvious labeling, one of the young ladies decided to get a bit snippy and demand what it was. Erm. Okay. It's written on the side of the bottle, but you asked for it.
So, I got to explain in excruciating and visceral detail in my rather stentorian voice that small women like her and her cohorts often need a bit of help when they attempt to have sex with someone who has an enormous dong like mine. THAT was the purpose of the bottle that has the words "sexual lubricant" emblazoned on the side.
All four of the women blushed to the top of their ears. Quite a few people in line chuckled. My wife rolled her eyes with her "I'm so put upon" expression. They finally threw the bottle out and waved me through.
At the gate board, a Good Ole Boy Texan--hat, boots, and belt buckle-stopped us with a full drawl "That was great and they so deserved that. How bout I buy y'all a beer?"
It was a good beer.
The much more likely explanation is that there is some threat where the neer-do-wells would use X oz of something bad to mess up a plane or the passengers. Maybe X=5 and it is to prevent lone wolf attacks. Maybe X=21 and the argument is they would need to get 7 bad guys onto the plane to do it, which decreases the odds significantly that it could be pulled off without security agencies figuring out the plan.
But you need the actors on board too. The name list, which naturally gives lots of false positives because it's just a list of names, gives agents something to do. It fills their day and makes them feel the persistent threat.
Instead of "nothing happened last month, hmm, or the month before that" they actually get a calendar full of things. It's a really terrible setup if you have the same name as a terrorist, but without it they literally are just Thousands Standing Around.
It's total bullshit. The politicians who created this system should be prosecuted for subverting the constitution, but there is no conceivable way for that to happen.
I think your argument is that the government simply cannot be justified in restricting someone who hasn't been convicted of any crime.
Wouldn't that reasoning also apply to restraining orders and personal protective orders? They do not require a trial, and the burden of proof is pretty low.
You could make a distinction based on how broad or narrow the restrictions are. Not being able to fly anywhere is more restrictive than staying 100 yards away from one particular person. But that's a different argument than there being something fundamentally wrong with the concept.
You have to present evidence before a judge, evidence that could be admissible in court. Yes, the bar for most restraining orders is low (often simply the sworn word of the requestor plus some other evidence like police reports or testimony of others), but so is the level of restraint. The key fact is the subject of said order can fight it in open court and the claims or evidence raised by the requestor can be challenged.
One can reasonably argue as to the merits and drawback of such a system but at least they interlock with due process.
But a secret no fly list based on classified or otherwise inadmissible evidence is a completely unrelated and immoral thing.
But it would still be possible (with judicial review) to put people on a no-fly list who the government nevertheless has no grounds to arrest for anything, just as it is possible today to issue restraining orders for people who the government has no grounds to arrest.
That specific argument against the no-fly list is really the only thing I was trying to take issue with.
Restraining orders and personal protective orders are court ordered according to the constitutional framework. They aren't things that are randomly assigned by airport employees.
An intelligence agency can probably figure out that someone is associated with terrorists before evidence is available to convict them beyond reasonable doubt. Maybe it’s even appropriate that the legal standard to get secondary physical screening during air travel is lower than the legal standard to get thrown in jail? I welcome any opinions on that question - I feel it’s in the background of the original post and this discussion.
[1] https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/...
No. That's a subversion of due process and politicians who support such systems are enemies of the American people.
Perhaps the evidence our suspect bombed a plane wasn’t quite strong enough for “beyond reasonable doubt”, but they did lose a civil case from the victim’s families under “preponderance of evidence”. Whence cometh the opinion that “beyond a reasonable doubt” must be the standard of evidence before someone is searched before boarding a plane?
When attempting to board an airplane, where different levels of physical screening take different amounts of time and resources to perform, and it’s not practical to fully screen everyone, we ought to apply the same legal standards of a criminal conviction to differentiate different levels of screening? Even if there’s “clear and convincing” evidence the person bombed a plane before, we ought to let them through anyway without even patting them down? Do we need a jury of peers at the ready at every checkpoint to make this determination? Would you also apply this same standard before someone could be restricted from admittance to the halls of congress, to Fort Knox, or to a warehouse in a major city storing many tons of seized fertilizer?
For reference, here’s a full list of the standards of evidence in the US, ordered from weakest to strongest:
1. Some evidence
2. Reasonable indications
3. Reasonable suspicion
4. Reasonable to believe
5. Probable cause
6. Some credible evidence
7. Preponderance of the evidence
8. Clear and convincing evidence
9. Beyond reasonable doubt
Sure, a trained person can probably kill with dental floss, but nowadays between the armored cockpits and the willingness of passengers to swarm a bad guy the risks of anything but a bomb are pretty low.
What if they have illegal evidence that you’re dangerous and can’t arrest you because it wouldn’t hold up? What if they’re not ready to arrest because they think you might lead them to people higher up in your organization?
Think mafia. Sure the thug did illegal crap and you know it, but he isn’t worth arresting. You want the boss.
Or to use a more scifi spin: Data science says you are 99% likely to blow up a plane. But you have done nothing illegal yet. Now what?
edit: for the record I don’t think any of this is a good idea, I’m exploring what the reasoning might be
Then that is a civil rights violation right there. Police shouldn't have illegally gathered evidence. Police should not be making decisions based on illegally gathered evidence. Police should not be making an endrun around the courts to apply punishments (such as forbidding travel) based on illegally gathered evidence.
I think the point of disallowing evidence found those ways is to discourage investigators from using those ways. If they can use it, they will seek it.
>Data science says you are 99% likely to blow up a plane. But you have done nothing illegal yet. Now what?
Totally off topic, but my proposal: a social worker should reach out to you and help with whatever problems you have. Very few people harm others just for the thrill of harming others. There's usually some other cause (revenge, poverty, desire to be heard).
So basically you watched Minority Report and thought it was a great idea? I think you missed the point.
> Think mafia. Sure the thug did illegal crap and you know it, but he isn’t worth arresting
If there is evidence somebody might blow up or hijack a plane and they must therefore be kept off that plane, then that person should be arrested. Do you think forbidding them from boarding the plane but letting them walk free without being arrested won't tip off the rest of their organization? Give me a break.
Also I’m pretty sure you can’t arrest people for something you have evidence they might do if they haven’t done it yet.
If “might do” means actually planning to commit a crime and then taking some material action to further that plan, then they can be charged with attempt.
I can't imagine a scenario where blowing up an airplane full of civilians would fall into the category of "not worth arresting".
> Or to use a more scifi spin: Data science says you are 99% likely to blow up a plane.
That's fiction for a reason--there's no possible way to know that from "data science". In the real world, you can know that from things like direct evidence that this person is involved in a plot to blow up an airplane, which is something they can be arrested for.
If you are confident in your ability to stop them at the checkpoint if they actually try to board a plane, why arrest immediately when you can try to obtain more leads?
Then they shouldn't have resorted to illegal means to gain that evidence. Using it to prevent someone from flying or to subject them to "advanced screening" is no more justifiable than using it in court.
> What if they’re not ready to arrest because they think you might lead them to people higher up in your organization?
They would share responsibility for whatever additional crimes you end up committing in the meantime because they failed to act on the evidence which they had. Until they actually bring the matter up in court, however, you remain a free citizen and ought not be subjected to special restrictions or mistreatment without a trial on the basis of secret evidence.
People don't blow up planes by accident. You're either planning to blow up a plane, in which case you have already done a number of illegal things, or you're not, in which case you're 0% likely to blow up a plane.
Fun thing I learned recently in a Netflix documentary: It used to be legal to be a mafia boss because you weren’t the one doing illegal things. Someone had to fight real hard in the 70’s to create a new law that made it illegal to tell others to commit crimes.
It was legal to own C4 that doesn’t smell until 1996. A new law after a series of bombings made it illegal.
https://www.atf.gov/explosives/plastic-explosives-reminder
I wonder what’s legal now that will be obviously illegal in 20 years because it leads to future crimes?
The theater of everything right now is absurd, but there are reasons for using identity to narrow more narrowly search people who may have some probable cause. My concern with the TSA is that we search everyone, regardless of probable cause.
It's interesting that you bring up mafia in a conversation about the federal government. The federal government collaborated with the mafia dueing WWII and afterwards. So, no, that is not the government that should have power to manufacture evidence and pretend it was legally obtained.
Where it gets hazy to me is why this is a security add anymore. There was an initial scare of vetting that all travelers weren't secretly terrorists waiting to pounce on the cockpit. So you secure the cockpit (good, simple add-on there) and you add in metal detectors and X-rays for weapons and contraband (literally what we were doing pre-9/11). You need a passport to get into the country, so it's not like they don't have a record or a means to monitor suspected people coming into the country. Just seems asinine that they continue to do the ID checks and x-ray your entire body at this point.
Now that these companies are sucking on the teet of Uncle Sam, there will be incredible amounts of whining at any attempt to remove them.
Having a giant government database that documents precisely the travels of all citizens.
This can be cross referenced to put names to de-anonymize cellphones and SIMs that have been bought in cash.
However assuming that it takes a while for the suspect to decide to skip town, it’s perhaps useful. The next question is whether it’s worth spending the money on these machines, hiring people to run them, and inconveniencing the innocent travelers (presumably 10^9 X the number of perps collared) is worth the occasional arrest. Ignoring false positives of course. And especially when there are plenty of other ways to skip town.
I have a separate problem with scope creep.
But thanks for suggestions use case that can actually be considered. Is this reason ever used as a justification for the TSA?
Just think of all the criminals using cars to flee the law!
Google cache: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:qm8IZ5...
Text-only cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:qm8IZ5R...
Don't get me wrong: I don't like this at all, and I think the TSA is at best worthless, but this seems like a complaint that the inevitable happened. And resting a legality accusation on a form not having a paperwork reduction act notice is kind of :eyeroll: even if it's true.
https://www.tsa.gov/travel/security-screening/identification
“ In the event you arrive at the airport without valid identification, because it is lost or at home, you may still be allowed to fly. The TSA officer may ask you to complete an identity verification process which includes collecting information such as your name, current address, and other personal information to confirm your identity. If your identity is confirmed, you will be allowed to enter the screening checkpoint. You will be subject to additional screening, to include a patdown and screening of carry-on property. You will not be allowed to enter the security checkpoint if your identity cannot be confirmed, you choose to not provide proper identification or you decline to cooperate with the identity verification process.”
If I've not checked-in electronically and have to get a printed boarding pass, I've had to present ID and credit card at a kiosk or ticket desk as well.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondary_Security_Screening_S...
For domestic flights you don’t technically need an id but be prepared to wait a long time and/or be subjected to a invasive questioning/security search.
Edit: Got it. If I enable simple view in accessibility features, the option shows up for this site. The way it's implemented by Google is still dumb. This should be in the menu.
It's about how if you wanted to bypass the excruciatingly slow and invasive TSA checkpoints, you need https://www.tsa.gov/precheck or https://www.cbp.gov/travel/trusted-traveler-programs/global-... which involve extremely thorough background checks. You sacrifice personal privacy in exchange for saving time.
TSA has been a global people-tracking effort from the beginning through security theater. This is simply the latest addition to their repertoire.
About a month ago I had to be in court at a certain time and from past experience (filing and getting paperwork to the court) I knew they'd make you take off your belt if it had metal on it. That day I specifically wore a belt with no metal on it so I wouldn't have to take it off, but it didn't make any difference. The sign at security said "no metal objects" and then gave a list of example items with metal on them, belt included, and that was what the security agent pointed to when telling me I still needed to take my belt off. I objected, telling her my pants would fall down if I did and that the list was an EXAMPLE of metal objects, but the only response I got was that if I wanted to I could complain to someone at some other time. Another agent chimed in that they require you to take your belt off because "people could be hiding a knife in their belt", as if that made any sense at all. Isn't that what a metal detector is for in the first place? Anyway, I had no option but to take off my belt or I just wouldn't get to court on time. I let my pants fall down (I decided to do this earlier because I knew it was a possibility) and waddled through security with my pants around my ankles.
So yeah, what could I have done in that case? Just miss my court date?
Then, people have raised the unrelated issue of why ID checks are needed at all, and I can think of a couple, not sure of the actual reason: 1) Checking that you're not on the no-fly list. 2) Checking that there isn't a BOLO out on you, so that people with warrants, parole etc can't skip town easily.
The argument that it is to prevent secondary markets for tickets sounds hollow - airlines do their own ID checks when printing the boarding pass and at the gate.
Having thousands of travellers unmask themselves at exactly the same physical spot within seconds of each other [and inevitably breathe in and out a couple times] sounds like a MASSIVE risk to me during COVID-19.
It will almost certainly be found on an unsecured S3 bucket
[1] https://www.scmagazine.com/home/opinions/blogs/the-data-brea...
This premise is ridiculous. The Raleigh airport specifically addressed this:
“ Am I required to keep my face covering on while processing through security?
Travelers should wear a face covering while processing through security. TSA officers may ask an individual to adjust their face covering during the screening process for identification purposes, which is permitted under the executive order.”
https://www.rdu.com/fly-confident-fly-rdu/face-coverings/#4
And from the actual North Carolina Executive Order:
“C. Exceptions. This Executive Order does not require Face Coverings for-and a Face Covering does not need to be worn by a worker, customer, or patron who: ... 8. Is temporarily removing his or her Face Covering to secure government or medical services or for identification purposes.”
https://files.nc.gov/governor/documents/files/EO147-Phase-2-...
While the article says “many jurisdictions,” and I cited only one specific jurisdiction, the onus is on the claimant to prove that there are, in fact jurisdictions that prohibit security exceptions. It’s unlikely that security exemptions don’t exist in every relevant executive order, yet the article requires accepting that premise in order to make the claim that this is “illegal.”
As far as the conspiracy theory that collecting names and positive ID by TSA is somehow nefarious — this information is already available through passenger manifests from the airlines — airlines that themselves establish a positive ID for every passenger, requiring ID to board a flight.
I am not sure what the controversy is. Every country in which I have ever boarded an airliner does an ID check and shares manifest data with authorities.
If we are going to claim this is illegal, then a reasonable person would expect some proof of that, such as citing the actual statute relevant to the jurisdiction that is being violated.
Is is interesting that many people opposed to this are supportive of government run health care — a situation that doesn’t only give government your name, but also access to your entire medical history. HIPAA (in the US,) has numerous government exceptions, including the nebulous “public health interest.” If we are worried about TSA positively identifying travelers, then certainly we should all be fearful of positively identifying people under the auspices of health care.
https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/privacy/guidance...
The beginning of the sentence you quoted has a link to the information you're looking for but it seems the quote you've pulled has cut that off. The word "noted" in "As we’ve noted previously" is a hyperlink pointing here[1] which itself links to an example order[2] that doesn't contain any such exception.
[1]https://papersplease.org/wp/2020/06/08/tsa-to-take-mug-shots...
[2]https://www.smchealth.org/sites/main/files/file-attachments/...
Wish I was kidding...
Even worse than "security theater" precautions are misunderstandings of the threat model. Pandemic mitigation is not a boolean function. Do what you can and choose strategies to sustain suppression, then stop. Find efficiencies where they lie.
In a low-infection-count region, I don't see why you can't sing quietly in a chorus with masks. It's surely safer than eating in a restaurant.
> "It's surely safer than eating in a restaurant."
by saying "safer", without any qualifiers on magnitude, that's making the same mistake. most things we do on a daily basis are safe. being 0.001% less likely to get infected is technically safer, but not practically so.
what's not relatively safe? gathering with random people breathing each other's direct exhaust for long periods.
now, you might think a restaurant is an example of that, but it's not. yes, you'll be sharing exhaust with your tablemates, but you shouldn't be eating with people you don't know/trust in any indoor setting, not just in restaurants. and with just a little precaution (i.e., distance), tables are relatively isolated transmission-wise, despite the general misperception of the risks of aerosol transmission (most people aren't infected, but when they are, virus particles land nearby and fall apart relatively quickly). restaurants aren't particularly unsafe. the same can't be said for bars and clubs, which resist such safety mitigations by their very nature.
also, if singing softer is the only mitigation, rather than distancing with an awareness of vocal exhaust flow, then it isn't really much safer. avoiding extended exposure to natural exhaust is the key, proper distancing being the easiest (and often least inconvenient) and therefore most effective measure.
Uh.. no it's not. SafER is a comparison, you can compare two quantities without specifying their values.
As far as restaurants: indoor dining is the SINGLE largest transmission vector right now. It's a known risk, there are case studies after case study showing single infections propagating across a whole restaurant. Stay OUT of indoor restaurants anywhere that isn't at a stable and low infection rate. Seriously.
Singing? My guess is that quiet singing with masks is safer than restaurants, yeah. I might be wrong, but it's not because of a logic error.
Its possible but it sucks. Sure it risky, anything has risk. I accept that I can be infected or infecting other people. I never stop eat in a restaurant all these time, fortunately some still open.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/people-collapsing-coronavi...
Keyword here is scope. [Is there a smiley for hint-hint?]
While I agree that entrusting this data to a third party provider is not ideal... I also don’t think that hiring people to look at your passport, and then your face before letting you in the country is the future... seems a bit archaic no?
If they're stressing the illegality by saying the TSA doesn't have proper authority to do this, well, I'm no expert on US politics but I'm pretty sure they'd get that authority sooner than anyone would even think of changing this system.
The site links to an article of Form 415, which points out that the TSA has not had OMB approval for that form for 12 years, so "sooner" and "changing this system" are both long time scales.
Illegal is not an overstatement. The reasoning was given in the article - there are federal requirements on the TSA to have specific authorization.
They can't just start to demand people's papers in order to travel! Police demanding to see people's papers has happened elsewhere, and the whole world knows why that was done and how it turned out.
Yes, why? Why do you have to identify yourself to fly on a plane? Do you have to identify yourself to travel on a light rail? Take a taxi? Cross the street? As long as you pay for the ticket, that should be enough. Don't you think?
> I'd rather have this than some underpaid, high school graduate who'd rather frisk all the pretty ladies that come by or racially profile others.
Ah the noble virtue signal. Another epidemic running rampant throughout the country. If people didn't have to identify themselves in the first place, they wouldn't have to be frisked at all. Don't you see that giving in on the id part was just the first step towards getting frisked? How about no id and no frisking?
I understand the need for id on international flights, but not domestic flights.
There are folks trying to push for comparable ID and security requirements for trains.
Because 1 person can kill the 100s of others on board really easily. That's not true of any other means of transportation.
Edit:
People keep suggesting you could achieve the same result by:
* Blowing up the security queue \ lobby etc
* Blowing up a train\bus etc
* Blowing up a stadium
But this doesn't seem to be true. It's actually a lot less true than I thought.
A 747 carries 450+ people. An Airbus A380 carries over 850 people. A terrorist can kill them all with a single bomb. Plus people on the ground if they're over somewhere populated.
Compare that to the 7/7 bombings: 4 bombs, all large, detonated on very crowded trains (and one on a bus). They managed to kill 56 people total. Partly this is because jets are full of jet fuel, partly it's because anyone who survives ground attacks gets medical attention. Partly it's because you don't have to free fall 30k ft as well.
If the same 4 bombers took the same 4 devices onto planes, they'd might well have killed 1000s of people.
It's a surprising difference in effect. I hadn't realised it was this big a difference. But it's very clear. Blowing up a crowd or a ground based transport system is much less lethal than blowing up a plane.
You identify a danger, but do not tie the 'solution' of ID to how it mitigates the danger, what the tradeoffs are, and why it is a superior solution to other options.
Not only does this solution not solve the problem (unless you consider the problem to be "get re-elected" or "make my election contributors money"), but it centralizes vulnerabilities and makes any destructive event both more dangerous and easier to carry out.
Sounds like a problem, we'd better start screening people before they get in line for screening
Let me introduce you to the (pre-pandemic) joys of London Transport. Any of Bank, Euston, Kings Cross, London Bridge at rush hour could have a couple of hundred packed together. Even more if you can cause a disruption in the train schedules by pulling a few alarms or chucking bricks on the line, etc.
The 7/7 bombings in London killed just 56 people (including 4 bombers) with 3 bombs in packed tube trains underground (plus a bus). Compare that to a half full 747 where you would get 100% casualties.
And that's without crashing the plane into something...
They would never need to make it past a single layer of security to reach a line with hundreds of people in close proximity. But then you could also do this with trains, large hotels during business conferences, etc.
Any security expert will tell you that real evil isn't something you can protect people from. Fortunately, 99.9% of people aren't genuinely evil.
Although, it does make it clear that these security measures aren't about us, they're about protecting expensive property and reducing their liability once we get into that property.
For comparison, a small bomb on a near full 747 would kill 450 (plus people on the ground).
I think blowing up planes is just a really really efficient way to kill people compared to blowing up almost any other grouping of people...
>Fortunately, 99.9% of people aren't genuinely evil.
Very true. And those that are are generally more interested in making headlines than setting records for casualty numbers luckily...
EDIT - [1] Added another article (about another attack) just to show that this is a recurring event, and because the first article was of poor quality.
> I think blowing up planes is just a really really efficient way to kill people compared to blowing up almost any other grouping of people...
It would be if you could get onto the plane every time, and if you were willing to die. Once the terrorist surrenders their bags to be scanned the attack is no longer under their control.
And then there's the suicide aspect. If it's as easy as walking in, a single terrorist can repeat their attack many times over. If they have to get on the plane, it's almost certainly going to be with small device that they take with them directly rather than a bag under the plane.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/15/truck-bomb-mog...
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/21/asia/sri-lanka-explosions/ind...
And nobody's going to hijack another airplane to crash into something, because since 9/11, cockpit doors have been reinforced.
Also, you should consider the lockerbie bombing: 11 ground casualties from an airliner that was blown up 31,000 feet above their small, spread out village. Now imagine the same thing, only over a packed park of London\NYC\Tokyo and from 5000 feet instead of 30,000...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_Am_Flight_103#Lockerbie_re...
A person can kill hundreds or thousands of others, regardless of there being any transportation - thats MORE people than can be killed on a plane.
A single well placed and timed explosion on London Underground could easily take out 100s. Hell, Euston or Kings Cross on a Friday is the same. With multiple bombers, you get easily get into the 1000s.
Plus if you pick your Underground target(s) sensibly, you could cripple a large portion of London's public transport for months.
With 4 bombers in a football stadium, you could probably get 1000s without even thinking about it.
[1] https://news.sky.com/story/thousands-of-train-passengers-str... [2] https://london.web2ua.com/london-is-crippled-by-commuter-cha...
So what's special about international flights?
However, getting frisked does NOT require identification as a first step. I get frisked regularly at TSA and it's not because of identification.
Not light rail, but yes, you do need ID for Amtrak.[1]
However I haven't traveled on Amtrak in the past two years, so maybe it has changed.
The only thing you need ID for on the train is for alcohol purchases. Otherwise you're free to come and go.
Might have when we had to rebook a trip.
I'm someone who speeds. I should work on it, but I have a habit of speeding.
But I'm the first person in line wishing we had extensive speed cameras and stopped letting cops pull people over.
A speeding camera is impartial, it's not going to pull me over and grill me about who really owns the car as if a black guy can't own a nice car
(and before you say it, standard operating procedure for cops is asking if it's your car, it's not asking if it's your car then insisting it's probably not)
A speeding camera isn't going to unholster a weapon because my 2 seat car doesn't have a glovebox where they expected it to be
A speeding camera doesn't care that "I'm not from around here" and isn't going to ask why I'm there and maybe give me a ticket because it was having a bad day and doesn't like the outsiders.
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Whether we should ID for flights is it's own thing, but as long as we're doing it, I'm very for removing humans from the loop when it comes to unsophisticated enforcement. ie. AI shouldn't tell us who to stop, but it should be used when everyone is subject to the same stop
Often they take grainy photos, and only a photo. Still images aren't proof that you were speeding, just proof that something triggered the camera. Plenty of things can trigger it, including software faults.
Additionally it creates a horrible incentive for local government as a revenue stream with little to no incentive to fix something. Speeding cameras are unmanned, cheap, and just make money. And contesting a speeding camera ticket is so much more difficult than issuing it. All of this makes it easy to undermine due process.
I'm not saying speeding camera are perfect, I'm saying if police weren't allowed to pull people over I would face less discrimination and avoid situations where armed people approach me prepared to shoot me for moving
Compared to that grainy pictures is a joke.
You're talking about false positives, do police not have false positives, and more importantly, hundreds of false negatives?
The false negatives are what allow them to discriminate so readily, when most traffic is breaking a law it's easy to pick who you want.
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And perverse incentive for speeding is only a problem with cameras? Is that also a joke?
You think police departments don't have even worse incentives to stop people and seize their goods with little recourse? That's in addition to getting to write tickets?
When 20% of a cities prosecution budget comes from forfeiture like Philadelphia's did in 2018 it should be no surprise cops are extremely happy to pull people over for reasons other than public safety...
And contesting a speeding camera ticket is so much more difficult than issuing it? What does that even mean, is spending a day to multiple days contesting a speeding ticket not harder than it is for an officer to write a ticket?
Even when the officer doesn't show up to court you've spent at least a day, if not more fighting it.
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Of course, speeding tickets regardless of source show the true reality of our culture, that money changes the rules. So you can just pay an attorney who knows the judge personally and somehow your infraction is less serious...
I honestly don't see how installing speeding cameras prevents this. Could you elaborate for me what you mean here?
> And perverse incentive for speeding is only a problem with cameras? Is that also a joke?
No? But speeding cameras can issue a lot more tickets per day without needing to sleep, draw benefits, pension, etc. This particular incentive scales much more quickly for cameras.
> You think police departments don't have even worse incentives to stop people and seize their goods with little recourse? That's in addition to getting to write tickets?
Also no? I don't think I implied that. If anything, speeding cameras can free up officer's time to do worse things, e.g. asset forfeiture as you mentioned.
> And contesting a speeding camera ticket is so much more difficult than issuing it? What does that even mean, is spending a day to multiple days contesting a speeding ticket not harder than it is for an officer to write a ticket?
Time for officer to write a ticket / time for ticket recipient to contest
Vs.
Time for camera to write ticket / time for ticket recipient to contest.
It takes a lot longer for an officer to write a ticket. As a result, the asymmetrical effort of ticketing vs. contesting or otherwise dealing with tickets is significantly worse at scale.
Think about this for a second.
The numbers are not very different because the denominator is so much larger than the numerator
The camera and officer are vastly different but they both pale in comparison to the time in court.
And the time in court is what ruins the most vulnerable people!
Average traffic stop is 20 minutes from stop to citation say
5 minutes for the camera. (Most times manual verification is required by law)
If you compare 20 minutes to 5 minutes, it sounds like a mountain for time...
Last time I fought a ticket (before I wised up to the fact paying the judge's friend who is a lawyer reverses time in such a way you never sped?) it took 2 full days off work. 1 day to wait in line so I plead not guilty, 1 to actually contest, and officer was a no-show.
So compared to 16 hours, the difference between 1 second and 20 minutes is meaningful only for a moment.
Especially when you consider, not everyone has a job where they can just take 2 days off.
The police target people who cannot afford the ticket, and cannot afford the two days off. They are literally stuck between a rock and a hard place
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This all buries the real issue I mention in another comment.
You're comparing ticket to ticket, but they're not the same.
If an officer stops you they can give you a warning because they like your tone (you speak like them, or you're kind of pretty, or you don't look the type who'll do this again). Or they can give you a reduced speed.
Or they can give you an additional ticket because you they don't like your tone, or rather... you didn't full stop at that stop sign. The other cars going through it didn't either, but they weren't the marks.
Or they can say they smell weed and start pushing the boundaries of your rights and take advantage of the fact they target the populations with the least experience with their legal rights due to systemic failings in education
You compared time for the camera to time for the officer.
How many innocent people do you think took plea deals sending them to jail for what started as a traffic stop? That would still be free today if a camera had sent a ticket by mail?
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Your other comments also imply a lack of understanding in the role traffic stops play in modern policing. Not being able to stop people for speeding and even other minor traffic infractions would remove so much power from them that they consider it a non-starter (having cameras doesn't mean they can't stop people for speeding it needs it's own legislation)
You say it frees up time for stuff like asset forfeiture... traffic stops are the leading springboard for all of these ills: https://leelofland.com/josh-moulin-the-importance-of-traffic...
In part because traffic stops combined with extremely dense traffic laws have essentially turned driving into an invitation for stop and frisk.
Cops do not hide the fact they tail people to create invitations to stop them. It is all to easy to find even the most law abiding citizen break a law.
And additionally in part because the leeway cops have during a traffic stop is immense, and they're extremely well versed in taking advantage of ambiguity in people's rights and even basic psychology such as fearing police, into getting into people's lives well past a ticket.
Compared to all this, cameras end up having shortcomings that police have, but with a fraction of the terrible abuse that can come from it.
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Also, this isn't the point of the comment, but cameras don't sleep, but they can be turned off. Here in New York City speed cameras are not on 24/7. They only operate during school opening and closing hours when kids are likely to be coming and going
And not every state allows them everywhere (in fact I don't know of any that do, but some might).
Virginia, notorious for some of the most brutal speed enforcement in the country (https://insurify.com/insights/states-with-the-most-speeding-...) only allows them in school zones and highway construction.
Legislation that would attempt to limit where police go would be almost untenable, but legislation limiting speed cameras is popular with motorists and much easier to pass (it's sad but true, it's easier to convince motorists to be anti speed enforcement than anti overpolicing)
True for an individual case. However, my argument was that, at scale, the difference is massive, and adding speeding cameras doesn't stop cops from pulling people over. You just have police AND speeding cameras, both of which have problems, and the problems of neither are mitigated by the presence of the other.
> And the time in court is what ruins the most vulnerable people!
> Last time I fought a ticket (before I wised up to the fact paying the judge's friend who is a lawyer reverses time in such a way you never sped?) it took 2 full days off work. 1 day to wait in line so I plead not guilty, 1 to actually contest, and officer was a no-show
And when this is much easier at scale, municipalities can create more of these headaches with less work on their part.
> Your other comments also imply a lack of understanding in the role traffic stops play in modern policing. Not being able to stop people for speeding and even other minor traffic infractions...
How do speeding cameras prevent this?! I ask a second time.
> Traffic stops are the leading springboard for all of these ills
How do speeding cameras prevent this?
> Compared to all this, cameras end up having shortcomings that police have, but with a fraction of the terrible abuse that can come from it.
I again don't understand how having speeding cameras prevents police from pulling people over.
> Also, this isn't the point of the comment, but cameras don't sleep, but they can be turned off. Here in New York City speed cameras are not on 24/7. They only operate during school opening and closing hours when kids are likely to be coming and going
And are pull-overs allowed outside of those times?
> And not every state allows them everywhere (in fact I don't know of any that do, but some might).
And are pull-overs allowed outside of those zones?
So somewhere along the line you came up with your own point that wasn't mine and argued against it?
Because literally in the comment you replied to:
> Not being able to stop people for speeding and even other minor traffic infractions would remove so much power from them that they consider it a non-starter (having cameras doesn't mean they can't stop people for speeding it needs it's own legislation)
The entire comment chain is about something that has never been done before, using camera based enforcement to replace large classes of traffic stops.
You literally managed to miss the entire point of the conversation yet replied so confidently?
Half the contextomies you're bringing up make 0 sense if you understood that.
Yes they're allowed to pull people over outside those times and inside them, that's the whole damn problem.
You literally don't understand the most basic issue here and you keep replying by quoting tiny parts of a comment and ignoring their context and going "gotcha!"
I'm glad I replied for the benefit of others who might read these comments because it's stuff more people need to hear, but I'm done wasting my time with this.
> The entire comment chain is about something that has never been done before, using camera based enforcement to replace large classes of traffic stops.
I keep asking how you that happens, and you keep not answering. How does camera based enforcement stop bullshit pullovers? It doesn't, it just changes the bullshit "reason" people get pulled over. And the examples you present - by your own admission - don't address the actual problems, and where the cameras are limited in scope (time and zone), the original problem remains.
> You literally don't understand the most basic issue here and you keep replying by quoting tiny parts of a comment and ignoring their context and going "gotcha!"
I'm continually asking questions about the core premise that 'using camera based enforcement to replace large classes of traffic stops' prevents abuse by authorities. You haven't provided any evidence that it does. You've just provided some ad hominem and say I don't understand.
> having cameras doesn't mean they can't stop people for speeding it needs it's own legislation
So when they're barred from pulling people over for "speeding", then... this prevents them from pulling over people for other bullshit reasons?
I just don't see how having shitty police and cameras are going to prevent these abuses of power.
> I keep asking how you that happens, and you keep not answering. How does camera based enforcement stop bullshit pullovers? It doesn't, it just changes the bullshit "reason" people get pulled over. And the examples you present - by your own admission - don't address the actual problems, and where the cameras are limited in scope (time and zone), the original problem remains.
>So when they're barred from pulling people over for "speeding", then... this prevents them from pulling over people for other bullshit reasons?
>> Not being able to stop people for speeding and even other minor traffic infractions* (man you couldn't even read the fucking quote in the comment you replied to) would remove so much power from them that they consider it a non-starter (having cameras doesn't mean they can't stop people for speeding it needs it's own legislation)
>> If an officer stops you they can give you a warning because they like your tone (you speak like them, or you're kind of pretty, or you don't look the type who'll do this again). Or they can give you a reduced speed.
>> Or they can give you an additional ticket because you they don't like your tone, or rather... you didn't full stop at that stop sign. The other cars going through it didn't either, but they weren't the marks.
>> Or they can say they smell weed and start pushing the boundaries of your rights and take advantage of the fact they target the populations with the least experience with their legal rights due to systemic failings in education
>> How many innocent people do you think took plea deals sending them to jail for what started as a traffic stop? That would still be free today if a camera had sent a ticket by mail?
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> I'm continually asking questions about the core premise that 'using camera based enforcement to replace large classes of traffic stops' prevents abuse by authorities. You haven't provided any evidence that it does. You've just provided some ad hominem and say I don't understand.
Ah, so you understood it referred to large classes of traffic stops when you reached this part of your comment, so you read the reply? But yeah:
>> Cameras are not able to kill people in self-defense.
>> Cameras are not able to trump up or discard charges and offenses based on mood or inclination, or prejudice.
>> (And before you miss the point and retort, but they can do that in court!!! Yeah... just like they can with the police officer's ticket. The point isn't "cameras fix the biased legal system!" it's cameras ferret out one facet of the legal systems biases)
>> Cameras are not able to try and push an illegal search or exploit ignorance to convince someone to give up their rights
>> Cameras are not able to seize assets on suspicion someone has too much cash on them.
>> Cameras can't falsely detain people.
>> Seriously, again, there are real people in jail, rotting, for everything from having a ounce or two of weed on them, to literally nothing at all (see: plea deals) off what started as a routine traffic stop. How would a ticket in the mail do these things?
Let me know if I can repeat any of this for you any slower...
Impartial like the bureaucrats who put the speed cameras in the poor neighborhoods but not the rich ones?
Did it really need to be pointed out camera won't remove racial bias from the entire legal system?
They remove bias at the "give a person who is speeding a ticket" level and more importantly they limit the damage that can be done at the moment of enforcement.
Cameras don't get to go "I think I smell drugs" and have your car torn to bits.
Cameras can't exploit a poor understanding of your rights and accidentally consent to a search that would have been illegal otherwise.
Cameras don't "fear for their lives" and shoot someone.
Bias in the places enforced needs something more than a camera, but that's common sense.
By limiting the bias in who is targeted by a biased police enforcement structure and the strength of that enforcement at the moment of the infraction, you take away a lot of the power that is being given to a biased legal system.
Right now they end up in those same neighborhoods, except instead of giving anyone who speeds a ticket, they pull over people who fit a profile of who they want to pull over.
They turn "speed enforcement" into stop and frisk with a pretense. And to add insult to injury, their targets are usually the people who can afford this sort of attack the least.
You need more than a camera to stop police from being out there, but by seriously raising the barrier for them to be able to stop people, you force them onto back footing in their harassment, which is a start.
Speed cameras perpetuate bias in painfully obvious ways.
1) Where do we put the cameras? This is susceptible to the same bias as individual police.
2) How do we apply the fines? Can some people get them reduced/waived? The legal system is the same and still biased.
Speeding cameras are mot perfect but literally every complaint you have applies to police, except police amplify them, while reducing the damage done by bias
Police over-police neighborhoods just like cameras could oversaturate them.
But police stops for a speeding ticket can spiral into life destroying incidents in an instant, and not just in overt ways like police shootings.
Even something as simple as claiming they smelt a drug can result in property being seized, destroyed, people being detained.
How many innocent people do you think there are out there who took a plea deal to go to prison over what started as a routine traffic stop?!
And you want to talk about fines? How do the fines differ from police tickets? Except the officer being able to heap on as much damage as they feel like doing at that moment.
For every time a cop "does someone a favor" by only giving them a 5 over to prevent a higher fine and more points, how many times were they able to instead put the full number, and a ticket because you didn't fully stop according to me, and I'll tack on a charge for that taillight, and improper merge because you changed lanes at that turn back there, and also do I smell weed?
Cops say this all the time, they do not attempt to hide it, it is literally their MO: "If I follow someone long enough, they will mess up".
There are too many traffic laws that essentially have turned driving into an invitation for stop and frisk.
Why do we understand stop and frisk is bad when you're walking down the street, but not bad when you're in one of your most valuable possessions (which can be seized on extremely dubious grounds)
I know it's popular on HN to ignore common sense to make a contrarian point, but come on...
I don't get this from GP at all. seems to me they are open to being held responsible for their behavior, but currently are not.
I'm no fan of speed cameras, but would consider them an improvement over traffic stops for minor infractions. it has always struck me that speed limits are unreasonably low on US highways/arterials (but unreasonably high on surface streets). I suspect most people just don't care because enforcement is so inconsistent that they mostly just get away with whatever speed they choose. perhaps if the rules were more consistently enforced, there would be more interest in reforming them.
How even if cameras were subject to all the biases police are (they're not, they're subject to a subset of those biases, and are subject in a much more quantifiable and combat-able way)
Cameras are not able to kill people in self-defense.
Cameras are not able to trump up or discard charges and offenses based on mood or inclination, or prejudice.
(And before you miss the point and retort, but they can do that in court!!! Yeah... just like they can with the police officer's ticket. The point isn't "cameras fix the biased legal system!" it's cameras ferret out one facet of the legal systems biases)
Cameras are not able to try and push an illegal search or exploit ignorance to convince someone to give up their rights
Cameras are not able to seize assets on suspicion someone has too much cash on them.
Cameras can't falsely detain people.
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Seriously, again, there are real people in jail, rotting, for everything from having a ounce or two of weed on them, to literally nothing at all (see: plea deals) off what started as a routine traffic stop.
Cops want people to think we need traffic stops because it's what allows them to stop murderers and rapists, for every murderer caught in a traffic stop 10 more people are inserted into the legal system on much lesser charges, who will be chewed up and spit out and experience an exponential chance of becoming a much more violent criminal
It's blowimg my mind, do you really not see how cameras are less biased than humans in a meaningful way or are you being a contrarian for the sake of being contrarian?
Cameras don’t fix the problems with law enforcement or the legal system and they introduce a whole set of new problems.
I’m not sure how you think cameras would actually help? Surely officers are still able to perform traffic stops, even with cameras on every corner.
I’d rather solve the actual problems than automate authoritarianism.
Literally the whole point of what I proposed, is they wouldn't be able to stop for anything less than a major moving traffic violation. Which has a legal definition. They include things like hit and runs and vehicular manslaughter. It's not like a crooked cop can't make up a major traffic violation (DUI could be "made up" by claiming "they were swerving") but the burden of proof is higher, and more importantly the average driver does not commit them in the process of driving.
An incredibly large part of the problem is cops don't have to lie about minor traffic violations, people commit them constantly in the process. Changing lanes during turns, coming to a 1 mph stop at a stop sign, speeding (even well below reckless driving speeds), even touching the tip of the dividing line during a wide turn can be grounds to be pulled over
The kneejerk is to "victim blame" but it's reached the point that if you don't violate them in some cases you can cause accidents. That's exactly what happened with the first SDCs in the wild, humans are so hard wired to do some of these things, when someone follows the rules perfectly people crash into them...
Like I said, it literally turns traffic laws into effective enablement of stop and frisk any time you're in a vehicle. Cops have said it before on record, they know if they follow someone long enough they will commit a traffic violation of some sort, driving laws have all sorts of dense corner cases that a determined cop can use to pull you over.
And they can stretch the definition since the barrier to breaking them is so minor that fighting them is almost impossible. If you say you came to complete stop and the cop says you were rolling, it doesn't mean you were speeding through a stop sign, they can claim you were going at near dead still and are mistaken. That's it. Even if they're wrong, you're already stopped, you're free to try and get recourse from the courts, but the stop has already happened.
> I’d rather solve the actual problems than automate authoritarianism.
I'd rather solve actual problems rather than act like the complete removal of racial bias is going to come about from going rawr rawr about authoritarianism. Pulling people over for speeding isn't authoritarianism, but pulling people over so you can try and impinge upon their rights based on their socioeconomic status or race under the guise of speeding is.
> Cameras are biased. It doesn’t matter to me if they are less biased.
Well that's the core of why we won't agree.
Those weren't hypotheticals, I'm black, I've had a gun unholstered on me because my glovebox wasn't where a cop thought it'd be, I know a speed camera wouldn't do that.
Removing traffic stops for minor traffic violations would leave many fewer people ending up in the legal system over stupid reasons, take cops out of situations where they apparently fear for their lives, take away a powerful tool for biased police forces. That's why they're mortified by the idea besides constantly making noise about how dangerous it is for them and how it justifies their behavior, like what I went through.
I don't care if they want to compare my passport photo with my face, it doesn't offend my privacy sensors to verify that someone coming into the country at least looks like the photo on their passport.
Making a database of everyone's face, fingerprints, DNA, that kind of thing is the "big deal" part to me. Especially consider that now they think they can just make an image of your phone every time you cross the border and store it for... what was it, 70 years or some similarly absurd timeframe? Or "only" 20 years if you are NOT suspected of any crime. Yeah, 20 years if they can't make up a reason to keep it longer. Minimum. 20 years.
You know, way more time than it would take for any current disk encryption to be broken and way more time than it would take for anyone to reasonably expect the database to remain unhacked? In 20 years quantum computers will be readily available.
But my objections are to the invasion of privacy and collection of personal data that they don't have a right to. This particular argument against is just yet another reason.
Granted this may get you shot, but the hope is the court is on your side.
The drug dogs are to my knowledge only if you're in a vehicle, and recently that has received challenges.
You just have to drive instead of fly.
I'm not trying to be hateful, but your argument just smacks of an 'I want what I want when I want how I want and will not take anything less than all of it' kind of argument.
If you don't want your ID scanned, just drive, or take a train, or a bus. Just don't fly, right?
What about Hawaii? Is there any reasonable alternative to flying?
That's not meant to be flippant - that would be an alternative, I'm just not sure about the very subjective definition of 'reasonable'.
No, that is not at all what is said in the article. But, even so, it is a big deal that the government wants to track people simply for wishing to travel!
People already identify themselves, when they fly on planes. The article doesn't say that identification is illegal but that requiring automated tracking, based upon identification, is illegal. "The TSA signs (visible in full on this TSA video released in conjunction with today’s press release) include — typically for the TSA and DHS — no OMB Control Number or Paperwork Reduction Act notice, both of which are required for any collection of information by a Federal agency, regardless of whether the collection of information is optional or mandatory, and regardless of whether the information collected is retained."
When people capitulate to demands that have no legal basis, because they don't understand their rights or care to protect them, soon they won't have any rights.
What does the required id system gain over screening everyone, securing the cockpit door, and stopping the older policy of letting hijackers take over?
While, what does it cost? Cost in terms of stress (I've forgotten my id at one airport), in terms of extra staffing, and in terms of personal privacy?
And why isn't that cost/benefit document public?
I can't think a single moment of when I've been grateful for the existence of the TSA. It's a giant jobs program. I'd rather pay them to do something for society rather than be a drain on it.
It increases the likelihood of your info getting leaked.
The overall risk seems like it's probably falling on the beneficial side as discouraging people with bad intentions from flying likely has a negligibly positive effect on risk.
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/09/excess_automo...
Not everybody. Lots of us go to great lengths to preserve our privacy when engaging in commercial transactions. You can pay cash, use a cover name, only have things shipped to your postbox/office, or only engage with vendors who have adequate security and privacy practices.
You can't fly without engaging with the TSA. They're the only game in town.
Additionally, many people in society are especially vulnerable, such as labor or political organizers, investigative journalists, and public officials. Having their home addresses leaked, or their family members' home addresses leaked, poses a direct threat to life and safety.
You can opt out of data brokers, or spyware smartphone apps, or use a cover name when you order a delivery sandwich or pizza to the building you sleep in. You can't use a cover name or opt out of the TSA.
If you have enough money you simply fly private. His is one of many reasons why the TSA continues to have problems - senior politicians and wealthy people barely need to deal with them.
In some ways it’s like HOV lanes in DC that have rates up to $80 for a single ride. The people most likely to be angered by traffic and to actually have the power to force changes to be made get to skip the traffic.
See also any legal issue that can be solved by paying for a good lawyer and a high extra price for “expedited” government service (anything from immigration to getting a passport).
I think you put yourself in more danger when you hand over your ID at every bar, liquor store, hotel [...] you go to. These people are local, build a relationship with you, aren't accountable like a government worker/contractor, and can easily get to your home.
If you live in America, the likelyhood of your personal info getting leaked in the past 5 years has reached 100%.
Adding it to yet another dataset does not meaningfully move the needle anymore. Assume your personal information has already been pwned, and carry on with your life.
Your private life is nobody's business but your own.
Presumably you can use hand gel, and take the actions serially.
And the whole thing is optional.
For now. Just like how going through the original "nude-o-scopes" was technically "optional" but TSA employees (I refuse to call them "officers") would give you no end of shit and pointlessly delay anyone who requested an opt-out.
Additionally, demanding ID to board a flight allows them to check against a "no fly list", an arbitrary designation they've created with no presumption of innocence and no burden of proof to be added, resulting in your effective inability to efficiently travel, with no legal recourse to regain this ability if you are placed on this list. Note that being added to the no fly list does not require a criminal conviction or even a basic legal standard like probable cause.
Imagine if you could be added to a "no drive list" without ever being accused of a crime or violation, and no way to ever get off.