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Comment by lddemi | Hacker News Reader

your air travel could be significantly optimized with TSA Precheck ($20year) and Clear ($120/year) to effectively eliminate security headaches

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Why would you pay extra and deal with the additional headache of being screened/having to enter your private data if you could just take the more convenient and largely anonymous train for under a $100? A train where you are not squeezed into the seat like a sardine?

I am personally also really uncomfortable with the notion that you have to pay an additional convenience fee just to have a mildly more pleasant travel experience. Coach class should not mean that you are cattle.

People in coach can still use PreCheck. Work only pays for economy tickets, so I can tell you PreCheck still works fine.

Also, FYI there are two price levels for TSA screening. One is the TSA PreCheck, the other is the 9/11 security fee everyone has to pay. A universal PreCheck would probably mean increasing the security fee.

Clear is one step too far to paying for freedom. Global entry money at least goes to one gang I already pay protection money to, the government. Clear is a non government gang that somehow got the ability to get paid in exchange for giving people more freedom.

That's how America has always worked, though: freedom is an asset you buy with money. They're just saying the quiet part out loud now.

When you buy it from the government, at least there is a veneer of it having come from democratically elected leaders and going back to a pot of resources that are democratically spent.

As in there was zero reason for the government to give Clear a cut of the money, other than outright corruption. They already have the department of homeland security.

Getting to/from the airport is the much larger headache than security in a lot of places, especially in NYC. Even if you're willing to pay $50-$100 each way for a car, it's not always easy to get a car and it's a long drive. It takes almost no time for Manhattanites to get to a train and costs virtually nothing.

And into what little database are my deets being entered for eternity by using either of these options, and to whom does the visibility to this data go?

Presumably the same database your details go in anyway, just with less security theatre.

Yeah, we can’t make it look like we’re relaxing security, but if we charge you an application, sit on it, and make felons lives worse, that’s cool.

Looking over the felonies for which TSA PreCheck is unavailable, it doesn’t appear to a thoughtlessly compiled make-felons-suffer list: https://www.tsa.gov/disqualifying-offenses-factors

I can see it for Part C, but why A and B? If someone's been charged and done whatever was required to be free enough that they can fly, then that should be the end of it. Especially things on that list. If treason isn't enough for the government to execute them or lock them up and throw away the key, then it shouldn't matter to the TSA.

If you can’t see how felony conviction for having illegal explosives might reasonably preclude you from reduced security screening, I’m not sure anything I can say will convince you.

If you can't see how the government continuing to treat someone like a criminal after they've paid their debt to society is wrong, I'm not sure anything I can say will convince you.

Are they being treated like a criminal in this case? Or are they merely being treated as requiring standard (not reduced) security screening?

I’m far more concerned where felons are denied the right to vote or to bear arms than I am with them having to stand in the same security line as most people.

I'm against the TSA and its security theater on principle. Any gradient to the offense of its existence just adds insult to injury.

So you should have a situation where someone who hasn't been caught with illegal explosives can pay some money and take those explosives on a plane?

That sounds sensible.

Your deets are going in a little database every time you buy a train ticket.

Can you not buy anonymous tickets, for example at a counter in the station or from a machine?

There are still enough machines that take cash that this is a practical option in most of Europe. Buying a ticket in advance works, but requires a trip to the station.

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