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Comment by manicennui | Hacker News Reader

"Clear Secure CEO Caryn Seidman-Becker has big plans for her company’s core product. In a profile in Forbes last year she said that 'We want Clear to become part of people’s daily habit, to go from 12 times a year using it—which is how people on average were using it in airports—to 12 times a day.'"

Disgusting.

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Couldn't agree more. We need better ways of fighting against this at multiple levels. No CEO should even aspire to be so intrusive and rent seeking. Part of this seems cultural, though I'm not sure what the fix is.

What exactly do you want to fight against?

People pay for access, convenience, and improved service in many areas of life.

Better passes at Disney World. VIP concert tickets that get you access to abundant restrooms, better food and drinks. I’ve seen some restaurants in S.F. that seem to have moved to a model where depending on which part of the restaurant you reserve you get different menus and service (I forget which, but saw that this summer).

Honest question, I’m not sure exactly what it is you want to disallow - can you elaborate?

I specifically would prefer to live in a culture that 1) establishes societal expectations of a relatively even playing field, and 2) encourages companies that seek to add value, not rent seek.

Clear is a perfect example of a company that exists to extract value from a system, and and company that will fight to maintain the status quo of a shitty experience for everyone else. Every time I pass the Clear line, I wonder why some private enterprise was given this space, and handed this right to insert themselves in the security process.

> establishes societal expectations of a relatively even playing field

I want to agree with you, but disregarding the clear thing - is it really optimal (and not only locally optimal) to not have any means (not per se financial) to not have everyone be handled equally and fairly, especially if we're talking things like "expedited access", usually for people who have put in some work once in order to speed up their daily/weekly/monthly thing over the average person doing the activity once per year or decade.

Maybe I'm just being too focused on this example at hand, but if you look at immigration queues, we often have these "this is for local people where we don't have to check anything, really" and "this is for people who might need to find their visa and it could be complicated, thus a long line" - or the simple example of buying a monthly ticket for public transport and not standing in line at the ticket machine.

I think the idea of precheck / pre vetting makes a lot of sense. It just shouldn't be outsourced and privatized to a company with an incentives alignment problem.

Your example about locals vs. foreigners at customs and border control also makes sense to me. I'm fine waiting in a longer line when I get to Europe since I'm not an EU citizen.

Think about EZPass on the highway. Anyone sitting in line waiting to pay a toll manually was just lazy in not setting up automatic toll payment.

For one thing it exacerbates inequality and makes it even more in your face. Inequality is the cancer that is destroying the US and other "democracies."

I think we need to find a nice balance in which wealthy individuals can gain access to better services in some areas of life, but not ALL areas of life. It is reassuring to us "normals" that we as a society reserve some scarcity decisions to be based on an even playing field, or at least something other that wealth or cost.

> Honest question, I’m not sure exactly what it is you want to disallow - can you elaborate?

You’re not replying to me, but I think any and all prioritization in security lines should be outlawed.

Why? It's freedom of choice. People who don't want their biometrics tracked should not use the system.

Because it won't remain that way. Clear will push for their service to be used in as many places as possible, and try to get legislators to create reasons to require such a system.

The pox has been spreading far and wide:

It's not about airports, it's about identity or rather social credit

2020 Health Pass - https://www.labcorp.com/coronavirus-disease-covid-19/news/cl...

2022 Normalize at major conventions https://www.reviewjournal.com/business/conventions/clear-tec...

2024 To get truly Clear, Download the app today!

And who wants a share of all that user data?

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