Two new security incidents involving CLEAR ratchet up concern from lawmakers | Hacker News Reader

Two new security incidents involving CLEAR ratchet up concern from lawmakers

politico.com

16 pointsphilip12097 comments

I vehemently (border line militantly) refuse to use these services and actively tell friends and family not to use them. There are a few reasons but at the core, it's not right that people can pay to jump to the front of airport security, something everyone has to go through as a condition for getting on your flight.

I'll leave with, it is a sad reflection of society that even the airport security line has been financialized.

> it's not right that people can pay to jump to the front of airport security

This has been true for quite a long time before this service or Pre-Check existed afaik.

Airports have VIP/Executive entrances and flyers with certain status “ex Delta Platinum” can use a different security checkpoint with a shorter line or skip to the front.

> have called for TSA to begin requiring all CLEAR passengers to present their IDs

This wouldn't be the end of the world since the value prop of CLEAR is skipping the line. I imagine that needing to flash an ID to a TSA agent would not impact the experience for most CLEAR users.

I'm curious how this compares to TSA's failure rate. E.g. does CLEAR fail to verify someone's identity more often than TSA agents through the regular line? It's hard to say if CLEAR is more or less "secure" without having a baseline to compare to.

Notably missing from the article is a comparison of CLEAR’s failure rates and severity against the TSA’s. Admittedly, CLEAR doesn’t handle as many travelers as TSA so the data would need to be extrapolated but based on what I’ve read over the past decade, I suspect the TSA’s performance would be much worse.

For example: https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/11/13/us/tsa-failures-box-cutte...

The truth is our entire system for airline security is theater and doesn’t actually make us safer. A number of other countries have solved this problem successfully, the US chooses not to. I wish more time was spent on fixing that mess instead of pursuing CLEAR.

What have other countries done with success?

https://simpleflying.com/tel-aviv-ben-gurion-airport-safety-...

Recent and related:

CLEAR led a flyer carrying ammo under a false name to TSA, sparking probe - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36910372 - July 2023 (93 comments)

Also:

Big change for some CLEAR users: TSA will soon require you to show ID - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36828361 - July 2023 (22 comments)

CLEAR is a pox on America’s airports - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34081156 - Dec 2022 (94 comments)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com