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Comment by chrisco255 | Hacker News Reader

Wonder how many more decades we'll pretend like everyone flying is a potential suicide bombing terrorist and ignore things like # of years or # of flights without trying to hijack a plane. Surely, if I've got 20 years of non-terrorist behavior, I should be allowed to go through a standard metal detector, no?

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Wait, do you still think this is about flight safety? I thought everyone saw it for what it is, conditioning.

Conditioning for what? To what end? Conspiratorial thinking.

TSA is a jobs program.

Acceptance of warrantless searches. To enable greater power and wealth for the political classes.

Why can’t it be both?

Not if they automate it like in the OP?

Double especially if they automate it.

Here is the rule, don’t question it, and now do it yourself. Everywhere you go you better follow the rules and check yourself in. Never question it.

If it is a jobs program, why are they understaffed and slow all the time? It is a scheme to funnel money over to millimeter wave machine manufacturers and gather biodata for Clear et al.

There's like ~47,000 TSA employees for context.

A conspiracy by definition is a group of people working together to benefit themselves at the expense of others. So yes, this is conspiratorial thinking, and that in itself does not necessitate it being invalid.

Forever, as long as you comply.

Wonder how many more decades we'll pretend the TSA, or any other federal agency like it has anything to do with safety at all.

It is all a pretense for behavior control, to have a precleared, approved, and unquestioned method to shut down "trouble makers", dissent, or other things the government finds more complicated to control unless they have tools created to prevent "terror"...

How else can they easily track who went to the political protest unless you your required to scan your face as you board the plan to go... How else can they shut down otherwise legal activity under the guise of security with out the terror back drop

TSA is not about stopping terror, TSA is the terror

I mean I’m all for a good anti government rant. But as someone who has has been through airport security in 15 cities this year and has 36 “segments” this year (landing and taking off in planes), TSA is the least intrusive part of government.

They literally take a nude photo of every traveler.... How is that Least Intrusive?

Not every traveler - only the ones who don't opt for the free massage instead!

you don’t need to wait 20 years, just pay $80!

Don’t tell them about TSA pre check! It’s so wonderful because many people don’t know about it, so it keeps the line short!

And definitely don’t tell them about global citizen!

> so it keeps the line short

I've seen the TSA pre-check line be longer than the regular TSA line recently. I think there has been a big push to get folks into pre-check, including opening up more interview places and making it less of a pain in the ass to get. It's all a money grab at the end of the day.

The types of checks they do in the PreCheck line are different and take less time, so even a longer line still moves quicker. There’s also far less chance of being behind a family with strollers, or someone in a wheelchair, which also slows things down. People with PreCheck are usually frequent travelers, and are more likely to be prepared (with everything out of their pockets, etc) when going through instead of having to wait for multiple rescans of the same person.

> There’s also far less chance of being behind a family with strollers, or someone in a wheelchair, which also slows things down

Unless you fly out of MCO (Orlando)…

I dont travel every often, but the few times I have Pre-Check has always been longer or equal to normal check..

One time I was in a mid sized city airport, there was like 30 people in PreFlight Line, and 20 in the Normal line, I got through the initial ID Checkpoint faster with no precheck. lol

Global Citizen may be worth it, but I only travel international about 1 time per year so...

It’s not just about the length of the lines. My wife and I take one way trips across the country while I work remotely…

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36767599

My backpack has two computers (work and personal), an iPad, a portable USB C monitor, a keyboard and a mouse depending on the airport without PreCheck, I have to take everything out and put it in separate bins

Not to mention taking my shoes and belt off.

With precheck, I just dump everything in my pockets into a back pocket of my backpack and go through.

Not to mention with Clear I even skip the precheck line and get go security faster.

The airport in the city I fly out of have the upgraded scanners, nothing comes out of the bag any more. You do still have to take your shoes off though

As more and more airports upgrade to the new scanners I see less and less of having to remove Electronics into separate bins.

Even at aiports with the old scanners I have never removed mouse to go through security... and rarely do i do separate bins, 1 Bin for my Shoes, Belts, Jacket etc, 1 Bin for my Electronics, Laptop, Cell, SteamDeck, and Tablet all go in 1 bin, never had a problem

It costs like $10-$15 more than PreCheck, so probably worth it if you're close to an enrollment center.

Depends on the airport, it seems. SeaTac always has a full PreCheck line in my experience, and smaller airports often don't even have a PreCheck line!

Today, that's a metal detector that intentionally randomly goes off even if you don't have any metal. Not quite "standard" in my book.

It is security theater. We just needed millions of dollars in equipment to go in so that Chertoff was able to get his payout. The frequency of false positives and false negatives is irrelevant.

For the downvoters because I can't edit anymore: No, this is not sarcasm about the quality of the metal detectors. The TSA intentionally configures their metal detectors to randomly trigger on people despite them not otherwise meeting the detection threshold. It's a different beep. It's a way to randomly select people for a body scan or a patdown.

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