I just had a big dose of that this morning, getting my tool bag flagged by TSA, which I honestly expected, and told my calipers were not allowed (because maybe I'm going to hijack a plane by threatening to measure it??) but having my very sharp broaching tools, which could actually maybe do some damage as a weapon, completely ignored. And then, the second time through, after checking the calipers, having my watch case opener taken because it sort of looks like a knife, even though it's completely dull with no sharp edge.
Hmm. At least you weren’t threatening to measure the momentum very accurately. Since that would make the position unknown. Would that turn the plane into a slab?
Are European airports statistically less secure than American airports? Is anyone even monitoring this? Surely by now we'd have some data to decide whether you need to remove your shoes or not.
They do, just kind of “at random”. I had it sometimes a bit of everywhere in Europe.
The security agents took it out, unfolded the knife blade, discussed it a bit in German and handed it back to me.
"It's OK! It's just a little guy! Go ahead".
So it depends I guess.
We were late for a flight in the Philippines and the gate agent knew it. Told me all of my travel fishing gear was contraband - even the rod and reel. Straight up stole all my fishing gear figuring (correctly) it was worth less to me than making my flight.
So after throwing away perfectly good food and multiple bottles of water because our flight was coming up, we then had to sit in a terminal that only had 2 snack choices and no real food offerings.
I've decided to never fly out of Dublin to the US again. Even if that means I have to fly to London just to transfer to the US.
I always fold up my pant legs so they can see I have low shoes and then it's no issue.
Yes, because I did the interview. But then I've done the background check and interview for jobs as well. And honestly, there's a ton of that information about you in computers if you travel by air at all. Don't fly (in particular) if you want to be anonymous.
And like I said in another reply, the country you grew up in was probably different than the country my still living parents grew up in in the Jim Crow south.
I think I asked what deposit they would need. It had never been an issue before.
"In fact, the TSA does not require, and the law does not authorize the TSA to require, that would-be travelers show any identity documents. According to longstanding practice, people who do not show any identity documents travel by air every day – typically after being required to complete and sign the current version of TSA Form 415 and answer questions about what information is contained in the file about them obtained by the TSA from data broker Accurint…."
https://papersplease.org/wp/2020/05/19/tsa-tries-again-to-im... https://papersplease.org/wp/2024/03/18/buses-trains-and-us-d... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_movement_under_Unit...
Similarly though admittedly more permissive, with Amtrak iirc it's like: you need a credit card and they probably won't check your ID. There were several more years after 9/11 before the "papers please" principle came for the trains and buses too.
E.g. search turned up a claim Greyhound "employees are not allowed to sell a ticket without an official ID" https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/140703/i-have-no-...
You definitely need ID for hotels a lot of the time. Not sure the level where the regulations are put in place--probably varies--and Europe is probably more formal than the US in this regard. Was staying with a friend in Europe about a year ago and they had to take our passports to the police station to make us "official."
As I wrote elsewhere, I also had a challenge in the US a few years back but I expect that, had I been at my usual chain, there would have been a discussion with the manager followed by "I see nothing, I hear nothing."
ID is not security.
This conversation just doesn't seem promising. Your initial wildly-off claim got me worried I might misunderstand the world by that much (I remember the 70s, fuzzily). I wasted time checking it, wondering if the actual peak might be in a year not mentioned, trying to find the paper Wikipedia cited: it was a non-open-access paper with at least four links to check; one of them did show the first page, which at least gave the figure in question, if not the ultimate source.
I've taken Amtrak quite a bit in the last few years (Emeryville & Truckee in California, and NYC, Philly, BWI, and DC in the east), and I've never been asked for ID to board a train. (In other words, trivially easy for someone to do something nefarious if they wanted to.)
No security checkpoints, no ticket checking before getting on the train, just someone checking tickets on the train itself 10-20 minutes after it gets moving.
You also don't actually need an ID to fly, though if you try that, give yourself plenty of time to get through "extra security".
I’m sure they both have policies about it on the books, but I’ve never seen them enforced
Now, I have Global Entry (which includes TSA Pre).
I rationalized it in a few ways:
* "The Government" already has all the information GE wants. Finger prints, photo ID, "interview" (answering the question "Are you a terrorist?"). They got nearly all of this when I got a driver's license. (https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a32035408/dmv-selling-...)
* With modern corporate surveillance, corps already have a shit ton of "my data" that they will happily sell to anyone, including "The Government". (https://media.ccc.de/v/38c3-databroker-files-wie-uns-apps-un...)
* If I'm flying anyway, the airlines already collect (and are legally required to collect) all sorts of personal data that I would rather them not have. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_name_record)
Yup. The people I've talked to who failed their GE interviews all failed because they lied and didn't admit to something shady that DHS already knew about them.
I doubt it.
Technically, legally, right now, maybe the Colorado DMV's database isn't accessible to other parties. How strongly are you willing to bet that it's going to stay that way for the rest of your life?
I've lived in 5 states in the last 20 years, but none of them were Colorado.
A quick web search suggests that CO requires prints for licensing as an auto or motorsports dealer, but I can't find a requirement for getting a standard DL. I didn't look too hard, and I'm not claiming any authority here, but I remain surprised by the requirement.
"The information here covers identification and lawful presence requirements for Coloradans seeking a driver license, ID card or instruction permit... Per C.R.S. 42-2-107 and 42-2-302, applications for credentials must contain a fingerprint."
CRS 42-2-107 concerns applications for driver's licenses and learner's permits, and CRS 42-2-302 concerns issuance of driver's licenses and non-driving identification cards.
My friends who were already in the state prior to 2017 never needed to get their prints taken to keep renewing their licenses. But since I moved here in 2019, I needed to provide mine, as do any teenagers getting their permits or licenses for the first time here.
But compulsory fingerprinting is too authoritarian for my tastes. I can still visit, right? :)
Maybe this was just a GenX thing, and isn't really done anymore, but in elementary school we were all fingerprinted.
They told our parents it was in case we were ever kidnapped it would help them find us.
You might be surprised about how many people's fingerprints the gov't has.
Why have a "security measure" only to allow bypassing it?
The answer is probably racism. Not everyone is allowed a pre-approval and the reasons for denial are of course obtuse.
Except it's not gated by the tiny fee, but with the background check. Only those who are statistically very low risk will be approved (which indeed is most people -- by design).
> The answer is probably racism. Not everyone is allowed a pre-approval
Is it racist to know the fact that say, zero schoolteachers from Iowa with no history of travel to the Middle East have ever hijacked a plane, but quite a few people from Saudi Arabia and Iran, or who have contacts there, have? And to allow the teacher to bypass the whole mess? I'd say that's efficient.
The fee is quite obviously not material to anyone who can afford air travel anyway. It would be a more serious critique if the fee were say, $1,500 a year. But for a hundred bucks every few years, this is neither extortion, nor a burden. It's just paying the admin costs of the program, which means not using general fund money (everyone's taxes) to pay for background checks for rich business travelers. That's progressive.
And the alternative to this type of program would be the silliness where some random grandma or child gets invasively searched because "we have to be random."
Iowans have committed significantly more homicides per capita than people from most European countries (or Saudi Arabia, for that matter). I don't think it's problematic if European airports screen Iowans more heavily than Europeans and Saudis. Do you?
If you really believe the public is kept safe most effectively by pretending to be fully blind to nationality when choosing who to screen at an airport (since you can't intensively screen everyone) I don't know what to tell you.
Although it's interesting that the same people who would take that position seem to also argue that colorblindness is actually a sin if it's done while processing a college application.
Reputation?
Are we deciding security policies by reputation or statistics?
I think I'd win the bet of "Americans have killed more people (per capita) in other countries than Saudis have", so it does seem relevant to be more wary of them. Especially given how widespread the former has been, compared to a few incidents with the latter.
> If you really believe ... I don't know what to tell you.
That does seem evident, yes.
> Although it's interesting that the same people who would take that position seem to also argue that colorblindness is actually a sin if it's done while processing a college application.
Citation?
That is true only if you start the count in 1946 or later!
The fee is tiny compared to the costs of a plane ticket. It's $100 for multiple years of validity.
The cost to do security checks on people scales with the number of people. There are plenty of taxes and fees already included with plane tickets; whatever "security fee" is actually necessary to fund reasonable security can be tacked onto the cost of tickets that way, and will automatically charge more from people flying more often (and won't penalize people who don't fly at all).
The only possible economic benefits separating it out into an optional multi-year subscription service provides for any party are 1) overcharging people who misgauge actually "needing" it when they don't end up flying enough to meet whatever your threshold for judging that is, and 2) actually not fully charging super-frequent fliers for the amount of workload they put on the system.
But who is going to keep up with the “frequent travelers”?