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Comment by beloch | Hacker News Reader

The U.S. government shutdown has halted pay to the TSA, but not ICE, so ICE is taking over from the TSA in airports[1]. If you fly to the U.S., starting Monday apparently, the first think you're likely to see is masked gunmen giving you the eye.

No thankyou.

[1]https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cede0qyvqz3o

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Would anyone argue that the TSA, Theatre Security Agency, shouldn’t be defunded?

This isn’t that.

There's an argument for that, though I think replacing it with Trump's basically-unregulated private military is pretty concerning.

Replacing it with nothing in an orderly fashion? Probably a good move.

Replacing them with ICE as a political gesture? Not so much

The TSA is responsible for more than just airports. As someone with family who works (worked) on port security in the maritime division, I would argue that Chesterton's Fence [0] applies here just as much as anywhere else.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton#Chesterton's_...

Ports had no security before 2001? What does TSA do there?

The Coast Guard has long been responsible for port security. TSA does administer TWIC, the Transportation Worker Identification Credential program, which is a biometric identification system go access to secure port facilities.

Ports did indeed have very little security before 2001 (compared to now). See ISPS code: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Ship_and_Port_Fa...

Yeah, it was actually a lot of fun. I worked in a port-related area and often we would just cruise around the port and look at the ships. If it looked cool we would yell loudly and ask if we could come aboard. The seamen were usually thrilled to show us around their massive ships and would often invite us to a barbecue. With the introduction of the ISPS all of that was over in an instant.

Many of us were alive when the TSA was created. It's not a mystery why it's there. (Mostly so politicians could say they did something to improve air travel security.)

Well, and it did do something - make the experience more consistently mediocre. Which is indeed something.

Previously, some airports were even more of a nightmare, and others were actually pleasant.

Depends on what defunded means... if it means pay/control shifting from a Federal agency to local, then yes.

Maning, airports / municipalities should be funding this. If airports were in control the the user experience, I bet you would see a lot better outcomes.

> If airports were in control the the user experience, I bet you would see a lot better outcomes.

Would you? It's not like I have a choice of which airport to fly out of.

Maybe New Yorkers have options, but for the rest of us, there is only one that is an option.

It shouldn't be defunded, because as stupid as it and the 2001 politics that spawned it were, anything MAGA will replace it with in 2026 would be way worse.

I feel like "form your own private paramilitary organisation with minimal oversight, then expand their reach by having them take over the operations of other government departments" has been done before somewhere, as part of a larger plan.

This is a historical pattern: Bringing border forces to bear against your own population, because those border forces are trained to deal with people who don't have the rights of the state.

It has. (Unless you're being sarcastic, in which case I'm not surprised it went over my head. Lol.)

of course they were

Hey, tone doesn't translate well over text, they did not use anu tone tags, and I'm already terrible at reading tone in the best of times. Lol, can you really blame me for at least asking? Haha.

I dunno, it is the most obvious nazi reference I've ever seen. Personally I feel like tone does translate well over text, although it's proportional to the speakers' familiarity in how to do it whereas for verbal communication it comes through without effort.

Nothing wrong with asking of course. But maybe it's useful data that it was, in fact, obvious.

Not when you're autistic (which I am). ;D

Yeah, I was aiming for irony but I should probably have added /s at the end there. It's definitely in the mid-late chapters in any "how to install a fascist regime" handbook.

Yeah, no worries, I'm pretty terrible at reading sarcasm on the best of days. Haha.

They dont have all the skills to do anything super complex in a sustainable way. Already proved in the first term. What their existence demonstrates is winning election is not super complex if you can find enough groups to precisely target and pander/capture attention. Social media has been a force multiplier for such behavior and the people that have emerged dont have any other skill other than attention capture. But thats short term win like full focus on marketing while product and operations have no hope of catching up. Every "large plan" will fail. Large plans in complex ever changing environments always need massive cooperation of very different skills. Never happens sustainably with just one skill dominating all.

They dont have all the skills to do anything super complex in a sustainable way.

And that's stopped them?

We know the answer. Whats stopping ebola or a hurricane from over running everything?

It will be so much fun to watch the World Cup from outside the US...

Remember to use a pirate stream.

Yeah! That will be even better!

Enter the country and you interact with CBP and that hasn't changed. CBP agents are the ones who murdered the legal observers in Minneapolis so there's that.

TSA checks bags for commercial airlines which is a service that should never have been nationalized.

It would really be amazing if the end result of all of this is the post-9/11 DHS finally gets reverted back to what we had before.

An amazing start.

Some airports started allowing bottled water already. We'll be back to pre 9/11 levels in 40 or so years.

> So ICE is taking over from the TSA in airports

It's even more disgusting than that:

"Tom Homan: ICE officers will not assist with airport security scanning amid TSA staffing shortage"

https://thehill.com/policy/transportation/5795316-homan-ice-...

I can't tell what's supposed to be disgusting about this unless you stopped reading past the inflammatory headline.

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