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Comment by AngryParsley | Hacker News Reader

I opt-out of backscatter and millimeter-wave screening every time. I think the TSA is a waste of money and I'd love to see the government take a more calculated approach to security instead of the typical CYA behavior. With that said...

His form of protest is to miss a flight he already paid for and hike/bum rides back to Texas? And asking for donations? This guy is a software engineer at Automattic. He's a WordPress developer. His blog is mostly pictures of vegan meals and unboxings: http://ryan.boren.me/. Considering his lifestyle and likely income, asking for donations seems to be rather poor taste.

Again I agree with his opinions, but his protest is not accomplishing anything useful. The net effect will be to transfer some money and resources from sympathetic people.

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I don't want to give the impression that I agree with everything he says - I don't entirely share his dystopic views on the state of the world, and my views on the TSA are more in line with yours - but I think you're being rather ungenerous. The closest he comes to asking for donations is to say:

Several people have already offered places to stay and donated money for travel costs. Thank you so much and be assured that any extra money will be passed on to civil liberties organizations trying to claw back our freedom of movement. I intend to at least double my usual contributions this year.

If you mean the donations link at the top of the page, that's clearly for people who want to send a small something in thanks for Wordpress, and I wouldn't call it distasteful. The world would be a sad place if gift giving were relegated to being soley for charitable causes.

When I read it, the "donated money" in your quoted text was a link to his donations page.

You're right, and I didn't notice that (in my defence, the link is not underlined and the link text is really dark on the non-mobile version of the site, so it was easy to look over). That is a bit more of a call to action than I initially thought. I still don't think it was in quite as bad taste as AngryParsley suggested though.

> Again I agree with his opinions, but his protest is not accomplishing anything useful.

I think a refusal to fly due to security policies is a pretty strong message. If it has come to that, it shows how serious the problem has become and maybe his example will make people do something about it rather than quietly subdue.

Is this your realistic assessment or just something you wish were true? It seems fanciful to me to believe that this is having any impact at all.

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