Confessions of an ex-TSA agent | Hacker News Reader

Confessions of an ex-TSA agent

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On The Media has been running an initiative to get lawmakers to answer basic questions about TSA and DHS policy. The agency has been stonewalling reporters so they've asked that citizens call lawmakers directly and ask a series of questions.

http://project.wnyc.org/otm-detain/

Cool! Has anyone here done this?

I'm normally not a fan of that type of thing. To me it's like a ddos attack on the phone system.

Edit: ddos attack on the phone system of the legislators. Nothing wrong with calling. But enabling people to call en masse without even the friction of having to look up a phone number (which is easy for sure) for the purpose of helping the media do their job just doesn't work for me.

Has nothing to do with whether the questions need to be answered or not. But potentially overloading a representatives phone system is not the way I think it should be done. (5 people calling a day is not overloading so of course I'm assuming that this would result in more activity).

Now of course considering how much people don't like spam and junk mail (which are really way less intrusive en masse than the phone ringing) I'm curious why people are disagreeing with my basic point.

Treat it instead as a DDoS attack on your congresscritters' bad ideas.

I'm not even sure what this means. Calling your elected representative is one of the most effective ways of getting issues confronted (as long as you're joined by hundreds of others calling). An actual calling human (as opposed to an email) is important here, as we're a lot easier to ignore when we're abstracted behind text (see: greater internet fuckwad theory, etc).

People underestimate the humanness of elected officials. The mere perception that there's a groundswell of support for something is often enough to get someone moving on something, or at least thinking about it. "We need to head this off before it becomes a bigger deal" is your ally, as it's so hard to tell what will become a bigger deal, it makes that perception hard to ignore.

That's why political "scandals"--often so inane and often stupidly inconsequential--can have such a big impact: that perception of pressure brought about by the media or interest groups or whatever, sustained long enough, can reify itself through the actions that people think they have to start making to save face, fix the situation, capture the press cycle, etc.

"The mere perception that there's a groundswell of support for something"

That's a good point. But while I'm interested in the right thing happening that is not necessarily the same as getting people to make a lot of phone calls to make that right thing happen. Seems to me to be very lynch mob-ish.

Legislators simply responding to the most organized group is really no better than legislators responding to lobbyists. Just because a group is able to organize effectively doesn't mean that what they are trying to achieve is right (although it could be).

> Legislators simply responding to the most organized group is really no better than legislators responding to lobbyists.

I don't think that's true at all. Lobbyists require nothing but money. An organized group requires organization, yes, but it also requires a group who actually cares about the issue strongly enough to do something. I think that sounds a lot closer to the ideal of democracy than lobbying.

"also requires a group who actually cares about the issue strongly enough to do something"

True but what I am guessing is that many people simply lemming along with something and don't fully develop their own opinion. Or they will read something that someone says and without any further thought decide to support without vetting any of the facts. We see examples of this on HN where multiple knowledgeable people often chime in to debunk some blog post as being less than factually correct.

Yes, this applies to democracy in general.

Many people see it as a failure of democracy, but it's actually a failure of education. Many people take the easy way out when confronted by issues they don't know about. By taking the popular line, they at least ensure that they won't be on the unpopular side of any conversations they have at social engagements.

Most bad ideas continue on the strength that most believers in said idea don't have the time or will to question it.

> Seems to me to be very lynch mob-ish.

While true on some level, from what I know of the history of legal reform, it's pretty much how most changes have actually gone down: the lawmakers come under intense pressure to do something about X and something gets done. Granted, there are quite a few slight of hand tricks that have been pulled, both in terms of creating artificial pressure and making sure that the thing that gets done is what you want (even when it has nothing to do with the original X...).

> Seems to me to be very lynch mob-ish.

Really? You are comparing calling your elected representatives to a lynch mob? wtf?

Because asking legitimate questions is terrorism.

Shouldn't you be a little more worried about the fact that politicians refuse to talk to their constituents more than you should worry about their phone lines being tied up while their constituents call them?

Explain the connection between this:

"a little more worried about the fact that politicians refuse to talk to their constituents"

and this:

"The agency has been stonewalling reporters"

While reporters are also constituents stonewalling reporters is different that stonewalling constituents.

Today, I learned that journalists are not constituents.

For the vast majority of people and issues, the media is the primary source the populace can rely upon to gain information about an issue. Obstructing, impeding, suppressing or in any other way hindering the access of the press is tantamount to doing the same to the population at large. This is why the Fourth Estate is critical to any democracy.

Hold on. Politicians aren't afraid to talk about the TSA to constituents. I don't know one politician (Rep or Dem) that's doesn't rail against the TSA. It's a hot topic in Florida.

But journalists are not constituents. And no politician wants to be on the record about anything. ;)

It's not really spam if your job is to represent the people contacting you with their concerns.

Well, isn't that is the whole point of representative democracy? The representatives listen to the people and then prioritize the issues they are working on based on what's important for the constituents. If more people call about one issue over the other, that's the hot button thing, they should give it a priority.

Making it easier for someone to get engaged in the political process (in this case, by helping them call their representative) is a good thing. Politicians do not receive enough pushback and feedback from their constituents (9% approval rating), yet you disapprove of efforts to improve this?

Spam and junk mail are very different than calling a representative -- this comparison feels disingenuous to me. It is their job to listen to us.

Spam is, by definition, unsolicited.

When you become an elected representative, you are implicitly soliciting comments and questions from every single person in the area you represent.

The spam analogy is not just wrong, but outright reprehensible. If you don't want to get lots of calls from your constituents, you have two choices: 1) don't piss them off in the first place 2) don't run for office.

They have systems in place to handle that stuff, man. It's not like the telephone was just invented and we're still coming to grips with the various core problems of making it work. Don' worry about it, just call.

And if you still really really hate the idea of calling, then send a fax instead. Plenty of online fax services with free plans you can just upload a .doc or .pdf to, and the best thing about it - it's asynchronous, woohoo!

You are misinformed about the nature of public office. Legislators act on the will of the voters, unless their is influence from lobbying groups. Without the emails and phone calls, an elected official has no idea about the numbers on either side of a debate. Ralph Nader has a quote along the lines of, "if you aren't speaking for your interests, then who will?" Lobbying just became a backdoor access because with money, you could pay for the influence of insiders. But believe me, no amount of lobbying will overcome organized American voters. Just look at SOPA as an example. This is how a democracy works and you probably just aren't used to seeing media do what they are supposed to do--facilitate democracy.

"you probably just aren't used to seeing media do what they are supposed to do--facilitate democracy."

No-one in the last few decades has seen this. Most media is is actually part of the government structure now, and has very little impact on facilitating "democracy". If this were the case, various media outlets would agree with each other (as the voice of the common opinion) as opposed to the current state of affairs, where a media channel controlled by one organization will be at war with a conflicting channel of "news".

I think that looking to the media to "facilitate democracy" is naive at best, disingenuous at worst.

You've never lobbied before, right? Emails, letters, petitions - all useless. Although a hand-written letter probably will get read by an official's staff. Probably ignored too; but you might get lucky.

Phone calls are ignored too. There are too many. And most of the calls are from "professional callers" - folk payed by lobbyists to call.

The absolute best way to lobby is to show up. In person. Either in DC, or even better, when they on the road locally. Especially during election years. NOTHING scares a politician more then a scene they can't control at a local event.

Congressmen are easy to get to when on the campaign trail. Senators are harder, but not much harder. But one piece of advice.. BE PREPARED. Know what you plan to say before the meet.

And you'll probably be shuffled off to a staffer. That's ok. Really. Staffers do most of the work anyway.

PS: Another way to get your message out, is of course money. A nice donation to a congressman will get you a meet. You'll get a few minutes with the congressman himself. But much more time with his staff. And if you give enough (a that level 3 or 4 thousand is more then enough) you get his top staff. And that's the best. Of course, the higher you go, the more money it cost. Example: you can get 20 seconds of the President's time (or his staff) if you drop 10k at certain dinners. Depending on your issue it can be money well spent.

By the way, the TSA is not gong away. Despite how much we all hate it. It's a jobs program now. And theres too much money involved now.

> PS: Another way to get your message out, is of course money.

As a european, I find it incredible that politics works this way in the US. It's corruption, plain and simple. Fully institutionalized and out in the open.

On the other hand, 3k is not a lot and gets you a guaranteed meeting.

That's like saying "Hey, a thousand bucks and Jimmy and his boys won't hassle us no more!"

That's exactly what it is. Granted, we didn't start out that way. It's a shake-down scheme now though. Everyone blames the lobbyist but really, it's the elected official. And by extension... us.

Look, most Americans have the attention span of a gnat. And most don't care about anything past their front lawn. A friend of mine, a state senator said it best to me; "Most Floridians want to be lead. They're sheep". And he's exactly right.

I mean when was the last time you researched a candidate? Knew his "real" history and views? Not the splat you're fed 30 second commercials. Half of American doesn't even vote. Even on issues that effect them directly - like the environment (water supply being a classic example). But they sure bitch about the TSA.

Man, I've been playing the political game (as a donor) too long. ;)

> didn't start out that way

Yes it did. Campaign finance was pretty much a free-for-all until the 20th century, and even then could barely be called regulated until FECA in 1971.

see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campaign_finance_reform_in_the_...

I'm guessing that the state senator would not have said that had their been a recording device active.

Wouldn't it be prudent to assume that there is one recording as they are now all around us?

It's a lot to the average person. By having a paid tier system like this, you're ensuring that only the rich and businesses have access to politicians (which actually goes a long way to explaining why American politics is so biased towards those already on top of the food chain; or "capitalism" as those in power often like to label their corruption)

This is an absurd, and woefully ignorant comment. A DDOS is one or a few individuals trying to shut down a service by mimicking large volumes of traffic, or sending incomplete packets which 'confuse' a server. Calling your elected official is akin to having a successful site where thousands of constituents are visiting a page. This is why they have publicly posted phone numbers. If you don't like what your elected official is doing it's your right and your obligation to tell the representative. It's called democracy.

We have several ways to demonstrate like calling an official, a petition, and a protest being the most common. Since Bush has neutered protests, and the White House pretty much just ignores the petitions, calling your representative is one of the few ways we differ from an oligarchy.

One of my favorite stories came from one of the linked articles that he wrote while still on the job.

http://takingsenseaway.wordpress.com/2012/11/12/confession-x...

I recall one time I did a bag check on a man from Detroit, once the auto-making capital of the world. Having been informed by the x-ray operator that there was a bottle of water in the bag, I pulled it out and quickly sensed that something was slightly off. Then, I realized what it was: there was an enormous dildo rubber-banded to it. I then had an epiphany, spreading over me like a sunrise, beautiful and exhilarating: he wanted me to have to deal with the dildo. He did it on purpose. In rubber-banding that dildo to the water bottle he knew we would target, he seemed to say:

“Yes, I have a dildo, federal officer. Even after the horrors of 9/11, I am still alive; full of vitality, love, sex and, later tonight, that large dildo rubber-banded to the water you are about to confiscate from me. That bottle of water, bought with hard-earned American dollars to relinquish my bodily fluids, so as to make me strong and keep the wheels of commerce of this great nation turning. In taking my water, I want you, federal officer, to know that the terrorists have won, and that you are complicit. I want you to see my dildo. To hold it in your hand; to know that I, as well as my fellow passengers and countrymen, are strong and resilient.

That we, the people of this great nation, can, and will, snap back, like that rubber band.”

On the way to my bachelor party, my friends snuck a foil-wrapped dildo into my luggage in the hopes of eliciting a TSA response. Thankfully, it didn't work.

How did it fail? Did the TSA not find it, or did it just not elicit a response?

Either they didn't see it, or they did, but didn't care.

Either way, we all got a good laugh about it when I unpacked at our destination.

Why we don't take a page out of the Israeli's book is beyond me. They have been dealing with this for much longer, have made the mistakes we are currently making, and have learned from them.

Their airports don't have long lines and pat downs by ill-trained employees (lines of course exist, but they are shorter and not what we in the US are used to). Instead they hire fewer, educated and skilled persons, many of whom are, behaviorists to determine potential threats. It works; the last successful airport attack in Israel was in 1986, and they have prevented many since.

I remember reading about this in an interview with an ex Israeli defense minister years ago, but I couldn't find that article. This one sums it up though: http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/01/11/yeffet.air.security.is...

While I think the TSA is largely a sack of shit, Israel's solution is hardly a panacea.

Israel has basically 1 major airport, and 2 minor airports. They further are based heavily on profiling. I don't expect the Israeli model would fit well to the US, which has 19 airports with more traffic than Ben Gurion, and a much more dynamic set of threats.

You could be right about that, I'm certainly no expert, it just seemed to make sense to me. Perhaps I was oversimplifying things in my head. However, it's hard to imagine that we wouldn't be more secure hiring educated behaviorists to have a quick chat with passengers before they board a plane.

> However, it's hard to imagine that we wouldn't be more secure hiring educated behaviorists to have a quick chat with passengers before they board a plane.

"quick chat"?

Would this would be a "quick chat" where they can ask anything they want, lying is a felony, and choosing not to answer would get you locked in a back room for "secondary screening" until ten minutes after your plane leaves?

Perhaps not that extreme, but I'm not aware of an inalienable right to fly on an airplane. Don't want to answer a few questions about your trip? Fine, you're either a threat or you're just being a jerk. You don't get to fly. You're coming up with problems with a theoretical implementation that doesn't even exist.

And let's not go overboard on the "ask anything they want." These would be educated, skilled individuals. Asking inappropriate questions would not be per procedure. It is in everyone's interest to have safe flights, and if you're being difficult just to be difficult then tough shit, that's what you get.

YouTube has very many videos of people being awkward assholes just for the sake of it, and then being outraged by the response they get no matter how mild and polite that response is.

While it probably would be a good thing to drop the security theatre and to have better training there are going to be a bunch of Americans who resent the idea that someone is asking them a question before they board a plane.

>Don't want to answer a few questions about your trip? Fine, you're either a threat or you're just being a jerk. You don't get to fly.

And if that was the extent of it, fair enough. Unfortunately, sometimes it's a little less "you don't get to fly" and a little more "I'm sorry sir, but we're going to have to detain you for several hours of invasive questioning".

>These would be educated, skilled individuals. Asking inappropriate questions would not be per procedure.

Maybe in CandyLand, this would be the case. Here on Earth, things do not always occur according to ideals.

Well I'm not proposing that we detain people who won't answer a question. Again, I'm not proposing a carbon copy of the Israeli system.

    Maybe in CandyLand, this would be the case. Here on Earth, things do not always occur according to ideals.

Well, yeah, of course, but there's nothing you can do to prevent that. You could make that argument of literally any system. Of course some people will do the wrong thing. The idea is that you correct it and do what you can to prevent it.

> The idea is that you correct it and do what you can to prevent it.

The US Government does not share this idea with you. It's much better to sweep it under the rug, because to admit to fault would hurt the public's confidence in The System(tm).

>These would be educated, skilled individuals.

I'm pretty sure TSA was created with the same thoughts.

Well I suppose I'm hoping for good execution.

Perhaps not that extreme, but I'm not aware of an inalienable right to fly on an airplane.

How about a combination of you paid for a ticket and freedom of movement is a basic human right?

I'm not against reasonable and proportionate security, for air travel or anywhere else. But the kind of arguments some airports and airport security organisations have been making in recent years boil down to giving up all your legal rights to anything and not being guaranteed a service you've clearly paid for or even any sort of compensation if they deny you passage on some arbitrary grounds. (Sorry, one of our staff felt you raised your voice to them and we have a Zero Tolerance(TM) approach to that kind of thing -- look, it's right there on page 74 of the impractically long agreement you couldn't possibly have read before the web page timed out when you bought your ticket.)

If you'll pardon the pun, that kind of reasoning would never fly under normal legal conditions. Courts in almost any jurisdiction would throw out a contract where you paid for something but weren't guaranteed what you paid for or some sort of reasonable alternative or compensation if for good reasons it wasn't possible to provide it. And if it wasn't provided and not for a good reason, you would probably be entitled to compensation for any consequential losses as well. I don't see any reason that airports, airlines, or for that matter government-mandated security organisations, should be held to a lower standard, or not held to any standard at all, just because someone mentioned words like "air" or "travel".

    How about a combination of you paid for a ticket and freedom of movement is a basic human right?

Neither are. We have passports. We have laws in place which restrict movement if needed. Just as driving is not a right, flying is not a right.

> Don't want to answer a few questions about your trip? Fine, you're either a threat or you're just being a jerk. You don't get to fly.

Who would be left to fly once we got rid of all the jerks?

> It is in everyone's interest to have safe flights, and if you're being difficult just to be difficult then tough shit, that's what you get.

Why don't we work on making car travel safe first, since that would actually be a net-win on saving lives? Why are safe flights so much more important than the 50,000 people that die on the roads each year? More people die from driving in one week than from one plane crash.

> Don't want to answer a few questions about your trip? Fine, you're either a threat or you're just being a jerk.

2013 called, they want their "If you got nothing to hide"-argument back.

> Would this would be a "quick chat" where they can ask anything they want, lying is a felony, and choosing not to answer would get you locked in a back room for "secondary screening" until ten minutes after your plane leaves?

Good point, but it's sadly not that different than the way things work now. The difference would seem to be the TSA wouldn't need a provocation, whereas technically now they sort of do.

Israeli security is based on profiling, but not racial or religious profiling. They profile primarily on the nations you have passport stamps for. If you've been in a country that is known to harbor and train terrorists, you're gonna get the microscope. I feel like this is healthy profiling.

What about Oklahoma City? Does this put the US on that list?

What amount of security screening is going to stop a truck full of explosives from going off?

None. Screening is not the only tool out there. What happened to good old fashioned detective work?

In both law enforcement and journalism, we are no longer willing to fund proper investigative work.

From what I've read, a lot of the profiling is by country of origin and somewhat by ethnic group.

They won't come out directly and ask if you're Jewish, but they will ask you where you were born, where your parents were born and what their last names were.

If you're Jewish you're in the "low risk" bucket. If you're not, you get extra scrutiny. I wouldn't be surprised if an Arab from Palestine gets a lot of scrutiny.

Yeah, the threat models are different, and again, scale.

Looks to be more than that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Israeli_airports

Look at the numbers:

Rank Airport Passenger numbers 1 Ben Gurion Airport 13,134,070 2 Eilat Airport 1,400,067 3 Sde Dov Airport 658,741 4 Ovda Airport 136,791 5 Haifa Airport 68,968 6 Ben Ya'akov Airport 15,782

Meanwhile in the US, Birmingham is the #72 airport, and the one closest to Israel's #2.

Harrisburg, PA is #105, and closest to Sde Dov.

Lincoln, NE is #204, and closest to Ovda.

Source: http://www.faa.gov/airports/planning_capacity/passenger_allc...

The profiling the Israelis do would never fly in the US.

Plus, all it would take is a few media reports about people missing or not being allowed on a flight and the system would come crashing down.

From what I've read, the Israeli system basically works like this:"if I'm not convinced I'm getting the entire truth, we're going to keep doing this until I do, plane leaving or not".

Well, I'm not saying we just copy what they do blindly. The situations are different. That doesn't mean we couldn't employee some of their tactics. Particularly, I've always liked the idea of trained personal (behaviorists) who have a quick chat with every passenger while doing away with much of the security dog and pony show.

I think the problem is that the most effective techniques used by the Israelis are the ones that wouldn't fly here in the US.

However, I'm sure the TSA reached out them for information on other things.

> "if I'm not convinced I'm getting the entire truth, we're going to keep doing this until I do, plane leaving or not"

That's pretty much how it is in the U.S. too.

That's true.

I'm not saying TSA agents let suspects onto planes, but the difference in Israel (from what I've read) is that the security agents use it to a much greater degree.

For example, if you fit the wrong profile, they will not let you board even though they have little to no evidence of any wrongdoing. If it turns out later that you're "clean"? No repercussions to the agents and you'll get zero traction if you try and complain about it either to the security organization or the press. The Israeli public accepts that fact.

If that same thing happened here in the US, I don't think Americans would stand for it. Sure there have been examples of the TSA doing it, but the backlash is pretty severe and they don't seem to do it as often.

The Israeli airport security process reminds me more of the border control agents in the US (CPB). Those guys can pretty much turn away anyone they want for little to no reason (even ban you from entry permanently) and they are given that prerogative.

> For example, if you fit the wrong profile, they will not let you board even though they have little to no evidence of any wrongdoing.

It may not be exactly the same, but that's not too far from what happens in the US either (I would know - it happened to me).

The main difference between Israel and the US is that in Israel, the racial profiling is done openly.

That's not to say that people are happy with the racial profiling there either[0], but it's legal to do it explicitly.

[0] http://www.thenational.ae/news/world/arabs-say-they-endure-d...

From what I understand, when you get pulled aside for questioning in the US, it works the same way... whether it's supposed to or not.

Too true. I was in Israel just a few years ago visiting family and my cousin that is now out of the army, but still works for the army, told me the safest place in the world is the Israeli airport. Between the cameras the officers and the checkpoints it sure seemed that way.

From memory: there was a checkpoint driving up to the airport where my cousin had to tell the guy where he was from, purpose for going to the airport etc, that was brief. Then when I got into the airport there was just sorta a mash of people rather than a line and eventually there were 3 or 4 people taking id, and asking you questions about your visit. Again very brief. From there metal detector and then to the gate.

My fear is that the TSA does do a lot of the same camera stuff and the charade that they put on at the metal detector/body scanner is in fact just a charade.

the safest place in the world is the Israeli airport. Between the cameras the officers and the checkpoints it sure seemed that way.

I can't tell if this is an attempt at humour or not.

There are tons of sleepy country villages with zero crime - not even theft, and a part-time law enforcement officer who covers a large area.

>It works; the last successful airport attack in Israel was in 1986, and they have prevented many since

I'd be willing to bet that shutting down all airports permanently would prove successful in preventing attacks. The question is, at what cost?

Well that seems like a silly leap. I'm not sure what "cost" you're referring to, but you're right in that some of what they do wouldn't fly here. That doesn't mean we couldn't take a hybrid approach. It seems pretty plain that much of what we do now is comical.

Of course it's a silly leap. I was trying to illustrate that the argument of "Strategy X prevented crime" doesn't necessarily make it a preferable alternative.

As to the cost: I'm a twitchy sort of fellow. If I had to self-diagnose I would probably attribute it to OCD or some such thing, but regardless... what are these behaviorists looking for? Do I get profiled based on the fact that I probably look "sketchy" in public, regardless of my actual intent? Sounds like a cost to me (though perhaps one you personally would never consider).

Funny story: a professor I know was once asked at an Israeli airport whether he spoke any hebrew, when he answered: "no, but I would love to learn", the security officer didn't know what to do for a couple of seconds.

Anyway if what I hear from my friend who is a social worker in the Occupied Territories about security at Israeli airports I sure hope the US doesn't take a page from Israeli's book.

As a society, you have to allocate the limited supply of educated and skilled people wisely. I'd rather have them teaching, doing medical research, or starting startups than doing better traveler screening.

America has a huge number of graduates who are unemployed or working at menial jobs, the supply is far from limited.

Among many other reasons, it's partly a question of scale. A quick Wikipedia check[1] shows Israel has 28 airports, the US has a few more than that, as of 2011 it was 19,782.[2] You just can't expect the same level of quality with the same policies with the difference in locations and passenger volume.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Israeli_airports

[2] http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/pub...

You're grossly overstating the commercial aviation fields in the US.

TSA applies to commercial aviation. Most of those US fields are general (civilian, private, noncommercial) aviation, and the overwhelming majority are little more than dirt strips (33.3% were paved as of 2006).

For commercial transport, you want to look at the "certified" line of that table, which shows 547 fields. From the footnote: "Certificated airports serve air-carrier operations with aircraft seating more than 9 passengers. As of 2005, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) no longer certificates military airports."

According to Wikipedia's list of US airports, sorted by enplanements (this is apparently a word), there are 87 airports with > 1 million enmplanements/year. At the low end, that's 2740 daily, or about 30 largish flights (100 seats each). CHS, Charleston International Airport (South Carolina) is the 87th on this list.

Another 296 airports are listed with traffic ranging down to 1,124 passenger boardings/year. Of these, 201 have more than 100 boardings/day on average.

> TSA applies to commercial aviation

It hasn't been that way for a while. They have been expanding to things like sporting events, trains stations, etc.

In the context of my comment: commercial as opposed to general aviation.

That would increase costs and require higher competency. It won't happen.

What we need is to expand the TSA-Pre procedures to everyone who isn't a suspected terrorist.

Behaviorists? That sounds like a mix of bullshit and racism.

Not sure I understand what you're getting at... there exist people trained to cue in on the behavior of others. What does race have to do with it? Care to elaborate?

He's calling the training and abilities of such people into question. And I think it's a legitimate concern. Have we performed any studies on such behaviorists to determine if they are better than people with no training? Are they succumbing to personal prejudice? (That's where race comes in.) How do we even evaluate such things?

Schneier has written favorably about the Israeli approach (https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/07/profiling.htm...) while more recently has pointed to research which calls the UK and US approach into question (https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/06/behavioral_pr...). Schneier's take is that the Israeli approach does not scale to the US (https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/01/adopting_the_...). If I understand his point, it's not so much the training of looking for behaviors, but the amount of time spent with each person. I am personally skeptical that anyone can be trained to identify behaviors indicative of terrorist activity, and that such a person would not just succumb to their own personal biases.

This here is making perfect the enemy of good, blended with the pathologically compulsive Hacker News "data needed!" tic.

I think it's garden-variety skepticism of a rather broad claim. "Behaviorists" ticks my charlatan-radar. I'm not arguing for perfect - how do we even know it's good? And I would like to point out that I sought out some sources on the subject, which points to lots of research.

The USA spends about $6.93 per passenger on security. Israel spends about $56.75 per passenger on security.

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11...

EL AL spends $56.75, not Israel. The in-airport security when not flying EL AL has nothing to do with EL AL so these numbers don't seem that relevant.

> Why we don't take a page out of the Israeli's book is beyond me. They have been dealing with this for much longer, have made the mistakes we are currently making, and have learned from them.

They've also decided that they're okay with alienating to the highest possible degree a huge chunk of their population and most of their neighbors with their security measures. I wonder how different their methods would look if they were adapted to the American situation, and how an already fatigued American populace would react.

How about you do it like the rest of the developed world does and just not have a whole load of useless security theatre? Everyone's happier and you don't become the laughing stock of the 'free' world.

Israeli security is based heavily on explicit racial profiling that is illegal in the US[0]. Their model is also great if you happen to be white and Jewish, but not so great if you're Arab[1].

In any case, we don't need to speculate. The TSA has actually been trained by former security officers from El Al, which is how we ended up with things like the "Behavioral Detection Officers", who have been accused of relying on race as a primary indicator[2], instead of "microexpressions" (which are themselves a rather suspect idea to begin with).

Perhaps we could hire and train better officers (which would require paying them better wages), but that would be a rather unnecessary expense, given that the TSA itself has admitted that there is "no evidence of terrorist plots against aviation in the US"[3].

[0] That doesn't prevent it from being practiced in the US, but it's illegal.

[1] http://www.thenational.ae/news/world/arabs-say-they-endure-d...

[2] http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2013/11/15/aclu-calls-fo...

[3] http://tsaoutofourpants.wordpress.com/2013/10/17/tsa-admits-...

I don't understand why people bring up Israel whenever there is a TSA discussion. When the obvious answer is to just abolish the TSA, and do way with any security theatre. Why does air travel need so much more protection (an infinite amount more) than pretty much anything else in our lives?

“I’m not trying to tread upon your First Amendment rights,” she said. “All I’m saying is: Couldn’t you have run those First Amendment rights past the legal department first?”

Welcome to modern America.

That was the most Orwellian sentence I've read in years.

You have a First Amendment right to speech. You don't have a right to a government job. It's hardly Orwellian.

If you self-identify as a government employee, then it is reasonable to assume that someone might take what you say as government policy. Had he not said he was a TSA employee first, there would have been no issue at all.

But if someone first says they are a government employee and then immediately follows that disclosure with "That being said, all of what I'm about to say represents my opinions and my observations and in no way should be interpreted as the official position or policy of the agency that I work for", it should all be kosher and protected under free speech, no?

Free speech does not guarantee employment.

If free speech costs you your job, is it really "free?" /snark ;-)

Yes. The point is that you can do it as much as you want without restriction from anyone. Whether or not that restricts your employment is irrelevant to the first amendment.

Of course not. Unless you live in economic boom or are rich. If government employee can not voice his opinions on politics without fear of being fired, his free speech rights are pure theory. Theoretically he has it, practically he does not dare to use them.

It just give the government ability to yell "we guarantee freedom of speech" without really giving it.

> You have a First Amendment right to speech. You don't have a right to a government job. It's hardly Orwellian.

It's not "Orwellian" (the term doesn't make sense here), however what would you say if the TSA fired someone because he was a muslim, for example. I doubt the following:

""You have a First Amendment right to follow any or no religion. You don't have a right to a government job""

> If you self-identify as a government employee, then it is reasonable to assume that someone might take what you say as government policy.

No, that's ridiculous. If someone says, "I work at the TSA, and the official policy is X", then perhaps it's "reasonable". Also, had he not identified himself as a TSA employee, none of what he said would make any sense: he was describing his experiences as a TSA employee.

> "You have a First Amendment right to follow any or no religion. You don't have a right to a government job"

Actually, that's built directly into the constitution, so the First Amendment doesn't enter into it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Religious_Test_Clause

>If you self-identify as a government employee, then it is reasonable to assume that someone might take what you say as government policy

I disagree. Especially when you are at the bottom of the chain of command.

Would you expect a Starbucks barista, when speaking in an off-hours context, to speak for Starbucks? "I work at starbucks, but I don't think their coffee is particularly good, and my boss is an asshole." No. That's clearly the private opinion and gripes of a grunt. Now, if said barista said that on national TV, sure, they'd get fired. But nobody would be mislead into thinking that the Starbucks official message was "our coffee is bad and our supervisors are assholes"

The expectation that a grunt will stay 'on message' on personal time is... pretty goddamn silly, if you ask me.

I mean, sure, if a grunt goes counter-message at a company that demands slavish obedience, you are going to get fired.

Hell, if you go off-message in a public enough way, and embarrass your bosses enough, especially if you reveal real weaknesses in the system you are a part of, as this person did, you are going to get fired about anywhere. I'm not making moral judgments about that; it's just the way it is.

But, going "off message" on your personal time and embarrassing your bosses, while it might get you fired, is not in any way misleading to the public. Especially when you are just a grunt.

But the main point is that the government didn't force him into silence. There was no First Amendment issue here. It was an employee/employer issue, not a citizen vs gov't issue.

I don't disagree, as written... though the guy did seem to fear being put on lists and harassed. To the extent that you think that fear is justified, this would be a first amendment issue. But as written, it doesn't sound like there has been retaliation.

I was just taking issue with this idea that a reasonable person would think that a grunt speaking off-hours was speaking for the corporation or government that employs them.

(I also have pretty strong feelings that complaining about your boss to people who aren't your boss is a reasonable sort of thing to do... and maybe even a fundamental human need. But that's not really relevant to the discussion at hand.)

That fear is the problem with agencies like the TSA which exist to "do something", and serve little real purpose.

The speech issue is a real ethical issue. A government employee has to be careful with what and how they say things in public, as people can and will decide to interpret your statement as policy statements. In NY, a DOT engineer was fired because he said something about snow plowing (that wasn't negative) which conflicted with the administrations narrative.

Would you expect a Starbucks barista, when speaking in an off-hours context, to speak for Starbucks? "I work at starbucks, but I don't think their coffee is particularly good

Don't you agree that a Starbucks barista saying "Our coffee is not good" is a different matter from John Doe saying "Starbucks coffee is not good"?

>Don't you agree that a Starbucks barista saying "Our coffee is not good" is a different matter from John Doe saying "Starbucks coffee is not good"?

Well, let's put it this way. I interviewed at Yahoo search, back when Yahoo Search was a thing. I was passing on a question, playing it off as a detail that i would look up. I said something to the effect of "I'd just google it"

Laughter. "we try not to say that here." I got the job.

As a SysAdmin, really? my knowledge of search-engines was probably not any more nuanced than any other technical person. That's probably true of the Starbucks barista, too; I believe that Starbucks uses so-called super-automatic espresso machines, meaning that the machine grinds, tamps and pulls the shot, so a starbucks barista might very well know no more about espresso than a random enthusiast.

I do believe that it is completely reasonable for an employee to have a low opinion of the company they work for.

In fact, I think that only having "yes men" type employees who always parrot the company line can be dangerous; I think this is a big part of why facebook doesn't understand just how creepy the rest of us think they are.

I think that this expectation that employees "work for the mission, not the money" and the other exercises in groupthink that are becoming more popular in "Startup culture" are... kind of dangerous. You are training your employees to conceal their honest feelings, which is certainly bad for your employee, and I believe also bad for the company.

It's also totally different when it's government, especially law enforcement or military.

"I think you should vote for Nixon" is entirely different if it's a random person saying that, vs. a police officer who could choose to search you.

>I disagree. Especially when you are at the bottom of the chain of command.

Its too much to expect the average person to understand rank structure. Everyone is capable of understanding it, but almost nobody cares because civilian life doesn't often give you a good reason to care about military/government rank structure. Many people see an intimidating looking guy in a uniform and assume he's in charge of a lot of really important stuff.

I was in the military for over a decade, yet to my wife, there were three ranks. Privates, Her Husband (Actually a Sergeant), and the mythical Officer/First Sergeant (Everyone higher ranking than myself would alternately be referred to as First Sergeant or my Commanding Officer, as in, the same person would be referred to as either one, depending on the conversation. I explained the differences to her a thousand times, but she, like many military wives, just didn't seem to care.

Civilians care even less. Most people recognize that a general is the highest authority in the military, but that's about where it ends.

You also have to consider the way that the media often likes to twist a person's words around. You might be speaking as a matter of opinion, but if a news station uses clever editing to make it sound like you are an important person who is declaring an official military position on a subject, it doesn't really matter that its not true, the damage is still done.

>Its too much to expect the average person to understand rank structure. Many people see an intimidating looking guy in a uniform and assume he's in charge of a lot of really important stuff.

While I agree that military rank is complex, I'm pretty sure that most people are very clear that the folks doing the grope and grab at the airport are at the very bottom of the hierarchy.

Of course, I could be wrong, but my impression is that the objection many people have to the grope and grab is at least partially a class thing. Most people see TSA employees as "beneath them"

I believe this is exacerbated by our (fading) sense that air travel is a luxury thing, and that the employees who facilitate said travel ought to kowtow to me, not the other way around.

Umm, no, it's not a class thing. It's an "I need to get to Seattle and you're an asshole getting in my way without any useful reason" thing.

You'll feel a lot less giving towards TSA the first time you show up two hours in advance of a domestic flight and end up having to sleep the night in an airport because they detained you for additional screening (for no apparent reason other than perhaps not liking your look) long enough to miss the last flight out to your destination.

>>You have a First Amendment right to speech. You don't have a right to a government job. It's hardly Orwellian.

That's not how it works. Freedom of speech means you can say whatever you want without fear of being prosecuted by the government. And if firing the employee is not prosecuting them, what is?

So what do you think the solution should be. Can government employees pretend to represent the government when they haven't actually been authorized to?

No one is "pretending to represent the government." He simply said he works for the TSA. As an employee at the lowest level, the last thing he is doing is representing the organization's policy or philosophy.

if firing the employee is not prosecuting them, what is?

Well, how about something like:

pros·e·cute (verb) law : to hold a trial against a person who is accused of a crime to see if that person is guilty

-- Merriam-Webster

I was using the term "prosecute" figuratively. But thank you for your pedantry. Sometimes I forget I'm on HN and comments like yours remind me again.

It's hardly pedantry when it comes to legal documents... The first amendment does not protect against figurative prosecution, at least to my knowledge, so your premise is off.

I realize you probably feel the actual text of the first amendment is needless pedantry, but what it actually says is congress shall pass no law...

You're committing an equivocation fallacy and (s)he's allowed to point that out.

But that's not how we define freedom of speech. You cannot just say anything without a context, for example inciting panic at a movie theater by yelling fire.

But more relevantly, one is allowed to say what one wants in government - one just has to be ready to take responsibility for one' s actions. That is far from not having freedom of speech.

Serious question, looking for actual precedents:

If you become a government employee, do you sacrifice any constitutional rights?

Can there be a clause or contract in any situation that removes your rights as a citizen, or do you cease to be a citizen when employed by the US government?

Maybe. Members of the US military generally enjoy the same rights and protections as civilians, but there are limits on their speech and they are subject to different laws/regulations (UCMJ).

Military officers in the US are barred from speaking contemptuous words against the President and VP. (article 88 UCMJ). There is a parallel article that applies to enlisted members. Calling the Pres a "fascist pig" is a no-no.

Army regulation 600-20 limits members ability to campaign on behalf of candidates for public office and partisan political causes.

I'm not aware of anything like this that applies to civilian government employees.

guess you don't read much

It cites a "legal department", which is probably enough to make it pretty Kafkian as well

You're right, kafkaesque may fit better.

It's hardly even a modern phenomenon.

As usual, the issue is quite a bit more complex than presented here. In modern America, government employees' free-speech rights are broader than they used to be, not narrower. The underlying principle here is that when you identify yourself as a government employee, you are in some sense speaking on behalf of the government, and as your employer the government has an interest in regulating the speech of its officers, not least to ensure an accurate reflection of its legal position. The author would [edit: probably - I haven't checked] have been perfectly at liberty to express the same viewpoint without self-identifying as a TSA official. A century ago this would have been an open-and-shut case...in favor of the government.

http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/publice...

Right, this is in the same bucket as the disclaimers on TV, e.g. the following in no way represents the viewpoints of this station. You as a person have more free speech than you as a representative of your employer.

But he's not acting as a representative of the TSA. He's not speaking for them; he's speaking for himself — for all of us, really — as someone who has seen their practices, many of them controversial, from an insider's perspective.

That's an invaluable (and otherwise largely unavailable, or at best, irredeemably subject to spin) contribution to the dialogue we, as a society, should be having about the TSA's form and function. Muzzling him a priori because he happens to have that perspective does disservice to everyone, including the TSA.

Sure, but nobody's saying that he shouldn't critique the agency as an ex-employee. That's totally legit.

It's not even specific to America, my very European government ask the same of its employees. It just make sense honestly.

I tend to think Pickering v Board of Education makes the speech protected even if the speaker identifies himself/herself as a government employee. At least, I would argue that such self-identification is so crucial to the speaker's message and so valuable to the public as to be protected.

I suspect that Garcetti v. Ceballos doesn't invalidate this position. In Garcetti, the issue was statements made pursuant to professional duties. I don't believe a letter to the editor criticizing your employer could be considered an action taken pursuant to your duties.

I'm just speculating, though. I can't be sure a given court would agree with me. So any government employees reading this shouldn't take my word for it.

It's easy to think of edge cases where it's a problem though, and then you get into tricky political questions about how to regulate the content of speech. For example, imagine a disgruntled TSA employee pens an article excoriating Muslims and suggesting that they be forbidden to travel (Constitutional impediments to such a policy notwithstanding). This would be very problematic for reasons that I hope are obvious; but all speech were constitutionally protected how would you legally distinguish between that critical of the TSA and that critical of some other class of people without privileging one set of political opinions over another?

I'm no expert on the Constitutional law in this area - it just seems like a very obvious can of worms, of the sort that the courts prefer to punt on.

I don't believe a letter to the editor criticizing your employer could be considered an action taken pursuant to your duties.

I think you could easily say you took an oath to the United States as opposed to your immediate supervisor, although in cases where people have made such arguments courts often seem to take the position that one should exhaust one's administrative remedies first - ie make complaints through channels, escalate to appropriate Congressional committees if necessary, etc. etc. Given the purpose of the TSA, national security issues could also come into play but I have no idea how those shake out.

For example, imagine a disgruntled TSA employee pens an article excoriating Muslims and suggesting that they be forbidden to travel.

They should be allowed to do that. And any publication willing to try to sell ad space flanking such drivel should be allowed to as well.

Freedom of speech is specifically and ultimately for the speech that you don't like. I find the ideas behind your hypothetical article abhorrent, but I absolutely and unwaveringly think people should be able to say those things. My main motivations for this stance are two-fold:

1. Preventing speech we don't like invites a slippery slope. If today we say you can't write articles excoriating Muslims, what's to stop us from barring editorials espousing atheism tomorrow? Or any religious stance but the current, socially dominant one the day after that? Better to allow distasteful discourse today than to risk dissenting discourse tomorrow.

2. I find it convenient when noxious assholes out themselves as such. It makes my life so much easier when people who think these kinds of things fly their flag loudly and proudly, so I know whom to avoid.

how would you legally distinguish between that critical of the TSA and that critical of some other class of people without privileging one set of political opinions over another?

Easy: you don't. Speech is speech is speech. Allow it all, or risk it all.

Now, a critical caveat here is that we're talking about speech, and not incitement. Expressing an opinion, however vile, should be sacrosanct. Encouraging people who might share your opinion to visit violence (and I don't just mean physical violence) upon the targets of your noisome nonsense is something entirely other. And I think that's a reasonably easy distinction to draw, as well, without privileging some opinions over others.

I don't agree with your position.

Look at the balance of harms in this example. On the one side, a TSA employee whose expression of sincere opinion is restrained by his employer, the government. On the other side, millions of innocent people who feel dissuaded from air travel on the grounds of national origin (see below) because they don't believe they'll be properly treated at airports and because they fear assaults , even if only verbal, from passengers emboldened by the slight imprimateur of official support for their prejudice.

(I say national origin rather than religion because most people seem to be in the habit of making judgments based on the former. Post 9/11 people like Sikhs were attacked because they were foreign-seeming and from a part of the world that has a lot of Muslims, even though Sikhism is a wholly different religion. a woman named Fatima Mubarak might be a Christian but most people are going to assume Islamic affiliation based on her name. Likewise, it's easy to imagine or identify people who are Islamic but statistically unlikely to be identified as such. In the aggregate, we're pretty superficial).

You have a balance of harms here, and I think ultimately courts would choose the harm that affects the fewest number of people, especially given the existence of numerous avenues for dissatisfied TSA employees to raise grievances through administrative channels rather than by trying to whip up public sentiment in favor of their political view.

Please note that it's not the speech excoriating someone else that I'm saying should be regulated - it's the publicity by the angry person of their official position with a government agency in connection with that speech, which shI say should be restrainable by the agency. If the TSA agent in this example thinks the agency so wrong-headed, s/he could resign from the TSA and then write things like 'I quit the TSA because they don't recognize the threat posed by Muslims' - to which the TSA could reply 'We are required by law to treat everyone equally and it is our policy to do so, which is why we parted ways with this employee.'

Now I totally agree that it's convenient when 'assholes out themselves as such.' The thing is that when they're in uniform (so to speak) what's convenient to you or me may be intimidating to someone else; things look quite different when you're a spectator rather than the target of someone's bias, and the appearance of official sanction for that bias amplifies the intimidatory effect. I'm saying that the interests of the agency in being seen to serve the public fairly and in accordance with law outweigh the interests of the individual agency employee who feels constrained by the agency's code of conduct.

I disagree with your position.

When we regulate free speech -- in any way whatsoever -- we open ourselves up to greater regulation of free speech. Free speech is a special privilege in that only unrestricted free speech can argue against restrictions on free speech. Once you grant restrictions against free speech, you open yourself up to a position where your speech becomes so restricted that you become unable to even argue why it should be less restricted.

Furthermore I strongly disagree that restrictions on speech should be relative to either the social position of the speaker, or the harms posed by the speaker. If our justification for preventing speech is that the speaker's speech could be mistaken as the official position of some group (in this case the TSA), then this gives us a legitimation to shut down all speech, as we can simply twist the speaker's position as being representative of some group to which they're tenuously related. A woman wants to speak out unpopularly against x? Well, we can claim she represents all women, and her speaking out would sour the position of the public towards women. A black man wants to speak out against unpopular y? Same argument. Jewish? Same argument. And so on. This is why speech is an individual right, regardless of circumstance.

As for the (in my opinion, unpersuasive) argument that the harm caused by speech should be legitimation to close down certain speech, no speech in-and-of itself is harmful. Speech is just speech, and cannot itself be harmful. It is people's reactions to speech which causes harm. Even if we claim certain classes of speech (say, yelling fire) have predictable outcomes that can cause harm, we also have to accept that harmful speech can sometimes be necessary. When the founding fathers spoke out against the tyranny of the British (or so I hear; I'm British!), this lead to a civil war which cost hundreds of thousands of people their lives. Same again when Lincoln spoke out against the separatist south. Same again when Churchill spoke out against the Nazi threat. Yet few would argue the harms caused by these pieces of speech should cause them to be banned, even though these pieces of speech resulted in the deaths of millions.

This means that we cannot be logically consistent when we claim to ban speech based upon harm, so we either have to change our justification (i.e. admit that it's not really harm we're avoiding, but specific types of harm), or admit that we're being illogical in selecting lesser harms (discomfort felt by non-Americans, in your example) as justification to shut down speech, and greater harms (the deaths of millions, as above) as protected speech.

Honestly, free speech is simply too fundamental to both democracy and philosophical/scientific progress to tamper with. No matter what lesser right you put up against it, you'd have a hard time convincing me that it should trump free speech, the right which underlies our very society.

I'm not proposing to regulate speech. I'm proposing to regulate people's ability to leverage their position as government officials to emphasize their speech. When you speak in uniform or publicize the fact of your position as a public employee, you're no longer speaking solely for yourself, but wrapping yourself in the mantle of authority.

Why is this such a difficult concept to grasp?

Furthermore I strongly disagree that restrictions on speech should be relative to either the social position of the speaker, or the harms posed by the speaker. If our justification for preventing speech is that the speaker's speech could be mistaken as the official position of some group (in this case the TSA), then this gives us a legitimation to shut down all speech, as we can simply twist the speaker's position as being representative of some group to which they're tenuously related. A woman wants to speak out unpopularly against x? Well, we can claim she represents all women, and her speaking out would sour the position of the public towards women. A black man wants to speak out against unpopular y? Same argument. Jewish? Same argument. And so on. This is why speech is an individual right, regardless of circumstance.

No, that's bollocks because employment is a bilateral contractual relationship. I don't choose to be a man nor is the fact of my masculinity subject to the agreement of the male community, therefore it's meaningless for me to say that I speak for all mean by virtue of happening to be one. Someone in a position of authority in an organization by definition stands in an agency relationship to that organization. The very word authority implies an ability to act as the of author of that organization's decisions.

As for the (in my opinion, unpersuasive) argument that the harm caused by speech should be legitimation to close down certain speech

I'm not making any such argument. If you think that, you have wholly misunderstood my position and I apologize for my lack of clarity in explaining.

If it's a question of balancing harms, then even the risk that open discourse, even the "icky" kind, might be imperiled is the greater harm, full stop.

What about the equally important freedom of assembly and travel, which is also constitutionally protected? You still seem hung up on the content of the speech, whereas the issue is that speech being made under color of the person's status as a TSA official. There's no barrier to some person expressing odious views without the additional context of being a government employee.

Travel, itself, isn't constitutionally protected, except insofar as it may be necessary for assembly; even then, it's the right of assembly that's protected. The government's position, one with which I'm somewhat sympathetic, is that the means of travel isn't protected. You can still take a bus or a train, drive yourself, or even hitchhike, if you're barred from flying. To say otherwise is tantamount to the claim that, as a citizen, you have a right to a driver's license. You don't.

All that aside, you seem equally hung up on whether someone is acting in some capacity as a TSA official or not. I maintain that unless someone specifically and explicitly claims they're speaking in that capacity, we should assume they're speaking as a private party.

I don't think it's the least bit ambiguous whether Mr. Harrington's blog posts — written while he was in the TSA's employ — nor this article, written after, are an official TSA position. Nor is it ambiguous whether your hypothetical anti-Muslim editorial, even were it penned by an active TSA employee — or, for that matter, officer or executive — is or isn't TSA policy. The legal system's notional "reasonable person" would be able to distinguish private speech from government policy in both cases, mooting your argument.

Well, it is complicated. There is a recognized right to travel as implicit, not in the Bill of Rights, but in the structure of the Constitution. The idea is that we are all citizens of the United States and we have a right to travel about the United States. See Crandall v. Nevada.

That poses some very interesting questions. If there is no right to a specific mode of travel, but some places can only be reached effectively by plane (say Hawaii) then does placing an American on a no-fly list impact that right to go to Hawaii? Does it matter if that individual is a resident of Hawaii and is thus effectively barred from interstate travel by this?

Internationally things get more complicated. I am not aware of any cases which hold squarely a right for Americans to travel about the world as they please. Certainly bans on spending money travelling to Cuba have been upheld. However what the government clearly cannot do is to take a protected criteria like speech, religion, or political viewpoint and use that as a basis for travel.

If an individual were to say that policy was to dissuade Muslims from travelling, the harm would be that Muslims would get together and sue the government in order to determine the scope of this misbehavior and put a stop to it. There really isn't that much harm when compared to the likely other uses of such a power (silencing discussions, for example, of what Islam means for politics in the US). On the whole disadvantaged groups are protected by bans on hate speech, given what the government has done in the past.

First of all, the limits of rights occurs in any culture in a cultural and historical context. Slopes can be more slippery in some places than others. In the US, you have tremendous emphasis on free speech not because free speech is necessarily good but because the restrictions on the government address past excesses in governmental action. So the historical context is important here.

A century ago, you would probably have been right. This speech has some significant bad tendencies that the government has a legitimate interest in regulating. If the government had been responsible in using that power, that might be the test today.

Unfortunately the trouble started in WWI, when sedition prosecutions were brought against individuals for encouraging people not to report for the draft. While the prosecutions were ultimately upheld, they made members of the court nervous. As a result the court, in Schenk v. United States, tightened up the standard a bit, to "clear and present danger" and including the famous bit about shouting fire in a crowded theater and laughing as people are trampled.

I think your hypothetical would be harder to justify under this new standard (in 1917) because it isn't clear that the danger is either clear or present. However, given prosecutions of alleged Communists in the 1920's I think it would stick.

The prosecutions of alleged communism, and the political antics surrounding them (HUAC, etc), eventually lead the courts to conclude that the basis of American democracy required a free marketplace of ideas. This eventually lead to the standard becoming a lot more tight in Yates v. United States (holding that urging people to accept the moral necessity of eventual violent overthrow of the government was protected speech, and not the equivalent of raising an army to accomplish such an end). In essence saying that workers must at some point unite and overthrow the government did not pose a clear or present danger but rather an unclear, future danger.

The danger in this context is not that a sincere opinion will be restrained but that the government will use its force to create apparent consensus for its preferred policies, and therefore deny the people a real voice in the matter. This is a structural, functional problem, and perhaps a less centralized, more local, more responsible and inclusive government might not have somewhere else.

> Look at the balance of harms in this example.

Your argument proceeds from the assumption that the balance of harms matters. Legally, it does not where political speech is concerned. This is pretty much the closest thing to a legal absolute as our system of laws has.

Restrictions on speech are generally subjected to strict scrutiny. Strict scrutiny is not based on a balance of harms test. Rather, for a restriction to pass strict scrutiny, it must satisfy the following factors:

1. It must be justified by a compelling governmental interest.

2. It must be narrowly tailored to achieve that interest.

3. It must be the least restrictive available means to achieve that interest.

Note that balance of harms doesn't factor anywhere into this analysis. The closest thing is the "compelling interest" test. But "compelling interest" isn't a test that weighs one interest against another. Rather, it simply asks whether the restriction's positive effects, examined on their own, are crucial, essential, or necessary, rather than merely desirable. This is a fairly high bar, by the way.

Getting back to our original question: A restriction on politicized hate speech by government employees would presumably trigger strict scrutiny, largely because of the political nature of the speech. So, does it pass strict scrutiny? Let's go factor by factor.

1. Does the government have a compelling interest in preventing hate speech by employees? No, because preventing such speech isn't crucial, essential, or necessary. It's merely desirable. Lives will not be lost, property will not be destroyed, and national security will not be directly compromised if a government employee engages in hate speech. The expected harm from hate speech by government employees is largely psychological. Further, the psychological damage inflicted by one crackpot will most likely be very small. While it's clearly a bad thing, it's not compelling by strict scrutiny standards. We could stop here, as the restriction has already failed the first test and thus failed strict scrutiny. But let's continue for the sake of the exercise.

2. Is the restriction narrowly tailored? If the interest is the prevention of psychological harm to minorities, and the law restricts that hate speech and nothing else, it's probably narrowly tailored.

3. Is the restriction the least restrictive means? Probably not. One could imagine an alternative solution whereby the government actively and publicly disclaims its employees hate speech. That would be less restrictive, and would probably go a long way toward achieving the goal.

As another poster pointed out, it's different when you work for the government. If you have a clearance, you need to be careful about reading the news at work lest you open one of Snowden's classified slides on an unclassified workstation.

She clearly has a point there. When a person identifies himself as TSA employee he is using TSA brand to say something that is his personal opinion. I dont think TSA can prevent him expressing his own opinion, they have all the right to prevent him from using the word TSA whenever he speaks.

You understand a person's message from all of the words they use, not just individual words. And if you think it's acceptable to prevent someone from using an individua word, you don't really understand why we have the concept of "free speech".

It's clear and in context that his account is reflective of his experience and his values. Asking him not to say "TSA" would nullify the very reason for him wishing to speak out and give rise to either a toothless account or one which obviously implicated the TSA because nobody else handles airport security in the US.

I dont think TSA can prevent him expressing his own opinion, they have all the right to prevent him from using the word TSA whenever he speaks.

So he can speak, just as long as he doesn't provide any verifiable credentials that might actually make him credible?

There is a difference between speaking for the TSA, or any other employer, and merely speaking personally as someone with personal experience of the TSA, or any other employer. It's reasonable to prohibit anyone from falsely claiming to represent someone else when expressing a personal view. As a general rule, I don't think it's reasonable to prevent them from making factually accurate claims about employment that support their own authenticity when speaking personally.

There probably needs to be an exception to that if there really is a genuine reason to avoid identifying an individual as part of a certain organisation for security reasons. However, given the tendency of governments to exaggerate "national security" and similar arguments, it would have to be a pretty compelling case and I would suggest that employees should have to be notified of it in advance so it could be properly challenged. In any case, it's hard to see how any of this would apply to a typical front-line TSA employee.

So he can speak, just as long as he doesn't provide any verifiable credentials that might actually make him credible?

He can speak, and he can say how he knows what he's talking about--but when he took the job he was put on notice that doing so might jeopardize his employment. (He says so in the article.) He can speak, but he also has to be prepared to take the consequences of speaking.

He can speak, but he also has to be prepared to take the consequences of speaking.

Perhaps, though given that the employer in this case is the government, we could debate whether or not the employment should be jeopardized in a whistle-blowing case.

Either way, I'm not sure that's what we were talking about. The GGP post suggested that the TSA should be able to stop him from even mentioning their name when expressing his opinion, not just that they should be able to fire him for expressing an opinion incompatible with remaining a TSA employee.

- verifiable credentials -

That is precisely the issue. He is using his employer's name to lend credibility to his personal opinion.

wow, that just totally blows me away. His stating of his job helps validate that what he says is not just some Joe Schmoe blowing smoke. It's critical to the conversation. And our government has no right to prevent us from using ANY word whenever we speak.

And our government has no right to prevent us from using ANY word whenever we speak.

As emphatically as I support the article's author's right to his opinion, and to express it, I stop short of agreeing with your position. We absolutely have the right to express any opinion, but speech is not absolutely free.

There's the cliché example of "Yelling 'Fire!' in a crowded theater". That's illegal, and with good reason. A more compelling case of legitimately restricted "speech", however, is incitement to violence. If you're actively encouraging people to commit violence on persons or property, that shit has to stop.

And how eager are those responding to this comment to use their analytic understanding of the world to apologize for and rationalize the position of government or other heavyweight institutions? Cookies all around for being so smart - while you give away your power to institutions that don't give one fuck about you. All I can imagine are a line of poindexters pushing their glasses up on their nose, saying, "Well, actually, an informed reading of the constitution reveals that you are a peon, which is actually as it should be..."

At least in US they are still scared of the First Amendment. In UK, for example, they just say "You've had your debate. There's no need to write any more."

Do government employees enjoy full protection from the First Amendment? It's not a simple yes or no answer. Whether a given utterance is protected depends on a variety of factors, but probably the most important one for low-ranking TSA employees is that the speech must be of public concern to be protected. I suspect that a front-lines TSA officer who writes a letter to the editor about the TSA would be entitled to First Amendment protection, per Pickering v Board of Education.

Here's a bit more info, with summaries of relevant cases:

http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/publice...

Oh snap, I just posted that same link ;)

I do urge participants to look into this, because the 'bill of rights > everything else' viewpoint frequently expressed on HN (and the US internet in general) is both fairly recent and misguided in that it implicitly assumes a two-tier constitution.

The bit about racial profiling is spot on, but heavily understated. People who are clearly U.S. citizens are merely inconvenienced and embarrassed by the TSA's shenanigans. If you know somebody from either the middle-east or a country noted for supplying narcotics (e.g. Mexico) who has flown through the U.S., even just to transfer to a connecting flight, ask them what their experience was like. The TSA treats U.S. citizens like Hollywood celebrities by comparison! The stories I've heard frequently cross the line into what any reasonable person would define as outright abuse. Obviously, few victims stand up for themselves.

The terrorists didn't win. The TSA became the terrorists.

This quote has had me thinking all morning:

"The thought nagged at me that I was enabling the same government-sanctioned bigotry my father had fought so hard to escape."

I really wish more people in government had the gumption that this agent has to speak out about how public trust is being abused.

On a different not, I'm certain that I'm not the only one who read the Selectee Passport List in the voice of Yakko, Wakko and Dot.

It's interesting how they mostly got a pass this past holiday travel season.

Barely saw anything about them. So even the media is looking the other way now.

Why would it be a big story? It has been a dozen years.

I feel like TSA is relaxing some of the security measures, just a bit - perhaps so there is no major media outrage so people will still trust them. Here and there there have been times my fiancé has not been made to take everything off and get a patdown. Scanners feel like they're decreasing in number so you can at least try to pick the metal detector lines again.

That might just be me with my TSA PreCheck and recent international non-US-destined flying talking though. Protip: fly business/first class or be part of PreCheck and revel in the pre-9/11 style of security. You know, the one where I wore all my jewelry, a sweater, and my boots through the metal detector, set it off, and the TSA agent just waved me through with a smile. Where I also didn't empty my water bottle or unpack anything at all - in fact, told not to even think about unpacking. Oh I feel so safe!

My typical airports have completely eliminated metal detector only lines except for Pre✓™.

Pre✓™ seems like extortion - I have a passport, DHS has my fingerprints (for unrelated reasons). Why should I jump through additional hoops, and give them more money for something that they've already collected from me? If they really wanted to know if I was a flight risk, wouldn't they have already used all of the information they already know about me? If not, why!?

It may just be profiling since I'm a middle-class white male, but I've been waved into the pre-check line several times despite flying coach and not signing up for anything special. Shoes on, drop your stuff on the conveyor belt and move along. It was great. That's how security should be all the time.

It might not be solely profiling, because my girlfriend, who is clearly Indian, has also been sent into the precheck line when flying alone.

Even in the regular lines, I can't think of the last time it took more than 15 minutes to get through security, and I usually opt out every time too.

I traveled in mid-December (between the holiday peaks) and I was able to enjoy a new "expedited security process we're testing" that was essentially the old metal detector only screening.

The TSA removed the backscatter machines as of June 2013. There are millimeter wave machines in use but I've only seen x-ray machines lately. (And not one terrorist incident on any of those flights...)

Some of their rules are dumb but that was my biggest complaint.

i went through the airport yesterday on my way to watch the Broncos win the super bowl. TSA had a new procedure which required travelers to touch a screen and give up their fingerprints then get their hands swabbed in order to collect DNA. later in the procedure travelers are asked to show their ids, which are then placed under 'infrared' scanners. given all the recent discussion about the pseudo anonymity of our interactions with various software services i found this to be more almost as intrusive as body scans. essentially, the tsa could be doing the following:

1. touch screen so we have a fingerprint 2. touch again if it didn't work the first time so we potentially have 2 fingerprints 3. swab finger for DNA sample that we'll link to step 1 and/or 2 4. place id under scanner which we'll link to steps 1-3 5. triangulate all these data points over many years until the TSA has a complete database with everyone's unique identifying info...

Really, nobody's gonna say it? Okay, fine. YOU ARE THE PROBLEM. You, guy wearing the uniform, you the mindless meat puppet acting out nonsensical policy directives. Without you, there is no system, yet you choose to participate in it, you enable it, you make it real.

I understand some people have no choice, family to support, made bad choices in the past that limit their opportunities now.. but you, good sir? You get no pass whatsoever. Young, male, educated -- one would expect you'd try harder than to settle into a TSA job.

Thought this was a great website with great content, reading this interesting article without annoying pagination (though the option was there if I had wanted it) at a comfortable font size.

Clicking through to the homepage, it turns out they also feature a call to censor Snowden: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/01/edward-snowde...

Never mind. This makes me doubt what I just read.

Lolz. I really wish I could figure out a way to fit this comment into a #ShitHNSays tweet.

Try a blog. They seem to work with posts of more than one sms.

I started questioning all the TSA security after I recently watched a demonstration on how you could make dangerous weapons with items you can purchase after you go through security. It is quite scary. The people that want to cause harm will always find a way.

I have not been outside the US, I am curious on the security around the world. Namely, flights headed towards US airports. Do they have to go through body scanners?

I'm a US citizen and I don't believe that when I flew from Berlin (TXL) back to the States a year ago that I had to go through a body scanner. It was quite relaxed. Likewise, my prior arrival in Frankfurt was like getting off a domestic (US) flight. Go straight to baggage. Stop at customs IF you have anything to declare, then off you go. In contrast, re-entering the States in Seattle was an appalling bit of theater. Crotch-sniffing dogs, long lines waiting to be interrogated and to have my Papiere scrutinized, then re-scanning of checked luggage (I had a connecting flight). I'm traveling again to .de in March and it will be very interesting to see what, if anything, has changed.

I fly to the US a few times a year. Until a year ago from Switzerland either direct or London, now from Tokyo. Never seen a full body scanner outside the US. There is a bit of security theater though, which might pale in comparison to the TSA, like a security officer at ZRH giving me a 'old school' (read: no private areas) pat down because, as he told me, "I was the 12th guy in a row". At NRT they check your ID or passport prior to entering the airport and may glance at your bag, due to the troubles when they opened the airport. HND doesn't have that IIRC. TL;DR, this seems mostly limited to the US from my experiences.

I do believe the first deployment of these scanners was at Amsterdam's Schipol airport. They were deployed at the time of the infamous Underwear Bomber that supposedly led to the US deploying them. This is the same Schipol airport where the Underwear Bomber went through security before boarding his flight to the US.

If you're flying from Amsterdam to the US, you do. They have usually blocked off the metal detectors and claim that you have to use the body scanners (you do have the right to opt out, but it's not stated there).

Yeah, you can opt out of the ones at Schiphol. One time I got a security guard give me a talk about how safe they were, and why wouldn't I want to.

They're millimetre wave machines, I think, so they likely are safe (certainly not ionising), but there are some theorised mechanisms by which they could impart greater energy on cellular molecules than is otherwise believed to be the case.

What really annoys me is that if these were medical devices, they would require many years of design approval and safety trials, so that their safety wouldn't be assumed but assured (to a high probability) before they could be deployed. Their maintenance regimes would be heavily regulated. However, when it's for security (or rather for lining the pockets of well-connected vendors and contractors), then none of this needs to be done.

I've flown to the USA from the UK twice, once in 2012 and again in 2013. It was notably different from most of my other flying experiences, but only on the US side - UK side was BAU. Both times I had to give fingerprints and answer a bunch of questions which is a lot more than I'm used to. In 2013 I was directed to go through a MW scanner, but it was a very casual thing, everyone was going through them as they had placement similar to metal detectors (i.e. you couldn't really go through security without going through them). They were actually very cool in a way, very small, very fast, very futuristic. It was all such a rush, and with such an assumption that you were going to go through this thing, that it didn't even occur to me to opt-out. I think next time I will, just to see what that is like.

The only other place I've been that was similar at the border was Russia (I haven't flown into Russia, but flying out I went through.. some sort of scanner. They didn't tell me what it was, it was about 10x the size of the US ones, big white metal box, covered in radiation warnings, totally dark on the inside) Actually, the USA reminded me more of Russia than any other country I've been to, with the questioning, the scanners, being given grief if you questioned anything, and of course - the paperwork.

Anyone else think "Rapiscan" is a perfect name for those machines?

Paging Dr. Funke.

new hero! and his book seems like it will be good: http://playbooknovel.com/

A bad job is never wasted on a good writer.

I always opt out from the body scanners, and I have yet to see another person do it (which implies very small number do, otherwise by pure chance I'd see somebody do it by now). Looks like most of the Americans just don't care. BTW, never took me excessive time and I've never been harassed or inconvenienced in any unusual (as opposed to usual for TSA) ways for opting out.

Also, from this article, next time TSA employee tries to feel my ass looking for a bomb, it would be interesting to think about him as an aspiring satire writer. I wonder if that would change the experience.

Its all been lies all along. What a shock.

Our government does so much propaganda in collusion with the media. Every time anything happens, we are treated to news stories about how security is being beefed up. The reality is that there reality isn't much they can do except show more security on TV and hope you'll conclude "ah, they are on top of things."

I wasn't a bit surprised to read any of this. Even the candor with which the author shows himself to actively and tacitly promote and sustain the unprofessional and compromising conduct in which he and his colleagues engaged.

I'm not sure if that transparency is due to his arrogance, or ignorance of how much he contributed to the problems we all deal with. No matter. Business as usual.

Ballsy? Maybe. 'Hey everybody! I'm a self-identified slacker, unqualified to be entrusted with responsibility. Here's my name. Here's my picture.'

Still, very disappointing.

From the why-anonymity-is-important department.

Truth will out.

In a funny way I find this reassuring.

After all the worries, posting from various places, TOR, and in the end from home, no one went after him even though he clearly ridiculed the TSA. It's kind of sad that we even have to consider that, but in these days of NSA abuses it's nice to see democracy at work.

Code red alfalfa. Ok that was a little redundant :)

Code red alfalfa hot papa. THAT was the as redundant as full body scanner pat down security check anal probe passport sweep.

This reads as if the author considers himself in league with Edward Snowden.

All you need to know about those performing the TSA roles can be learned from one trip through a security line, where some fat obnoxious woman screams at paying customers and american citizens like they're children and berate and segregate (for further humiliation or harassment) anyone who dares question anything or do anything but be blindly and unwaveringly obedient.

I didn't think it was necessary to call her fat.

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