I'm a remote worker and have travelled a lot for fun in the past two years. While checking into a flight from AMS headed to USA, I was told as a prerequisite to getting my boarding pass I needed to talk to an agent from the US Department of the State. He asked me many detailed questions about my travels and said I was considered a person of interest. He stressed that they may in the future not allow me to enter the USA (I'm a citizen of USA).
It seems likely he was just trying to scare me, but it was still was quite jarring. I'm a fairly normal US citizen (I don't associate with political people, no criminal record, never been to a country not known for tourism). I believe I was flagged just from traveling between Turkey and Russia.
Since then when I fly I cant use online check-in, my boarding pass is marked SSSS and I am taken into the backroom for questioning at border control.
Maybe these extra precautions keep the USA safe, but it certainly seemed excessively paranoid.
"While checking into a flight from AMS headed to USA, I was told as a prerequisite to getting my boarding pass I needed to talk to an agent from the US Department of the State. He asked me many detailed questions about my travels and said I was considered a person of interest. He stressed that they may in the future not allow me to enter the USA (I'm a citizen of USA)."
I recently flew from Zurich home to San Francisco and prior to boarding the plane in Zurich I was interviewed by a state department employee. She was very nice and at no time indicated that I was special or "of interest", etc.
She did, however, drill pretty deeply into where I had been and what I was doing.
I have traveled to Switzerland relatively frequently over the past ten years and this was the first time I had seen this.
I suspect there are a significant amount of snap judgements being made, and I would be very surprised if they kept anyone safe. One of the many examples is that when I traveled a lot, I quickly noticed that if I have had a recent shave and have my hair cut short (no longer than to the end of the ear) I do not get picked out. If I have long hair or a goatee, I will get picked out for extra questioning (dogs in bags, bomb swabs, extra-strict questioning by border officials, regular bag search, etc) every time.
> I don't associate with political people, (...) never been to a country not known for tourism
Interestingly, I would argue that it should be perfectly fine for these two, especially the first one. Harassing the friends of political people would not be odd behaviour for a totalitarian state.
Sounds like you're on the do not fly list. A friend of mine got added because his honeymoon trip included a few African and middle east countries. I think you can petition to get yourself off of it.
This sounds like the latest "mission creep" by the TSA in order to justify their budget and possibly ask for a budget increase. This would not be the first instance of "mission creep" by them.
They are basically an entrenched part of the security-industrial complex at this point. It seems to be a vicious circle of "expand the mission to justify a bigger budget and ask for a bigger budget in order to meet the self-directed increase in scope." There seems to be very little practical oversight of this agency.
What I particularly loathe about TSA's constant mission creep is that at no point have they proven even minimally competent at any of the existing missions.
Nothing they do provides any meaningful security. They fail 90% of tests run by their own agency. They are useless and ever expanding.
There has been some pushback to the mission creep; my favorite is the response from freight railroads to a proposal by the TSA to have their agents show up unannounced at rail yards:
This is the natural evolution of the privatized prison. To treat an ever growing segment of the population in a carceral manner in ways large and small. Degrees of citizenship is now a thing in America. You can be graded on your credit, your connections, your history; the color of your skin or the shape of your face.
Every single criticism of capitalism is NOT an endorsement of communism. The world is not so freaking black and white. There are degrees of capitalism, degrees of socialism, good use cases for capitalism and bad ones.
People tend towards authoritarianism. Our tendencies toward finding heirarchies and joining them is essentially an evolved organizational strategy. Communism was an early attempt at flattening it.
points like this read like pure lickspittle to me when considering the many varied forms of communal life that had to be exterminated through massive amounts of violence in order to establish a basis of capital.
I'm not being obtuse: you are implying that we cannot ever criticize capitalism because that means a request for communism. This does not follow. It also shuts down criticism completely, which is never something you want, even for a good system.
If I criticize Agile, does that mean I propose Waterfall?
If you criticize something that’s known to happen both under agile and waterfall, you have to give some sort of a persuasive argument for how it’s actually caused by agile and not something more deep-rooted. Otherwise it’s just a particularly cheap cum hoc ergo propter hoc.
No, I don't, since it was never my interest to begin with to say that Agile is the original mover of all software problems, just like I'm not interested in saying that capitalism is the original mover of all human problems.
Criticism of a system has nothing to do with original causality and everything to do with "the system is not accomplishing the goals well enough". It can be done on any system in vacuum, and should be done in vacuum, because dealing with deep rooted causes is part of the package and is one of the reasons we devise systems in the first place.
Surely it is ridiculous to say that we can't criticize the US government structure because human corruption is older than the Constitution? Yet this is basically what your argument path is implying. There's nowhere to go from here but doing nothing because, news flash, the deep rooted problems are here to stay, and if we're going to excuse every system from those problems we can as well pack our bags and go back to Feudalism.
No, the original commenter threw in ”because capitalism” in a context where that causation is clearly not obvious, and failed to give any justification for the claim. They got justly downvoted for a poor argument.
wasn’t really an argument in the first place, but it seems to be quite obvious given that capitalism aims at the maximization of profits, and that slavery is a form of labor that extracts the most wealth from its subjects
I guess it depends on the country, but in former Czechoslovakia, it wasn't true. There was about 1 million party members to about 10 million adults. Whether you needed to be a member depended on the nature of the job.
But you're correct that family relations played a big role, the nepotism was rampant.
Your experience might be different to mine, potentially from a different communist country perhaps? But in communist Poland you could very much not be a member of the party, and still function fine. It's just that any sort of "better" job was inaccessible to you(to be a teacher you had to have party connections for example) - but not having party affiliations was far far away from being an outcast.
Some of these behaviors are so benign that any regular person might exhibit these. Slept during the flight, changed clothes, boarded last (I hate standing in those queues), observed the boarding area from afar. Hell I do many of these things. I am sure their "ML" model must have spit these indicators but it's a waste of resources.
Also, they capture all ranges of behavior. Glazed over look? Suspicious. Intently paying attention to everything? Suspicious. Friendly? Suspicious. Cold to agents? Suspicious.
This is worse than criteria to pull you over when driving.
To be fair, they aren't--or shouldn't be--looking for one thing. The idea is that bomber-wannabe comes late, changes clothes, is all nervous, looks for undercover cops etc etc.
But if fidgeting or some other innocent thing, puts you in that list, you're f---d. You will be groped every single flight. No one is going to take the risk to remove you from that list.
> To be fair, they aren't--or shouldn't be--looking for one thing.
Right, but profiling using these specific patterns will lead to a lot of false positives, which might make this entire exercise a waste of resources, and there is no guarantee that a "terrorist" might exhibit these patterns.
Checkbox me for having a) boarded last, b) been drenched in sweat, and c) run across the entire airport while having their name called out on the PA system for five minutes.
>The teams document whether passengers fidget, use a computer, have a “jump” in their Adam’s apple or a “cold penetrating stare,” among other behaviors, according to the records.
I believe this isn't the first time the TSA has tried to do some sort of behavioral profiling and such. Previously it proved to be BS and did not show any ability to identify threats.
Considering TSA agents are leaking this to the press makes me think someone(s) at TSA think you can just spot a terrorist and the agents think it is ballony ....
How many airline terrorists have we had in the last 10 years? 2? How many travellers per year? 500m+. TSA is just really bad a math if they think they have any chance of actually profiling a real terrorist. They should just take the money and buy Powerball tickets, least then they have a better chance at a return of investment.
It allows more spending by taxpayers for the military industrial complex, more invasion of privacy, increased government power, and makes the populace mentally prepared to be repressed. It’s a jobs program for people who don’t want to do manual labor, and aren’t smart enough to do anything else.
Perfect for power hungry organizations. Only solution to combat this is full transparency, or to join the game and make it to the “elite” and help suppress everyone else. It’s a pretty good setup, you use the bottom 20% to help keep the 20% to 80% in line, and then pluck out a few of the smarter 20% to 80% and drop those in leadership positions in military or police and pay them a nice pension and keep suctioining up a bigger and bigger share of resources.
> and makes the populace mentally prepared to be repressed
First it was electronics. Then water/liquids. Then shoes. Lately, they've been asking people to get snacks/food items out. For what reason? We aren't given one. Just do as you're told, or else.
Imagine the economic result if we got rid of the TSA (we did fine without it before 9/11 and they don't do shit now) and created jobs in rebuilding infrastructure using that budget.
Healthcare, housing, education, feeding the poor. You know, those things the US says are "socialist commie bullshit", but spending ~$8 BILLION a year on a bunch of untrained people given power over others is perfectly acceptable.
This sounds like they’ve hired a bunch of air marshals but don’t have much for them to do. Having them make observations on random people might be a way to make sure they’re still doing their job?
It might be like the air marshal version of a security guard route patrol system, where the guard has to swipe a fob or access card at predefined locations in a campus or building periodically. Intended to enforce actually patrolling an area. Not saying it's a good thing, just that's the closest analogy I can think of.
The closest analogy I could come up with was the Stasi.
Okay, I'll concede, it's not really analogy, it's more like a 1:1 mapping: "One of its main tasks was spying on the population, mainly through a vast network of citizens turned informants"[1]
>A bulletin in May notes that travelers entering the United States may be added to the Quiet Skies watch list if [they] ... “are possibly affiliated with Watch Listed suspects.”
What a beautiful qualification. Put one person on Quiet Skies, for any reason, legit or not. Now every known contact or associate of that one person becomes of interest to the Quiet Skies program. Every neighbor, even if they don't know the neighbor. Every work colleague, even if the colleague doesn't know that they work with the person. Every vendor. Every vendee. The air marshal assigned to watch them.
This is far more an issue of the Executive and Congress at work, than it is tax dollars at work. Let’s lay the blame where it belongs—only then do we have the slightest hope of citizens recognizing how they can play a part in stopping this. Tax dollars aren’t allocating themselves.
Complaints about "tax dollars" or about 'tax payers' seem like stalking horses for the whole Reagan-esque 'drown government in the bathtub' thing. It's weird to me that the most jingoistic Americans are also the ones who are most hostile to the concrete manifestations of America.
Back to the topic at hand: I agree wholeheartedly with you and I hope that you and everyone else here votes in their primary and general elections. Headcount is a good, nonpartisan resource for finding out more about this: https://www.headcount.org
If you believe that, then you should seek to change the policy priorities of either major party. Fatalism in a two party system is neither useful nor indicative of a keener understanding of early 21st century American politics.
"infringing on our rights"...minority opinion. If it is a major concern, the senators who approved the procedures would have been voted out. Instead more of the same are being voted into power, which means all this makes the majority feel safe.
How can this make anyone feel safe if they won't even admit that it's happening?! Moreover, the people are forced to compromise on just about every issue when voting, so they naturally get swayed by marketing and personal priorities. Somehow I doubt that surveillance was much of a priority for anyone.
Agency documents show there are about 40 to 50 Quiet Skies passengers on domestic flights each day. On average, air marshals follow and surveil about 35 of them.
There are 2 million people on domestic flights daily, if I checked correctly. If 30 get followed, it is a few orders of magnitude lower than in East Germany.
This seems mostly harmless (insofar as tailing random innocent people could be) but also a collosal waste of time that could be spent doing nearly anything else.
Mind you, it's hard to see it as security theater (they won't admit it's happening!). It sounds like they have a power envy thing going on vis a vis the FBI, but even the actual marshals doing it seem to think it's dumb. If it were the FBI just tasking FBI Surveillance Vans onto random people without a predicate, there'd potentially be hell to pay as they generally have regulations on what is a valid reason for opening an investigation.
I mean, it's obviously bad for the same reasons dragnet surveillance is always bad. But this particular instance so ham-handed (tailing an executive that went to Turkey one time?) and so manpower intensive it's kind of hard to take seriously.
> What makes you say that? I didn't see it in the article, but maybe I missed something.
The article mentions that they first got into the business of tracking people through airports and in the sky after the FBI asked them to help on existing investigations, so I wonder if they are just trying to show that they can do investigations on their own like big boys.
>> the program could pass legal muster if the selection criteria are sufficiently broad
and...
>> surveillance of travelers without any suspicion of actual wrongdoing
Those seem to play off each other in a weird way. The program is legal because the selection criteria are so broad that no one under surveillance is suspected of any evildoery? It would be really interesting to find out what kind of records on these surveillance activities are kept.
Having been the subject of covert surveillance at multiple points in my past (and future probably) there is a certain amount of shrugging it off that is necessary. The real concern for TSA, or Neighborhood Watch, is whether they are sharing records with any other agencies. Congress would potentially have a Pinata party if that came to light.
TSA employees are generally not well-paid and not well-educated. They come from the bottom third of the economic advantage spectrum. As a result, most of them have probably never visited a foreign country; many have likely never even been on an airplane.
So their opinion of "foreigners" is skewed by their anti-terrorist training to think that people from outside the USA are mostly bad and wish us harm.
TSA employees should be required to visit a foreign country at least once a year--paid for by their employer--so they have direct experience with the vast majority of non-US citizens who are simply normal people living their normal lives.
While we are on this topic, what I find to be a complete sham is TSA-PRE (a US preflight registration program). The pre-screening is valid for 5 years, in exchange you don't remove your shoes or have to remove electronics and liquids. Basically, what you did BEFORE the TSA program was put in place.
I presume they are OK with taking the chance that a TSA-PRE enrolled individual is not turning into a shoe-bomber in year 3 after preenrollment? Why not just abolish all the checks and selectively pull people to remove liquids, shoes and electronics. You'd lose the $99 revenue/passsenger that TSAPRE generates.
This program sounds like a huge, irresponsible waste of public resources. However I don’t exactly see how merely being observed in public amounts to the dystopian surveillance state this article seems to imply. Is going unnoticed in public reasonably considered to be a right? I would suggest the problem here is the extent of resources that are wasted by the government watching the innocuous behavior of arbitrary people in an airport.
> This program sounds like a huge, irresponsible waste of public resources. However I don’t exactly see how merely being observed in public amounts to the dystopian surveillance state this article seems to imply.
It's the same argument against "I have nothing to hide."
Consider two people, both objectively innocent. One is surveilled, one is not.
The surveilled person, merely by coming to the attention of the government, is at risk of mistakes, misjudgment, quota satisfaction, resume building, budget justification, extortion by criminal government employees bad personal life and resulting sour disposition of the watcher, etc. Just because they became noticed.
The unsurveilled person is safe.
In firearms training, you learn not to point a gun at something unless you intend to destroy it. You should also not point a government at someone unless they have at least shown some reason beyond existence that it's worth potentially destroying their well being.
Article does mention extra screening times. And we don't know the selection criteria. If it's a proxy for 'has brown skin' as an excuse to surveil and add extra screening to a US citizen that would run afoul of rights.
I don't know, but I assume we don't have a right to avoid extra screening that is based on a 'fair' selection?
The article did mention travel to Turkey as a trigger, which has been in my top 5 places I'd like to visit next. Would suck to get held up for extra screenings just because I went there.
Seeing my 12 year old daughter groped by a TSA agent because she "moved her hand too early" in the x ray machine really put things into perspective for me.
TSA is the department of domestic fear mongering. That's it.
"But some air marshals ... say the program has them tasked with shadowing travelers who appear to pose no real threat .. a fellow federal law enforcement officer, in a third."
I dunno about TSA, but I'm am Indian male and I keep a beard and visited Sydney and Melbourne recently. I was singled out for "random" checks at every single airport. Even though the metal detector thing didn't go off at all. They were very nice and polite but I was a bit annoyed. After 9-11, it seems most western countries have become cautious to the extent of paranoia and cause inconvenience to normal people.
Perhaps we've met in Charles De Gaulle then, as I had an Indian gentleman who stood next to me in the boarding line who struck up a conversation along the same lines. He had been telling me how he always gets pulled aside, and since he travels so much for work, on too many occasions it's caused flight delays as he was asked to explain in great detail what he was doing, where he was going, etc. And it's not even like his business took him to politically active zones.
Without evidence other than anecdotal, I'm sure it's true that there's heavy and undeserved bias for the airport security, and I'm not sure which would be better; to continue in silence about the bias, or to put it out in the open.
I think those aren't the only choices. There's another. We could just eliminate it. Dismantle the whole apparatus introduced after 9/11, roll back each and every single security "improvement" since then at airports (which does nothing but make the long lines awaiting security screening an easier and much better target than any flight). 9/11 was basically a vaccine against hijackings. It only worked because prior hijackings resulted in nothing more than the flight being redirected to some different destination. But now that every person in the world getting on a flight knows that the potential exists that the plane will be turned into a flying bomb, hijacking is basically impossible. Do you think a pilot will open the door because a hijacker is holding a flight attendant hostage with a box cutter? Do you think that the would-be hijacker won't be crushed under nearly every able-bodied passenger on the flight piling themselves on top of the hijacker?
If there's still concern over hijacking, that solution is super simple. They do it in Israel. Separate entrances for pilot and passengers. Only way to get from the passenger compartment into the pilots cabin is by exiting the airplane and entering a separate door from the outside. Boom. Hijacking impossible. The security theater of the TSA does not keep anyone safe.
Sorry I may have missed it but can you source "They do it in Israel. Separate entrances for pilot and passengers. Only way to get from the passenger compartment into the pilots cabin is by exiting the airplane and entering a separate door from the outside."?
That seems unlikely for many reasons (washroom and rest area access among others).
It may have been my incoherence after having just woken up but I was more sardonically commenting on the existence of the bias itself and whether it being a hidden bias or a publicly stated standard operating procedure would be preferable.
Naturally eliminating it would be better, but at the moment I am not confident the US will. It was more a stab at the sad state of affairs and if at least pretending to not be biased is preferred to at least knowing it's the default state
(Tagging dang -- am I crazy here for the following observation? Please advise.)
What is it with all the random European-Caucasian men coming in and commenting on how they're randomly selected all the time?
When someone feels like they're being selected-against for bias and when popular and well-researched evidence of such exists, you're minimizing and trivializing their suffering by making the same observation of yourself when you're the majority party. It's a form of passive and latent bigotry you might not even realize you're expressing. I'm commenting publicly and separately from HNthrow22 because plenty of you seem hideously blind to this.
Your case may be true; I'm not disputing that, but the consensus research position is that "people of color are more often mistreated" and this anecdote by the OP fits that position. Your anecdote fits the less frequent occurrences ("more often against minorities v. less often against the majority"), and so by mentioning it, you diminish and belittle the minority person who's being mistreated by suggesting your experience is of equal likelihood; it's not, and you're not being considerate of that fact.
As for me, I ambiguously appear to be of Middle Eastern or Cuban descent--Persian, for the record--and noticed that I'm consistently selected-against for screening about 50% of the time whenever I have either a beard or an extremely well-maintained fade. Of the many, many times I've been down to scruff or a clean-shaven face, it has happened only once, with that singular exception being this past Tuesday night in Tom Bradley International in LAX.
In closing: there's nothing preventing you from voicing your less-likely experience, but by doing so, you're diminishing the more-likely experience faced by minority parties because there's inherently no differentiating context in individual anecdotes.
The reason for this is because the poster above shared an anecdote without that well-researched evidence. That means that if you're not aware of that well-researched evidence, the natural response to anecdote is by sharing your own, since anecdotes might not be representative and the sharer of the anecdote might want to be aware of that.
Thus, I think the most valuable part of your post is sharing that the original anecdote is actually in line with well-researched evidence showing that that happens. It would be even more valuable, I think, if that was the main point of the post. By starting out with "What's will all the <people identified by a characteristic they can't help>", which immediately guilt-trips people and makes them less open to the information that might actually lead them to change their behaviour. More effective would be to frame it more like "if you are <characteristic you can't change>, you might not be aware that <thing>, but you might want to do <desired behaviour> because of that".
Sure, it'd be nice if people would already know that, but I think it's good to focus on what's effective. Knowing all research or exactly how people unlike you experience life is really hard, so it's nice if you can help us with that.
Since you asked: it's a fine comment and I appreciate that you made it so thoughtfully.
There's a tragedy-of-the-commons aspect in cases like this which we see a lot: a bunch of posts which individually aren't that problematic, but collectively are. The whole is less than the sum of its parts.
In this case, the individual commenters weren't making claims about which groups this happens more to; they were just saying 'hey this reminds me of me', or perhaps, 'oh yeah, I always get picked on this way'. We all feel like we get picked on more than the next person ('mosquitoes always bite me'). But of course when you get a bunch of these together, the shadow they cast looks like a claim that maybe no one was trying to make. It's easy to see how that could make someone feel unwelcome and I wish that weren't the case.
I agree with most everything you said and appreciate the support.
That said, there is something to address:
> In this case, the individual commenters weren't making claims about which groups this happens more to
I don't know if this assertion can be sustained (though I can appreciate why you added it to your initial comment). My experience in these debates—having been on both sides and having done this exact same thing myself—is that we tend not to like feeling as if we're on the wrong side of anything. When someone makes a claim that inherently implies a societal wrong ("I'm am Indian male and I keep a beard and [...] I was singled out for 'random' checks at every single airport.") and someone else replies with a claim that the same situation was encountered without any of the same conditions (e.g. "White dude, [...] always getting the random checks too."), there's quite possibly an internal stimulus there compelling the latter to comment on the matter, inherently aiming to suggest away the risk that s/he's possibly part of an instigating group. As I've mentioned before, I've made this exact same sort of diminishing comment in other contexts in the past and have been (hopefully) re-educated on it, hence my keen sensitivity to it.
The latter cited comment even went out of its way to attribute the OP's comment to "bad luck I guess." I don't think the latter commenter realized the harm in that statement nor intended any harm with it ("if it makes you feel any better" mid-comment), but it's a textbook example of the kind of diminishing remark that utterly decimates minority morale.
Appreciate you taking the time to read this, dang.
You are 100% correct, I made a similar post and had it flagged/deleted, albeit with a bit more anger in mine. Give up man, this is a safe space for the white SV bros to hang out, they delete articles about minorities/black people in tech are regularly, check out http://hckrnews.com/ to see what they remove. Don't mistake Hn for a discussion platform like I did, this is a curated SV accelerator funded PR platform to promote YC companies before anything else, the anger/frustration comes from this place parading/dressing up as a discussion forum, it is NOT.
As I posted in my sibling reply, I think it might be good if you tried to focus on informing and actually trying to help people change their behaviour, rather than just voicing anger. I understand where the anger comes from, but try to realise that it is the exact thing you're angry about: you're mad that people can't identify with your experience, because you can't identify with not being able to do that without your (constructively formulated) help :)
Interestingly, I'm somewhat afraid that this isn't formulated constructively enough. It's really hard to write this without sounding like I'm attacking you. But I guess that's what discussions are.
I'm sorry you feel that way and would be glad for an opportunity to persuade you otherwise, but there's no mystery in why users flagged https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17637105: it broke the site guidelines. Comments here need to be better than telling others to "fuck right off", even when they're wrong, even when the feeling is understandable. eganist's comment makes the same point more thoughtfully, and didn't get flagged.
Not making any statements about the post in question, but I do think it would be more helpful if posters where given reasons for why posts are being flagged and/or downvoted.
The legal profession exists because rules/laws are subject to all sorts of interpretation. And just as is the case in the outside world, it seems that, if at all, the rules are cited quite frequently for no other reason than someone decided that they didn't/don't agree with something that someone said.
Hell, I've been downvoted a number of times for relaying facts that answer questions people here are asking or for pointing out a duplicate post. As you can imagine, such experiences detract from the experience, but perhaps that is the point?
I do not believe you are crazy. I believe that HN commenters are mostly 'European-Caucasian men' giving a skewed representation with respect to the general population.
It's interesting, my Dad is white but has a distant ancestor who was Greek, with the result that he looks a bit Middle-Eastern. Predictably, when travelling in Australia/USA/Western Europe he gets the random screening treatment every time.
On the other hand, I look like a young white guy and whenever I travel to Asian countries, particularly South-east Asia, I routinely get the extra drug search at customs.
I wonder if they should all just drop the whole "random" charade and optimize the system for the biased policies: it's not fair but at least that way people might be able to make their flight.
I’m a late 20s clean-cut white guy; I travel alone, and a lot, and with usually just my messenger bag — I also get bomb checked every time I fly internationally from Australia!
As am I. I get pulled aside for the explosives check around 50% of the time when departing on an international flight from Melbourne airport.
When I'm not tested, then there is typically another group being tested. They seem to utilize the testing machinery/staff close to 100% of the time, so if you're the next group of people as their finishing up, you're likely to be tested.
Not to say there isn't any bias, but I've never noticed a larger proportion of dark skinned/long haired/bearded etc. individuals being tested vs the departing passenger population.
I travel often and the Australian airports certainly seem to test a much higher percentage of departing passengers than other airports.
Same situation - blonde haired, blue eyed white guy. For a while I was getting checked on every single flight I took, something like 10 flights in a row. I even asked why, to be told it was random - bullshit. Flipping heads 10 times in a row is not "random". They would stand there and wait for me!
I actually have a theory, which is that I (and yourself, and the GP) are targeted to provide deniability of racial profiling. Build up a buffer of whiter-than-white business guys and then no-one can accuse you of racism when you grab the person you really want. No idea if there's any truth to it but it's the only reason I could come up with.
I have no inside information on the following... but an effective explosive trace detection screen would go like this.
First, it would be random, with no profiling. Profiling gets defeated by shaving, change of clothing, etc. Random selection can't be defeated.
I would make it resistant to implicit profiling from the operators by saying "wear a watch, every time the seconds reach 0 you select the next person for screening."
Then, I would make it hard to dodge being selected by varying pace through screening, with a rule that "at the selection time you pick the next person through the metal detector, without giving passengers any indication that you've picked, and wait for your selectee who gets screened no matter how much they dawdle or how long the X-ray search takes".
Next time you fly you'll observe that the ETD procedure at Australian airports is consistent with this theoretical design.
I thought Shanghai had a pretty interesting system — they’d put about 10 people at a time in a “pen” made of Tensabarrier, swab all 10 with the same sample thingy and then test it. Once it came back clean they’d release them and take another group in. They were testing everyone but it went pretty fast.
What I’m getting from the responses to this post is that everyone is getting checked and everyone resents it, nobody knows why they’re checked and every decent innocent individual can only conclude it’s due to prejudice.
Under this defintion of 'nailing it', it there any way in which the TSA are not 'nailing it'? Even if the TSA were carrying out a highy biased and ineffective program, you'd just see a small proportion of the majority being searched, a large proportion of minorities being searched, and then conclude that they're 'nailing it' because the numeric magnitude of people being searched is high...
Of course, in real-world tests of the TSA's usefulness they have been found to be quite ineffectual [0], [1]...so why even make weird justifications for them like this?
My brother lived in Australia for a while. He has olive skin but he's of European descent and can't shave closely, he gets a mild rash on his face. Every time he flew back to New Zealand, he was pulled up for what was claimed to be a random search by New Zealand the security staff.
I'm a 50ish anglo with a beard who travels Sydney - Melbourne quite regularly (for both work and leisure). I get pulled aside for the explosive swab test about 3 out of 4 flights. It's so often that I usually comment to friends if I make a Syd-Mel round trip without getting swabbed...
Yeah I'm a 40ish white-as-a-sheet-of-paper Aussie with a very short beard (pushing an inch maybe, it's more I cbf shaving but I clip it regularly with sheers).
I travel lots (dozen+ times a year, in/out of Mel/Syd and Int'l). I get checked 4/4 times for explosives, and 1/4 times down to boxers in the side room.
Outside AU though, it gets worse. Electronic devices are always confiscated, checked bags pulled back for extra checking, etc
I have no idea why. Even people who consider themselves pros at flying have no idea why. I'm fine with it though, it at least proves they're not JUST targeting people on race, but also are shit scared of shy middle aged nerds who get icked out killing insects ;)
Common first name (well most first names are) but not a common last name.
I'm not picked 100% of the time, but it happens a high %. Gratned I don't travel as much as I used to in the last year so i haven't been able to test recently.
I'm a clean cut white male, and I was singled out twice in the same airport for one flight pos 9/11, pre liquids restrictions. I had 3 bottles of local Idaho vodka, flying from Boise to Chicago. It would have been less annoying if it wasn't literally the same TSA agent that searched me both times, once at the general security in the terminal then secondly "randomly" at the gate. Same agent. Ostensibly looking for weapons. The agent told me as such. Seeing as it was the same agent that had already searched me, I was a bit glib. "Did you miss something the first time around?" Somehow I made my flight. Dude was a jackass.
If I wasn't in a hurry to get onto a flight (which you clearly were if you got searched at the gate), I'd have asked for a supervisor at that point, especially if it was the same agent who had already cleared you at the checkpoint. That's entirely unreasonable.
Yes, which is why the first part of my sentence starts with “If I wasn’t in a hurry to get onto a flight”. I specifically pointed out that in other circumstances that would’ve been my course of action.
Me too if I'm wearing a jacket. White but fat, all in the tummy. Obviously the Aussies find it too confrontational to ask me to open the jacket so they can check it's stomach and not explosives, so the "random" check it is.
There's also a great article out there somewhere (7+ years old, around the time they started the xray backscatter scanners) about an actor who changed her behavior as she went through lots of TSA checkpoints, and eventually concluded that the TSA random checkers were mostly picking people who looked like they wouldn't make a fuss.
Whatever you're getting from the airport, it's certainly not security.
> eventually concluded that the TSA random checkers were mostly picking people who looked like they wouldn't make a fuss.
This is my theory as well. Their job KPIs probably have something like "patted down x people per shift", so they pick people that will cause the least trouble for them.
I've recently started rocking a mustache and beard because razors are expensive and I can't be arsed. I think it has to do with how easy it is for people to "read" us. With facial hair it's harder to tell if I'm smiling or generally in a good mood. People fear the unknown? It's hard to empathize with a poker face, and trust in that face.
Total aside: non Gilette (etc) razors are extraordinarily cheap. After buying a double edged razor set (~40 iirc?), I pay ~15/yr in blades and shaving cream, shaving both my face and my head. Can't help you to be motivated to do so, however!
Buying a double edge razor was one of my best life decision. I'm still running on the 150 blades that I bought 1.5 years ago. I'm shaving 1-3 times a week and mostly keep the same blade for 2-6 shaves
The blades are so cheap, I could literally change my blades every single time and it would still cost me less than a Gilette razor.
Best decision here too. Although i think i got much bigger savings from using shaving brush + shaving soap instead. In my counry almost everybody uses gillete shaving foams in cans. They dont last very long and thus are super expensive. Gillette is huge marketing trick. I mean shaving soaps smell better, have enormous variety and are like 10x cheaper.
With blades you should change them every other shave. Only ones that last me longer are japanese Feathers i dont get it but these are most amazing. Also pretty expensive (still much cheaper than gillette) but totaly worth it.
I shave in the shower with the water directed onto my face. No foam required. I thought it would be really hard without a mirror but it only took a week to get used to it.
Same here. For me it's not the price, but shaving with double edge feels better (3/4 blade razors always felt they were pulling my face very strongly, and disposable 1/2 blade razors weren't sharp enough, double-edge seems the perfect fit for my beard). Shaving has also gone from a "chore" to a time for relaxing (getting a nice cream you can foam with a brush is very mind-quieting)
You'll likely cut yourself a few times at beginning as you learn the technique to hit the contours of your face. That was probably true with Gilette at beginning though right? You can buy a thing called a styptic pencil to stop bleeding. They're great, and super cheap ($1? something like that). I have a few in various toiletry bags. I cut myself MAYBE once every few hundred shaves and it was usually a bump I missed on the back of my head because I don't do it with a mirror.
The typical technique is with grain, against grain, cross grain for whichever direction the hair is flowing, but I usually stop after the second one because it's smooth enough.
They're not quite as easy but I wouldn't say they're difficult. The main drawback for me is that it takes longer. I need two passes for a good shave with a safety razor, and each pass is slower.
I'm told it's a good time to relax and reflect, but... if I'm in a hurry I grab my quatro.
Slightly harder, only. Have only got cuts in the same places I had before, around the chin area, but overall I actually get less minor cuts with safety razor than disposable multi-blade razors (have been using safety for around two year).
I prefer to use them even without considering the costs. It’s possible to nick yourself, but I’ve never done anymore damage than I’d previously managed to do with a Gillette, and it doesn’t happen that often (to me at least, YMMV).
I have a friend who's parents fled Iran when she was two. She grew up in Britain and then the US when her parents immigrated. She gets the 3rd degree every time she flies.
TSA is not chartered to look for drugs, and technically, they aren't supposed to be looking for them (though sometimes they find them in the course of their job- transportation security)
It is basically an end-run around the constitution -- if the police were searching through your bags without your consent any evidence they found could be challenged on constitutional grounds. The courts have (afaik) found that the TSA's searches are a different category, "administrative searches," and therefore not unconstitutional; somehow, though, there is no problem with using evidence found by the TSA in a criminal case.
Also, since the TSA's mission is not limited to aircraft, it is entirely possible that "administrative searches" are coming to a public transit system near you. Presumably the same rules would apply.
It could be your name. I knew a guy name Omar Ahmed (now sadly deceased); he got extra security every time. Someone with the same or similar name was on a watch list.
I don't travel much and when I do, it is with my wife. She uses the airline wheelchairs and it seems to be a trigger for an additional inspection. On the last two trips we didn't get checked out, but I observed business men (white male, clean cut, etc) being checked out. Children (including toddlers) being checked out. Women of ages being checked out. Yet, I also saw those you might expect to fit the "profile" being passed straight through. This was at Melbourne and at Brisbane. I have a friend who is an Iraqi and he never seems to be pulled over for inspections when travelling around the world. Go figure.
When I have travelled elsewhere in the country, they just seemed to grab 4 to 6 people as they are passing through security. I can not offer any point of view regards elsewhere in the world, but at least here, it seems to be related to how much random disruption they can cause to all types of travellers.
I know that our government is getting more and more "afraid" of any kind of "terrorist" that they are willing to bring in more and more annoyances and intrusions. I have also seen some of the security inspection staff being more apologetic for increased intrusions.
It's just a fact of life that fear is being fed so that a greater control over the citizens can be created. This is irrespective of political affiliation any of our elected politicians may have. There are many people that I have discussed this matter with and they express the opinion that such policies should be in place because "fear".
As citizens, we need to start recognising that we are the ones who can elect people who will stand strong against fear and will do something to bring about an increase in the backbone of society. However, the citizenry of Australia seems to be focussed on many matters that don't matter.
In no time TSA will ask Congress for billions in funding to set up their own CIA and even send paramilitary groups all over the world to catch potential bombers. Who doesn't want "quiet skies" after all?
It seems likely he was just trying to scare me, but it was still was quite jarring. I'm a fairly normal US citizen (I don't associate with political people, no criminal record, never been to a country not known for tourism). I believe I was flagged just from traveling between Turkey and Russia.
Since then when I fly I cant use online check-in, my boarding pass is marked SSSS and I am taken into the backroom for questioning at border control.
Maybe these extra precautions keep the USA safe, but it certainly seemed excessively paranoid.