TSA can "envision" all it wants, it must operate within the confines of the constitution. CBP gets away with a lot due to the unique legal quagmire that is the US border. TSA has no such luxury, and thus (with a little help with orgs like ACLU and EFF) such initiatives should fail. Some restrictions apply - void where prohibited[1]
The TSA already gets to harass, molest and assault people all they want. We've had nearly a decade of videos of crazy invasive and disturbing pat-downs of both adults and children. It's pretty obvious if you want to touch people inappropriately and legally, the TSA is the career choice you should be looking at.
I rarely fly anywhere unless I absolutely have to. I've flown a lot outside the country and no other country is anywhere near as bad as the US/TSA. No other country makes you take off your shoes.
I feel like early on, Americans fought hard against TSA security theatre and nothing changed and people kept flying, so it's just stayed pretty much the same.
It's gotten a little better. TSA agent can't harass people as much and have to be nicer since everyone is recording, but everything they do is still worthless. Millimetre wave machines are filled with so many false positives you should just have people roll a six-sided die.
I have not been everywhere, but Ben Gurion in Israel was worse than TSA. There’s some valid reason for that, but it can indeed be more intense than what TSA currently does.
I think it’s theatre too, but too many people are comforted by the theatre and believe that the more that there is, the safer that they’ll be.
The table seems to agree with you, however the text below it doesn't (at least not entirely).
After trying to decipher how they keep switching units (kg/km per passenger vs kg/mile per passenger), it seems as if the text shows .18 for long flights, .35 for average cars, .08 for long distance busses, and .19 for long distance trains (all units I put here are kg of CO2 emissions per passenger per mile).
And that doesn't take into account manufacturing or the impact of roads, but I don't necessarily think that changes the discussion at all.
I'm also not sure if those numbers are average capacity or peak capacity (planes are very often mostly full in my experience, while trains are not, and busses even less so, but that's all based on my own memory).
So I'm leaving this discussion with more questions than I started with, but my first statement was absolutely wrong!
> planes are very often mostly full in my experience, while trains are not, and busses even less so.
This is going to be very dependent on the route/times. I've flown transatlantic flights where I've had entire rows to myself (on multiple occasions). Trains are regularly running at capacity, especially on commuter lines.
Vietnam makes you take off your shoes, I think last time I flew through Malaysia it was the same, and Australia sometimes requires you to take off your shoes (I think maybe some airports, like Gold Coast?).
It's annoyingly common, especially since I tend to wear boots, so it's a real hassle to take my boots off and then put them on again.
You know this, and you've apparently experienced this several times. So maybe stop wearing boots when flying? I always carry a pocket knife, but not when flying. Not just because I want to avoid anal probing, but also out of courtesy towards everyone who is behind me in the security theatre queue.
You are assuming they don't need or want the boots for any reason.
I've flow places with 4 laptops before, not because I think it's fun to inconvenience everyone in line, but because I needed them for where I was going.
If I was flying somewhere that I needed boots, I'd probably try to wear them to avoid having them pretty much take up most of my carry on space...
The major difference is that one is basic clothing and the other is something you just have with you.
I shouldn't have to buy special clothes to fly. (I happen to own a pair of athletic shoes as well as boots, however, my spouse only owns boots. We don't invest much in clothing).
On the other hand, I don't really find it to be much of a bother. My boots stay on decently without tying the laces and I can usually do a proper lacing when I'm out of the way.
I think only if you have steel caps in Australia as they trigger the metal detectors. I've flown into and out of every major airport in Australia (including OOL) and have only had to remove my shoes when I'm wearing work boots.
I would say occasionally, not regularly. I don't think I've had to take off my shoes flying through European airports in at least 5 years, and even then it's generally because you set off the metal detector.
I fly quite a bit. I signed up for TSA pre. It typically takes me about 5m to get through a security lane and usually involves a walk through a metal detector. Shoes on; laptop in bag; no need to remove toiletries. It is a fast, efficient, and polite experience. I'm sure others have different experiences - or aren't willing/able to pay for the TSA pre program. But in general, I prefer my experience traveling domestically to passing through security internationally.
According to the TSA website, that means you submitted to "a 10 minute, in person appointment that includes a background check and fingerprinting." [0]
There is no reason why that should be required in order to fly without "harassment".
> There is no reason why that should be required in order to fly without "harassment".
Can you explain why you think this way exactly? How does taking out your laptop and taking off your shoes count as harassment, exactly?
I submitted to a 10 minute in person appointment that included fingerprinting and answering questions about my criminal status (I'm not). That's it. It was super easy.
I have tsa pre-check, and I mostly enjoy it because travelers who have tsa precheck tend to pack efficiently and aren't surprised and hung up at various checkpoints during the security intake process. It's an added bonus that I don't have to take my laptop out or take my shoes off, but it's not that big of a deal.
I'm not a fan of the TSA but I have a hard time understanding why someone would be upset with the TSA precheck process.
> or aren't willing/able to pay for the TSA pre program
Or are not eligible for any of the various 'pay more to be treated as a human' programs due to having the wrong citizenship (which is most citizenships).
Putting mafia style protection racket arguments aside (pretty soon TSA will not need money from taxpayers, they’ll just extort for convenience sake) - per the press release you have now been forced into a full scale biometrics ID program (reminder: TSA also has jurisdiction in metro rail and bus areas). How does that make you feel? Do you know what information sharing agreements they have with local law enforcement? Intel agencies? Other federal agencies? License plate metadata vendors?
Good luck out there! Glad you could save the 30 minutes, but I’d love a world where it wouldn’t require payment.
No it's not. I fly regularly intra-EU and maybe once (?) have had to take my shoes off in the last 5+yrs....can't even remember. I don't know which airports you transit/use but I go throw most of the major ones across EU pretty regularly.
Maybe I haven't been paying that much attention. I travel wearing a mix of dress/ converse/ boots type shoes but no issues so far. Neither has my GF had any issues (that I know of).
No fly lists are inherently unconstitutional. They are secret lists that limit travel. They are applied arbitrarily with no judicial process. They have existed since 9/11 and they need to be banned.
But yet... the electorate still believes in the safety they create because no legislator that I’m aware of has even broached the topic. I hope to see candidates with some sane opinions on this soon.
The “illusion of safety”. There is no legitimate safety guarantee from TSA. If someone wanted to do harm in an American airport or airplane, they could. We need to stop kidding ourselves. If a terrorist was serious about death and destruction at an American airport, they could do it. It is absolutely possible to bring down an airplane right now, with all the safeguards and TSA crap. We’ve all just fooled ourselves into thinking more security and less civil rights equals more safety.
This is true, but the other side of the coin is that you want to make attacks hard enough. Yes, a group with $100k and a team of 3-5 people planning for a few months could really be destructive. But attacks (this applies to the digital world too) are generally unsophisticated, poorly planned, and take the easiest route possible. If you protect against, or at least mitigate, the easiest possible attacks, you eliminate a very large portion of security risks weighted by the likelihood of attackers to actually take those risks
It's just like there can be no legitimate safety guarantee that software companies are unhackable. But you can make it really, really hard. Of course the TSA doesn't make it that hard, and mostly wastes a ton of money on things with little value, but in theory there should be some amount of physical security to prevent people from hijacking what are essentially missiles containing 100s of regular people
"The other side of the coin"? I think you have presented a strawman opposition.
Few argue there should be no security, but rather that a few simple changes, like hardening cockpit doors for the cockpit and a change to the hijacking policy (based as it was on the assumption that the hijackers wanted to live and, for example, go to Cuba), were enough "physical security to prevent people from hijacking what are essentially missiles."
How does yet more biometrics help? Is the cost justifiable?
We could have 5 security guards on every plane. That would surely help prevent people from 'hijacking what are essentially missiles', yes? But the costs aren't worth it. Eg:
"An assessment of the Federal Air Marshal Service suggests that the annual cost is $180 million per life saved. This is greatly in excess of the regulatory safety goal of $1-$10 million per life saved. As such, the air marshal program would seem to fail a cost-benefit analysis" - https://ogma.newcastle.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repositor...
The "illusion of safety" comes from putting policies into place which aren't justified by a reasonable cost-benefit analysis, but exist mostly for cover-your-ass reasoning.
There is a very famous website about making serious weapons (shivs, bombs, even a homemade “gun”) for under $100 using only items purchased at the news stands and gift shops found airside.
There never can or will be another 9/11 style attack, ever. Why? Because no one will ever give control of a plane over to an attacker, even if they have a knife / gun / bomb.
Attacker: “We have a bomb, let us into the cockpit or we will kill all 300 people on board”
Pilot: “...why, so you can fly the plane into a building and kill 1000 people? lol no, just detonate your bomb.”
That’s it, plane attacks like this are over. They ended on 9/12, forever.
Even in the case of private property, if the public is generally invited in, some constitutional rights can still apply:
...ownership "does not always mean absolute dominion." The court pointed out that the more an owner opens his property up to the public in general, the more his rights are circumscribed by the statutory and constitutional rights of those who are invited in.
In its conclusion, the Court stated that it was essentially weighing the rights of property owners against the rights of citizens to enjoy freedom of press and religion. The Court noted that the rights of citizens under the Bill of Rights occupy a preferred position. Accordingly, the Court held that the property rights of a private entity are not sufficient to justify the restriction of a community of citizens' fundamental rights and liberties.
Incidentally, this judgment could be relevant to questions around freedom of speech on monopoly online platforms (e.g. google search, youtube, twitter & facebook): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_v._Alabama
That was a horrible ruling. Upholding private property rights does not restrict anyone's "fundamental rights and liberties". The two are not in conflict: no one has any legitimate rights or liberties with respect to anyone else's private property to begin with, no matter how much the property owners may have opened up their property to the public. The Constitution guarantees freedom from government interference in the exercise of one's rights; it does not guarantee the availability of other's property for that purpose without their consent.
However, the issue in this case is not restrictions imposed by property owners on the use of their own property, but rather restrictions imposed by the federal government, which is bound by the limitations on government power written into the Constitution.
Consider the Nordic "right to roam". Just because you own land doesn't mean you have the right to keep people off the land simply because you don't want them there. Or as the WP page quotes for this court case: 'ownership "does not always mean absolute dominion."'
If it were otherwise, then what's to keep from having a company city, or company state? Sell off Seattle to Bill Gates, and make it his fiefdom.
That points out that "Ancient traces provide evidence of the freedom to roam in many European countries, suggesting such a freedom was once a common norm."
It's also been noted that the freedom to roam is strongest in those areas which didn't have feudalism and serfdom.
Just like feudalism and serfdom, company towns have a history of being controlling and exploitative .. and un-democratic. That's what's wrong with them.
Cars and garages are private property as well. Just try flying an airplane without obtaining government approval and see what happens. The airways are definitely regulated public space.
Private companies acting in a private capacity cannot violate the constitution.
The limits of the Constitution apply to government employees (or even private employees performing a service contracted by a government agency) whether they are on public or private property.
The major exception being slavery, that is, a private company with slave labor, "except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted", violates the 13th amendment, with penalties set by Congressional legislation.
That is not an exception. The 13th Amendment prohibits the government from legally classifying a person as someone else's property (with the one noted exception). A private citizen treating a person as a slave may be guilty of kidnapping, assault, battery, or any number of other crimes, but they are not violating the 13th Amendment—only the government can do that, by granting legal recognition to the victim's status as a slave.
If a private company is acting in ways normally prohibited to private actors, on the state's authority, then they are effectively acting as an extension of the state. The state obviously cannot grant a private company the authority to do something which both private actors and the state itself are prohibited from doing. However, it's still the government, not the private company, which is bound by the Constitution.
Your interpretation seems to differ from that of legal sources.
Quoting from the first paragraph of the ACLU link I gave: "With the notable exception of the Thirteenth Amendment’s ban on slavery, the individual liberties guaranteed by the United States Constitution protect against actions by government officials but not against actions by private persons or entities."
Quoting from https://academic.udayton.edu/race/06hrights/GeoRegions/North... : "the Thirteenth Amendment's prohibition against slavery and involuntary servitude encompasses both governmental and private action. Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3, 20 (1883). The U.S. Supreme Court has held that Congress may regulate private conduct under sec. 2 of the Thirteenth Amendment, which provides that "Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation." Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co., 392 U.S. 409 (1968). Such power includes determining what constitutes the "badges and incidents of slavery and the authority to translate that determination into effective legislation."
Quoting from https://www.encyclopedia.com/politics/encyclopedias-almanacs... : "The Thirteenth Amendment is one of the few constitutional provisions that directly implicates private conduct. That amendment, the first of the three "civil war amendments," flatly bans slavery and involuntary servitude. It acts directly upon private entities; slaves were owned by private businesses and individuals. The Thirteenth Amendment, however, has not been interpreted to provide a significant source of constitutional proscription against acts of private discrimination."
Quoting from http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/PROJECTS/FTRIALS/conlaw/thirtee... "The Thirteenth Amendment, unlike most provisions in the Constitution, is self-executing, in that it directly reaches-even without action by Congress- conduct by private individuals (slave holders)."
Yeah, that happens a lot. There's no need to treat the 13th Amendment as a unique case. The default state under natural law is that there is no such thing as legitimate involuntary slavery; treating anyone as a slave without their consent infringes on their inalienable rights. As such, there was never any need to ban private parties from holding slaves; the slave holder's only tenuous claim to legitimacy comes from the fact that the government takes their side, recognizing and enforcing their claims while simultaneously ignoring the natural rights of their slaves.
I suspect the convoluted arguments proposed for why the 13th Amendment must be unique are a direct consequence of the tortured logic needed to reconcile the institution of slavery with the principles on which the Constitution was based. Faced with a choice between acknowledging the government's role in legitimizing slavery or else arguing that it was merely a "private" matter which the government had thus far refrained from regulating they chose the narrative which minimized their share of the blame. This is akin to how the Interstate Commerce and General Welfare clauses have been perverted to justify all manner of legislation outside the narrowly defined scope of the federal government's enumerated powers.
"direct consequence of the tortured logic needed to reconcile the institution of slavery with the principles on which the Constitution was based"
You cannot pick and choose which principles you like. The Constitutional principles include the support of slavery. The Constitutional principles do not include universal suffrage. The Constitutional principles said nothing against expanding westward and stealing Native American lands. The Constitutional principles didn't prevent us from ruling the Philippines as a colonial power, or using government power to suppress labor rights.
To the contrary, I believe federal power was strengthened in part to be able to suppress the rights of the poor. The rebels of Shay's Rebellion fought against monetary policies and court practices which caused their lands and possessions to be confiscated. The elites and merchant class wanted to be able to call out federal troops should their own power be threatened.
What does "natural law" say about the right to confiscate land and possessions for failure to pay debts? For failure to pay taxes? What if those debts and taxes must be paid in hard currency, and that currency isn't available, and the government refuses to issue paper currency and allow it to be used as a substitute?
What would happen if businesspeople refused to travel if their constitutional rights were not respected, and the economy ground to a halt?
A small precedent was the widely flaunted "ban" on small electronic devices during takeoff/landing. A revolt among business travelers caused a rapid change in the rule.
> What would happen if businesspeople refused to travel if their constitutional rights were not respected, and the economy ground to a halt?
When have business people as a very large collective ever been particularly outraged about the surveillance state? Nothing about the NSA's activities have been fundamentally rolled back. They won, across the board and across party lines. I'm not talking about seven executives from some corner of tech lodging a twitter protest, I mean the millions of people that make up the "businesspeople" category. They have never widely protested the surveillence moves of the last 17 years.
Americans will resist this as much as 24/7 cctv surveillence has been resisted in other developed nations such as Britain. Not at all. Most people do not view it as a threat to their liberty, they view it as an isolated intrusion that is to their security benefit.
I’m betting we will never find out. The number of people who have been driven out of air travel because of today’s draconian restrictions is basically zero. People are conditioned to comply with any request in order to board an airplane.
EDIT: you edited your post after I posted. As long as you don’t make people uncomfortable on the plane, that is. Don’t take away their phones, laptops or headphones, and you can grab as many images as you want of their irises, retinas and fingerprints.
TSA Precheck has made things much, much easier for frequent travelers -- those who aren't as concerned about their "constitutional rights" anyway. [0] Perhaps the business travelers that might revolt have already signed up, and know they're being tracked by some government entity whether they sign up for Precheck or not.
In many ways, Precheck feels like flying in the 90s. You know 24h in advance if you will be able to sail through security in < 5 minutes and can get to the airport much closer to departure.
s/spaghetti & meatballs/illicit drugs/ and that argument falls apart. You will quickly lose other rights, even though drugs aren't explicitly guaranteed or prohibited by the constitution either.
(Not addressing GPs argument, just that the spaghetti & meatballs one doesn't hold water.)
Bone Saws aren't banned either, and retinal eye-scans of assassins will not make the world a safer place.
Having Humanist-Centric politics makes the world a better place. Humans with shitty governments, parenting and environments which are shitty typically wind up being shitty humans.
Building walls, guns, bombs, cages, cops, totalitarian and authoritarian regimes are no substitute for actually working to be better humans
I agree but you can't realistically build policy around "working to be better humans". Walls, guns, surveillance, etc are all easily deployable policies with easily measurable results. I don't enjoy the surveillance state or waiting 2 hours for airport security but it is tolerable...to an extent.
Only because at the time that clause was written no one expected the relatively benign power to "make interstate commerce regular", i.e. to facilitate trade between the states, to be used as cover for absolutely any kind of interference in state affairs Washington can dream up—including actions which actively inhibit trade, or have precious little to do with interstate commerce in the first place—in preference to actually useful things like standardizing weights and measures and curbing fraud.
Nobody is required to give you free air travel, no. But the government is not supposed to be allowed to obstruct you from traveling, whether you want to go by air, boat, road..
Travel is essential, just as the right to work, breathe when you want etc etc. So, my bet is that it is. Granted with some restrictions to make sure everyone is as safe as possible...without getting a cavity search
If the TSA and its $85 for a five year TSA Pre pass make you upset (like it does me), then you should really check out the private security pass system call CLEAR[1] for the next level of crazy. $179 a year, lines even faster than TSA Pre, already in 35 airports and starting to make a big push into stadium events. "Our advanced technology is SAFETY Act Certified from the Department of Homeland Security." WTF?
I dislike the TSA immensely, but paying a private company for an express line through security screams misaligned incentives to me (even if the vast majority of airport security is theater anyways).
CLEAR is "skip waiting in line for a person to look at your ID and boarding pass". That's it. CLEAR by itself still sends you into the unpack-your-bag, take-off-half-your-clothes, body-scanner experience.
If you want to leave things in your carry-on, stay fully dressed and use the metal detector, you still need Pre (or another program which grants membership in Pre). CLEAR does not give you Pre.
As someone who has CLEAR, and flys frequently on airlines that are not enrolled in Pre (JAL out of SFO), this is simply untrue. CLEAR escorts me to the front of the Pre line, allowing me to keep my shoes on and laptop in bag -- even though the airline is not a part of the Pre program.
The amount of misinformation and fear mongering here is staggering. The article is posted by an anti-surveillance publication, so I guess the skewed perspective makes sense.
I understand and agree with the fear of it being a slippery slope. I'm concerned about facial recognition becoming a regular part of surveillance in everyday life, and I hope that there is legislation around this TSA rollout that strictly prohibits their database from being used for non-airport related purposes.
Here's how the system is designed to work at full implementation. This is based on a briefing I had about 6 months ago, so I imagine it's still along the lines of what they're planning.
You get to airport security with your cary-on. You walk up to a kiosk to scan your face. When you booked your flight, they essentially did a background check on you, and if it was clean you just walk through to the terminal, with minimally-invasive scanning that doesn't require any stopping or removing anything from your bag.
If something did come up on your background check (mainly a conviction for a violent crime or a pattern of information that suggests possible ties to terrorism... one of the TSA's goals behind this system is do screening based on suspicious activity rather than profiling) you go through what essentially is the TSA experience today.
This is more frightening than the implications of the article and all the comments I've seen here so far.
To be clear, what you're describing is a system for triggering asynchronous, automated "background checks" (no doubt based on a secret methodology) against Americans, the results of which will then be applied at biometric checkpoints and used to justify taking individuals into custody for "further screening".
Do you understand the implications of a government using such a system against its citizens? Do you really think the TSA will effectively prevent other actors from using their database? Even if they do, do you think this model and precedent won't be exploited by other actors? FFS, they're already talking about ripping off the photos we have to have taken for our regular state-issued IDs.
> automated "background checks" (no doubt based on a secret methodology) against Americans, the results of which will then be applied at biometric checkpoints and used to justify taking individuals into custody for "further screening"
This is exactly the current system, but the current system puts a human instead of the biometric system. See all the business of "SSSS" stamps on boarding passes.
> You get to airport security with your cary-on. You walk up to a kiosk to scan your face. When you booked your flight, they essentially did a background check on you, and if it was clean you just walk through to the terminal, with minimally-invasive scanning that doesn't require any stopping or removing anything from your bag.
That's a pretty attractive sales proposition there; it's really hard for me as an individual to argue against the reduced hassle (and essentially a return to pre-2001 boarding patterns) in return for them having access to data they can realistically already get.
Japan takes pictures and fingerprints from people as they arrive; this doesn't seem too much different, just the direction.
I wonder if this could also be expanded to people without boarding passes. I know a lot of people mourn the loss of the ability to go directly to the gate to meet or see off family.
They take pictures and fingerprints of foreigners when you arrive in the USA as well.
I hope no families at the gates will be allowed.
People are already clueless about how to properly cue and board a plane. As a frequent flyer it is beyond irritating. Families or friends at the gate would just make things even worse.
Plus, letting them in without a boarding pass is just a way to add insecurity variables to the airport experience for no reason but the movie-like romantic idea of airport goodbyes.
Surely they all need to come through the security screening, though? So suddenly the (already far too long) lines are 2-4x longer. Just say your goodbyes before security, it's really not as issue.
It’s a weird custom that I’ve seen only in American movies and that was ever probably true only for American airports.
It’s not an issue indeed and I think Americans are as usual a bit myopic in pretending that a cultural experience is globally recognized.
Feel free to downvote this (true) generalization.
> You walk up to a kiosk to scan your face. When you booked your flight, they essentially did a background check on you, and if it was clean you just walk through to the terminal
This may be really cynical, but... I bet we'll get news like "our tests were based on our employees and we're surprised the system fails for black people / asians / ..." fairly soon after first implementation. So many large companies fail on this, I don't have high expectations for TSA.
I'm with you. Someone could cause a huge amount of death, damage and destruction by blowing up a bus or subway train, and yet these have zero security and work just fine. How come everyone gets hysterical when it comes to flying?
I generally agree with you, but the justification is basically the 9/11 effect:
If a bomb goes off in a subway train or bus, the people in that vehicle die. If an airplane crashes into a building, significantly more people could die.
On a serious note; One has already provided their personal details to purchase the ticket, then to receive their bording pass, then presenting their ID to pass through securit - and soon, to provide their "realID" BS which requires a bunch more hoops-to-jump-through-to-obtain, and now in addition to all of this, WHAT exactly is facial recognition/retinal scanning going to do?
I would argue that if they are going to use facial recognition/retinal scanning - then I shouldnt be stopped, searched or require ANY paper document to do anything and should be able to just walk through access-portals for which my ID can be tied to my ticket-of-passage....
That's the argument - you are already required to show photo id and have a person compare your photo to your face. This replaces that person with an algorithm.
But that person isn't attached to databases containing archived CCTV, scraped social media data [1], parking tickets, license plate reader data [2], phone metadata, or the myriad biased and unaccountable algorithms created by private companies, used to rank and sort humans [3].
Think about the implications for whistleblowers, journalists meeting anonymous sources, activists, immigrants, etc etc etc.
I remember how everyone in USA made fun of China’s facial recognition/social rating system. I wonder if something similar will be implemented soon in USA too.
What I don't understand is why? Is it in response to an increase in plane hijackings in the US since 9/11?
Unless the terrorists board with machine guns, 9/11 wouldn't be possible today. No passenger would assume that a bunch of middle eastern hijackers have any other intention than to kill them all, and it would be impossible for the hijackers to control the passengers.
I'm very conflicted about this. And I'm actually sitting at my gate while typing this, in an uncharacteristically busy terminal, where I'm suddenly so very urgently aware about the risks of large crowds at airports and such. Conflicted because it does make sense to me that tracking people in facilities like this could help with safety and security. I have no principled problem with my picture being taken. But I wouldn't want it to be abused, for sure. So... is it the secondary uses, like marketing and totalitarian uses (never thought that'd go in one sentence) that I'm worried about? Or should I be worried about it anyway? Does the distinction matter? Is distinguishing between the two possible? Realistic? ... CONFUSED!
Airlines have traditionally been targets for terrorism. For other concentrations of people like pop concerts the same may apply. Or in any case, those already have had security measures for a while beyond just some town's busy downtown. But I don't know what I want. I'm probably mostly saying that it's not a black or white matter for me.
> In the future, TSA will be able to use TSA Pre® enrolled facial images for matching…. Moving forward, TSA Pre® will increase its access to and utilization of voluntarily-provided biometric data, including facial images, to modernize the trusted traveler experience for TSA Pre® travelers.
Wait wait, so let's use biometrics on people we already trust! I mean, not that TSA Pre-check is hard to get (airlines include it free for their best travelers after all) but give me a break government - you've already said these people are a-ok, so there's no point in this silliness.
Actually, unless I'm missing something, what they are saying here comes in two parts:
1) You now have to include a photo, same as you would for a passport.
2) They will have photo lines for TSA where they recognize you from these photos, nominally to help make the lines faster.
So on one hand... you already have to provide a photo for a passport, so this is just bringing TSA Pre-Check into balance with that. But, on the other... could government waste anymore of my tax dollars? I mean - they already "trust" the people who receive pre-check AND the lines are never that long. So it's just more silliness.
> let's use biometrics on people we already trust!
The biometrics would eventually replace the ID check you have to go through now. People who are "trusted" don't get to just walk to their airplane today.
TSA and airport security-theatre in the USA is such a mind-boggling concept to me. Im flying a lot within Europe, especially between Sweden and Switzerland, and i have never had to show my passport to anyone. More often than not they don't check the fluids in my carry-on, and i get to keep my shoes on. The security check usually takes 5-10 minutes including the time spent queuing.
I fly frequently in the US, if you pay for TSA pre they don't check fluids below the limit, don't take anything out of your bag and you keep your shoes on. My average time in line is about 6 minutes (mostly driven up by a time where I left water in my bottle at Denver airport).
No one has to show a passport as long as your ticket is going somewhere in the US. Even the state licenses that don't meet the federal standard have been grandfathered into it for a few years, so they can fix it at the state level rather than pissing off voters.
Well, as you should know, the UK is a special case because the concessions it has demanded from the EU include not opening its borders like other Schengen countries. Thus, normal border controls for people traveling between the UK and continental EU. And NI, of course, is an even more special case due to the conditions of the Good Friday agreement. In the Brexit negotiations the question of what to do with NI borders seems to be one of the most hairy ones.
In Europe (Schengen) you need not a passport (in the sense of a document valid for crossing a border) but you still need an ID card (all countries in Europe have these AFAIK) when boarding a plane.
There was a lot of fuzz here in Italy some ten years ago about Ryan Air not accepting as ID some particular forms of ID cards because of some fine interpretation of the Law.
In Italy a number of documents (driving license, boat driving license, other kinds of government issued ID cards, such as police ID cards, gun carrying permit, or similar) are considered as substituting the national ID card for the identification of someone, but for taking a plane only the national ID card (or a passport) is considered valid.
I never shown my ID to anyone when flying between ZRH and ARN. When flying from Nice I had to present it though, but they barely looked, and just waved me through.
A valid passport (Note: all non EU passport holders, travelling into a Schengen member country are obliged to ensure that their passport is valid for at least 3 months from the date of their departure from the Schengen member country. This requirement does not apply to holders of a Schengen issued residence permit or long term visas).
A valid National Identity Card issued by the government of a European Economic Area (EEA) country. (Only the following EEA countries currently issue National Identity Cards acceptable for carriage on Ryanair flights: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Gibraltar, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland. The validity of French National ID cards (issued for adults) has been extended from 10 years to 15 years ONLY for cards issued between 2nd January 2004 and 31st December 2013.
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The request for passport probably derives from the UK seemingly not issuing a suitable national ID card.
I've always wondered what is the process that generates this kind of proposals. Was it a single person? A group conspiring from within to perpetuate the power of the TSA? Or from outside, influencing or enforcing the directors to take some actions?
How do they come to be? And what strategy do they use to bootstrap the authority and support of the project? Puss in Boots always comes to my mind.
I wonder what the GDPR implications of using this on international travellers from europe are?
What data are they collecting? What are they using to for? Who do they share it with? How can I request a copy of all my personal data? What's the process by which I notify them of errors in my data, and how quickly will they correct them? How do I request that they delete all my data?
I seriously doubt a part of the US Gov't would be made subject to GDPR in any way. That would seem to be treaty territory. US Corps that do business in Europe are another matter entirely.
In a way, they are forced to do this by their nature. As an abstract entity they should not and will not care about consequences other than making their job easier.
But it operates in a world where other entities might come in play and counter. The problem is that I don't hear the voices of these other entities. Is TSA that powerful on its own?
meh. I flew into Thailand yesterday. They took my photo. Cambodia took my photo and my fingerprints. Nepal took my photo. The UK took my photo and compared it to the one encoded in my UK passport. As did Australia (with my Aussie passport).
I know "America = Freedom", but pretty soon it's going to be the same situation as we have with gmail - you may not use gmail because you don't want Google hoovering your conversation to target ads with, but if anyone cc'd in the chain uses gmail, google gets it anyway.
Whatever country you traveled to or from is going to get your biometrics, and they're probably sharing that info with the US anyway. I get the point of protesting this, but it feels kinda academic now.
I'm not saying I like giving up my freedom for convenience, but I am fed up of standing for hours in lines for "security" checks that are just theater, when they've got the information from other sources anyway. The automated checks using the biometric information in my passport(s) feel so much quicker and less biased (e.g. Thai immigration officer getting into a long conversation with a Chinese tourist about what hotel they were staying at).
The problem of how to gradually implement a pervasive surveillance state without at any one time arousing people's suspicions to the point where they will actually do something meaningful about it?
Seriously, though, I would love to know the actual motivation for this. Somehow these days I have trouble attributing changes like this to simple bureaucratic momentum.
Good! I for one am glad for this and the measures that were implemented as a result of certain actors wishing ill on our society. It’s a small price to pay for piece of mind when flying. For the past 17 years there was immense fear-mongering of what kind of slippery slope these measures would lead to and yet none have really materialized.
Aside from all the stories about minorities, and sometimes even white males being harrassed and physically violated, but yeah, those are just minor details.
I could not disagree more. Trading liberty for safety is not something we should ever do. Risk mitigation is different than giving up rights. They can be done at the same time without compromising anything. “No slippery slope...yet” isn’t really a thing you want to rely on.
I am personally furious every time I fly because these rules do little to protect us. I’m glad it is giving someone (you?) some peace I guess, but the cost is too much to bear.
Outside of rights, do you have any idea how much this costs taxpayers and how insanely run that organization is? I’d say it fails many, many rational tests.
Field sobriety tests are only issued once the officer has probable cause based on suspicion of intoxication. I don't think anyone would disagree that suspicious behavior within an airport warrants detainment and questioning, but in that case no one's liberties are being compromised.
Trading liberty, as in being searched the 5 min each time you fly is worth the added safety of being stuck in a soeeding metal tube 30k feet in the sky.
The slippery slope is absolutely happening. To start, TSA is costing this country 7 billion dollars, and in return they fail 90% of their audits, and thus have prevented literally no terrorist attacks.
And the event culminating in their unparalleled power to date was avoidable, not based on any of the power they've been granted and continue to demand at our every expense, but by already established agencies with the information to correctly act to do so. I try not to court conspiracy, but the elements are all there (i.e. could 9/11 have been avoided?) The power of pretense seems too strong here.
> For the past 17 years there was immense fear-mongering of what kind of slippery slope these measures would lead to and yet none have really materialized.
In the context of OP's link, this is just funny. I find it hard to see how a person could legitimately be so ignorant and oblivious.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_search_exception