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TSA Sued Over New Policy to Refuse Opt-Outs
- jasonjei 11y agoIs this inclusive of the TSA PreCheck or Global Entry program?
- hyperbovine 11y agoPrecheck relied on metal scanners only every time I used it. Global entry is an immigration thing which currently includes pre check at no additional fee.
- tdicola 11y agoI have pre check with the global entry program and was 'randomly selected' to go through a body scanner on a recent trip, so it can happen. Most of the time pre check just goes through a simple metal detector though.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- meesterdude 11y agoThis does nothing to make us safer, as the ineffectiveness of the TSA has been well documented on numerous occasions since their inception.
- tallerholler 11y agowould you rather have no security and feel good knowing anyone can walk into the airport unhinged and hop on an airplane?
- ketralnis 11y agoThat's what we have right now, we just pretend that we don't. The TSA routinely fails their own inspections.
- u801e 11y agoDefinitely. The chances are so low that I'm not worried about it. The same concern applies to any other mode of transportation and we don't have to deal with the "security theater" measures for those other modes of transport. Do you constantly worry about "unhinged" drivers while walking on the sidewalk? Are you constantly worried that you would be the victim of an intentional attack like what recently happened in Las Vegas? Do you believe we need to go through the "security theater" motions in order to "mitigate" the, for all practical purposes, negligible risk of something similar happening in the future?
- Silhouette 11y agoYou can have other kinds of security without necessarily having the strip search machines. For example, basic checks like going through a metal detector or passing sniffers for explosives or other undesirable substances have proven to be relatively reliable, and do not cause significant concerns relating to either health or privacy in the way that various body scanning technologies do. In any case, I am at a similar risk of someone unhinged killing me and hundreds of other people every time I get a local train into the city, which requires no security checks at all. This was, unfortunately, demonstrated in the 7 July attacks in London, and I personally know people who were caught up in those attacks and hurt so I'm the last person who's going to be flippant about that possibility. I still feel just fine about my survival chances getting on a train, though. More people get hurt and killed on our roads most weeks than died in the 7/7 attacks, and those were more than a decade ago and haven't been repeated since.
- meesterdude 11y agoI'd rather have effective security, instead of security theater.
- chrismcb 11y agoYES. The only time I feel unsafe is when I go through security. I get groped and lose sight of my belongings. But I get on a bus with just anyone, I walk into a mall with just anyone, I drive on the freeway with anyone, and I go to a sporting event with just anyone. Why not fly with just anyone?
- hyperbovine 11y agoMan that's annoying. I don't feel like these scanners have been impartially vetted by the medical community and while they are potentially safe, it's going to be a bummer to finally be forced through one.
- UnoriginalGuy 11y agoIndeed. And previously pregnant women, those with compromised immune systems, and parents of young children could opt out. Not so much now. I will say that the current Millimetre Wave machines are likely safer than the now defunct Backscatter X-ray machines. At least we're dealing with non-ironising radiation with a lower amount of raw energy.
- carbocation 11y agoIs there independent evidence supporting their claims that they have correctly calibrated these devices to emit non-ionizing radiation?
- gugagore 11y agoHave you calibrated your flashlight to emit non-ionizing radiation?
- Johnny555 11y agoI calibrated mine -- there's a little calibration screw on the back labeled with "Gamma, X-ray, UV, Visible, IR, Microwave, UHF, VHF, HF, ELF" It's only got about 120 degrees of rotation, so it's tricky trying to tune it to emit a particular color. I had it turned to ELF for a while, but then the Navy called and said my flashlight was disrupting their submarine communications.
- GhotiFish 11y agoMan, you must of twisted that screw tight.
- drglitch 11y agoDecember 2016 prediction: TSA PreCheck (including the $100+ fee) will become mandatory as well. You can always take a bicycle to your destination if you disagree.
- mattzito 11y agoThat seems like a weird assumption, considering that even today, you can fly domestically without any ID at all, subject to additional screening. PreCheck is a good thing, and a good system, but it hardly incentivizes the government to make it mandatory.
- tamana 11y ago$100 fee isn't even such a big de, compared to the Sept 11 Security Fee (terrorism tax) already attached to every leg of your airline trips.
- tamana 11y agoCan we get some blog posts and discussions about how single individuals can put together such a beautifully branded and effective civil rights advocacy program, without a bloated nonprofit organization attached? This is a powerful weapon against tyranny
- tsaoutourpants 11y agoHi tamana, Author of the article and lawsuit here. Anything in particular you'd like to challenge? The thing is, I can put up a guide, but all of this takes a ton of work (and money). It's not possible to make a lawsuit tutorial that you can follow in a couple hours and be done. Once you've researched, written, and filed your lawsuit, then the real stuff begins: the government attacking your suit and you're left to defend it. I think it's fun, and it's definitely rewarding, but it takes a lot to make happen. Thanks, --Jon
- RA_Fisher 11y agoI think those with biomedical devices especially implants have a very good case. It's a catch 22 with a life-sustaining device: https://twitter.com/statwonk/status/679390295771979778?s=09 https://twitter.com/statwonk/status/679390295771979778?s=09
- nolite 11y agoThank you for your initiative to fight this BS
- tslug 11y agoThanks for fighting the good fight, Jon. I've been opting out for years, and if there's anything people like us can do to help, please don't hesitate to ask! They clearly don't like it when you opt out. Things I have experienced while opting out: 1. Being separated from my belongings for up to a half hour while dozens of strangers are walking past them and could easily pluck my wallet or computer out of them. 2. Being asked to wait directly next to the luggage X-ray machines. I think most know that we're specifically not thrilled about that. 3. Got an "extra-thorough" pat-down by a guy who claimed it was in the name of security and procedure. 4. Teasing/harassment for not trusting the X-ray machines. Between this latest opt-out opt out and the collaboration with the IRS, I'm going to stop flying soon. I should anyway, as flying is one of the most carbon-awful things you can do.
- nikolay 11y agoThe same scanners that proved to be inefficient?! I will definitely fly less then and will consider other means of transportation. It's better for the environment as well.
- jimrandomh 11y agoThe TSA scanners are presented to the public as a tool for detecting weapons and other contraband, but I think this is actually a secondary goal and a bit of misdirection. Think about what those scans actually are. They're biometrics. They take precise measurements of a person's shape, which is sufficient to detect if someone is traveling under a false name, and they're building a database of those biometrics to have available for use elsewhere. If the scan's result is ambiguous, they swab your hands and stick the swab in a machine, supposedly to detect residue from explosives but with the nice side-effect of producing a stored DNA sample for later use. They've proven pretty useless for controlling the flow of contraband, but they're quite useful for catching fugitives. While the people staffing the checkpoints aren't particularly smart, it's reasonable to assume that the people at the top are pretty clever, and their policies are consistent with this having been the real goal all along. If they tried collecting fingerprints from travelers, they would get a very strong backlash. This way, they get a weaker backlash and some jokes about how stupid they are for using machines that can't reliably detect guns.
- imroot 11y agoThey do collect fingerprints from travelers -- TSA PreCheck -- but it's 100% opt-in.
- ninjin 11y agoUnless you are a not a US citizen of course, then you will have your fingerprints taken regardless.
- xs 11y agoBut it specifically says in DHS document: TSA does not store any personally identifiable information from AIT screening.
- delinka 11y agoHow have they defined "personally identifiable information?"
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- imroot 11y agoInteresting. I opted out this morning. I have friends on flight crews who opt out (either by KCM or by the freedom frisk) and I haven't heard anyone in my circles complain about it on Facebook.
- schoen 11y agoI think this headline is misleading. Per discussion from yesterday (there's another thread), TSA published a document which says that they may decline opt-outs but that passengers can "generally" still opt out (they didn't publicly state who won't be permitted to opt out or when or why). While this is a very disturbing change, it's not quite the same as eliminating opt-outs entirely.
- ams6110 11y agoSo it's probably more likely that opting out is now a courtesy and that if they want to make you go through the peep-show machine, they can.
- NvidiaCUDA 11y agoThe biggest problem is you lose sight of your personal belongings. And TSA workers are arrested for stealing from passengers at the rate of about 1/day.
- xs 11y agoHere is the excerpt from the DHS document: Individuals undergoing screening using AIT generally will have the option to decline an AIT screeningin favor of physical screening. Given the implementation of ATR and the mitigation of privacy issues associated with the individual image generated by previous versions of AIT not using ATR, and the need to respond to potential security threats, TSA will nonetheless mandate AIT screening for some passengers as warranted by security considerations in order to safeguard transportation security.
- tslug 11y agoI already know exactly what's going to represent a "security consideration in order to safeguard transportation security." When you opt-out, they make you wait a long time standing next to the X-ray machine for someone to give you a pat-down. (It's almost never that the guy doing pat-downs is busy, btw- really weird.) They're going to claim that having someone wait near the X-ray machines that long represents some kind of security threat. And then they're going to use that fact to justify overriding the opt-out, because the more time you spend next to an X-ray machine, the higher the odds you've tampered with it or have had time to assemble that tactical nuke you've been hiding in your pockets or whatever nonsense they come up with.
- cgearhart 11y agoI broadly oppose security theater in all its forms, especially when it does nothing to improve actual security - and none of the naked scanners used by the TSA have been shown to be effective. The only real argument in their favor is that it's so easy to use that there is no reason not to use them - but even that isn't true. It's trivial to show that even if they were nearly foolproof that they still wouldn't be worth using. There are so many airline passengers that the prior probability that an individual traveler has malicious intent means that virtually all alerts will be false positives. It is pointless to violate the privacy of everyone when the benefits are so minimal.
- chrismcb 11y agoThe biggest reason not to use them is they are slow. It is a waste of our time, not to mention the cost to run them. And then, at least on the US they don't have the right to search me.
- dang 11y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10779589 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10779589
- Titanous 11y agoThis is not a duplicate. The post is about a new lawsuit filed due to the change in rules, the suit has not been previously on the front page.
- dang 11y agoIt's the same underlying story; note how the thread is much the same as the earlier one. In such cases we treat follow-up posts as dupes unless they're particularly substantive or contain significant new information. I don't think this post quite clears that bar. That is not an opinion about either the TSA or the lawsuit. We started moderating HN this way after the Snowden deluge of 2013 in which the front page was dominated by follow-up posts for a long time. Many users complained about this, and they were right, yet the underlying stories were obviously on-topic. We came up with the current policy as a way to balance the concerns.
- Rhapso 11y agoThis post was top on the front page an hour ago. It seems to have been removed. Why?
- tsaoutourpants 11y agoI noticed the same, and it's not the first time it happened to one of my posts. My guess is one of the mods thinks it's "not tech enough" and bumps it down, but who knows?