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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 ai

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.

grecy 8y ago
I'm a white male with long scraggly blonde hair and this happens to me in basically every developed country. Obviously long-haired hippies pose a security threat.
- roywiggins 8y ago
  I'd guess they are hoping to find drugs on you, rather than, say, box cutters.
  - hammock 8y ago
    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)
    - nasredin 8y ago
      Do the TSA screeners get training on identifying drugs?
      - betterunix2 8y ago
        Even if not, the TSA does report drugs when they find them: https://www.tsa.gov/travel/security-screening/whatcanibring/items/medical-marijuana https://www.tsa.gov/travel/security-screening/whatcanibring/... 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.
    - jghn 8y ago
      And yet that's primarily what they're looking for
      - c22 8y ago
        If that's the case then why does none of their fancy equipment detect drugs? Why are their canine units not trained to alert on drugs?
        chimeracoder 8y ago
        > If that's the case then why does none of their fancy equipment detect drugs? To be fair, the GAO reports have shown that their fancy equipment isn't actually detecting weapons either.
        snuxoll 8y ago
        But it sure detects the damned hair tie I forgot in my back pocket, and that’s the REAL threat they are protecting us from - elastic bands....
        deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
        polynomial 8y ago
        Seems pretty effective at detecting trace metals from handling artists' paints.
    - ataturk 8y ago
      Was leaving Denver and the TSA guys had a dog going up and down the line and one agent was making the "smoking" hand sign to the other one for each passenger he pulled off to get swabbed. They damn well definitely were looking for people taking home weed.
- Gibbon1 8y ago
  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.
- blitmap 8y ago
  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.
  - craftyguy 8y ago
    > or generally in a good mood. Is anyone in a TSA line in a "good mood"?
    - blitmap 8y ago
      Well I have healthcare but my job keeps me out of area/network pretty consistently. The airport is the only reliable way to get a physical.
  - nasredin 8y ago
    Your physical stature may (wrongly) come into this. If you are a young male with a beard... skin colour wouldn't matter much. You are gonna get groped.
  - _asummers 8y ago
    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!
    - rnotaro 8y ago
      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.
- hermitdev 8y ago
  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.
  - mynameisvlad 8y ago
    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.
    - lostlogin 8y ago
      That would have guaranteed missing the flight.
      - mynameisvlad 8y ago
        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.
    - dahlueblojen 8y ago
      That's okay. Now they make most of lowely plebs that can't afford, or don't fly often enough to bother, a TSA-prescreen go through a machine that that pretty much reveals everything you'd only want a doctor or your partner to see to wonderful and highly trained TSA agent. Edit: guess y'all like showin your penis off to underqualified chud. Privacy matters. Fuck tsa.
- Sir_Substance 8y ago
  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.
  - chiph 8y ago
    > 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.
duxup 8y ago
White dude, if it makes you feel any better...I'm always getting the random checks too. Bad luck I guess.
- Spooky23 8y ago
  Do you have a common name by chance? I know a couple of people with “John Smith” and “Kim Park” type names who have trouble with processes built on lists of names.
  - duxup 8y ago
    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.
dzdt 8y ago
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.
girvo 8y ago
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!
- ddeck 8y ago
  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.
  - sho 8y ago
    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.
    - mabcat 8y ago
      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.
323454 8y ago
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.
csydas 8y ago
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.
- otakucode 8y ago
  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.
  - csydas 8y ago
    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
HNthrow22 8y ago
To all the white guys (core demo of this site and SV) replying to this guy saying "oh im white and this happens to me" can fuck right off thanks, he is accurately observing a bias against him, you may have been profiled at some point but you do not experience anything similar to what a brown man does, fuck right off.
- oldandtired 8y ago
  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.
eganist 8y ago
(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.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- HNthrow22 8y ago
  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/ 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.
bigiain 8y ago
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...
- ObsoleteNerd 8y ago
  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 ;)
onetimemanytime 8y ago
>>I'm am Indian male Indian "Indian" or an Indian Muslim? 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?
- saagarjha 8y ago
  Are Muslims originating from India not Indians?
  - onetimemanytime 8y ago
    Yes, they are, just like Chechens are Russians. Now go and ask them what they are...
otakucode 8y ago
Paranoia is no longer a clinical diagnosis of mental illness, but a virtue.
theclaw 8y ago
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. Sounds like the TSA are nailing it.
- zach43 8y ago
  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? [0] http://www.latimes.com/opinion/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-tsa-airport-security-charade-20150608-story.html http://www.latimes.com/opinion/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-tsa-a... [1] https://www.newsweek.com/tsa-fails-half-time-706568 https://www.newsweek.com/tsa-fails-half-time-706568
dvtv75 8y ago
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.

grecy 8y ago

I'm a white male with long scraggly blonde hair and this happens to me in basically every developed country. Obviously long-haired hippies pose a security threat.

roywiggins 8y ago
I'd guess they are hoping to find drugs on you, rather than, say, box cutters.
- hammock 8y ago
  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)
  - nasredin 8y ago
    Do the TSA screeners get training on identifying drugs?
    - betterunix2 8y ago
      Even if not, the TSA does report drugs when they find them: https://www.tsa.gov/travel/security-screening/whatcanibring/items/medical-marijuana https://www.tsa.gov/travel/security-screening/whatcanibring/... 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.
  - jghn 8y ago
    And yet that's primarily what they're looking for
    - c22 8y ago
      If that's the case then why does none of their fancy equipment detect drugs? Why are their canine units not trained to alert on drugs?
      - chimeracoder 8y ago
        > If that's the case then why does none of their fancy equipment detect drugs? To be fair, the GAO reports have shown that their fancy equipment isn't actually detecting weapons either.
        snuxoll 8y ago
        But it sure detects the damned hair tie I forgot in my back pocket, and that’s the REAL threat they are protecting us from - elastic bands....
        deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
        polynomial 8y ago
        Seems pretty effective at detecting trace metals from handling artists' paints.
  - ataturk 8y ago
    Was leaving Denver and the TSA guys had a dog going up and down the line and one agent was making the "smoking" hand sign to the other one for each passenger he pulled off to get swabbed. They damn well definitely were looking for people taking home weed.
Gibbon1 8y ago
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.
blitmap 8y ago
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.
- craftyguy 8y ago
  > or generally in a good mood. Is anyone in a TSA line in a "good mood"?
  - blitmap 8y ago
    Well I have healthcare but my job keeps me out of area/network pretty consistently. The airport is the only reliable way to get a physical.
- nasredin 8y ago
  Your physical stature may (wrongly) come into this. If you are a young male with a beard... skin colour wouldn't matter much. You are gonna get groped.
- _asummers 8y ago
  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!
  - rnotaro 8y ago
    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.
hermitdev 8y ago
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.
- mynameisvlad 8y ago
  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.
  - lostlogin 8y ago
    That would have guaranteed missing the flight.
    - mynameisvlad 8y ago
      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.
  - dahlueblojen 8y ago
    That's okay. Now they make most of lowely plebs that can't afford, or don't fly often enough to bother, a TSA-prescreen go through a machine that that pretty much reveals everything you'd only want a doctor or your partner to see to wonderful and highly trained TSA agent. Edit: guess y'all like showin your penis off to underqualified chud. Privacy matters. Fuck tsa.
Sir_Substance 8y ago
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.
- chiph 8y ago
  > 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.

duxup 8y ago

White dude, if it makes you feel any better...I'm always getting the random checks too. Bad luck I guess.

Spooky23 8y ago
Do you have a common name by chance? I know a couple of people with “John Smith” and “Kim Park” type names who have trouble with processes built on lists of names.
- duxup 8y ago
  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.

dzdt 8y ago

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.

girvo 8y ago

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!

ddeck 8y ago
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.
- sho 8y ago
  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.
  - mabcat 8y ago
    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.

323454 8y ago

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.

csydas 8y ago

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.

otakucode 8y ago
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.
- csydas 8y ago
  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

HNthrow22 8y ago

To all the white guys (core demo of this site and SV) replying to this guy saying "oh im white and this happens to me" can fuck right off thanks, he is accurately observing a bias against him, you may have been profiled at some point but you do not experience anything similar to what a brown man does, fuck right off.

oldandtired 8y ago
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.

eganist 8y ago

(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.

deleted 8y ago
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HNthrow22 8y ago
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/ 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.

bigiain 8y ago

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...

ObsoleteNerd 8y ago
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 ;)

onetimemanytime 8y ago

>>I'm am Indian male Indian "Indian" or an Indian Muslim? 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?

saagarjha 8y ago
Are Muslims originating from India not Indians?
- onetimemanytime 8y ago
  Yes, they are, just like Chechens are Russians. Now go and ask them what they are...

otakucode 8y ago

Paranoia is no longer a clinical diagnosis of mental illness, but a virtue.

theclaw 8y ago

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. Sounds like the TSA are nailing it.

zach43 8y ago
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? [0] http://www.latimes.com/opinion/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-tsa-airport-security-charade-20150608-story.html http://www.latimes.com/opinion/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-tsa-a... [1] https://www.newsweek.com/tsa-fails-half-time-706568 https://www.newsweek.com/tsa-fails-half-time-706568

dvtv75 8y ago

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.