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When Will Being a Non-TSA Airport Become a Competitive Advantage?

118 points by wmeredith 15y ago

geophile 15y ago
Obama could close this election right now by simply getting rid of the pornoscanners and the groping. Please, oh please, let the Republicans be the party that wants to take away your birth control, and subject you to the TSA, while the Democrats are the one removing government interference from your life.
- Natsu 15y ago
  Politics doesn't appear to work that way. People trying to push unfavorable policies do their best to get the support of whoever is popular at the time. As long as our choices are defined for us, our choices will suck.
- LargeWu 15y ago
  "Obama Weak on Airport Security, Charges GOP Rival" sounds like the headline that results from this course of action.
  - cperciva 15y ago
    Only in moderate publications. On Fox News that would be "Obama supports terrorist attacks against America".
    - CWuestefeld 15y ago
      Your response implies that other news outlets -- ABC, MSNBC, etc. -- are "moderate", while Fox is the one that is pandering to an off-center political agenda. Surely you don't really believe that the rest of the media is centrist. (I'm not asserting that Fox doesn't have an editorial slant, I'm claiming that every news agency, bar none, does as well.)
      - mason55 15y ago
        You're right, all the major media is right of center
    - Silhouette 15y ago
      It would be nice to think that the things that the Obama administration have got right on that count could trump that sort of silliness in most forums. Killing bin Laden is a good headline, for example. (I'm neither a Democrat nor a Republican, being from outside the US; I'm just a guy who wishes the US would get its house in order on this one so governments elsewhere in the world have to stop pointing at the US and saying "Well, they do it!" as if it's some sort of justification for their own security theatre.)
- andylei 15y ago
  > Obama could close this election right now by simply getting rid of the pornoscanners and the groping this is not even remotely close to true. most americans care much more about things like the economy and jobs than things like civil liberties
  - aqme28 15y ago
    Even then, pornoscanners and groping have nothing on indefinite detention, warrantless wiretapping, and extrajudicial assassination.
- CWuestefeld 15y ago
  The fact that this is not happening ought to reveal something to you about the real ideologies of those you're supporting. (Please don't interpret that as advocacy for the GOP -- I'm an equal-opportunity basher of the governmental parasites and thugs.)
- anigbrowl 15y ago
  The GOP is still trying to beat him as soft on terrorism (eg Iran) despite Obama being the most hawkish Democrat in living memory and having a string of wins to his credit (bin Laden, Gaddhafi, umpteen lesser threats eliminated). If he wins re-election and the Democrats improve their representation in Congress, then incremental changes tot he TSA may come in a few years. FBI stats suggest that Al-Qaeda type terror attacks on the US have declined in both number and severity over the last 3 years, but it will be some years before a political consensus emerges about that. Crime figures have been falling since the 90s, and and yet there have been few politicians willing to embrace penal reform lest the trend prove fickle. Neither the political system nor the general public takes a rational approach to existential threats of this kind.
  - CWuestefeld 15y ago
    despite Obama being the most hawkish Democrat in living memory I'm afraid to say that you're the victim of propaganda. Yes, Obama is hawkish (to the chagrin of many of his early supporters). But Democrats tend to get us into wars more frequently than Republicans do: * VietNam - in fact our escalated presence there was directly caused by LBJ's misrepresentation of the Gulf of Tonkin Incident [1]. * Korean War - this occurred under the watch of Truman, another Democrat [2]. * WWII - FDR was keen to get into the war against Germany in order to aid our allies (can't quickly find a citation, sorry). * WWI - Woodrow Wilson, another Democrat. The fact is that most American wars in the past century were entered under a Democratic administration. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Tonkin_incident#Distortion_of_the_event http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Tonkin_incident#Distort... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_War#Factors_in_US_intervention http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_War#Factors_in_US_interv...
    - anigbrowl 15y ago
      'In living memory' was stretching it a bit, I suppose - I ought to have said 'in my lifetime (1970->). On the other hand, I can't really agree with your criteria for inclusion; in both WW 1 and 2 the US only entered the war after direct provocations (the sinking of the Lusitania and the attack on Pearl Harbor, respectively) and while entry into the Korean war was optional, there were strong strategical imperatives as Communism presented a much greater existential threat to the US in 1950; the USSR had exploded it's first atomic bomb in 1949, and China had fallen to Mao's Communists late that same year. I don't regard it as hawkish to respond militarily to significant emergent threats or actual attacks. You are quite right aout LBJ and Vietnam, though. My underlying point stands, I think: Obama has shown himself to be far more comfortable deploying military force than many expected, and has had several apparent successes; but Republicans still attack him frequently on national security issues, and will continue to do so given that it's an election year. He needs a fresh electoral mandate before he can propose dialing back the TSA or DHS in general.
hastur 15y ago
I doubt that's even possible. US airports don't have much to say in terms of TSA presence. US security services have shown very poor judgment on multiple occasions, in Canada now you're a child pornography supporter if you don't like internet surveillance and in UK you get extradited to US like a terrorist if you link to pirated content. My advice: Steer away from Anglo-Saxon countries. Continental Europe and Brazil are the only reasonable places if you want to live in a civilized world.
- jbrun 15y ago
  We are putting up a pretty good fight here in Canada to keep it 'civilized', though there is some nasty lawful access legislation being discussed.
- deleted 15y ago
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  - bmj 15y ago
    Are TSA security services free[1]? Or does the airport pay for the government presence, too? [1] That is, does a TSA airport pay out of pocket specifically for the TSA staff, or is it a service of Homeland Security (and funded by tax dollars, exclusively)?
    - hastur 15y ago
      I don't know but I very much doubt that airports pay for TSA staff. At worst, airports provide electricity for all the equipment, like scanners, and don't make any money off the space used up by TSA (screening rooms, etc).
    - khuey 15y ago
      There are fees on airline tickets in the US that pay for TSA services. Whether that is their sole source of funding or not I don't know. I imagine that at least some of the renovations that have been done at various airports to house larger screening facilities have been paid for out of general tax dollars.
RandallBrown 15y ago
My experiences at the San Francisco airport were no different than at any other airport I've ever been to. It's not like the TSA is alone in making poor hiring decisions.
- jfb 15y ago
  This is my experience as well. These private companies are drawing from a pool of people who are willing to do a wretched job for not very much money, so it's not surprising that they'd be largely indistinguishable from federal employees. Too, it's not the TSA employees who are the fundamental problem; it's the organization as a whole.
  - jsavimbi 15y ago
    I disagree. Having travelled extensively and been used to elevated threat levels throughout most of my life, I can attest to the fact that the average retail TSA employee is about as backwards, disorganized and inept as one could expect from the day-labor source pool.
- deleted 15y ago
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ajmurmann 15y ago
The author points that SFO is not using the TSA. Having used SFO often, I have to say that I sadly would have never guessed that. So I think not using TSA is not going to be a competitive advantage, as long as the private companies are indistinguishable from TSA. Actually, if everything is just the same anyway, I'd rather them do it instead some random private company who is in it for the cash.
- DannyPage 15y ago
  I wouldn't have guessed that either. I flew for 9 months at my last job, which included 6 outbound flights through SFO. SFO was one of the few places where I actually was patted-down instead of scanned (not by choice). So, what is the actual difference between the TSA and the security companies that are emulating the TSA? Overall, the headline is (unintentionally, perhaps) misleading. I thought there might be some network of airports that don't have TSA-like security procedures. If that were the case, yes, I would use those instead if the prices were close. I guess that is a (libertarian?) fantasy though.
scrozier 15y ago
This ad hominem post doesn't belong on HN. "Perverted thugs"? And 500 complaints out of how many millions of passenger flights? I'm no fan of airport security, but this sort of Fact Light bashing of TSA employees is not useful.
bri3d 15y ago
Never. The author of the article doesn't understand how "opting-out of the TSA" works. Opting out of the TSA just means that your agents are hired through a private agency. The TSA still regulates them, sets their policy, and determines what screening devices are in use. Airports using private agents will not be distinguishable from airports using TSA agents until the law changes, just as how SFO is indistinguishable from any other airport now. http://blog.tsa.gov/2010/11/airports-who-opt-out-of-tsa-screening.html http://blog.tsa.gov/2010/11/airports-who-opt-out-of-tsa-scre...
- phillco 15y ago
  Which, although I hate the TSA, sort of makes sense from their perspective. What's the point of creating a consistent screening process if an airport can just opt out? The terrorists will just board at the airport with the weakest security. All of the security is then worthless.
  - deleted 15y ago
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- icefox 15y ago
  Follow the money and if enough opt-out then all of those TSA jobs get "lost" and the TSA shrinks (so they go and do something else) and so the drive to keep this airport security theater pork around will decrease and might even kill it to put money on the next scare tactic response.
- jmilloy 15y ago
  The specific issue in the relevant wired article wasn't the policy and devices that are in use, but the abuse and mis-use of the policies and devices by TSA-hired agents. If the TSA is unable or doesn't choose to monitor and eliminate this behavior in its employees, but a private company does, then their could be a distinguishable, competitive advantage. In other words, allowing agents to request extra body scans of particular people they want to see (hopefully) isn't a policy mandated by the TSA that a private agency just can't avoid.
DanielBMarkham 15y ago
Sadly, up until today TSA is not allowing airports to opt out of the system, even though the law was specifically set up to allow them to do so. The new FAA bill -- which also calls for the FAA to set rules for thousands of law enforcement drones to monitor civilians sometime in the next decade or so -- changes this. (random Google link: http://www.securitydirectornews.com/?p=article&id=sd2012021h9pdx http://www.securitydirectornews.com/?p=article&id=sd2012...) A bunch have already applied -- and been turned down. Hopefully this will change. ADD: Hate to be Mr. Cyncial Guy, but I think it's important to look at the problems with the system that led to the creation of the TSA. After 9-11, the Republicans wanted to do something big to put boots on the ground all over the nation, to be the party of security (theater). The Democrats wanted tens of thousands of new federal union workers to help shore up their re-election base. Both sides also wanted to be able to run generally on "doing something about terrorism". So a compromise was reached, everybody got something they wanted, and here we are. Hopefully many airports will manage to opt out. I am not holding my breath for it, though. My money says we'll see those tens of thousands of drones a long time before we see substantial competition for airport security. As the other commenter pointed out, even if you opt out TSA still gets to tell you exactly what to do. Litigation exposure alone will keep most airports from signing up.
- roc 15y ago
  > "Hate to be Mr. Cyncial Guy, but I think it's important to look at the problems with the system that led to the creation of the TSA." The problems with the system that led to the creation of the TSA is that voters vote for theatre. They do it with drug laws, they do it with drunk driving laws, they do it to "protect the children" and they do it with anti-terror nonsense. The parties' motives for going along with it are almost irrelevant. Opposing these laws is career suicide for American politicians.
  - ambler0 15y ago
    I wholeheartedly agree with everything you said except for the part about drunk driving laws. Could you please elaborate on this part? It's also worth noting that there are two types of career suicide here: 1. Acting against the population's wishes, and 2. Acing against what is deemed acceptable by the ruling establishment. I think the "war on drugs" is an example where the general population might be very receptive to an unorthodox (i.e. decriminalization) candidate, but such candidates are filtered out of the process.
functionform 15y ago
When you're willing to put your kids on a non-TSA flight.
- fein 15y ago
  People are willing to take their kids on non TSA cruises, to non TSA malls, and to non TSA public schools. These are all larger and easier targets than an airplane, so where is the rationale for worry?
- henrikschroder 15y ago
  Are there actually any significant number of people that are acually pleased with the TSA, the naked scanners, the intrusive patdowns, and the bigger security theater? I can see people being fooled by the theater and grudgingly accept it, but does anyone like it and think it should be expanded?
  - anigbrowl 15y ago
    Lots of people like it. To the extent that it inconveniences them, they wish it were directed solely at Muslim-looking foreigners, but are willing to accept the security theater because they have a siege mentality. Similarly, there's a good number of people that call for ever more draconian enforcement of immigration laws, despite both economic costs and significant inconvenience to US citizens, Latinos in particular. The US frankly has a bit of a security fetish; you might find this paper interesting: http://tuvalu.santafe.edu/~bowles/GarrisonAmerica2007.pdf http://tuvalu.santafe.edu/~bowles/GarrisonAmerica2007.pdf
- CWuestefeld 15y ago
  When such a flight is one of the choices available to get to my destination, I'd be willing to pay additional just to continue to enjoy my human rights and dignity. Yes, I'll put my entire family on a non-TSA flight. In fact, I would prefer it.
- eli 15y ago
  An airport with no TSA and no kids is just too good to be true!
JumpCrisscross 15y ago
"This is all not to mention that hey’re [sic] protecting us from something that, statistically speaking, never actually happens." I understand the sentiment here, but low relative frequency for a risk with catastrophic consequences, e.g. your house flooding or a terrorist attack, isn't valid justification for not taking precautions. I blend back in with the author's rhetoric in calling out the TSA for engaging in expensive security theatre instead of working towards more meaningful uses of funds.
- mhurron 15y ago
  I have some volcano insurance to sell you. True, a volcano popping up out of nowhere almost never happens, but it did that one time so can you really afford not to spend money preparing for it?
- grecy 15y ago
  >but low relative frequency for a risk with catastrophic consequences, e.g. your house flooding Let's be honest here, you don't have sandbags piled around your house and a boat tied up and ready to use for evacuation. You've also done nothing to protect yourself from the thousands of other extraordinarily unlikely catastrophic events that might happen to you on a daily basis.
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- aqme28 15y ago
  "I understand the sentiment here, but low relative frequency for a risk with catastrophic consequences, e.g. your house flooding or a terrorist attack, isn't valid justification for not taking precautions." That is a completely valid justification for not taking precautions. The amount of money we spend towards fighting terrorism on all fronts could go MUCH further in other places, protecting far more people from the large variety of threats we all face.
- rbanffy 15y ago
  > isn't valid justification for not taking precautions. As long as the precautions are effective, I have no problem with them. But 9-11 was a rule changer: even if terrorists got on the planes now, they would not be able to control the passengers or highjack the plane and would, most likely, get lynched after stabbing one or two passengers. 9-11 was a spectacular win for the bad guys, but that same trick cannot be used twice. Before 9-11 passengers had an incentive to cooperate with highjackers - they were the highly valuable item that would be exchanged for something else. 9-11 changed that rule. Now, in most cases, the winning scenario is taking back the plane at any cost. I don't think this level of precaution is warranted.
shallowwater 15y ago
Is there any evidence that private screening companies are any less skeevy than actual TSA? I'd be shocked if there was and appreciable difference between the two. They still have to follow all the same screening procedures that the TSA does.
nevinera 15y ago
When people start making decisions about where they need to go based on how comfortable they are at the airport there? There aren't that many places where there are airports that can realistically be said to be in 'competition' with each other.
- icefox 15y ago
  I drive and take the train when possible over flying even when it is a little bit more of a hassle and have been doing this more and more over the past few years. Beyond the security theater my door to door time increased so much because of the security increases that it actually made the other forms of transportation faster in some cases for me.
- jmilloy 15y ago
  Don't forget about connections... an hour more or a few extra bucks for a different connecting airport could easily be worth it to someone.
  - smackfu 15y ago
    Connections don't go through security and the TSA though?
    - jmilloy 15y ago
      Oh. Yes. Good point!
- shasta 15y ago
  Other airports aren't there only competition. I know a number of people who will drive up to ten hours rather than fly.
seanica 15y ago
It will have to be all-or-none: Last May, Texas tried to pass a bill to ban 'groping patdowns'. The bill was passed by the Texan House of Representative, but then the federal government, approx 1-2 weeks later, threatened to shutdown all Texan airports because they would be a threat to the overall security. The bill failed to go any further on that threat. http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/13/us-tsa-groping-texas-idUSTRE74C54E20110513 http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/13/us-tsa-groping-tex... http://www.texastribune.org/texas-legislature/82nd-legislative-session/fed-threat-shuts-down-tsa-groping-bill-in-texas/ http://www.texastribune.org/texas-legislature/82nd-legislati...
- arohner 15y ago
  I really wish they would have made the feds call that bluff. Dallas and Houston are the #8 and #23 airports in the world by traffic. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worlds_busiest_airports_by_passenger_traffic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worlds_busiest_airports_by_pass...
  - angersock 15y ago
    That would have been hilariously satisfying. "Sure, we'll shut down DFW and IAH. Your move."
- canadiancreed 15y ago
  With the political climate in Texas, I'm sort of surprised it didn't become another brick in the wall for the successionists in that state.
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me2me2me2 15y ago
I hardly ever travel anymore, mostly due to my reluctance to subject myself to the TSA. Vacation and work locally.
- waqf 15y ago
  right, I don't go anywhere I can't get to on ... Amtrak. I'm still trying to figure how, when I emigrate to Europe, I'm going to get there. (Cruise ship?)
jarek 15y ago
It already is a competitive advantage. Connecting at an U.S. airport better be a whole lot cheaper and extremely convenient for me as a Canadian to consider it versus connecting at a Canadian airport or a direct flight.
malachismith 15y ago
PDX used to be a non TSA Airport. And I think it won "best small airport in the US" for 5 years running. I didn't hate it. At the end of last year, TSA took over. The difference is dramatic. I fly through PDX at least 4 times a month. Average security wait time has more than tripled for me. They've installed scanners. But the big change is the way travelers are treated. As a woman waiting in line next time me on one trip put it, "these TSA guys act like they're Prison Guards - and we're convicts." It's turned a not terrible experience into a truly awful one. It's turned PDX from one of the best US airports into just another shit show. I know that I would absolutely fly to a less convenient airport if it were not TSA staffed.
- sukuriant 15y ago
  "fly" to a less convenient airport?

118 points by wmeredith 15y ago

Obama could close this election right now by simply getting rid of the pornoscanners and the groping. Please, oh please, let the Republicans be the party that wants to take away your birth control, and subject you to the TSA, while the Democrats are the one removing government interference from your life.

Natsu 15y ago
Politics doesn't appear to work that way. People trying to push unfavorable policies do their best to get the support of whoever is popular at the time. As long as our choices are defined for us, our choices will suck.
LargeWu 15y ago
"Obama Weak on Airport Security, Charges GOP Rival" sounds like the headline that results from this course of action.
- cperciva 15y ago
  Only in moderate publications. On Fox News that would be "Obama supports terrorist attacks against America".
  - CWuestefeld 15y ago
    Your response implies that other news outlets -- ABC, MSNBC, etc. -- are "moderate", while Fox is the one that is pandering to an off-center political agenda. Surely you don't really believe that the rest of the media is centrist. (I'm not asserting that Fox doesn't have an editorial slant, I'm claiming that every news agency, bar none, does as well.)
    - mason55 15y ago
      You're right, all the major media is right of center
  - Silhouette 15y ago
    It would be nice to think that the things that the Obama administration have got right on that count could trump that sort of silliness in most forums. Killing bin Laden is a good headline, for example. (I'm neither a Democrat nor a Republican, being from outside the US; I'm just a guy who wishes the US would get its house in order on this one so governments elsewhere in the world have to stop pointing at the US and saying "Well, they do it!" as if it's some sort of justification for their own security theatre.)
andylei 15y ago
> Obama could close this election right now by simply getting rid of the pornoscanners and the groping this is not even remotely close to true. most americans care much more about things like the economy and jobs than things like civil liberties
- aqme28 15y ago
  Even then, pornoscanners and groping have nothing on indefinite detention, warrantless wiretapping, and extrajudicial assassination.
CWuestefeld 15y ago
The fact that this is not happening ought to reveal something to you about the real ideologies of those you're supporting. (Please don't interpret that as advocacy for the GOP -- I'm an equal-opportunity basher of the governmental parasites and thugs.)
anigbrowl 15y ago
The GOP is still trying to beat him as soft on terrorism (eg Iran) despite Obama being the most hawkish Democrat in living memory and having a string of wins to his credit (bin Laden, Gaddhafi, umpteen lesser threats eliminated). If he wins re-election and the Democrats improve their representation in Congress, then incremental changes tot he TSA may come in a few years. FBI stats suggest that Al-Qaeda type terror attacks on the US have declined in both number and severity over the last 3 years, but it will be some years before a political consensus emerges about that. Crime figures have been falling since the 90s, and and yet there have been few politicians willing to embrace penal reform lest the trend prove fickle. Neither the political system nor the general public takes a rational approach to existential threats of this kind.
- CWuestefeld 15y ago
  despite Obama being the most hawkish Democrat in living memory I'm afraid to say that you're the victim of propaganda. Yes, Obama is hawkish (to the chagrin of many of his early supporters). But Democrats tend to get us into wars more frequently than Republicans do: * VietNam - in fact our escalated presence there was directly caused by LBJ's misrepresentation of the Gulf of Tonkin Incident [1]. * Korean War - this occurred under the watch of Truman, another Democrat [2]. * WWII - FDR was keen to get into the war against Germany in order to aid our allies (can't quickly find a citation, sorry). * WWI - Woodrow Wilson, another Democrat. The fact is that most American wars in the past century were entered under a Democratic administration. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Tonkin_incident#Distortion_of_the_event http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Tonkin_incident#Distort... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_War#Factors_in_US_intervention http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_War#Factors_in_US_interv...
  - anigbrowl 15y ago
    'In living memory' was stretching it a bit, I suppose - I ought to have said 'in my lifetime (1970->). On the other hand, I can't really agree with your criteria for inclusion; in both WW 1 and 2 the US only entered the war after direct provocations (the sinking of the Lusitania and the attack on Pearl Harbor, respectively) and while entry into the Korean war was optional, there were strong strategical imperatives as Communism presented a much greater existential threat to the US in 1950; the USSR had exploded it's first atomic bomb in 1949, and China had fallen to Mao's Communists late that same year. I don't regard it as hawkish to respond militarily to significant emergent threats or actual attacks. You are quite right aout LBJ and Vietnam, though. My underlying point stands, I think: Obama has shown himself to be far more comfortable deploying military force than many expected, and has had several apparent successes; but Republicans still attack him frequently on national security issues, and will continue to do so given that it's an election year. He needs a fresh electoral mandate before he can propose dialing back the TSA or DHS in general.

hastur 15y ago

I doubt that's even possible. US airports don't have much to say in terms of TSA presence. US security services have shown very poor judgment on multiple occasions, in Canada now you're a child pornography supporter if you don't like internet surveillance and in UK you get extradited to US like a terrorist if you link to pirated content. My advice: Steer away from Anglo-Saxon countries. Continental Europe and Brazil are the only reasonable places if you want to live in a civilized world.

jbrun 15y ago
We are putting up a pretty good fight here in Canada to keep it 'civilized', though there is some nasty lawful access legislation being discussed.
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- bmj 15y ago
  Are TSA security services free[1]? Or does the airport pay for the government presence, too? [1] That is, does a TSA airport pay out of pocket specifically for the TSA staff, or is it a service of Homeland Security (and funded by tax dollars, exclusively)?
  - hastur 15y ago
    I don't know but I very much doubt that airports pay for TSA staff. At worst, airports provide electricity for all the equipment, like scanners, and don't make any money off the space used up by TSA (screening rooms, etc).
  - khuey 15y ago
    There are fees on airline tickets in the US that pay for TSA services. Whether that is their sole source of funding or not I don't know. I imagine that at least some of the renovations that have been done at various airports to house larger screening facilities have been paid for out of general tax dollars.

RandallBrown 15y ago

My experiences at the San Francisco airport were no different than at any other airport I've ever been to. It's not like the TSA is alone in making poor hiring decisions.

jfb 15y ago
This is my experience as well. These private companies are drawing from a pool of people who are willing to do a wretched job for not very much money, so it's not surprising that they'd be largely indistinguishable from federal employees. Too, it's not the TSA employees who are the fundamental problem; it's the organization as a whole.
- jsavimbi 15y ago
  I disagree. Having travelled extensively and been used to elevated threat levels throughout most of my life, I can attest to the fact that the average retail TSA employee is about as backwards, disorganized and inept as one could expect from the day-labor source pool.
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ajmurmann 15y ago

The author points that SFO is not using the TSA. Having used SFO often, I have to say that I sadly would have never guessed that. So I think not using TSA is not going to be a competitive advantage, as long as the private companies are indistinguishable from TSA. Actually, if everything is just the same anyway, I'd rather them do it instead some random private company who is in it for the cash.

DannyPage 15y ago
I wouldn't have guessed that either. I flew for 9 months at my last job, which included 6 outbound flights through SFO. SFO was one of the few places where I actually was patted-down instead of scanned (not by choice). So, what is the actual difference between the TSA and the security companies that are emulating the TSA? Overall, the headline is (unintentionally, perhaps) misleading. I thought there might be some network of airports that don't have TSA-like security procedures. If that were the case, yes, I would use those instead if the prices were close. I guess that is a (libertarian?) fantasy though.

scrozier 15y ago

This ad hominem post doesn't belong on HN. "Perverted thugs"? And 500 complaints out of how many millions of passenger flights? I'm no fan of airport security, but this sort of Fact Light bashing of TSA employees is not useful.

bri3d 15y ago

Never. The author of the article doesn't understand how "opting-out of the TSA" works. Opting out of the TSA just means that your agents are hired through a private agency. The TSA still regulates them, sets their policy, and determines what screening devices are in use. Airports using private agents will not be distinguishable from airports using TSA agents until the law changes, just as how SFO is indistinguishable from any other airport now. http://blog.tsa.gov/2010/11/airports-who-opt-out-of-tsa-screening.html http://blog.tsa.gov/2010/11/airports-who-opt-out-of-tsa-scre...

phillco 15y ago
Which, although I hate the TSA, sort of makes sense from their perspective. What's the point of creating a consistent screening process if an airport can just opt out? The terrorists will just board at the airport with the weakest security. All of the security is then worthless.
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icefox 15y ago
Follow the money and if enough opt-out then all of those TSA jobs get "lost" and the TSA shrinks (so they go and do something else) and so the drive to keep this airport security theater pork around will decrease and might even kill it to put money on the next scare tactic response.
jmilloy 15y ago
The specific issue in the relevant wired article wasn't the policy and devices that are in use, but the abuse and mis-use of the policies and devices by TSA-hired agents. If the TSA is unable or doesn't choose to monitor and eliminate this behavior in its employees, but a private company does, then their could be a distinguishable, competitive advantage. In other words, allowing agents to request extra body scans of particular people they want to see (hopefully) isn't a policy mandated by the TSA that a private agency just can't avoid.

DanielBMarkham 15y ago

Sadly, up until today TSA is not allowing airports to opt out of the system, even though the law was specifically set up to allow them to do so. The new FAA bill -- which also calls for the FAA to set rules for thousands of law enforcement drones to monitor civilians sometime in the next decade or so -- changes this. (random Google link: http://www.securitydirectornews.com/?p=article&id=sd2012021h9pdx http://www.securitydirectornews.com/?p=article&id=sd2012...) A bunch have already applied -- and been turned down. Hopefully this will change. ADD: Hate to be Mr. Cyncial Guy, but I think it's important to look at the problems with the system that led to the creation of the TSA. After 9-11, the Republicans wanted to do something big to put boots on the ground all over the nation, to be the party of security (theater). The Democrats wanted tens of thousands of new federal union workers to help shore up their re-election base. Both sides also wanted to be able to run generally on "doing something about terrorism". So a compromise was reached, everybody got something they wanted, and here we are. Hopefully many airports will manage to opt out. I am not holding my breath for it, though. My money says we'll see those tens of thousands of drones a long time before we see substantial competition for airport security. As the other commenter pointed out, even if you opt out TSA still gets to tell you exactly what to do. Litigation exposure alone will keep most airports from signing up.

roc 15y ago
> "Hate to be Mr. Cyncial Guy, but I think it's important to look at the problems with the system that led to the creation of the TSA." The problems with the system that led to the creation of the TSA is that voters vote for theatre. They do it with drug laws, they do it with drunk driving laws, they do it to "protect the children" and they do it with anti-terror nonsense. The parties' motives for going along with it are almost irrelevant. Opposing these laws is career suicide for American politicians.
- ambler0 15y ago
  I wholeheartedly agree with everything you said except for the part about drunk driving laws. Could you please elaborate on this part? It's also worth noting that there are two types of career suicide here: 1. Acting against the population's wishes, and 2. Acing against what is deemed acceptable by the ruling establishment. I think the "war on drugs" is an example where the general population might be very receptive to an unorthodox (i.e. decriminalization) candidate, but such candidates are filtered out of the process.

functionform 15y ago

When you're willing to put your kids on a non-TSA flight.

fein 15y ago
People are willing to take their kids on non TSA cruises, to non TSA malls, and to non TSA public schools. These are all larger and easier targets than an airplane, so where is the rationale for worry?
henrikschroder 15y ago
Are there actually any significant number of people that are acually pleased with the TSA, the naked scanners, the intrusive patdowns, and the bigger security theater? I can see people being fooled by the theater and grudgingly accept it, but does anyone like it and think it should be expanded?
- anigbrowl 15y ago
  Lots of people like it. To the extent that it inconveniences them, they wish it were directed solely at Muslim-looking foreigners, but are willing to accept the security theater because they have a siege mentality. Similarly, there's a good number of people that call for ever more draconian enforcement of immigration laws, despite both economic costs and significant inconvenience to US citizens, Latinos in particular. The US frankly has a bit of a security fetish; you might find this paper interesting: http://tuvalu.santafe.edu/~bowles/GarrisonAmerica2007.pdf http://tuvalu.santafe.edu/~bowles/GarrisonAmerica2007.pdf
CWuestefeld 15y ago
When such a flight is one of the choices available to get to my destination, I'd be willing to pay additional just to continue to enjoy my human rights and dignity. Yes, I'll put my entire family on a non-TSA flight. In fact, I would prefer it.
eli 15y ago
An airport with no TSA and no kids is just too good to be true!

JumpCrisscross 15y ago

"This is all not to mention that hey’re [sic] protecting us from something that, statistically speaking, never actually happens." I understand the sentiment here, but low relative frequency for a risk with catastrophic consequences, e.g. your house flooding or a terrorist attack, isn't valid justification for not taking precautions. I blend back in with the author's rhetoric in calling out the TSA for engaging in expensive security theatre instead of working towards more meaningful uses of funds.

mhurron 15y ago
I have some volcano insurance to sell you. True, a volcano popping up out of nowhere almost never happens, but it did that one time so can you really afford not to spend money preparing for it?
grecy 15y ago
>but low relative frequency for a risk with catastrophic consequences, e.g. your house flooding Let's be honest here, you don't have sandbags piled around your house and a boat tied up and ready to use for evacuation. You've also done nothing to protect yourself from the thousands of other extraordinarily unlikely catastrophic events that might happen to you on a daily basis.
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aqme28 15y ago
"I understand the sentiment here, but low relative frequency for a risk with catastrophic consequences, e.g. your house flooding or a terrorist attack, isn't valid justification for not taking precautions." That is a completely valid justification for not taking precautions. The amount of money we spend towards fighting terrorism on all fronts could go MUCH further in other places, protecting far more people from the large variety of threats we all face.
rbanffy 15y ago
> isn't valid justification for not taking precautions. As long as the precautions are effective, I have no problem with them. But 9-11 was a rule changer: even if terrorists got on the planes now, they would not be able to control the passengers or highjack the plane and would, most likely, get lynched after stabbing one or two passengers. 9-11 was a spectacular win for the bad guys, but that same trick cannot be used twice. Before 9-11 passengers had an incentive to cooperate with highjackers - they were the highly valuable item that would be exchanged for something else. 9-11 changed that rule. Now, in most cases, the winning scenario is taking back the plane at any cost. I don't think this level of precaution is warranted.

shallowwater 15y ago

Is there any evidence that private screening companies are any less skeevy than actual TSA? I'd be shocked if there was and appreciable difference between the two. They still have to follow all the same screening procedures that the TSA does.

nevinera 15y ago

When people start making decisions about where they need to go based on how comfortable they are at the airport there? There aren't that many places where there are airports that can realistically be said to be in 'competition' with each other.

icefox 15y ago
I drive and take the train when possible over flying even when it is a little bit more of a hassle and have been doing this more and more over the past few years. Beyond the security theater my door to door time increased so much because of the security increases that it actually made the other forms of transportation faster in some cases for me.
jmilloy 15y ago
Don't forget about connections... an hour more or a few extra bucks for a different connecting airport could easily be worth it to someone.
- smackfu 15y ago
  Connections don't go through security and the TSA though?
  - jmilloy 15y ago
    Oh. Yes. Good point!
shasta 15y ago
Other airports aren't there only competition. I know a number of people who will drive up to ten hours rather than fly.

seanica 15y ago

It will have to be all-or-none: Last May, Texas tried to pass a bill to ban 'groping patdowns'. The bill was passed by the Texan House of Representative, but then the federal government, approx 1-2 weeks later, threatened to shutdown all Texan airports because they would be a threat to the overall security. The bill failed to go any further on that threat. http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/13/us-tsa-groping-texas-idUSTRE74C54E20110513 http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/13/us-tsa-groping-tex... http://www.texastribune.org/texas-legislature/82nd-legislative-session/fed-threat-shuts-down-tsa-groping-bill-in-texas/ http://www.texastribune.org/texas-legislature/82nd-legislati...

arohner 15y ago
I really wish they would have made the feds call that bluff. Dallas and Houston are the #8 and #23 airports in the world by traffic. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worlds_busiest_airports_by_passenger_traffic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worlds_busiest_airports_by_pass...
- angersock 15y ago
  That would have been hilariously satisfying. "Sure, we'll shut down DFW and IAH. Your move."
canadiancreed 15y ago
With the political climate in Texas, I'm sort of surprised it didn't become another brick in the wall for the successionists in that state.
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me2me2me2 15y ago

I hardly ever travel anymore, mostly due to my reluctance to subject myself to the TSA. Vacation and work locally.

waqf 15y ago
right, I don't go anywhere I can't get to on ... Amtrak. I'm still trying to figure how, when I emigrate to Europe, I'm going to get there. (Cruise ship?)

jarek 15y ago

It already is a competitive advantage. Connecting at an U.S. airport better be a whole lot cheaper and extremely convenient for me as a Canadian to consider it versus connecting at a Canadian airport or a direct flight.

malachismith 15y ago

PDX used to be a non TSA Airport. And I think it won "best small airport in the US" for 5 years running. I didn't hate it. At the end of last year, TSA took over. The difference is dramatic. I fly through PDX at least 4 times a month. Average security wait time has more than tripled for me. They've installed scanners. But the big change is the way travelers are treated. As a woman waiting in line next time me on one trip put it, "these TSA guys act like they're Prison Guards - and we're convicts." It's turned a not terrible experience into a truly awful one. It's turned PDX from one of the best US airports into just another shit show. I know that I would absolutely fly to a less convenient airport if it were not TSA staffed.

sukuriant 15y ago
"fly" to a less convenient airport?