Comment by keeda
1 day ago
> The TSA was NEVER about security. It was designed as a jobs program and make it look like we were doing something for security.
To a great extent, it is security, even if it's mostly security theater, in the sense that it is security theater that people want.
A large portion, maybe even the majority, of travelers simply won't feel safe without it. I've had and overheard multiple conversations at the airport where somebody felt uncomfortable boarding a plane because they saw the screening agent asleep at the desk. Pro-tip, trying to explain security theater to the concerned passenger is not the right solution at this point ;-)
Even Bruce Schneier, who coined the term "security theater" has moderated his stance to acknowledge that it can satisfy a real psychological need, even if it's irrational.
We may be more cynical and look upon such things with disdain, but most people want the illusion of safety, even if deep down they know it's just an illusion.
> A large portion, maybe even the majority, of travelers simply won't feel safe without it. I've had and overheard multiple conversations at the airport where somebody felt uncomfortable boarding a plane because they saw the screening agent asleep at the desk.
I’d hazard that this may be true now, but this feeling was created by the same “security measures” we’re discussing.
Anyway, such major population-wide measures shouldn’t be about stopping people being “uncomfortable” - they should be about minimising risk, or not at all. If you start imposing laws or other practices every time a group of people feel “uncomfortable”, the world will quickly grind to a halt.
> I’d hazard that this may be true now, but this feeling was created by the same “security measures” we’re discussing.
Slight tangent but I recall travelling within the Schengen Zone for the first time and just walking off the plane and straight into a taxi. When I explained what I did to someone she asked "but what about security? How do they know you've not got a bomb?" I don't think I had the words to explain that, if I did manage to sneak a bomb onto the plane into Madrid, I was probably not going to save it for the airport after I landed...
Er, I don't get it. I do the same thing at every airport in the US: walk off the plane and straight into a taxi.
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> If you start imposing laws or other practices every time a group of people feel “uncomfortable”, the world will quickly grind to a halt.
I mean, yes, quite an apt description of our reality. This has basically been the modus operandi of the whole of American society for the last 3 decades.
Can't have your kids riding bikes in the neighborhood. Can't build something on your own property yourself without 3 rounds of permitting and environmental review. Can't have roads that are too narrow for a 1100 horsepower ladder truck. Can't get onto a plane without going through a jobs program. Can't cut hair without a certificate. Can't teach 6 year olds without 3 years of post grad schooling + debt. Can't have plants in a waiting room because they might catch on fire. Can't have a comfortable bench because someone who looks like shit might sleep on it.
Can't can't can't can't ...
This is it. It’s amazing how accepting people of this reality and how resigned they are about it.
Yeah, those people are welcome to drive if it makes them feel safer. Meanwhile lets focus on actually making sure planes are safe.
The problem with allowing "feels unsafe" to drive policy is that you get this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46866201 ; a lot of Americans (and other nationalities) get that "feels unsafe" feeling when they see a visible minority. Or a Muslim. Or someone who isn't a Muslim but (like a Sikh!) is from the same hemisphere as the Middle East.
You get one set of people's rights compromised to salve the feelings of another set, and this is not right.
The worst thing is that indulging it doesn't lessen the fear either. It just means people reach for something else to be "afraid" of.
Oh for sure, as a non-white, bearded person I've had more than my fair share of "random" screenings!
My dad, with similar features, had the additional (mis)fortune of several work trips to the Middle East and China on his passport. He was "randomly" selected pretty much every time on his US trips, until about ~10 years ago.
Hmmm, now I wonder. Like most other people I had suspected that the "random" screenings of people fitting a certain profile were just biases of the agents creeping in. But could it be, given that the whole process is rather public in view of the rest of the people in line, this is also part of that security theater... i.e. maybe the agents are sometimes pandering to the biases of the travellers?
Nah I disagree. A charter plane with 200 Dutch tourists is lower risk than a flight coming out of Bolivia.
You can do the wokeness and treat everyone the same but that's not how policing works.
The moment you encode your biases in policy, you create vulnerabilities.
What I’m hearing is that if I want to get something past your security policy, I need to route it through the Netherlands, possibly via a travel agency.
You don't have to profile people to police, and that's very poor policing. You need to assess actual risk, not fake proxy risk like the color of people's skin.
The problem with profiling is that it sucks both ways. People who are regular degular get fucked for the sake of fake policing, and then real threats are more likely to slip through.
> Nah I disagree. A charter plane with 200 Dutch tourists is lower risk than a flight coming out of Bolivia.
What a weird and random thing to say. There's literally no data that can support for or against and neither have a history of terrorism.
Ironically KLM ('dutch') has had more terrorism per flight than any Bolivian airline. Both minimal (Bolivia 1954, KLM 1973,1994). There's literally no other piece of data between these countries that I could find to support this "lower risk".
Further, the travel advisory for Denmark and Netherlands cite terror risk while Bolivia cites civil unrest.
While being woke is not helpful, neither is 'winging it' based on 'what feels white, ahem, right'. At least do a Google search.
How about a flight coming out of Bolivia with 200 Dutch tourists on board? Is it more or less risky than a flight coming out of the USA with 200 Donald Trumps on board? Is there a list?
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It is mostly security, but not to residents of the country. Those can enforce their rights. In my country, I can argue with airport security, and win. Foreigners can’t, so they follow whatever rules. A few times when landing in the US, security was extremely rude, I think just looking for an excuse (things like throwing your laptop a few feet away, while staring at you, etc). You take it bc you’re not home, and the cost of ruining your vacation is not worth it.
What I’m trying to say is that , while a lot of it is theater, TSA may be more effective security against foreigners but you as a resident don’t notice because you can opt out. Try going to the UK and telling them you can’t raise your arms while being a US citizen.
Reasonable hypothesis but not correct in the US.
The point where you present your ticket+ID is before and separate from the physical screening. It could be anywhere from a few meters to dozens of meters separating them.
At the screening stage, the agents do not know who you are or your nationality.
It's not about being recognized, it's about when you are asked to be patted down, having the courage to lie "I can't raise my arms over my head", knowing the risk of being caught is at worst not making this flight. For a foreigner it might be getting banned permanently from the country. Same concept as self censorship. You do what you're told and then you go enjoy your vacation.
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I don't think I've ever made it through the physical screening without betraying my accent at some point. Sure you can work your way out of an accent, but it's not easy, and requires years of practice, and probably the most reliable (but fuzzy) low-scrutiny indicator of someone who "aint from around here" in a multicultural society where looks are ~useless for such determinations.
I tried to opt out in the UK last time I was there a few years ago. The agent looked at me, confused, and said "so... you don't want to get on the plane?". She told me the the UK didn't allow opt-outs.
This was the only time I've gone through the machine since they were introduced.
Note that for the most part, air travel into/out of the UK is international, so the constraints are stricter.
> The agent looked at me, confused, and said "so... you don't want to get on the plane?"
Brit here.
That's simply the British way of "calling you out" on your bullshit. Had you given a legitimate reason not to be scanned (and I can't think of one offhand), then I assure you, they would have been quite nice and helpful; certainly so in comparison to American standards of airport security staff!
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Airport security in India is particularly infuriating on this point. Everything gets scanned and fed through over and over again, and everyone gets wanded and patted down over and over again, with maximum ‘fuck you’ to any passenger that dares to question the sanity of restarting your entire screening - because you left your belt on.
Meanwhile, I haven’t even had a western airports metal detector even fire on the same belt in years.
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We people are extremely poor judges of our own emotions, particularly in hypotheticals.
Normalize having two lines; one with tsa, one without. See which airplane people actually board after a while. Let us put our time and money on the line and we’ll see what we really think. It’s the only way to tell.
I’m sure in a world with tsa for buses and trains some people would say the same things they do now about our tsa.
Let's not mix "emotions" with "think". If I am afraid (emotion) about something happening, I will be afraid where the maximum damage can be done - in the queue before the security check (think). Most airports optimized that to reduce the queues, but there are still at least tens of people in a very narrow space.
But I personally do not care that much, because I think most terrorists are dumb or crazy, and you can't fix all dumb or crazy. Some of the dumb and crazy become terrorists, some become CEO-s, some do maintenance of something critical. If something really bad happens I would not feel much better if it was a "dumb CEO" that caused it or it was a "dumb terrorist".
> Even Bruce Schneier, who coined the term "security theater" has moderated his stance to acknowledge that it can satisfy a real psychological need, even if it's irrational.
What about the real psychological need of not wanting to be surveilled that also quite a lot of people have?
Personally I agree with that sentiment. But unfortunately, as the success of Facebook and Google have shown, most people really don't care about their privacy.
> But unfortunately, as the success of Facebook and Google have shown, most people really don't care about their privacy.
In particular concerning Facebook:
The very radical stances that people have concerning Facebooks (i.e. both the success of Facebook, and the existence of people who are radically opposed to social media sites) rather shows that both stances are very present in society and the trenches between these stances run deep.
If you offer the public FDA-inspected cinnamon for a 20% premium over not-inspected-and-may-contain-dangerous-levels-of-lead cinnamon, a lot of people will pay the premium. But a large percentage of people will opt for the cheaper cinnamon.
If you let it be known that the FDA inspection amounts to a high school dropout trying to read a manifest on a shipping container full of imported cinnamon, a lot more people will opt for the cheaper cinnamon. But a significant percentage will still pay the premium.
There is very little about that inspection that protects people, and just because something is not inspected doesn't mean it has lead in it. If you really want to be safe, you should run your cinnamon through your own detection lab.
What we need is an iPhone app that can detect guns, explosives, anthrax, covid, Canadians, and any other airplane hazard. Then let people carry that personal TSA sniffer onto the plane. They can feel safe and secure and the rest of us can save a fortune in taxes.
> What we need is an iPhone app that can detect guns, explosives, anthrax, covid, Canadians, and any other airplane hazard.
No doubt! Then strap it to our arms and call it a Pip Boy.
https://thedirect.com/article/fallout-season-2-us-canada
I would just let the airlines pick if they want TSA screening or not. Customers could buy flights with whatever security level they want.
If you fly intrastate in Alaska there is no screening on commercial flights (it seems TSA must not be required on non-interstate flights). Technically it's still illegal to bring a gun but no one would know one way or the other. It really didn't bother me that there was no security, in fact, it felt great, and at least I could be sure if a bear met us on the tarmac someone would probably be ready.
I know of one other story I heard secondhand from someone experiencing it, of a small regional airline in the South, where if you checked a gun, the pilot just gives it back to the passenger...
Security is a classic example of a public good where this doesn't work well. The cheapest ways to secure an airport (sharing queues, staff, protocols, machines, training, threat models) are going to also benefit those who opt out, creating a tragedy of the commons.
>small regional airline in the South, where if you checked a gun, the pilot just gives it back to the passenger...
If the passenger is white. They would call the cops on anyone else. The state dept of terrorism would get involved if they were 1/1000 middle eastern.
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Effectiveness and theatricality aside, that wouldn’t work: the risk that the TSA ostensibly controls for is primarily that of planes being used as weapons against non-passengers, and only secondarily passenger security/hijacking.
If it's about satisfying a psychological need, then it should be compared as such to satisfying other psychological needs. Like, say, not getting groped by strangers.
> A large portion, maybe even the majority, of travelers simply won't feel safe without it.
Nonsense. Most of that is just because it’s been normalised - because it exists and the people manning it make such a song and dance about it. Going from that to nothing would freak some people out, but if it were just gradually pared back bit by bit people wouldn’t need it anymore.
Here in Australia there’s no security for a lot of regional routes (think like turboprop (dash-8) kind of routes) starting from small airports, because it’s very expensive to have the equipment and personnel at all these small airports, and on a risk-benefit analysis the risk isn’t high enough. Some people are surprised boarding with no security, but then they’re like, “Oh, well must be OK then I guess or they wouldn’t let us do it”…
We also don’t have any liquid limits at all for domestic flights, and don’t have e to take our shoes off to go through security domestically or internationally, and funnily enough we aren’t all nervous wrecks travelling.
The situation re: psychological safety becomes very apparent when you mention to foreigners how often guns accidentally make it through TSA in peoples bags - and get discovered on screening on the return flight.
Saucers for eyes, saucers! Hah
The reality is that screening raises the bar enough that most casuals won’t risk it unless they’re crazy, which is worth something, and makes most people feel comfy, which is also worth something.
It’s like using a master lock on your shed, or a cheap kwikset on your front door.
Here we are specifically discussing the gold star on a USA driver license. When there is already the whole TSA kwikset fiasco in place. The gold star indicates that a person provided some pieces of paper that may be fabricated to a very busy DMV clerk. This is somehow meant to prove they would never do anything malicious.
Or... you could slip the TSA person a $50 and say "keep the change". Legally.
There is no risk in submitting false documents. They reject valid documents all the time. They don't report you to authorities when they reject your documents.
So neither avenue is like even a cheap lock. They are more like door knobs that keep the door closed until you twist the knob that is designed to be easy to twist.
> no risk in submitting false documents
Except the risk you'll miss your flight, which in most cases is the screw that is turned.
My wife and I both have RealID driver's licenses. She had to get a replacement, and apparently the machines used to print them for mailing out later (as opposed to going down to their office and getting a replacement in person) are just ever so slightly off - so her license won't scan. She was given a surprising amount of harassment on a flight not long ago over this matter. She got me to take a photograph of her passport and send it to her so she could show it on the return trip - where her license again failed to scan. This is a fairly well-documented problem. Reports from all over the country have it, and it always seems to be certain license printers that just fail.
So now she carries her Global Entry card, which is otherwise only used for access to the expedited line for land and sea border crossings but is a valid RealID in itself, for domestic flights. It scans correctly.
So there are two kind of security, one is preventing innocents who mistakenly brings things like gun or flammable liquid like gasoline. The other is preventing people who actually want to do harm like terrorism. There is no doubt TSA is effective for first group. However the evidence against second group is kind of murky as no country has ever caught anyone in the second group till now.
I think it's human nature to point at something you don't like and if it isn't 100% perfect then point to it and say it's flawed and must be taken down.
Repeated examples on HN
- TSA effectiveness
- AI Writing code free bug
- Self driving cars get into accidents
You are missing an important element. You can decide for yourself whether AI-produced code is worth the price. You don't get to decide whether the TSA is effective enough to pay for it.
Maybe you are willing to pay 15% for AI that saves you 20%. Even if it isn't very effective, you come out slightly ahead. Or maybe you pay 85% for something you deem to be 90% effective
With TSA you pay 300% for something you might judge to be 2% effective and you don't have a choice.
- TSA fails its own Red Team exercises 95% of the time.
- Self driving cars have measurably fewer accidents.
If you're confusing the two, I suggest you look into the data.
*Not sure on AI code yet.
Security Theater Blanket
I've been applying this principle of behavior to... ahem... current events. I feel like this helps contextualize the behavior of the majority during the current economic and political turmoil. People can't help but pretend this wasn't coming for years, and they certainly can't admit to having a part in it.
Taxpayers haven’t agreed to fund theater they agreed to fund safer travel. The failed audits of TSA are totally unacceptable
The purpose of the system is what it does.
If enough people actually cared about the failed audits, we’d invest in making sure they didn’t fail.
As it is, it’s settled in this funky middle ground that seems to maximize cost/incompetence/hassle which is generally the picture of America overall.
Taxpayers don't universally agree it's ONLY theater, HN is biased echo chamber just like any other group.
Yeah security people (computer or otherwise), are mostly crypto fascists with hardons for humiliating people and telling them what to do.
It's been proven from time to time that the strength of a security system is mostly determined by its strongest element, and defense in depth, and making people jump through hoops contributes comparatively little.
That's why you can go reasonably anywhere on the web, and have your computer publically reachable from any point in the world, yet be reasonably safe, provided you don't do anything particularly dumb, like installing something from an unsafe source.
That's why these weird security mitigation strategies like password rotation every two weeks with super complex passwords, and scary click-through screens about how youll go straight to jail if you misuse the company computer are laughable.
A growing part of me doesn't care, and doesn't want to coddle fascist mental illness.
If it was "Glass Iraq or make people take off their shoes", then I'll take the shoes...
But honestly? Fuck these people. We have extended them unlimited credit to make social change, and they always want more and worse changes. Their insecurities are inexhaustible. We need to declare them bankrupt of political capital. We need to bully them and make it clear their views aren't welcome, frankly.
We are 25 years deep into "Letting the terrorists win", and I'm fucking sick of it.