We have mountains of malicious intent established and chronicled to the point where the burden of proof is not on those downstream of that malice to substantiate it. That mountain is conveniently labeled "American policing and jurisprudence relating thereto, 1620-Present".
> There's a problem with people smuggling dangerous items on to aircraft
That problem is a vanishingly small rounding error and the good-faith effort to fix it would be more air marshals. Instead, we get nonsense like this which, because the scanning devices look scary and dehumanize those who go through them, entrench a threat in the minds of the populace--because a threat must be serious, otherwise why would we be putting ourselves through all this?
These tools exist to scare people into seeking solutions to the problem they purport to, and yet do not, solve.
Only in areas which is very close to war would current methods be necessary, but you also need multiple checks which manually going through every single item in luggage and backpacks. This is only really possible in low traffic airports, which destinations close to wars usually is.
We have a lot of evidence that these machines are minimally effective against most terrorist threats.
Do you think a government agency would just publicly blast all the unsuccessful attempts that were prevented, without fear that future criminals can look at those attempts and do better next time by learning how to avoid making the same mistakes?
Disclaimer: I agree with most of the posters that TSA is mostly just a security theater. But just because I think so, that doesn't make the flawed parent argument any better.
Surely those statistics can be verified by, say, the House Committee on Homeland Security without needing to leak the details of specific attempts.
Perhaps if it's singling out dense hair vs. actual places where people are hiding something, despite any evidence being presented that it's useful to do so, we should... I dunno, not use it? Definitely not spend millions of dollars on it.
I'm not sure what problem it's solving, when the solution involves humans mindlessly following a procedure, that dictates that a machine that happens to single out black hair and 'turbans' decides someone is suspect.
You haven't got a shred of evidence of malicious intent, so you just toss around accusations of racist conspiracies. That's insane and shameful.
(I happen to think the TSA is misguided and unnecessary, but that's irrelevant to the question of discrimination.)
> If you build discrimination into the system you don't have to explicitly discriminate
There's a problem with people smuggling dangerous items on to aircraft, and the system is trying to address that to prevent people of all races dying.
The system has to find things that are hidden, and that means it has to discern between people who have more places to hide items on their body.
That design of the system is a natural consequence of the parameters of the problem, not some vast conspiracy to oppress minorities.