While I agree that the US is stricter, the EU has gotten strict as well. There are millimeter-wave scanners in many airports (usually mandatory with an opt-out pat-down, but in some airports you have a chance to just go through the metal detectors), sometimes they make you take your shoes off, X-raying takes ages. The US is stricter only in the sense that the TSA is everywhere all the time, whereas in Europe it's only some places some of the time. At least in Europe you don't have some highschool dropout rifle through your luggage and leave your suitcase open, though (that's happened to me in the US).

It used to be that you'd go through a metal detector and be done with it, and that's still the way it is in, for example, Greece. My local airport (second largest in the country, but still no SFO) gets you from the entrance to the gate in less than ten minutes.

I don't know why we've accepted this bullshit. It's not as if some malicious actor couldn't just hit a train or bus instead and kill just as many people, yet we accept all this hassle and invasion of privacy for exactly zero benefit.

> At least in Europe you don't have some highschool dropout rifle through your luggage and leave your suitcase open, though (that's happened to me in the US).

No but the people putting the suitcase - that you had to take apart yourself - through the scanner will steal things from you - my credit card and powerbank went missing during the process this summer.

What do you mean take apart? When taking your laptop out? I just close it again, that limits opportunistic theft by a lot (though you're the first person I hear having stuff stolen from).

Yeah, I took it out, closed the suitcase and send the boxes on their way. Then they forced me to open it up again and take out my camera, chargers and some cables etc too, I guess they took it during this.

We don't? So the officers groped me just for fun this summer? And my GF's bra had to be undone just for fun too?

> So the officers groped me just for fun this summer? And my GF's bra had to be undone just for fun too?

Probably yes. But for their fun, not yours.

They didn't look like they were having fun, tbh. If I had to grope 300+ people, some of them really not appealing, I wouldn't have fun too.

Then why do you think they do it? It's obviously not for security.

Because they were ordered to do it.