So long as I can assume an anonymous role on occasion, and other people can too, I must think twice before doing anything destructively rash. Nobody else has bombed this thing yet, and they surely could, so perhaps it exists with the consent of the people around it.
But if surveillance and control exceeds some ill defined threshold such that its not clear that so many of us actually could get away with fighting back against the machinery of control that surrounds us. Well then one must question whether it actually exists with our consent. And in that case, if we're lucky enough to be able to get away with dismantling it, it very well may be our responsibility to do so.
That's the principle. There must still be some line not yet crossed. Because otherwise there's nothing to do besides fight. So we don't let them cross whatever the arbitrary line is because most of us are not prepared for the fight.
if you can't afford your rights, that's a you problem, in America
But I think society has decided people who want to engage in acts of resistance and sabotage shouldn't be allowed in airports.
As you might be aware there's quite a history of people using the aviation system to make a political point via sabotage.
-- Patrick McGoohan, The Prisoner
If you didn't vote for them, these laws still represent the choice of the majority (or at least of their representatives).
Either way, surveillance laws are a direct consequence of our democratic process and must be acknowledged as such.
You say "it's your responsibility to hold them accountable for their actions and to check at that level"- but all I see in the parent comments is people discussing politics. People saying "I think this law is bad" is a critical part of the exact democratic process you seem to hold in high regard. That's how you get a consensus among the electorate that can push representatives to oppose future surveillance legislation and repeal existing stuff.
(If you replied to the wrong comment, and meant to say this to somebody proposing overthrowing democracy or whatever, disregard my comment, obviously!)
Because here, we have a series of people who don't like the law (potentially for good reasons).
If the law is like that, it's because we have a "majority" (unless democracy is cheated) who voted for such things (additional control during plane boarding, to have border guards, to allow spying on private messages, etc).
The "majority" defended their right; the right to feel safe.
A bit like someone who does Open Carry in a state who doesn't want you to show weapons.
It may be not dangerous if you openly have a weapon, but other people still voted against that for their own reasons.
> other people still voted against that for their own reasons
You are describing a direct democracy, not the representative democracy that actually exists.
There are plenty of examples of laws, existent and nonexistent, whose status has little to do with the preferences of the general public. One need only look where there is a conflict between the general public’s interest and that of the government. Surveillance is prime territory.
Opting-out isn't "making a scandal".
You can both opt-out and "talk with the people who make the laws", one doesn't preclude the other.
> If the law is like that, it's because we have a "majority" (unless democracy is cheated) who voted for such things
That is an idealistic view not grounded in reality at all.
"They already have your photo". Yes, I know. I gave it to them in exchange for documents that grant international travel privileges. The rules/laws also say I can opt out of face rec and are posted on that big ass sign. I exercised my rights as a citizen to apply for documents within the rules allowed. Now I am excising my rights to the part that says I can opt out of having my pic taken every time I want to get on a plane.
I would like more clarity on the storage of the bio info derived from the photos. My guess is they keep updating profiles every time they take the pic, but discard the actual photo. This is not why I opt out, but like the salami slicing up-thread, I would guess they are waiting for everyone to get use to the pic at TSA before removing the opt-out clause and letting everyone know they are storing it to update profiles - for your safety. I am just waiting for that big leak, and then massive bio id fraud that will be harder to clean up than it is now. I know someone that has been a victim of id fraud (complete nightmare), I can't even imagine how one would clean that up once bio fraud becomes the norm.
There's another point of view though that says that the aviation system is particularly fragile, and of course it has a history of being used for acts of extreme violence.
So there's a compelling state interest question here. Like I think people definitely DO and SHOULD have the right to be secure in their own homes, in their personal papers, and to be free from surveillance of their personal life.
I'm extremely amenable to the idea that you should be able to "exercise your rights, for any reason you please and without having to explain yourself" in that regard.
I think it's also clear that the rights one has are going to be circumscribed when participating in the aviation system.
So it's more a matter of degree than principle.
It doesn't matter for my purposes whether you agree with this as a principle.
> biometrics they already have
> obviously already being constantly recorded by surveillance cameras
The whole “boiling the frog” meme is that nobody notices the rights being curtailed over time. I understand the whole “not in public” thing but there’s still got to be a point where the depth and/or breadth of information gathered is too much.
It should be noted the frogs regulate their body temperature by jumping in and out of water and thus do react to even slow increases of temperature.
so what is the whole salami?
It's not unreasonable to know exactly who is on which flight imho.
It is slightly worse to have face recognition in public spaces, but your identity is not a secret. As long as this information is not available for private uses (aka, it is only used by law enforcement), i don't see the privacy implications of public facial recognition.
Governments, like many other institutions, tend to find ways to generate demand for their services. By the time it happens the response is; ‘of course we need these things’, and in time that will be replaced by ‘that’s the way it has always been’ by people who don’t know any better. Just because it’s normal now doesn’t mean it always had to be this way.
I’m not going to summarize everything the whole salami encompasses - that’s a rather big topic that’s probably best left as an exercise for the reader.
When was that? Mass (as in common, not the initial one off ones) airplane hijackings started in the 1940s.
> Governments, like many other institutions, tend to find ways to generate demand for their services.
Are you implying that governments are behind terrorist acts or suicidal ones in order to generate demand for security services?
> I’m not going to summarize everything the whole salami encompasses - that’s a rather big topic that’s probably best left as an exercise for the reader.
No, go ahead, because what you're saying is vague enough to be useless.
IIRC, in the US up to the 1980s or so. Perhaps even into the 1990s.
Hell, there didn't even used to be metal detectors in airports until a "large" number of plane bombings happened in the 1980s. IIRC, the excuse for installing them was to detect metal-based explosives smuggled in one's person.
> Are you implying that governments are behind terrorist acts or suicidal ones...
I'll note that the cumulative delays from TSA "security" have had a much, much larger human cost than the destruction of the WTC towers. Relatedly, the financial cost has been staggering. Tragically, the process creating both of these costs are ongoing.
Two things (and only two things) ensured that there will never be another attack like that, ever:
1) Hardening and locking the cockpit doors. Pilots screamed about this for an assload of years before 9/11, but penny-pinching airlines refused to do anything about it.
2) The fact that air passengers now know that a hijacking is not an inconvenience (or maybe a stop at an exotic destination), but is a death sentence. With any plausible armament that a team of hijackers could get into the cabin with even 1970's-era security screening, they absolutely cannot win against a planeload of people who are supremely disinterested in dying in a plane crash today.
People die because of the TSA? Like die immediately, in the aftermath, and a decade later from cancer? Any sources on this?
Your two things fall apart with a (not even that big to trigger an explosive decompression in a bad part of the aircraft and cause a near certain crash) bomb. Or a grenade to blow up the cabin door. Or hell, a deranged pilot who decides to end it all and crash the plane.
As I said:
> [T]he cumulative delays from TSA "security" have had a much, much larger human cost than the destruction of the WTC towers.
Do try to keep up.
> Your two things fall apart with a ... bomb. Or a grenade[.]
How do you get them past a metal detector? Remember that most explosives are metallic. If your answer is to shove them up your ass into your intestines or down your throat into your stomach, then note that that method also defeats both the pornoscanners and the patdowns and ask yourself why noone has detonated a grenade or blown out a portion of the fuselage with an explosive in the ~15 years that TSA has been using scanners, or the ~9 between 2001 and 2010 [0] where they were "just" using metal detectors.
> A deranged pilot who decides to end it all and crash the plane.
Yep, that's a very real hazard and has happened internationally a time or two in the years since 2001. Locking and reinforcing the door has changed that from a "Alert crew might be able to save the plane" situation to a "Crew have no hope of saving the plane." situation.
[0] Or if we're being fair, the thirty-six years since the last US aircraft bombing in 1988.
> Do try to keep up.
Still looking for that source that TSA has killed people.
> How do you get them past a metal detector? Remember that most explosives are metallic. If your answer is to shove them up your ass into your intestines or down your throat into your stomach, then note that that method also defeats both the pornoscanners and the patdowns and ask yourself why noone has detonated a grenade or blown out a portion of the fuselage with an explosive in the ~15 years that TSA has been using scanners, or the ~9 between 2001 and 2010 [0] where they were "just" using metal detectors.
I thought you only need two things? A hardened cockpit door and passenger knowledge about the dangers of hijackins. Now you need metal detectors too? Please try to keep up with your own argument.
The kind of languorous and spiritless attitude with which people argue for all this extra population control makes me think they would prefer those passengers sit calmly and sing Nearer My God To Thee.
Do you understand that the section you quoted indicates that (since 2001) people in the plane will absolutely use violence to stop any hijackers that attempt to hijack the plane?
I see it as part of this inversion of responsibility at schools and in culture where students have not failed to learn, the teachers have failed to teach. The students have become very entitled and demanding that not only must they be spoon fed but that the information must be pre-chewed to their exact liking.
I’m not paid to teach you and if you spend your life expecting others to do the work of learning for you then you assuredly will spend the rest of your life in ignorance.
I’m far better off finding ways to shield myself from the negative consequences of a culture fostering ignorant masses than I am to try to fight that onslaught one person at a time.
I remember, it must have been in the late '90s, when Windows added the ability to get "important security updates" via the internet and a lot of people were turning it off. I remember a comment on slashdot about how we would all become conditioned to accept it.
...and the thing that I said: "here's a thing that you don't want to do, and don't see the need for, but don't worry because it wont happen often" (then over time it starts happening often.
The former is not conditioning. The latter is.
The super duper classified high security no-flight list was shared internationally via a public ftp server with the username and password anonymous:anonymous.
A hacker that disclosed that responsibly got into lots of troubles for exposing that. [1]
So I'd argue indeed I assume that TSA and border control use the most incompetent and most lying way to solve anything when the control mechanism are privacy laws. They literally care 0% about that. If they say they delete something, I assume they keep a physical copy.
And I totally understand people worrying a lot about that, given the golden age of deep fakes we live in. Imagine what's possible 10 years ahead when that biometric data can be used to imitate and authenticate you.
It's not that they took my picture at the DMV to put it on my license. It's the idea that through this picture, they're going to decide if I can fly or not, and I have no process to challenge that determination.
> So I don't really understand the privacy concerns here
Why is the government allowed to decide if I can fly domestically or not?
> that is different from the biometrics they already have from your ID photos?
Why is my biometric data required to fly? This is why I can't fly. I refuse real ID. I refuse a passport. These are not prescriptive rights the government has over my affairs.
> You're also obviously already being constantly recorded by surveillance cameras in the airport
Do they also have my drivers license information?
Have _we_? What mechanism did _we_ decide this by? Why is there zero alternative mechanisms for boarding a flight if I refuse to share my "biometrics" with the state?
> but it does bring a peace of mind
We were given specific intelligence on the 9/11 attackers and their plans before they were enacted. The "shoe bomber" was let on a plane and only stopped by alert passengers. Private plane passengers do not have to go through security checks. Your peace of mind is a total lie.
They already have your photo if you have a driver's license or US passport or basically any form of government ID. The whole point is to compare it to what they already have.
So I don't really understand the privacy concerns here, but maybe I'm missing something. Is there something that these cameras record that is different from the biometrics they already have from your ID photos?
(You're also obviously already being constantly recorded by surveillance cameras in the airport, of course.)