Never was.
I flew every other week prior to covid and haven't once been through the scanners. For the first ~6 years, I opted out and got pat down over and over again.
Then I realized I could even skip that.
Now at the checkpoint, I stand at the metal detector. When they wave me to the scanner, I say "I can't raise my arms over my head." They wave me through the metal detector, swab my hands, and I'm done. I usually make it through before my bags.
Sometimes, a TSA moron asks "why not?" and I simply say "are you asking me to share my personal healthcare information out loud in front of a bunch of strangers? Are you a medical professional?" and they back down.
Other times, they've asked "can you raise them at least this high?" and kind of motion. I ask "are you asking me to potentially injure myself for your curiosity? are you going to pay for any injuries or pain I suffer?"
The TSA was NEVER about security. It was designed as a jobs program and make it look like we were doing something for security.
Most people I know who object to full-body millimeter-wave scanners either do so on pseudoscientific health claims, or “philosophical” anti-scanner objections that are structurally the same genre as sovereign-citizen or First-Amendment-auditor thinking.
You are, right?
Unless you want to!
The first time I visited a different country I was surprised to see my friend accompany me to the check-in counter and even further to drop me off. In India they wouldn't let you enter the airport if your flight doesn't depart soon enough.
Now you can escort someone to the check-in counter and up to the security checkpoint, and meet people at the luggage area to help with bags.
But in practice it seems rare to do so if there isn’t a particular reason, probably because you’d have to pay to park or ride transit and it’s usually a trek beyond that. Honestly if they allowed you to go through security with the passenger and wait at the gate, I’m not sure how many people would even do it here (or how many passengers would want their loved ones to do so).
I could imagine other conditions potentially but pacemakers have been ruled a non issue for mmWave by academic studies (albeit I can understand still exercising caution despite that).
But mmWave really just is not dangerous. Current generation 5G cellular and WiFi standards are mmWave and they are just as harmless.
Molecular damage just starts showing up with THF/terahertz emissions band but mmWave is in the EHF and is has more than 10x the wavelength of THF (i.e. it is far wider/more gentle than THF). In a very real sense mmWave can't even interact with most of the molecules in your body.
mmWave can interact with the water in your body but at the levels it's being used it's only really useful for seeing the water. You'd needs orders of magnitude more powerful emissions than what these scanners use to actually cause damage at that frequency.
i.e. It's the difference between using the flashlight on your phone to see in the dark and using the concentrated light from solar-thermal heliostats to boil water or heat molten salt. No matter how hard you try, your flashlight is never gonna boil water.
Also I kinda like the process better; the pat-down is nothin', and you can a full table to yourself to recombobulate.
> First-Amendment-auditor thinking.
Uhhh, I like that kind of thinking. Is there something wrong with first amendment auditors now?!
It strikes me that the first clause of this sentence and the last one are unambiguously contradictory.
Right now I don't think there are that many First Amendment auditors around, so there's not much point in passing new laws to deal with them. But if they became more common, it might be necessary to draw the line, as we did in the 90s with stalking.
I didn't suggest it was speech; it's press, no?
Again, I don't have enough context to cast judgment about them being assholes or violating some other law (like harassment, etc) - I don't support that _at all_.
However, the basic right to document one's surroundings in public is absolutely essential to liberty, especially now.
You say "harassment", but that's precisely the problem. Many things that any reasonable person would identify as harassment are protected speech under the First Amendment. So these auditors go around harassing people, knowing that they're causing people emotional distress, because they're bullies who want to make people feel bad.
But walking around with cameras maintaining the unequivocal right to record what happens in the commons seems like a very important and thankless task.
You're thinking of being interviewed by a Federal agent. At no point are you being interviewed at a TSA checkpoint. Generally, they have two agents present for that so they can act as witnesses for each other. The FBI specifically uses the 302 for such an interview. Can you cite the relavant US Code here? I can.
Further, you're assuming I'm lying.
As someone who was present (in the room) as DHS was being formed and witnessed the negotiations around the TSA, the "really shitty, anti-social behavior" is sharing misinformation.
You should look around carefully and see who is actively defending government fraud right now.
If you're honest, you may be shocked.
A major win for the people.
Does it make you feel good to participate in a meaningless charade of security theater? Or would you rather spend your time doing some of value?
I think there is a lot of value in being part of a democratic society that has structured dispute-resolution processes. Part of the cost of that is occasionally going along with something pointless (even if some things warrant civil disobedience, not everything does), and that's a vital democratic responsibility. So yes, I do feel good doing that - the same kind of good I feel when I pick up someone else's litter or give up my time for jury service. If anything, going along with a law you disagree with is harder, and more virtuous, than those.
Law in a democracy ALWAYS lags public sentiment because without sentiment to pander to no politician will lift a finger. Overt sentiment always lags behind closed doors sentiment because practically nobody is gonna display overt sentiment until there's some indication from their experience that support for their sentiment is there. There MUST be room for petty noncompliance to let people discover that the noncompliance in some unknown case is perhaps not bad in order to kick start the process.
People like you are actively working to prevent and delay alignment between the people and the government/laws. If everyone subscribed to your ideology nothing would ever get done. If more people subscribed to it then things would change slower than they do.
You can tell yourself whatever you need to sleep at night but this sort of compliance as a virtue ideology you subscribe to is the evil that keeps our democracies from delivering good results promptly. I'm not saying go murder your neighbor because "fuck the law" or whatever, but an ideology that does not permit for deviance when such deviance is tasteful is a bad one.
Not always, just the last few decades.
Obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1431/
Sure (although I don't think there's ever been a law against being gay, only against particular acts).
> There MUST be room for petty noncompliance to let people discover that the noncompliance in some unknown case is perhaps not bad in order to kick start the process.
Petty noncompliance isn't the only source of information, and even if it was, that doesn't negate the cost to society.
> People like you are actively working to prevent and delay alignment between the people and the government/laws. If everyone subscribed to your ideology nothing would ever get done. If more people subscribed to it then things would change slower than they do.
So the wild swings of public opinion will be tempered somewhat, and society's path will be smoothed. Yes, that's the point. Same spirit as having a constitution and a second chamber rather than making everything run on a simple majority.
> I'm not saying go murder your neighbor because "fuck the law" or whatever
But you are. That's where your ideology leads once people start following it in practice.
I was then subjected to full pat down and a shoe chemical test as a cherry on top.
Might need to try convincing them next time to let me do the metal detector instead.
What's the point of this higher fidelity scanner if it can't tell the difference between a fly and a restricted object?
Whenever my backpack has been pulled aside for various reasons (large metal tools, too many loose wires, water bottle), I'll often get the bomb sniffer wipe.
Cute analogy, but.
Handicap parking tags provide value to those who need them. Depriving them of parking makes their lives harder.
On the other hand, TSA is pure theater, as TFA makes clear. Avoiding this needless ritual saves time for the passenger, for the TSA officers, even for the other passengers, and does not increase risk at all. It's pure win-win.
IANAL but I would be very cautious about lying to a federal agent, or anyone acting in a capacity on behalf of a federal agent (this is all of TSA).
From what I see, it's low risk, though the parent's smartass approach might get you some punishment. Not worth skipping the detector via lie.
> Then I realized I could even skip that.
It would make sense that you weren’t injuring yourself prior to realizing this.
Again, implied. But agreed, you didn’t say it.
Either they're joking (and should've added an emoji) or more likely, parent is being childish and phrasing points to finding a "clever hack" (i.e., not injured). There's nothing clever about unethical and criminal pro tips.
In any case, it's legal to opt-out of the scanners, so why would they care what method you use (really what language you use) to indicate you'd rather get a pat-down than go through the scanners? Either way you're complying with the law.
Any chance one gets to regain freedom, by any method, take it.
In this situation proving someone is lying would be news worthy. You will win in this situation if you stand your ground.
> Random selection by our screening technology prevents terrorists from attempting to defeat the security system by learning how it operates. Leaving out any one group, such as senior citizens, persons with disabilities, or children, would remove the random element from the system and undermine security. We simply cannot assume that all terrorists will fit a particular profile.
I don't know the specifics of the process for selection, but I can confidently say that the process is bigoted.
(obstinately or unreasonably attached to a belief, opinion, or faction, in particular prejudiced against or antagonistic towards a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular group)
The Rehat Maryada would suggest that is in no way whatsoever an unreasonable suspicion.
Sure, your manager likely didn't carry one on airplanes .. but that still falls short of being an unreasonable check.
> There's no reason to think that Sikhs are explicitly going out of their way to hide something.
... other than a small, curved sword or dagger that initiated (Amritdhari) Sikhs are required to wear at all times as one of the Five Ks (articles of faith) ordained by Guru Gobind Singh in 1699 you mean?
It seems reasonable, and a number of actual Sikh's would actually agree, to guess that a Sikh who holds their faith to be a matter of importance would absolutely hide a symbolic dagger the size of a letter opener and capable of slitting a throat.
The question facing any border agent tasked with checking Sikh's, of course, is this specific Sikh one that will always try to carry a Kiran, or one that doesn't hold with all that articles of faith guff.
Not exactly an ideology though.
and potential incidental dangers from unrest in confined spaces.
It is not that I have a singular focus on one religion nor one political movement, so much as that the evidence suggests that, currently, some movements have more violent offshoots and a more violent profile. There are a handful of political and religious ideologies in the world that lead to more suicide bombings and hijackings per year than, say, the total number done by believers in Zoroastrianism, Sikhs, Confucians, Hindus, Yazidis, Jews, Buddhists, Libertarians, Democratic Socialists, Freemasons and Christians combined.
If you had, for instance, Jim Jones's cult or the Aum Shinrikyo boarding airplanes and blowing them up on a regular basis, and your response was that a person had to be a single-minded bigot to notice the fact that most airplane bombings originated with this particular ideology, then I'd say you were ignoring facts or willfully making excuses for ideologies which brainwashed people into doing those things. Possibly for reasons related to disliking your own society, which is perfectly fair, but certainly not neutral or scientific.
Notably in India, there have been a few times where Sikhs have been at the head of violent revolts - and a few times where they have been targeted by violent purges/genocides.
They’re generally pretty chill, but they aren’t pacifists.
Anyway, I wasn't trying to say that Sikhs are more or less likely than any other group to be pacifist. I was saying we shouldn't even be having this discussion, and simply scan people for weapons, and use things like actual random screening to help as needed. And that religious reasons for carrying weapons are not a valid excuse.
[edit] To be more specific: An individual with an extreme belief about anything is as dangerous as an extremist member of a group with extreme beliefs. So the smart thing is to look at the beliefs and extramicy of each person. If you find someone trying to board an aircraft who doesn't care if they make it to the end of their flight, that is a security problem.
In contrast, trying to interview and run background checks on every person boarding a plane to figure out if they are an extremist on a mission or not is (a) much more invasive, and (b) much less likely to work out. Especially when you actually don't want to prevent fundamentalists from flying on planes (I don't think preventing some major evangelical church leader or some radical rabbi from flying would even be constitutional, and clearly not a popular move if attempted).
Note that I am not at all advocating for extra security targeting of Sikhs or any other such religious or ethnic targeting. I am just saying that no one should be allowed to carry a weapon on board a commercial airplane, for any reason.
> The bombing of Air India Flight 182 is the worst terrorist attack in Canadian history and was the world's deadliest act of aviation terrorism until the September 11 attacks in 2001. It remains the deadliest aviation incident in the history of Air India, and the deadliest no-survivor hull loss of a single Boeing 747
They always had a pass here in Australia for many years until things tightened up.
Not that I'm a fan, but in general Rules are Rules and making exceptions while fair in some senses will be unfair in others <shrug>.
Circling back to my initial comment- it is the case that there is an actual reason rather than a made up bit of bullshit, to reasonably suspect that a Sikh might be carrying a knife ... if they are they're almost certain to also have a comb .. so that's handy.
I must say, one thing that this reminds me of is what happens if you board an El Al flight. They don't racially profile you, they just ask you some fairly innocuous questions and watch your responses. I assume they have some way of monitoring your blood pressure, heart rate, and pupil dilation at a distance... but this hasn't really changed since the 1980s, when those things had to be read or guessed in realtime by a trained human. They have a phenomenally safe record, for a country under constant terror attacks.
My takeaway from flying El Al is that there is a much better way to deal with security, that analyzes and addresses the potentially bad individual motives of anyone getting on a plane, and mostly lets everyone else pass. Which is to say that security in its best form should be almost transparent to people without malicious intentions. Having good intelligence coupled with treating each person as their own potential bomb threat is far superior to superficially treating everyone as a threat and having no real security, and far better than just creating security theater around certain people because they're of one race or ethnicity. But El Al's methods probably don't scale well to the size of US or European air travel, because you need highly trained people to stand there in the airport make those calls on the fly for every single passenger.
If I were to guess - I'd guess El Al would let a Sikh bring a blade if they looked him in the eye for 10 seconds and decided he was okay.
It's not a great analogy, but the same applies to registered concealed carry gun owners. They're not the people who shoot people.
Still screened and detained 100 percent of the time, sometimes for hours, sometimes having to surrender personal devices, decades later.
The message is very clear.
What were you hoping to achieve by sending that report?
Most people would have just thought "wow, lucky I wasn't caught with that", taken it out of the bag so it didn't happen again and carried on with their lives.
Deviating from that normal response makes it look like you're just trying to cause trouble.
As I wrote in a very different thread, I avoid putting anything in baggage that I might carryon that is even marginally prohibited. I used to do a lot more travel and it's inevitable that knives and the like would inevitable get left in a pocket.
Officer: Look at this knife. You're trying to take this on the plane?
Me: Holy shit I didn't realize that was in my bag.
Officer: Well do you want it back? Or do you want to fly today?
Me: I don't want it.
Officer: Don't mind if I keep it?
Me: It's all yours.
It was a $13 knife, but he liked it.
No doubt that was a security violation, but it's all security theatre.
Now, knives could only be used to commit a crime i.e. assaulting another passenger or crew. Banning liquids does more to prevent terrorists than banning knives. I can see banning them for the same reason concerts ban them, that it is a lot of people in a small space, but that is very different than “national security” or “preventing terrorism”.
> Isn’t that what the scanners are for?
Err, not that I know of, I generally use the OED to look up the various recorded uses of words.
> To find large metallic objects?
The OED is for finding words, "scanners" that I've used or made are for mapping background geological structures via seismic waves, gravitational waves, magnetic waves, gamma waves. Medical scanners I've worked with have generally not bee used for finding large metallic objects and some should not be used if a patient has large metal objects attached or within.
> Why do you need additional “random” screenings behind that?
In 40+ years of scanning things there's not been a single time I've needed an additioan "random" scan - a few times scans have been repeated due to various failures to save data.
> Or are you saying the scanners don’t work to find even obvious weapons?
In the comment you responded to I said that it is not unreasonable to think that a Sikh you meet, anywhere, might be carrying a knife, a comb, a bracelet, etc. I did not mention anything about scanners. No, seriously, go and recheck the comment.
> If so, we should get rid of the scanners.
We? All scanners? Okay, well, thanks for sharing that opinion.
I figure various groups of scanner users will want to keep using them, of course. I personally am in favour of scanners for exploration and medical work.
I mean TSA, but it also applies to other groups too.
I haven't so much as gotten a speeding ticket in nearly a decade but law enforcement and border guards break out the microscope every time they see me.
Whenever we travelled to offsite offices Mohammed 100% of the time was picked for bag check, while Kevin was not picked once.
Mohammed was white, and Kevin was black.
It was completely racist, and never random.
I fixed it by filling out a form requesting a review, after which I received a “redress number” which could be entered into my booking information. It reliably stopped after that.
It may be a racist result but there is a pretty reasonable and understandable reason it happens, ignoring the legality and morality of that kind of tracking as well.
You're so far up your own virtue signalling you've lost touch.
I'm the whitest white person you'll find, white bread and turkey sandwich. I get screened all the time. Most of the time the agents are not white, WTF would I blame the color of their skin?
More at 11.
When it comes to customs & border, it's more about being "ethnically terrorist", which is more so Middle Eastern than Black in US at this particular moment in time.
I always say "my penis" and they say "uh.. well.. I'm not going to touch that"
Me: "When you slide your hand up until you meet resistance? That resistance is my penis. You're going to touch my penis and it's a sensitive area."
I fly next week, I will have to decide whether having this conversation is worth not trying to get out of the opt-out procedure. The difficulty will be keeping a straight face.
I did meet a lot of older TSA agents who told me they tried to stand as far away from the scanners as possible all day, and they completely understood my position on not going through em. I'm from LA, and I remember when this happened [0] so my general view on letting anyone shoot any kind of imaging radiation through me is pretty dim, but more so if they can't count to ten or tie their own shoelaces.
[0] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2009-oct-13-me-cedar...
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.
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.
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...
Hopefully they haven't changed. It's nice to see a place still left without the paranoia.
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 ...
I lived in Switzerland for a time and there are many notorious rules (e.g. don't shower or flush your toilet after 10pm; don't recycle glass out of working hours) governing day-to-day behaviour which initially seem ridiculous and intrusive. However, what you quickly realise is that many of these are rooted in a simple cultural approach of "live your life as you wish, just don't make other people's life worse" - an approach I came to appreciate.
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.
This was the only time I've gone through the machine since they were introduced.
Meanwhile, I haven’t even had a western airports metal detector even fire on the same belt in years.
And airport security in Israel makes Indian airport security feel like a breeze and I found Turkish airport security to be similar to India's (I remember landing in IST a couple years ago post-COVID and how the news monitors all blared about the 3-6 Turkish soldiers who died in Turkish controlled Syria the day previously).
All three are in very tenuous neighborhoods where the risks of mass casualty terror attacks remains a very real possibility and no on-duty officer wants to be the one who's name comes up in an inquiry into a terror attack should they happen.
Also, from what I remember you are either a Chinese national or someone who has travelled significantly to China. It's the equivalent of a Russian national or Russian-origin person traveling to Poland or Estonia post-2022. Anyone with that profile falls under stricter scrutiny in India due to reciprocal treatment of Indian-nationals and Indian-origin people from Arunachal [6][7] and Ladakh [8] as well as the multiple recent India-China standoffs.
[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Delhi_car_explosion
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Nowgam_explosion
[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Bengaluru_cafe_bombing
[3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Reasi_attack
[4] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Pahalgam_attack
[5] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_India%E2%80%93Pakistan_co...
[6] - https://indianexpress.com/article/world/who-is-prema-thongdo...
[7] - https://idsa.in/publisher/comments/china-ups-the-ante-in-aru...
[8] - https://www.indiatoday.in/news-analysis/story/why-china-is-e...
The needless repetition and duplication of tasks achieves little actual "security" and is more a jobs program for a population that is desperately underskilled, underemployed and borderline unemployable. Never mind the fact that airports like Bombay are literally meters away from slums, which are a far greater security risk than actual passengers.
Your list of citations is entirely meaningless because Indian airports are no more or less secure than the average airport in the west. What India manages to do extremely well is annoy the daylights out of travellers for mindless bureaucratic reasons.
Please can you explain how security stamping the back of your boarding pass meaningfully adds to "security" and how fifteen checks of your passport could have avoided a single one of the incidents you list?
Not just in Israel, but even at other airports for flights to Israel! I was surprised to find that flights to Israel from JFK and EWR actually have a secondary security screening at the gate. In fact, the entire waiting area is walled off with only 1 or 2 controlled entries and exits. If you have to leave the area to go to the bathroom, well, you're just going to get screened again when you come back.
And they are very thorough. They WILL rummage through your carry on and purse and shoes.
(I wasn't even traveling to Israel, I was at an adjacent gate but got in the wrong line by mistake, haha!)
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!
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.
> when you are asked to be patted down, having the courage to lie "I can't raise my arms over my head"
You only get a pat down if you trigger additional screening or opt out. Not being able to raise my arms is NOT opting out. Therefore, no pat down.
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.
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.
Repeated examples on HN
- TSA effectiveness
- AI Writing code free bug
- Self driving cars get into accidents
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.
- 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.
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.
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.
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.
You can do the wokeness and treat everyone the same but that's not how policing works.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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".
What about the real psychological need of not wanting to be surveilled that also quite a lot of people have?
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 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.
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.
No doubt! Then strap it to our arms and call it a Pip Boy.
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...
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.
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.
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.
I used to "punish" the rude or particularly slow ones by insisting on a private screening (since that involves two officers, and Is A Whole Thing) but I haven't gotten a rude one in a few years. But that also just makes it take even longer.
Just because you can get around TSA checkpoints doesn't mean it's not "about" security. There's only so much that can be done when we have to balance safety and convenience.
2) those scanning machines have leaked their images before to the public so its okay not to want to go through them and have your.png on there forever.
Are we saying that if they stopped doing that there would not be an increase in incidents?
Or is it that they are overly performative? I’ve never been all that annoyed with raising my hands above my head, but it seems like, in your case, if a passenger can’t do that, they would make an exception for you anyways. Which seems fair?
Dealing with the presence of travelers who haven't updated their driver's licenses requires a bunch of extra staff to perform the time-consuming additional verifications. The basic idea is for those staff to be paid by the people using them, rather than by taxpayers and air travelers more generally. As well as there being a small deterrent effect.
...The courts have repeatedly struck down limits on domestic travel over the
past couple hundred years.
In fact, the $45 "fee" is an acknowledgment that you aren't required to have
special documents to travel within the US. Otherwise, they just wouldn't let
you travel.
So instead, they're making more security theater and punishing you if you
don't comply with their demands...
This is just a way to compel compliance and to push the agenda for ID with higher documentary requirements, ultimately to deny the vote.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46864182
It's absolutely not just enhanced physical screening.
They can't detain you (if you're not otherwise some kind of suspect, and you're not trying to assault them or sprint past security or anything), but they don't let you fly.
I mean, I know you're right, and I know you will always lose if you try, but I don't understand the legal basis.
Cities don't own restaurants either but can fine them and close them if health inspections fail, because there's a law for that.
The legal basis is the federal laws written specifically around airport security.
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PLAW-107publ71/html/PLAW...
Whether they can then elect to stay is a different matter, I think.
But so what? How long would a person have to stand in a screening area before someone who properly represents the ownership of that space shows up and authoritatively tells them to GTFO, do you suppose?
You are already free to go that other way (towards the street), but not necessarily free to go the way you want.
The ruse here is to pretend like the property owner is agreeing with TSA because TSA forced them to this agreement by government act. But that is just the government trying to have their cake and eat it by forcing someone to do something and then pretending it is a private act which isn't bound to the constitutional right to not have to answer additional questions.
The government can absolutely pass laws prohibiting you from entering a privately owned location. There is no constitutional right of access to private property.
And more specifically, the commerce clause of the constitution allows the government to regulate air travel, which means regulating airports. The fact that they're privately owned doesn't change anything. If a private airport owner allowed you to proceed through security, they'd be breaking the law.
There's no public access doctrine for airports the way there is for streets or parks.
You clear seem to wish it was otherwise. But it's easy to do the research to understand where the authority comes from and why it's entirely constitutional.
If the difference between access and not having access is relinquishing your civil rights, then the reason for denial is exercising your civil rights. Those are explicitly protected. So while you're right they could make a law that says 'no one on the plane' they cannot make a law that says "everyone on the plane except those who won't give up their 4th or 5th amendment rights not to answer additional questions."
There have been prior SCOTUS cases narrowly allowing asking name, DOB, addresses, as well as inspection of your items during certain inspections, but this is something entirely different beyond that asking further probing questions about your identity.
And that brings us back to the tagline of the article:
The law, as written, is clear: You have the right to fly without ID, without paying a $45 fee, and without answering questions
Those that did had to pay $30-$60 plus fees (actual cost differs by state) to get one and will have to pay that again and again each renewal. This is certainly making money somewhere for somebody and not at all about security
I think New York is one, so well over 10mill people don’t require it. Do you seriously think most of those people are getting one anyway? Guarantee you there are millions of people without it if not tens of millions. I’d put money on it.
So back to the point, we’re talking likely 100’s of millions of dollars. That is nothing to sneeze at. The TSA is an $11bill operation based on a quick search. $500mill (~11mill people) would be 5% of their annual budget.
That's the point. It's not to make money. The primary purpose is to get people to use RealID, and to cover the costs of the extra screening for those who don't. For however much more money they take in, you need to subtract the cost of the additional staff they need to hire and pay to handle it, plus the tech systems.
Also, remember you can just use a passport instead. That hasn't changed.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/real-id-deadline-weeks-away-mos...
I personally have a hard time believing that a “Real” ID that does not verify citizenship or residency is meaningfully different from my current one. I certainly do not believe there are increased costs associated with my existing ID, that would be alleviated with a Real ID. At no point have I ever heard Real ID exists to reduce costs (though if that’s true, I’d love to read how). IMHO it may not be a “cash grab,” but it’s certainly punitive. And, for what it’s worth, there have been no extra steps I’ve had to take or increased screening when using my existing ID for the past year. Same photo machine, same scanner, as everyone else.
I will personally just renew my passport to avoid the fee until I need to renew my drivers license.
I guess that's because you haven't renewed your driver's license yet?
I did last year, precisely because I had to fly, and had to bring a bunch of new documentation I never needed for my previous driver's licenses, including, yes, multiple proofs of both citizenship and residency, and then had to go through a whole additional process because of a slight name discrepancy between documents that they had to get a supervisor to make a judgment call on. It's a totally different verification process that is actually quite meaningfully different.
https://reason.com/2025/12/31/dhs-says-real-id-which-dhs-cer...
> I personally have a hard time believing that a “Real” ID that does not verify citizenship or residency is meaningfully different from my current one.
You seem to have conveniently forgotten that residency was part of the discussion. DHS hasn't contested REAL ID as a means to verify your identity or your residency. They have contested it as a means to verify your citizenship and they are correct because it was never intended to be proof of citizenship or legal residency status.
You do need to show your residency paperwork or prove citizenship when applying as only lawfully present residents are eligible to receive a REAL ID, but only citizens and permanent residents have indefinite legal status and REAL ID doesn't track your status.
I would argue this is a silly gap, but Congress intentionally did not establish a National ID which you would expect to identify nationality. Instead, they created a system which makes it difficult to create ID in multiple states concurrently or under multiple names.
I would further argue that the database required to make REAL ID work ends up with all of the negatives of a national ID, without the most useful benefits. So really, we all lose.
It's absolutely a totally different and much stricter vetting process from before. Whether you or some other government agency thinks it still doesn't go far enough is a separate question.
Also almost half the population flies annually, so we’re starting around 150mill.
You need numbers at this point. I am willing to bet millions flying don’t have it.
It then goes on to explain that the TSA has reported 93% of traveler's complied with REAL ID, citing a TSA blog from a week prior which in fact states the same.
They then take this and couple it with a single day, which they state was the busiest travel day of the Memorial Day weekend, and extrapolate that 7% of the travelers that day must've failed to provide a REAL ID.
For the sake of conversation, this is a reasonable statement. Going back and using it to suggest 200k fly without it on a typical day is not reasonable, nor is your suggestion that a 6 months later it's still at 7% (or even typical travel volume hasn't changed.) There has to be better data available.
I was curious about this, so I looked up travel volume. YTD the daily average is 2,130,136 passengers. At 7%, this is 149,109.5 passengers or $2.449 B a year in fees. This ignores that you only pay the fee once very 10 days and assumes that all travelers pay the fee on every occurrence.
The point is that lots of people will pay this fee and it will equal a large amount of money and it does nothing of value. It’s just a fee for the fee’s sake. It serves no practical purpose, it’s just punitive. You still get to fly. There’s no safety element, there’s nothing the RealID enables that costs something without it, there is no clear reason here for this.
What is the actual legitimate purpose of this fee that millions will likely pay? Almost half the country flies annually and as of April 2025 20% of travelers didn’t have a RealID. So we’re talking millions of people, some of which will pay it multiple times, per year until full compliance. This is going to net a consequential amount of money and it doesn’t seem like it’s for any purpose other than to generate revenue.
If they have to perform extra work then I'd say it's justified. If it's just a punishment for not getting a real ID I'm not sure if that's fair
It wasn't just pay for play! TSA-PreCheck and Global Entry approval requires a thorough background check of your residential, work, and travel history, also in-person interview. Unfortunately, some Privacy activists prefer not doing that over occasional convenience.
Now! But, when it started it definitely required.
Could the $45 be a way to pay for some extra manual screening? Maybe? Or do they not deserve any benefit of the doubt.
It's a proof of an address, akin to soviet-style "propiska", which was very important and hard to get without (it also affected ownership/inheritance).
What's more fun is that even though they accept different types of residence, they mostly trust utility bills -- but to set up utilities on your name even for your personal home utility company will ask a lot of documents, including credit score checks.
I personally felt that it's utility companies who do the heavy proof checking, not DMVs.
I've moved several times since getting my Colorado driver's license (a REAL ID). Technically, you are supposed to submit a change-of-address form to the DMV online within 30 days of moving. They don't send you a new card when you do that; the official procedure is to stick a piece of paper with your new address written on it to your existing ID yourself, and then just wait until your next renewal to actually get a card with the new address on it. The change of address form does not require utility bills or any other proof of the new address-- that's only required when you initially get the driver's license.
The US currently has freedom of movement. You don't need the government's permission to live somewhere or to move somewhere else. An ID with your address listed isn't propiska. At best, you could compare it to the 'internal passport' that the USSR and most post-Soviet countries had, which acted as a comprehensive identity document and was the ancestor to modern national ID cards that are used in many countries.
- Bank statement
- Pay stub
- Utility bill
- Any other state ID with the same last name, which I can claim is my parent or spouse.
I can change my mailing address on any of them with a few clicks online, no actual verification needed.
What they do NOT accept as proof of address:
- My passport
How does that make any sense?
It makes sense because, if you look closely, you will see that your passport does not indicate your address.
Yes, but you’d have to be able to retrieve mail from that address?
> - Pay stub
> - Utility bill
It should be noted, and I don't understand why people aren't angry about this: Account numbers unredacted on the statements. The numbers are redacted the documentation gets rejected.
But it’s totemic when you dig into conspiracy theories about undocumented immigrants voting. RealID comes up a lot.
Except that it appears one of the primary reasons this has become a thing is that the Feds are angry at states like Washington that don't verify citizenship when issuing driver's licenses. The whole point was that Washington (as an example) wanted to make sure people were able to get an identification and driving with a license (IE: some degree of documentation, had achieved some degree of driver's education and testing somewhere along the line...) regardless of their immigration status - and that pissed off the Feds. So it shouldn't be related to citizenship but that's part of how we got here.
That's why if you don't have an ID, you should get to the airport at least an hour earlier than otherwise (already accounting for long security lines), and more during peak travel times. If you get slowed down, you're going to miss your flight. They're not going to speed it up for you.
That's what they're guarding against. There's is no secure enough visual or computational ID check that takes a second when you're not already carrying a RealID or passport, that's the point. They have to start getting a bunch of information from databases, determining if it seems like a real person, and quizzing you on information you should know if you're the real you, and seeing if it all adds up or not.
Because we closed the door. Like was policy already.
9/11 could not have happened had the doors been closed.
The door being closed is how the Flight 93 terrorists prevented passengers from re-taking the flight.
It does take longer than regular screening (most of the time was just spent waiting for the supervisor -- I'm not sure they were spending time collecting some data first), if that causes you to miss your flight you miss your flight.
It seems plausible to me that $45 could be about a TSA employee's wage times how much longer this takes. In aggregate, this (in theory) lets them hire additional staff to make sure normal screening doesn't take longer due to existing staff being tied up in extra verifications.
Having a reliable ID system is only useful if you have a security apparatus to check them, which literally did not exist then.
The justification for all of the security theatre after 9/11 was that it would stop terrorist attacks. Makes no difference what passport they have as long as you can determine they're not smuggling a bomb up their ass.
Not to mention that you can't take down a plane with a box-cutter anymore. The only way the 9/11 hijackers were successful is that the remaining passengers thought that the hijackers were pirates. It's a burned 0-day.
You could just enact a policy of shooting down all planes within a certain radius of large buildings. I wouldn't be surprised if the annual cost would be orders of magnitude less than the annual cost of TSA. As long as you could ensure that aircraft couldn't be weaponized against major infrastructure, hijacking a plane would be no more dangerous than hijacking a train.
Though they might not do that either.
1. They're not doing screening. The screening comes later. At this stage, they're attempting to identify someone. That has never been the job. The job is to prevent guns, knives, swollen batteries, or anything else that could be a safety threat during air travel.
2. Regardless, the reality is that they do identify travelers. Even so, the job has not changed. If you don't present sufficient identification, they will identify you through other mechanisms. The only thing the new dictate says is that they don't want this document, they want that document.
A job that by their own internal testing, they do well less than 5% of the time (some of their audits showed that 98% of fake/test guns that were sent through TSA got through checkpoints).
Thats why cashless businesses exist, why you pay more for things that involve human attention instead of automated online solutions etc.
https://www.clearlypayments.com/blog/interchange-fees-by-cou...
or tax fraud, otherwise cashless is obviously cheaper
Are these the same poor people that reputedly cannot get IDs to vote because of a government conspiracy to suppress their votes, yet can afford an airline ticket and commute to an airport?
The whole debate is hilarious, you need one or two extra documents to get RealID. The exact same amount of time and trips to DMV.
Only half of the opposition to federal IDs comes from the right wing people who are hand wringing about ""The Mark of the Beast"" while saying that immigrants need to identify themselves. The other half of the opposition to federal IDs comes from the left who insist that federal IDs are a conspiracy to stop poor people from voting. This is a bipartisan issue, but you only acknowledged one half.
Rich people just print out some combination of a bank statement, a pay stub, and a copy of their mortgage or lease or the electric bill, but poor people may not have much of that. Think of someone staying with family and getting paid by a gig economy job to a Cash App card or just working under the table/doing odd jobs.
Once you start with less common documents, there seem to be more arcane rules, and the documents poor people do have often don’t quite fit the rules that were basically written around what people middle class and up are likely to have.
In order for me, myself, to get a Real ID in Ohio, I need to produce documents demonstrating all 5 of the following elements[1]: Full legal name, DOB, legal presence in the US, SSN, and Ohio street address -- with the Ohio street address element requiring two separate documents.
Most of this is easy. I can rummage around in the paperwork pile and find most of what I need.
But the only acceptable document that applies to me (a single white male born in the US who has never had a reason to get a passport) is an original or certified copy of my birth certificate. That's kind of a pain in the ass: I have a copy, and that copy is on the fancy green cardstock the health department uses where I was born, and that copy was good enough to enlist and get paid in the US military, but it's not a certified copy and therefore is not good enough to prove my full name. My original DD214 is also not good enough.
So I'll have to round that up (which will cost me money). And then I'll have to go to the BMV (which costs money and time), and wait in line (which costs more time), and then pay for these documents to be reviewed. Eventually, they'll mail me a new ID.
Achievable? Sure. I'll get it done.
But it's quite clearly more arduous than having "two pieces of paper that have: 1) their name 2) their address", which is rather oversimplified.
---
And meanwhile: Air travel doesn't have to be expensive. In my direct experience, a person can fly from Ohio to Florida and back in cattle class for as little as $37 if they're not picky about dates.
Until last month, that is. This month: It costs an extra $45, or a Real ID.
[1]: https://dam.assets.ohio.gov/image/upload/publicsafety.ohio.g...
For context, at one point I couldn't even get AB60 license in California because I didn't have a single photo ID that isn't expired, and you just need some photo id and pulse to get AB60.
> Will the DMV accept a purchase order from Amazon?
DMV accepted my marriage license and bank statement. Bank accepted "I will mail you my card, bring back in sealed envelope".
> Rather you lack perspective on the wider world.
I don't think so.
So assuming you already have a regular driver's license and a bank account this would make the requirement to fly 1. verify address with bank 2. figure out an additional piece of documentation 3. pay fee for "real" ID 4. wait a while.
How does that improve security? Why do I need any ID at all in the first place? If the concern is weapons or explosives then just search for those ... which they already do.
Another thought occurs to me. What if I grab a homeless person off the street and attempt to fly with him? So now there's an additional $45 "no ID" fee? That hardly seems reasonable. Will they even be able to verify much of anything in that scenario to begin with? (Granted that's an edge case but that doesn't mean it's okay to ignore it.)
Nope, KYC rules are different from Real ID rules. Banks accept more documents ad PoA. It comes down to: does the person have access to banking or not because it's the easiest PoA.
> How does that improve security? Why do I need any ID at all in the first place? If the concern is weapons or explosives then just search for those ... which they already do.
Like I said in the original message - every state has different requirements for IDs. I was able to get California AB-60 with just paper (no RFID) foreign passport that looked like I made it myself and laminated at it at FedEx.
> 3. pay fee for "real" ID 4. wait a while.
I don't know how other states do it, but I'm pretty sure in CA it's the same time it takes to get a regular ID. and the fee difference is like $20?
> Another thought occurs to me. What if I grab a homeless person off the street and attempt to fly with him? So now there's an additional $45 "no ID" fee?
Well, that person still needs some ID to fly? I'm against that tho, I'd start enforcing real id years ago if it were up to me.
DHS says they don't consider RealID to be reliable "proof" of immigration status[0][1], so you might consider rethinking that strategy.
[0] https://www.biometricupdate.com/202601/dhs-agent-tells-court...
[1] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.alsd.76...
I did, I became American and now have a US passport. That is just moving of the goal post by current admin.
I don’t think the existence of the fine itself is necessarily evidence of a cash grab.
If it isn’t temporary and extends beyond a year or two, then it probably is just meant to be a cash grab.
And since Congress never approved it, well, that makes it illegal.
But not as much fun as watching people really the crazy screaming lefties were right the whole time.
Now TSA is offering an ultimatum. Pay $45 once to renew your ID or pay it every time you travel. For most people this is enough motivation to renew the ID and never think about it again.
That's madness.
For the $45 I should get a "TSA ID" that lets me fly for a year. That would be a cash grab. They don't even care enough to do that. They want to blur the line between state and federal and they're going to use your need to fly to accomplish that.
FTFY
They've been trying to push this BS for over a decade but some of the states haven't been adopting it the way they'd like. The threats to ban travel without one were ultimately toothless as there would have been far too much backlash (and that would presumably be unconstitutional). This is what they figure they can get away with.
> the remaining stragglers simply don't care because there have never been any consequences
The default ID that my state issues has historically not been RealID compliant and I think that's a good thing. I have no interest in actively participating in the latest authoritarian overreach attempt.
Although, I thought it would just be delayed indefinitely. I suppose it effectively has been.
Too much of our economy depends on it.
It's not pay $45 to go though, it's pay $45 for someone to take you around back and look you up based on secondary identification, and if they can't positively identify you based on that you still can't go through.
This is a system that has been in place for a long, long time. You could always say you don't have ID and they'll look you up. The change is they're now charging for it.
> And don't get me started with all the paid express security lanes. Because of course only poor people can weaponize shoes and laptops.
This is also not accurate. If you're talking about Clear, you just skip to the front of the normal line. If you're talking about Pre, those people are individually background-checked before hand, and it costs $19/yr, so it's not exactly a tophat and monocle only program. Especially since that's half the price of a one-way taxi ride to the airport, let alone the ticket. The airport self-selects for the fairly well off to begin with.
The lowest amount I see on https://www.tsa.gov/precheck is $58.75.
And before people start to argue that planes aren't public transportation - over 10 million _passenger_ flights a year. It is critical to the functioning of all aspects of society.
And these additions are the opposite of privatization, they are federal requirements, de facto socialization.
"You need to show a Real ID for security, otherwise how do we know you won't hijack the plane?"
"Well I don't have a Real ID."
"Ok then, give us $45 and you can go through."
So it was never about security at all then, was it?
And don't get me started with all the paid express security lanes. Because of course only poor people can weaponize shoes and laptops.