For anyone else curious about the brief mention of purple peeps being banned, turns out it's because it uses Red Dye 3 which Consumer Reports claims is a known carcinogen.
https://advocacy.consumerreports.org/press_release/popular-p...
Airport security line cutters are target of first-in-the-nation California bill
41–50 of 51 posts
Re: Airport security line cutters are target of first-in-the-nation California bill
#42A little zero-sum class warfare to distract from the fact that the TSA is the most wasteful and useless government agency in human history.
Unfortunately, the state government cannot alter TSA's authority.
Don't all states have the ability to ignore federal law (enforcement) leading to situations like sanctuary cities and legalized cannabis?
Re: Airport security line cutters are target of first-in-the-nation California bill
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unfortunately, the state government cannot alter TSA's authority.
Don't all states have the ability to ignore federal law (enforcement) leading to situations like sanctuary cities and legalized cannabis?
Not really, states don't have a way to prevent federal agents from enforcing federal law. The best they can do is decline to cooperate with and help those agents. Plenty of dispenseries have been shut down by feds over the years against the wishes of the state.
Re: Airport security line cutters are target of first-in-the-nation California bill
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
Passport control is CBP (a part of USCIS) and doesn't really have any relation to TSA, which is security checks to go from the "unsecured" (curbside) part of the airport to the "secured" (planeside) part. > back in london i just scan my passport Presumably your passport is a UK passport? Generally it's much quicker for a country's nationals to enter a border than foreigners.
>Generally it's much quicker for a country's nationals to enter a border than foreigners. The UK is somewhat unusual in letting nationals of a number of countries, including the US, simply scan their passports at an electronic barrier and pass through without speaking to anyone, essentially the same as their own nationals; it usually just takes a few seconds. Many EU countries do this for EU and sometimes other Europ…
> Many EU countries do this for EU and sometimes other European nationals, but rarely for the US.
EU countries are expanding this. France lets Can/US/Aus/NZ and probably others use the e-gates.
Belgium, Germany, Italy, Portugal and others do too with different eligibility lists: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_border_control_sys...
Some other EU countries too, but only on exit.
(No physical exit controls are a nice thing about US/Canada, but in my EU experience, the rate limiting step is really security, not exit controls).
Re: Airport security line cutters are target of first-in-the-nation California bill
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Global entry kiosks clear me to enter the country in 3 seconds. No reason going through security should take any longer.
You have to consider the fact that most airports were built pre-9/11. The architectural constraints of the airport means long lines are unavoidable if you need to scan people and carry-on luggages for things like metal and sharp objects. Global entry only deals with international passengers which represents fraction of all passengers traveling in the US (which is what the front security deals with). It also doesn't h…
To be fair, airports were already screening for that pre-9/11.
The tech has gotten a lot better which… should make things faster and easier to pinpoint and locate problematic objects instead of doing random checks?
I think long lines are mainly due to growth of travel and aviation (more planes, bigger planes, and jamming more people in the same plane) without corresponding growth in airport security infra.
If there were lineups at the shops in the airport, they’d build new and bigger shops in no time.
Re: Airport security line cutters are target of first-in-the-nation California bill
#46A little zero-sum class warfare to distract from the fact that the TSA is the most wasteful and useless government agency in human history.
the TSA is literal street sweepings, but that does not mean private companies should be able to sell the ability to skip lines in public airports. if the government wants to implement its own program they can.
Re: Airport security line cutters are target of first-in-the-nation California bill
#47No idea if this will pass or not but paying a private company to cut lines in airports seemed like a flimsy value prop
As someone who uses Clear, it has a significant benefit in that, for a comparatively low cost, it makes time through the airport more consistent. If I have priority check-in through airline status, or am not checking baggage, then security waiting time is the main variable in the time to get from the terminal entrance to the gate (we'll ignore disaster airports like LAX where time from the freeway to the terminal is…
I used to race my coworkers through those lines. Going through normal security 9/10 times, I would win. They’d finally come through the other side to find me sipping on a Starbucks coffee. But when I lost, I lost big time, and I’d have to meet them in the bar.
Re: Airport security line cutters are target of first-in-the-nation California bill
#48A little zero-sum class warfare to distract from the fact that the TSA is the most wasteful and useless government agency in human history.
the TSA is literal street sweepings, but that does not mean private companies should be able to sell the ability to skip lines in public airports. if the government wants to implement its own program they can.
$12 billion. So you're right that it's not a lot relative to the size of the federal budget. But it is a lot relative to the TSA's accomplishments:
1. Has never prevented an act of terrorism in its history
2. Robs travelers of their time and sanity
3. Makes life a living hell for people with unfortunate names
Re: Airport security line cutters are target of first-in-the-nation California bill
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
the TSA is literal street sweepings, but that does not mean private companies should be able to sell the ability to skip lines in public airports. if the government wants to implement its own program they can.
$12 billion. So you're right that it's not a lot relative to the size of the federal budget. But it is a lot relative to the TSA's accomplishments: 1. Has never prevented an act of terrorism in its history 2. Robs travelers of their time and sanity 3. Makes life a living hell for people with unfortunate names
heh, I meant as in "the garbage that no other department wanted" rather than "not much money in the grand scheme of things". I agree it's a total waste of everything.
Re: Airport security line cutters are target of first-in-the-nation California bill
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
As someone who uses Clear, it has a significant benefit in that, for a comparatively low cost, it makes time through the airport more consistent. If I have priority check-in through airline status, or am not checking baggage, then security waiting time is the main variable in the time to get from the terminal entrance to the gate (we'll ignore disaster airports like LAX where time from the freeway to the terminal is…
> In Europe, some airports just directly offer a paid priority security option, which sometimes is actually quite inexpensive. But it seems this may not be allowed by the TSA, and the alternative is the fiction of Clear supposedly offering some identity verification benefit. The question is why a non governmental entity is inserted into the middle of transportation security, with a profit incentive. There already exi…
> The question is why a non governmental entity is inserted into the middle of transportation security, with a profit incentive.
Reminds me of ID.me, the for-profit company that authenticates users for certain IRS services including IRS Direct File [1]. For some reason, the government agency asks us to present our government-issued ID to a private company to verify our identity when Login.gov [2] exists to provide “the public’s one account for government”.
[1]: https://directfile.irs.gov/
[2]: https://login.gov/