Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The TSA's New $45 Fee to Fly Without ID Is Illegal

frommers.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

631–640 of 780 posts

Re: The TSA's New $45 Fee to Fly Without ID Is Illegal

#631

Post by SunshineTheCat »

paxys wrote: post #23

It's hilarious how transparent a money grab this entire thing is. "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 la…

Any time the TSA comes back into the news I always go through old Remi videos all over again. They are masterpieces:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrof3Rf3_L8

Re: The TSA's New $45 Fee to Fly Without ID Is Illegal

#632

Post by watwut »

m000 wrote: post #569
jfengel wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ill that it's supposed to address is people hassling government officials who are just doing their jobs. Their jobs require them to do things that people don't want them to do, like making you pay taxes or go to jail for committing crimes. They are prominent targets and can easily spend their entire career fighting off complaints. Of course that promptly shifts the potential for abuse in the other direction. Supp…

Still. I understand the officers having "qualified immunity". But not the agency. If an agency has shitty officers doing dodgy stuff, it's on the agency. The agents may be declared immune to direct litigation, but any claims and reparations should be automatically shifted to the agency.

I do not understand officers having qualified immunity. They are armed for of the government and they have much lower expectations placed on them the normal citizens.

The fact that cops can break laws, actually harm people and then make prosecution basically impossible is bonkers.

Re: The TSA's New $45 Fee to Fly Without ID Is Illegal

#633

Post by ibejoeb »

kube-system wrote: post #612
ibejoeb wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, I'll concede that. That boils down to someone bringing something on the plane that can be used to cause trouble.

That could be... themselves.

You're right. I vaguely remember a faux hijacking (or a real hijacking but not with the intent to do harm) wherein an unarmed man caused a flight diversion to seek asylum in Italy. He entered the cockpit while the door was open for service. I don't remember the details, but now I'm very curious if identification would have resulted in successful interdiction. It certainly would not have prevented 9/11 since those perps were known to both domestic and foreign intelligence. So what do we do?

To bring it back to the root question: how does REAL ID mitigate these threats?

Re: The TSA's New $45 Fee to Fly Without ID Is Illegal

#634

Post by anonymars »

raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #617
duskdozer wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- 2D ID photo vs 3D scan - ID photo is x years out of date - old identifying info + new identifying info is more valuable than just old identifying info - if it really doesn't matter, then why do they need to collect it? they can just not collect it, since it doesn't matter.

Neither does a 3D scan like an iPhone. As far as facial recognition better because it has up to date pictures. This has been solved without up to date pictures for years. My phone can - on device recognize my son from the time he was 9 to today at 25. If my phone can do it on device, do you think this is a hard problem on a server farm?

I'm quite perplexed on what point you are trying to make by dying on this hill.

That this does solve some hidden problem? ("if it really doesn't matter, then why do they need to collect it?")

That folks should be conditioned to freely provide any data, scan, or biometrics upon request?

When the government says "jump", always ask "how high"?

Re: The TSA's New $45 Fee to Fly Without ID Is Illegal

#635

Post by array_key_first »

expedition32 wrote: post #555
pjc50 wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with allowing "feels unsafe" to drive policy is that you get this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46866201 ; a lot of Americans (and other nationalities) get that "feels unsafe" feeling when they see a visible minority. Or a Muslim. Or someone who isn't a Muslim but (like a Sikh!) is from the same hemisphere as the Middle East. You get one set of people's rights compromised to salve the feelings of…

[flagged]

You don't have to profile people to police, and that's very poor policing. You need to assess actual risk, not fake proxy risk like the color of people's skin.

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.

Re: The TSA's New $45 Fee to Fly Without ID Is Illegal

#636

Post by array_key_first »

mlrtime wrote: post #530
sargun wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What ethnicity are you? I went through an airport -- and nobody else got screened except me. What was special about me? I was the only non-white person in the airport. Upon complaining, this was the response: > 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 disa…

When all you see is color, everything different is racism. 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?

This just in, white person thinks racism isn't real. "Well, I've never experienced it", he says.

More at 11.

Re: The TSA's New $45 Fee to Fly Without ID Is Illegal

#637

Post by eldaisfish »

alephnerd wrote: post #595
lazide wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Airport security in India is particularly infuriating on this point. Everything gets scanned and fed through over and over again, and everyone gets wanded and patted down over and over again, with maximum ‘fuck you’ to any passenger that dares to question the sanity of restarting your entire screening - because you left your belt on. Meanwhile, I haven’t even had a western airports metal detector even fire on the sam…

Most western countries also haven't had multiple attempted [0][1][2] and committed [3][4] mass casualty terror attacks nor a direct conventional conflict that for all intents and purposes was a war [5] in the past 2 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-COVI…

India's airport "security" is one of the best examples of underemployment and security "theatre".

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?

Re: The TSA's New $45 Fee to Fly Without ID Is Illegal

#638

Post by roughly »

expedition32 wrote: post #555
pjc50 wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with allowing "feels unsafe" to drive policy is that you get this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46866201 ; a lot of Americans (and other nationalities) get that "feels unsafe" feeling when they see a visible minority. Or a Muslim. Or someone who isn't a Muslim but (like a Sikh!) is from the same hemisphere as the Middle East. You get one set of people's rights compromised to salve the feelings of…

[flagged]

The moment you encode your biases in policy, you create vulnerabilities.

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.

Re: The TSA's New $45 Fee to Fly Without ID Is Illegal

#639

Post by torginus »

keeda wrote: post #358
caseysoftware wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So it was never about security at all then, was it? 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 m…

> The TSA was NEVER about security. It was designed as a jobs program and make it look like we were doing something for security. 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…

Yeah security people (computer or otherwise), are mostly crypto fascists with hardons for humiliating people and telling them what to do.

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.

Re: The TSA's New $45 Fee to Fly Without ID Is Illegal

#640

Post by torginus »

mft_ wrote: post #423
keeda wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The TSA was NEVER about security. It was designed as a jobs program and make it look like we were doing something for security. 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…

> 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. 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 measur…

Yeah, those people are welcome to drive if it makes them feel safer. Meanwhile lets focus on actually making sure planes are safe.
Post reply on HN