
TSA’s Roadmap for Airport Surveillance Moves in a Dangerous Direction - ccnafr
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/12/tsas-roadmap-airport-surveillance-moves-dangerous-direction
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Zaheer
Important to note that the TSA has largely been ineffective: "In a 2016 survey
by the Department of Homeland Security Inspector General (IG), the TSA missed
95 percent of the weapons and assorted contraband carried into commercial
aircraft cabins by undercover investigators"

[https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/366998-the-
tsa...](https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/366998-the-tsas-lax-
performance-amounts-to-security-theater)

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fooker
It acts as a deterrent, similar to door locks in homes.

Lockpicking is relatively easy, and there is always brute force.

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Zelphyr
I suspect the better deterrent, and the reason we haven’t seen another attack
remotely similar to 9/11, is that the terrorists know we won’t fall for that
again. There would be a whole airplane full of people willing to take down a
would-be terrorist.

The TSA is just a pacifier for people who buy that they’re effective.

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curlcntr
This might be a stupid question, but, airplanes are computerized, can they be
programmed such-that they simply won't fly into buildings, cities, restricted
airspace, etc..

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brokenmachine
I think that would set a dangerous precedent. Systems mess up in all kinds of
strange ways. The human pilot needs the final say, especially in an emergency
situation.

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dawnerd
I think they were saying the autopilot only kick in if the pilots fail to
acknowledge it.

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nimbius
if you think TSA is getting hard to handle with unreasonable surveillance, you
havent taken a road trip lately.

Riding my motorcycle from the east coast to the southwest I was stopped by
"border patrol" at least 100 miles from any border I could see. After refusing
to answer any questions, I was detained for an hour near the AZ border until
agents could photograph my sugar skull patch and empty all my bags on the side
of the road.

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swozey
I'm not sure if there are more than usual now but those of us in TX have dealt
with interior checkpoints traveling anywhere near MX I'd say most of our
lives. We go out of our way to take paths that avoid them. If you didn't know
they existed it makes sense that they'd surprise you. I didn't know until
moving to TX and going on aimless roadtrips in my Jeep, quite the surprise.
And yeah, they'll harass the hell out of you. Everyone has some friend who was
detained for something or other then released. That's why we avoid them if
we're not actually going to MX. Specifically I remember a friend getting
detained for an expired drivers license when he was just a passenger.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Border_Patrol_in...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Border_Patrol_interior_checkpoints)

edit: Evidently there are some near Canada as well, didn't know that.

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blattimwind
Border checkpoints _inside_ the country?

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nitwit005
California has it's own checkpoints, although they're purely about keeping
pests out:
[https://www.cdfa.ca.gov/plant/pe/ExteriorExclusion/borders.h...](https://www.cdfa.ca.gov/plant/pe/ExteriorExclusion/borders.html)

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dawnerd
And more often then not they flag you through before you can even slow down.
They’re just really interested in trucks. Hawaii also does a checkpoint when
leaving.

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jstanley
What is going on in the world? Why are governments bringing in authoritarian
measures all the time? I don't get it. It can't always have been this way.

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betterunix2
Authoritarianism is the historical norm in every human civilization. In fact
America is one of the only examples of an empire that has been democratically
governed since its inception. America is also a rare example of a revolution
being followed by a lasting, multi-generational democracy (and that was a
close call -- remember that our first president was the commander of the army
that fought for revolution); the typical pattern is for some military leader
to refuse to give up power after a successful revolution, or if a democracy is
established it will usually end quickly after it is challenged by some crisis.
Examples are plentiful and can be found in the histories of every region of
human habitation on this planet, and it is a fantastic example of a phenomenon
that seems to transcend things like technological development, culture,
religion, and so forth.

Remember that for a democracy to work people have to be active participants,
and most people have other things to worry about in their lives. Democracies
tend to erode over time; every crisis will lead to a bit of erosion of a
democracy, and if the democracy is not reinforced following the crisis, it
will be eroded even further during the next crisis. The decline of the
Republican system of Rome is an interesting case study -- crisis after crisis
weakened the democratic institutions until Caesar struck the final blow.

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abecedarius
Right, but this doesn't explain the speed of recent change.

Maybe Steven Pinker jinxed civilization the same way that guy did who wrote a
book a few years before WW1 about how globalization made war between modern
states unthinkable.

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betterunix2
What makes you think this is unusually fast? If anything the example of Rome
was unusually slow, which is why it is so easy to understand the sequence of
events. The current trends are proceeding far slower than the decline of the
Weimar Republic: in 1928 the Nazi party won less than 3% of the vote; in 1930,
over 18%; in 1932 they were the largest party in parliament with nearly 38%;
after 1933 free elections stopped being held and Hitler was given the power to
enact laws without a parliamentary vote.

[Edit: Edited to correct the vote totals for the Nazis in 1930 and 1932.]

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humanrebar
> Hitler was given the power to enact laws without a parliamentary vote

It's worth noting that no _bill_ passed recently to create this new behavior.
It's all done through executive orders and other bureaucratic measures.

Congress has been happy to delegate its authority to the executive branch, the
executive obviously likes it, and the judiciary isn't going to contradict
_both_ other branches, so more detail oriented democratic measures
(legislation, constitutional amendments) have basically fallen away.

Thankfully the U.S. still has peaceful transmission of presidential power
between the major parties. For now at least. If there was one-party rule in
the executive branch for too long, things would stop looking democratic pretty
fast since neither the legislative nor judicial branches seem to be up for
getting Congress to do its job again [1].

[1] Like actually declaring war, requiring legislation go through the
legislature, balancing budgets, passing trade deals, overturning broken laws
instead of rewriting them from the bench, and just about everything else
besides approving judicial appointments (which is actually happening at a
steady clip for the moment).

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paulmd
> Thankfully the U.S. still has peaceful transmission of presidential power
> between the major parties

Let's not be _too_ hasty there. It's being severely curtailed at the state
level (several states gutting the power of Governor after democrats took that
seat in the last election) and who knows what will happen with Trump. He's
already screaming about voter fraud, if he loses who knows what's going to
happen.

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0x445442
I'd argue Trump is a product of an already one party system, at least when it
comes to the most important issues. With respect to anything of real substance
HW, Clinton, W and Obama were more or less indistinguishable.

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sverige
The idea of airport surveillance is itself dangerous, since "profiling" is
prohibited. Either do it the way El Al does it (obsessively complete
inspection of all persons boarding an aircraft) or forget it. Half measures
don't accomplish the stated purpose and are only a means to population
control, not for "security."

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edoo
If security was private the companies involved could do it however they
wanted, including using AI to profile. The TSA was created not for security
but to shield the airlines from liability, and also a bit as a jobs program.
In those regards it is a success.

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dawnerd
And now the airlines and airports want private security. Go figure.

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edoo
One thing to consider is anything that the government is allowed to do will
eventually be maximized by technology. The slightest allowed oppressions will
be amplified exponentially. Since tech is going to serious amplify anything we
do that makes the root principles all that more important.

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cbkeller
The article mentions that this push to collect biometric information is
happening at the same time as biometric information is being used more
frequently in device security.

While I don't know if it's reasonable to think DHS is sufficiently organized
and competent to actually put these two parts together w/r/t their "going dark
problem", this is probably as good time as any to reiterate that as a best
practice biometrics should only be used as _username_ information, not
password information.

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jwally
Given that 9/11 style attacks have been mitigated with cockpit locks and guns
are kept out with metal detectors what exactly are they trying to prevent?

