I couldn't tell you why, but the fact that it's administered by a private company seems so wrong.
Ewwww. It this is just wrong. The new screening procedures should just be rolled back to what they were seven years ago: no fiddling with liquids, no fiddling with shoes, just get on the plane after we scan all your bags.
One of these days, I'm planning on calculating the number of wasted hours of people's lives from the current regime using a queuing system model, but I think the results may be even more depressing than my estimate of their false positive rate.
1: Imagine the company that runs this someday becoming a wholly-owned subsidiary of Blackwater USA. Dystopian future, here we come!
You want a finger? I can get you a finger, believe me. With nail polish.
Retina are a little trickier, mind.
Completely wrong. I don't know why I'm surprised that in America someone would commercialize the uneven trade of liberty and privacy for convenience, but I am.
No, wait, "wrong" isn't the word I'm looking for. "Tacky" is the word I'm looking for.
Iris scan? What is this, True Lies? What's the point, they don't have iris scanners at the security checkpoints nor do they have a previous iris scan on record to compare it to.
We got photographed and fingerprinted to come into the States. The info gets linked to our passports and will follow when we get new passports.
But SCMT and SP are both right about the private company (that sort of thing usually ends badly, surely?) and the redundant iris scanning.
Never mind, apparently they will have fingerprint readers and iris scanners at the participating airports- that must be why it's slow to roll out.
4: But can you get it by 3 o'clock this afternoon?
Our latest episode of security theatre offers extra glamor for the discerning patron.
I'm planning on calculating the number of wasted hours of people's lives
Oh, gawd, yes. On Monday I flew to NYC and got flagged for extra screening. The swab of my bag and laptop set off the explosives sniffer.
TSA dude: "You haven't had any...lotion in this bag, have you?
Me: "Um, you mean ever?"
Comforting: they can't tell the differents between hand lotion residue and fucking explosives. I'm sure retina scans will help.
For at least a couple of years the airport here had a security person (rent-a-cop, not TSA) stationed at each garage entrance and you were required to open your trunk for inspection before entering. As near as I could tell, the only thing they were really looking for was a large red box with wires sticking out and the word "BOMB" written on each side in large letters. Any terrorist cunning enough to camouflage his bomb with, say, a suitcase, or even just a cardboard box that wasn't red and didn't say "BOMB" on it, was fine.
I hate this bullshit. Hate, hate, hate. Even though most of the airport security folks I've come in contact with in recent years have been competent and professional, or at least as competent and professional as you can be while doing something as fundamentally absurd as our current airport security regime.
extra glamor
It's true. IIRC, there was a Clear station at JFK the last time I flew out: a glowing blue booth, all clear plastic, some snazzy looking computers. I was impressed.
Having just finished season 1 of The Wire, fingerprint and iris scans don't really concern me. The real way to secure privacy is to have everyone call you by a street name.
Wait - haven't they tried this like 3 times before in the past five years, and haven't those previous attempts been failures for the reasons mentioned above? Why do they think it'll work this time?
That said, I'd sign up for this as a semi-regular traveller myself, if it seemed worth the time, money & hassle.
you will not be charged the $99.95 annual fee until you are approved for membership.
If I become a member, will I still have to take off my shoes?
And now, having followed the links....is it nuts that I find it deeply offensive to allow people to buy their way around airport security bullshit? Money is very useful for avoiding all sorts of hassles and I generally don't get too worked up about that; sometimes I take advantage of it myself. But when the government creates a whole bunch of mostly-pointless hassles and then lets my sort of people buy our way around it, it really bugs the hell out of me.
if it seemed worth the time, money & hassle
I've become a pretty frequent traveller, but as Becks says, fuck if I'm participating in this nonsense. Besides the privacy and stupidity issues, the elitism is just too obnoxious.
On preview, what NPH said.
In some participating airports, additional benefits such as complimentary baggage service or discounted concessions are included with the membership.
Would you like some free fries with that?
In a way, it's comforting that they're charging a fair amount for this. If it were free or for a nominal fee, there'd be a lot more suspicion of people who didn't want to sign up because, say, they didn't want to be cataloged by the government. If it were free and you didn't sign up, there would be a lot of, "What do you have to hide? You look guilty to me..."
Plus, this placates high-powered business travellers, the most powerful constituency for rationalizing airport security (which is the point, obvs.), leaving the rest of us even less likely to ever get relief.
20 gets it exactly right.
Maybe we should BURN SHIT DOWN. Or at least have some orange post titles.
17: The truly upsetting thing is that the government set up the artificial hurdles, then allows a private company to profit from their monopoly on getting around said hurdles. At least if the government were directly charging a fee, it would go into general revenue and have some shot at benefiting the public good.
22: In your future— an always running illegal immigrant checkpoint on the 405 in Pendleton with a "pre-approved toll road" paralleling it.
At least if the government were directly charging a fee, it would go into general revenue and have some shot at benefiting the public good abstinence education.
Keep in mind the authorities controlling those public revenues.
Exactly. Down this road lies a society in which everyone who gives up their privacy is assumed good and everyone else is an enemy of the state. The larger the first group is, the more likely the second is to be guilty. Very Stasi.
25: Luckily, we're all voluntarily anticipating such a regime by posting so much personal information on the Internet. I'm sure the Privacy Services Corporation will offer discounts to Facebook users.
27: Ha! My eyes are too bloodshot in all of my Facebook pictures--retnal ID is impossible!
Alcohol: the cause of and solution to all of life's problems.