Replies (29)
interesting thought experiment
i support abolishing the tsa and then we can figure out how to deal with whatever comes next
Appreciate this line of thinking
Agreed.
Flying, particularly airports feel like prison every time.
Can’t get lost in the weeds of what happens if we get rid of the terrible thing bc another terrible thing could come after it.
If private, the likelihood of accountability is much lower due to lack of transparency, except for shareholder needs or if corporate social responsibility is in place at the org, which considers society at large. Or if someone speaks truth to power, but with a giant, giant megaphone i.e media 📣 Think what has happened with prison systems today.
These are all good points
ZK-proofs 👀
1) The TSA is about 20 years old, eliminating them only means going back about 20 years. They didn’t need your chat history or biometrics 25 years ago they don’t need it now. 2) No data besides biometrics are required to authenticate the person is who they say they are from your list. If that’s your approach. From there it’s a bag screening. Chat history and other data you are supposing they would try to collect for “risk of bringing a bomb on a flight” without screening every bag is, not going to work, it wouldn’t work now if they tried it with the TSA. 3) most of the The things people dislike from the TSA are things that airport security in the rest of the world doesn’t do. Leave your belt on, shoes on, etc, not be microwave scanned, etc it’s just an unnecessary level in the rest of the world, so probably an unnecessary degree for us too. Reverting to private security back to 1999 or modern UK/ France is achievable now without algorithms or pervasive data gathering. If you are going to screen every bag, and you will, then you don’t actually need to know anything about the passenger before the screening, you just need to go through their stuff (Xray, bomb dogs etc)
I hear you. I worry that a goldrush of some of the shadiest companies will happen in a blink.
Surveillance-oriented-companies love nothing more than areas where people *have to hand over data*.
And the "we need this data to keep ppl safe" fear thing is going to be a godsend.
If we aren't demanding that concerns about safeguards, limits & accountability are included in every step of the conversation now...it will be 100x harder to get them in place once big companies & lobbyists have set the terms of the game.
I hear what you are saying, and agree that this kind of advanced data collection probably is not necessary.
My view is: don't underestimate the power of these industries.
Consider that there's a difference between what kind of invasiveness might be needed.... and what will be instantly sought & probably granted.
Getting concrete. The cheaper bids on contracts will probably be because they rely heavily on more automated approaches... And to make that work, they are going to want data.
What are some possible radical solutions?
How many tragedies has the tsa thwarted?
How many have they over looked?
Prevention is hard to measure, but there has to be some way to accomplish an 80/20 analysis of TSA effectiveness.
For instance - how many shoe bombs have been found?
View quoted note →Why not just let the airlines keep their own planes safe?
true, that will probably happen
TSA was also created to solve a fake problem. 9/11 was fake. Al-qaeda was fake. This is all so tiresome.
They don't want people travelling freely. This was a huge pivot in 2001 in so many ways. The world changed for the worse, especially in the US.
Hi john 😉🤟🏴☠️ nice to meet you 🤝
You raise a crucial point criticizing existing systems is easy, but we need to think critically about the alternatives we create. A privatized TSA might remove some of the inefficiencies of government bureaucracy, but it could also introduce an entirely new set of risks, particularly around data privacy, corporate overreach, and lack of accountability.
AI-driven risk ratings sound efficient in theory, but as we’ve seen in other industries, they often lead to opaque, unchallengeable black-box decisions that disproportionately harm certain groups. And once a company accumulates vast pools of personal data, the temptation to monetize it or the risk of it being compromised becomes almost inevitable.
History suggests that privatized security firms wouldn’t necessarily be better at preventing breaches or respecting civil liberties. Instead, they could end up operating with even less transparency and oversight than government agencies. The key question is: how do we build a security model that balances efficiency, accountability, and privacy, rather than simply replacing one flawed system with another that could be even worse?
This is obvious. Because a country is supposed to protect is people, even the poorest. You cannot have 'low cost security planes'.
Not so simple or obvious in a free market, or a free society that doesn't depend on big daddy government for protection from everything. Private airlines will be incentivized to keep their planes safe. How many customers, jets, and employees do they want to lose to terrorists? How many CAN they lose before they are out of business? The winners will be those airlines that can keep their planes safe and do it politely and cheaply. I trust the free market can do that; we already know governments cannot.
It's all cool and beautiful, but what makes you even being up free markets or free society in the context of the US? Those times are long gone; one half wants a big gov, another one wants strong daddy. Neither are interested in free markets and free society.
I'm interested.
Would it be fair to say the true game is to surrender the data of the citizens to a lobbyist that has the infrastructure of digital capture in place already? Oh I don't know, Facebook or Palantir, perhaps? Or may be always hungry fElon pursuing total control? All this "wouldn't it be nice to dismantle TSA" is just smoke and mirrors in preparation for a private capture, read the oligarchy.
Once you hear the rumors, you can rest assured the deal has been made already imo
In such case, as a thought experiment, it's a good exercise.
VERY well said
I would not be ready to sacrify people to run such a race.
Governments have sacrificed more people than the free market.
Horrible take. The state has no incentive to make the process better for the consumer. You’ve created a number of straw men arguments to suggest that the state can do it better. Why wouldn’t the tsa also resort to the methods described? The tsa is violating the 4th amendment with every passenger. Flying is a govt controlled industry that’s inevitably getting worse over time. There is no longer any innovation and the incentive system is broken.
The TSA is a jobs program disguised as a security apparatus
TSA as it stands today is a downward spiral of handholding grown adults disguised as protection.
The utter dehumanization felt at airports is akin to cattle being farmed to slaughter, then released on good behavior.
“Strip down, put your hands up, and shut up” sounds more like a totalitarian principle than a preventative measure for a few bad actors.
Definitely needs to be a topic of discussion, but the solution can’t just be to privatize and move on.
lol airport security was always private until relatively recently, and still is in other countries, and it has always worked fine. da TSA is an orwellian nightmare nobody likes created to solve nonexistent problems. the ignorance of dese basic facts is even more orwellian and creepy... either dat or u ppl are just really young and didn't think dis thru. OH YA N DID I MENTION FUK U N FUK DA GVT???????
