> In total, the TSA raised concerns about almost 49,000 Clear customers who were enrolled despite facial-recognition software flagging them as non-matches, and concluded its broader methods were inherently inferior to how the government checks travelers’ IDs, the people said. Enrollment photos seen by Bloomberg in some cases didn’t show a face at all and instead, for example, a shoulder and ceiling.
Nah, as the people still have to go through screening no different than elderly or children (leave on shoes). Ramp workers go through separate doors with keypads- no screening. Even TSA doesn't screen themselves, as if a TSA government employee could not be bribed or coerced to take items around screening.
ID is not required to be shown to TSA. I misplaced my ID a couple times and went through.
The ID check was really to stop frequent flier award travel resale back when tickets were paper. It's still possible to use paper boarding pass today, though to my knowledge few people try to fly on tickets with someone else's name. It is still possible because showing ID, like the full body scan machines, is voluntary.
TSA misleads the public about what is mandatory. Freedom to travel is a right in USA. If you closely observe the TSA process, they check the ID with the name on boarding pass. This is revenue management service for the airlines.
For example if TSA misinformation, they claim full body imaging can be required yet they do not have that authority in practice. They can't even detain people.
That doesn't imply (let alone exply) a right to board a plane. This is the same logic used by self-proclaimed "sovereign citizens" to get out of everything from speeding tickets to California's agricultural checkpoints, and said logic falls apart for the exact same reason: you can exercise your freedom to travel on foot.
> If you closely observe the TSA process, they check the ID with the name on boarding pass.
Well yeah, obviously. The whole point of the checkpoint is to establish "you are who you say you are" and "you're authorized to be here", not just one or the other.
> they claim full body imaging can be required yet they do not have that authority in practice. They can't even detain people.
They clearly do and can, as plenty of people have learned the hard way. That, or you can walk (or drive, or bus, or train, or boat, or whatever) to your destination.
Like, I'm with you that TSA is security theater and largely pointless, but you don't have to buy into sovereign-citizen-style misinterpretations of the law in order to arrive at that conclusion.
> If you closely observe the TSA process, they check the ID with the name on boarding pass. This is revenue management service for the airlines.
The rationale for checking name match is there there is a separate part of the TSA process which identifies high-risk and prohibited individuals, and that works on name matching.
That has already been completed based on the name on the boarding pass, so using another persons boarding pass/false name would bypass those checks.
You could still bypass the airline's rules by entering with a ticket for another flight in your name (refundable or cheap) and using someone else's ticket at the gate. Couldn't check a bag, however. (although I inadvertently bypassed the checked bag-ID match at DCA last time)
It shouldn't because the TSA does not serve a real purpose other than to be a jobs program.
There has been a great deal of evidence over the years that the safety measures of the TSA are easily bypassed (google "TSA security theater" for a wealth of sources) and there's no evidence of increased safety since the department was created.
This is such a common refrain ("it's security theater"), but I never hear any alternatives that I think would be slightly viable.
To be clear, not really making an argument on TSA vs private security screeners that were in use before 9/11. But I am making the argument that those who like to shout "security theater" - what do you think is a better alternative? Do you honestly think it would ever work to just let flyers board planes with no screening of them or their luggage? When the inevitable jet loads of people are taken down by a terrorist bomb, the populous at large would be scrambling for more security, basically like they were after 9/11.
Basically I'd like to know what your alternative proposal is.
The pre-9/11 security screening itself was less invasive and faster than it is now. Luggage, bulky clothing, and anything that set off the metal detector still had to go through the X-ray.
A better alternative would be to let people keep their shoes on, stop worrying about liquids, and not scrutinize small objects in luggage that can't be identified, but obviously aren't guns or bombs large enough to crash a plane. Yes, people have tried to bomb aircraft using shoes and liquids, but those plots were not only ineffective but likely ineffectual.
IMO one nice (un?)intended consequence of the liquids restriction is limiting liquid spills on the floor of the plane i.e. somebody can't spill a 2-liter bottle of Mountain Dew or IDK, a gallon of laundry detergent on the plane (Sure there's the beverages on the plane or whatever you can buy post-security but they're usually not that large either) -- there's enough mess without having to deal with people porting around whatever amount of liquid they please.
We already made the sensible changes. X-raying bags, armored cockpit doors, and passengers who know to fight hijackers - the Flight 93 folks knew immediately the “be quiet, land, and everyone gets out alive” era was over.
We don’t need the shoe, laptop, and liquid rules that take most of the time.
How many terrorist “bombs” do you think it stops? If they had easy access to bombs why would they waste it on planes when they could just go into hospitals, trains, and buses and cause just as much havoc?
There were very few plane bombings even when bombing was popular (Oklahoma city, wtc, etc). Planes are only interesting to terrorists as a weapon, not a target.
Pre-9/11 the assumption was most nut job with guns on a plane wanted to hijack it as part of some heist, etc. 9/11 changed that assumption, locks went on cockpit doors, a few protocols were tweaked, and that actually solved the problem. The naked scanners on the ground were for theater of “being secure”.
There are loads of examples that terrorists love blowing up planes.
There are plenty of terrorist bombs that screening stopped (search the famous El Al case), or alternatively that terrorists were able to successfully bypass which led to stronger rules in the first place (e.g. the shoe bomber), or which they planned (e.g. the Bojinka Plot).
I can easily buy the argument that a lot of other commenters are making that a lot of the specific rules can be improved, or that there are other targeted approaches that could work better. What I absolutely don't buy, because there are plenty of examples to the contrary, is that screening itself is unnecessary.
Based on the timeline here they've mostly stopped. [1] The last one with any meaningful injuries was almost a decade ago, and the one before that a decade earlier. Compare that to the 70s and 80s.
We don't do any screening at FBOs/private terminals so long as the plane has less than some number of passengers. Every flight out of Oakland on JSX has zero screening whatsoever, you just walk on and those are 30-seat Embraers. Larger than some of the stuff going out of the regional gates at the main concourse. It's even in their marketing material under "bye bye hassle." [2]
> Based on the timeline here they've mostly stopped. [1] The last one with any meaningful injuries was almost a decade ago, and the one before that a decade earlier. Compare that to the 70s and 80s.
So, in other words, airline bombings have gone way down as screening procedures have increased?
If the only thing standing between America and another airplane based incident is the tireless work of the TSA, who fail 95% of their own red team attempts - why would there not be an incident out of a private aviation terminal where there is literally no security?
Either there’s some other non-security reason the likelihood has gone down and we don’t need the TSA — or it hasn’t, and something else (like reinforced cockpit doors) is stopping them and again we don’t need the TSA.
We’ve been running an A/B test the whole time between the public and private aviation terminals, and the results seem pretty compelling.
To answer your question directly: the procedures at the private terminal haven’t changed at all.
> Basically I'd like to know what your alternative proposal is.
We already did it. The only thing we did to materially improve security in air travel since 9/11 is fortifying the cockpit doors. It's super effective.
My proposal: More or less what we had pre 9/11. We solved the the vulnerability that 9/11 exposed in under a year - the inability to lock down the cabin to protect it from hostiles. Every commercial plane has newer doors installed now.
This means the only really viable attack on aircraft is to blow them up mid-air which:
Just want to say I very much agree with this, and pretty much most of the other responses here. A lot of the times when I hear people talk about TSA "security theater" I hear them arguing that we really shouldn't have any screening at all, but it seems like the responses here are arguing specifically against:
1. Taking off your shoes
2. The liquids rule
3. Taking out your laptop.
To which I totally agree (and since as a TSA Precheck member I never hit those issues anyway I don't notice them as much).
I’d be the first to say I’m not a fan of the TSA but this is a bit of an extreme take.
Yes, you can bypass the measures, but there’s a fallacy in assuming they don’t still stop bad actors.
iirc the TSA failure rate is an abysmal 70%, but I’d wager that for determined, organized individuals a lock has the same failure rate. You can easily break past a lock but does that mean we should be leaving our doors, cars etc unlocked?
The solution is probably to replace them or improve them but not get rid of them altogether. Or perhaps the solution is to increase the purview of DHS here, which is generally more skilled and has comparatively stellar performance stopping domestic threats.
Everything I've read concurs with an extreme view. 70% failure is a good day for them. They accomplish very close to nothing. They catch a lot of dumb people that mistakenly packed firearms, and not much else.
"TSA agents failed 67 out of 70 tests, with Red Team members repeatedly able to get potential weapons through checkpoints...Two years later, a Red Team test at Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport achieved the same 95 percent failure rate to detect explosives, weapons, and illegal drugs. Repeat national tests in 2017 also went badly, "in the ballpark" of an 80 percent failure rate."[1]
22 years after 9/11, there has not been a serious aviation terrorist attack in America. I don't think anybody likes TSA, but it's better than nothing. It's too bad the National Guard or the military can't run it
That paragraph is a bit misleading/unclear in my opinion, and is further explained lower in the article. Basically the Clear enrollment process is this:
1. First, the prospective enrollee needs to be matched to their ID. The normal way to do this is to take the person's picture, and then facial recognition software matches that face with their ID. However, since facial recognition isn't perfect, there is a "manual override" process where a Clear employee manually checks your ID and says "yes, this is you." That's why I don't think the sentence about "Enrollment photos seen by Bloomberg in some cases didn’t show a face at all and instead, for example, a shoulder and ceiling" is really that big a deal, because in those cases the photo was just ignored, and the person's ID was manually verified (which is what TSA agents do anyways).
2. Once your ID has been verified, then the Clear system scans your retina and your fingerprints. For any flights then that you want to board, Clear just does a retina scan to look up your ID.
The problem is that if the original ID verification is wrong (e.g. the applicant had someone else's ID that just happens to look similar to them, think of the 20 year old trying to get into the bar with their older sibling's ID), it basically would allow the person to fly unlimited without their ID ever being checked again. That is, you only need to "sneak in" once.
I think a better solution is to just more periodically revalidate IDs, and pick some percentage for random additional verification.
As a US Citizen with "western values" the CLEAR program was always suspicious for "slippery slope" reasons. Meanwhile, a wealthy South Asian man nearby who lives and does business completely in the USA, applied for and got CLEAR ID immediately when the program was made public, long ago. We speculated that since he is dark skinned with a foreign name, he was concerned about being singled out for security ? Post-911 was a bad time for the USA. The article here says in the fine print at the bottom that there may be little legal basis for a number of common TSA practices, but there is literally no choice. Combine that with scrupulous license plate readers and the "shoes off" ritual, it really does seem like an alternate social system.
You still go through metal detectors with CLEAR and can still be singled out for additional security at that point? Its just a fast pass to the front of the line, like TSA Pre.
I have both and I've sometimes waited for CLEAR kiosks/agents to open up, and got impatient and went to TSA Pre, and vice versa.
edit: okay from the article it suggests at one point they did let you skip security completely with CLEAR.
> who lives and does business completely in the USA, applied for and got CLEAR ID immediately when the program was made public
Are you mixing up Clear and Global Entry? Clear only expedites domestic flights [EDIT: departures]. And it never let you skip security, just get to the front of the line.
For some additional context as to how Clear exists, airports have the responsibility for managing passenger flow up to the TSA checkpoint. Within the checkpoint, it's all government-run. This is why Clear subscribers still have to take off their shoes.
Clear's business model is to give airports part of the subscriber revenue in return for allowing their employees manage the queues, which they use to direct subscribers into checkpoints with shorter lines.
I've long held the opinion that the government should ban all forms of paying a third party extra for shorter waits in security lines, but then wealthy frequent travelers would start pushing back on the security process itself.
My company paid for me to get precheck/globalentry years ago and I still have it after having left. I can say from my experience about 99% of the time it actually is a shorter line and a much smoother experience. And even in cases where its not shorter, it can still be faster since people don't have to take off shoes, belt, etc.
To add to this, the line is also faster because you're not dealing with the people who never fly and can't figure out how to put a bag on a conveyer belt.
There's a better argument for Global Entry and TSA Precheck since at least in theory they're not about paying money, but about reduced scrutiny in exchange for submitting to a background check. The fee is (supposedly) to cover the costs of running the program.
Of course, I'm cynical enough to believe that they, too are about reducing pushback against security procedures from the sort of people politicians actually listen to.
> Of course, I'm cynical enough to believe that they, too are about reducing pushback against security procedures from the sort of people politicians actually listen to.
I completely agree with this, but at the same time I paid for Global Entry. It feels ok to me since it's really a government program that helps with a government requirement.
I find CLEAR offensive because of the way it blurs public/private boundaries.
Maybe rare and unpopular to think about, but a one-time check allowing less scrutiny for future boarding is a gift to radicals who may not care about living beyond One Big Act.
Also, agreeing with GP, it generally creates a lower class of government trust based on wealth.
Hence the goal of forcing the powerful and wealthy to go through the same process as everyone else.
When we force the same process on the powerful and wealthy as are applied to everyone, suddenly these programs that inconvenienced tens of millions without any careful evaluation are put under close scrutiny to determine their value.
The most wealthy fly on private jets. But there are still plenty of wealthy and powerful people who fly commercial
Look at it this way, if you can afford to donate $6,600 to a house candidate every two years (current max donations for primary and general election for a single candidate), you're absolutely wealthy enough to get a member of the house of representatives to listen to you and take your concerns seriously (at least for a brief period during the election cycles).
You're also not nearly wealthy enough to be flying private, but you are probably wealthy enough to be paying for CLEAR, TSA Pre-Check, or another option to reduce the hassle of security lines.
+1000 and they should ban TSA precheck as well. Combine that with mandating that Congress travel commercial and wait in line with the proletariat and you’ll have a solution faster than you can say “equal treatment”.
Unlike Clear, precheck is trading an up-front background check for a less involved inspection when traveling. I'd imagine if it was up to the TSA everyone would do precheck.
Air travel is a luxury. Basically everything else in the airport is private and for a huge fee except the airport itself - and even that's not universally true. If they want to charge for shorter lines why not? Government services charge expedite fees for basically everything else, why not here?
Seems a weird place to draw the line, eh, $30 burgers and $8 water - equally optional - are fine, but $179/yr for people who value their time disproportionately highly is a step too far? Despite the average ticket costing some ~$300? [2]
This whole thing is kind of silly - the identity and name of the passenger shouldn't even matter in the first place, the security checkpoint should remove anything dangerous no matter what their name is. They don't though, TSA fails over 90% of their own red team operations. That's where the focus should be. [1]
Airlines can reasonably charge customers extra for a shorter check-in or boarding line because the airline owns those processes and pays the staff that operate them. Shops can reasonably charge whatever people will pay, which tends to be higher when they're a captive audience.
Why should airlines or Clear have any authority over the security line when they're not the ones requiring or conducting the security check?
They don't have any authority over the security check itself, just the line, as delegated to them by the airport. As you say. But the airport is where you line up, the airport is who you pay for your experience (XF, $4.50 per ticket at SFO anyways), and the airport is private property.
So I guess my question is, why shouldn't the airport - who you're paying admission to - get to decide who can line up where, any less than security at the ballpark? Why should they not defer that authority to someone else? The airport is a business too, generally speaking, and they have customers who value getting through the line faster. They've deferred that determination to a third party who also manages said line-up.
What difference does it make who's running the line - SFO staff or Clear staff? They're going to be private contractors either way. And at SFO you're just going from one private contractor who manages the line-up (Clear) to another one who manages the actual security (CAS, not the TSA) - to another private company who flies you somewhere. Unless you stop at the privately operated restaurants or lounges (almost certainly Aramark).
Would you feel differently if CAS ran the lines, or if Clear did the security?
This is the government erecting barriers for no reason, then understaffing to make lines longer, then you get to pay government to buy back some of your time, and you get to pay a private company to buy back some more of your time.
From a quick websearch [1], it shows that the airport with the longest wait time on average was 26 minutes (STL) for a TSA checkpoint.
What should that target number be?
Also, how many people who arrive within the recommended window (2 hours before departure time for domestic, 3 hours for international) miss their flight due to security checkpoint delays, and how many people over all miss their flight due to security delays.
The purpose of the onboarding process (of which TSA checkpoints is one portion) is to maximize passenger safety, not minimize frustration. How much should US tax payers be expected to pay for better customer service?
You may not realise this, but you need to be reasonably affluent *and* fly quite a bit for this to make sense. An extra $190 to shave off 15 or so minutes(1) for 1 or 2 trips a year is, frankly, not an affordable luxury for most.
For families it'd be worth it sooner, but if 2 parents join, you'll need to fork over $380. You could also put that towards your family holidays. E.g., it's enough for three tickets to Disney World.
(1) another comment stated that average regular TSA wait time was 26 min worst-case.
Flying isn't just for luxury. In my previous job, I was sent to client sites, a week at a time, for about 60% of the year. I flew 2ish weeks a month every month for years.
Because of the above, I demanded to only fly Delta, and I got the Amex Skymiles credit card. I built status, and often, got free upgrades to First Class. Another "not-a-luxury" thing. When you're boarding and you walk by all the First Class passengers, most of them are there on their company's dime, and nearly all got a free upgrade or paid a highly reduced rate.
The AMEX SkyMiles Credit Card also pays for your PreCheck or Global Entry. So even that was "free" for me (depending how you define 'free' and 'credit cards')
We're mostly saying the same thing here--though adding an adult is only $60, so it's $250 for a family.
If you fly infrequently, it's probably not worth the cost. If you do fly frequently, it probably is.
However, in response to the commenter whom I originally replied to, my opinion is Clear is not a luxury for only the wealthy. And it seems silly to prohibit Clear because of philosophical opposition to paying for expedited access.
The author of this doesn’t fly much, and probably isn’t actually a clear member. Nobody who pays for clear uses it because they don’t want to show ID: any frequent traveller has ID (probably a Real ID, too) and uses Clear to jump to the front of the PRE line. Also, and frequent traveller probably encounters non-Clear airports so has yet another reason to ensure they’ve got ID.
As for one of the more bizarre comments here: No minorities are signing up for clear to skip TSA, it doesn’t do that… it merely puts you at the front of the TSA line.
This just seems like a rebel-without-a-clue ranting about … something?
> Nobody who pays for clear uses it because they don’t want to show ID: any frequent traveller has ID…uses Clear to jump to the front of the PRE line
The author concludes as much: “There’s been a lot of speculation that the requirement to show ID somehow undermines the usefulness of CLEAR. But maybe not showing ID is an ancillary benefit at best to the customer, even if it’s how the program is sold. We pretend it’s about identity verification when really it’s about priority in getting through security faster. It still does that. The usefulness of the service would change not at all.”
Notably, the line-skipping benefit to users only exists if a minority of people use it. If it becomes widely used, it degrades to the old state of affairs (i.e. waiting in line behind all the other CLEAR users). Without actual increases to throughput of the TSA checkpoint, it's only temporarily beneficial to early adopters as everyone else catches up. And when we're done, a private company has gathered loads of facial recognition data, CLEAR flyers paid for the privilege of giving it up, and they still have to wait in line.
> author suggests that the program is sold on the basis of not requiring ID. This is untrue
But it is a benefit. I have flown without ID on account of losing it. Without Clear, TSA concocted an opera out of the matter. With it, it was entirely unremarlable.
The benefit is being able to leave your ID in your pocket/bag. It is not to be able to travel without ID. You are describing an edge case, not a reason a frequent traveller would opt to purchase Clear. (Fwiw, I understand this edge case, I’ve flown to Canada from the US w/o a passport because I could show the gate agents my Nexus card, but this is not a feature of having Nexus. The same logic holds for Clear.)
Being a trusted traveler with global entry, I loathe clear with a passion. It means 2 metres from the TSA checkpoint I have to let a family of six randos cut the precheck line I was told to stand in and wait while they fumble for their ID and juggle their shoes.
Just roll them to the back of the line and stop acting like the fact that they surrendered s generation of biometric data to a startup entitles them to anything more than equality.
I’m the type of guy who runs a pihole and types in 867-5309 as my shoppers club lookup at the supermarket checkout, but I have never more gladly traded a little privacy for time than when purchasing Clear. I would have gladly given them a stool sample if it meant never having to wait in security theater line at JFK.
Clear puts them in front of the general line. if you have ge won't you be in the precheck line? unless they have clear + precheck. but i guess this varies by airport too.
At my local airport, you can schedule a time ahead with TSA. It is 100% free, and they basically provide the same service of "walking you to the front of the TSA line."
Seems like a better option than paying a corporation for "convenience".
I'm not sure how someone could get through with the incorrect identity unless their eye scan results in the record of someone with the same name.
The process for CLEAR is:
1. Stand next to the kiosk for recognition. For whatever reasons, the machines always seem to have problems with me, but eventually get a good scan and bring up the correct record.
2. Scan your boarding pass at the kiosk, which (supposedly) validates that you're on a flight at this airport and that your name matches what's on the boarding pass.
3. You're escorted to the TSA agent, the CLEAR agent vouches for you, and you just wave your boarding pass in the air to the TSA agent (no scanning).
Often (including this week), I get flagged to show my identification to the CLEAR agent and to the TSA agent. Ultimately, I could have gone through less hassle with simply the TSA Precheck line.
Many times the TSA Precheck line is actually faster. However, when that line is backed up (usually at certain airports like DCA), having CLEAR is a winner. YMMV
96 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 69.6 ms ] thread> In total, the TSA raised concerns about almost 49,000 Clear customers who were enrolled despite facial-recognition software flagging them as non-matches, and concluded its broader methods were inherently inferior to how the government checks travelers’ IDs, the people said. Enrollment photos seen by Bloomberg in some cases didn’t show a face at all and instead, for example, a shoulder and ceiling.
This seems like it ought to be a huge story.
The ID check was really to stop frequent flier award travel resale back when tickets were paper. It's still possible to use paper boarding pass today, though to my knowledge few people try to fly on tickets with someone else's name. It is still possible because showing ID, like the full body scan machines, is voluntary.
TSA misleads the public about what is mandatory. Freedom to travel is a right in USA. If you closely observe the TSA process, they check the ID with the name on boarding pass. This is revenue management service for the airlines.
For example if TSA misinformation, they claim full body imaging can be required yet they do not have that authority in practice. They can't even detain people.
https://twitter.com/TSA/status/679447467922984961
That doesn't imply (let alone exply) a right to board a plane. This is the same logic used by self-proclaimed "sovereign citizens" to get out of everything from speeding tickets to California's agricultural checkpoints, and said logic falls apart for the exact same reason: you can exercise your freedom to travel on foot.
> If you closely observe the TSA process, they check the ID with the name on boarding pass.
Well yeah, obviously. The whole point of the checkpoint is to establish "you are who you say you are" and "you're authorized to be here", not just one or the other.
> they claim full body imaging can be required yet they do not have that authority in practice. They can't even detain people.
They clearly do and can, as plenty of people have learned the hard way. That, or you can walk (or drive, or bus, or train, or boat, or whatever) to your destination.
Like, I'm with you that TSA is security theater and largely pointless, but you don't have to buy into sovereign-citizen-style misinterpretations of the law in order to arrive at that conclusion.
The rationale for checking name match is there there is a separate part of the TSA process which identifies high-risk and prohibited individuals, and that works on name matching.
That has already been completed based on the name on the boarding pass, so using another persons boarding pass/false name would bypass those checks.
You could still bypass the airline's rules by entering with a ticket for another flight in your name (refundable or cheap) and using someone else's ticket at the gate. Couldn't check a bag, however. (although I inadvertently bypassed the checked bag-ID match at DCA last time)
There has been a great deal of evidence over the years that the safety measures of the TSA are easily bypassed (google "TSA security theater" for a wealth of sources) and there's no evidence of increased safety since the department was created.
To be clear, not really making an argument on TSA vs private security screeners that were in use before 9/11. But I am making the argument that those who like to shout "security theater" - what do you think is a better alternative? Do you honestly think it would ever work to just let flyers board planes with no screening of them or their luggage? When the inevitable jet loads of people are taken down by a terrorist bomb, the populous at large would be scrambling for more security, basically like they were after 9/11.
Basically I'd like to know what your alternative proposal is.
A better alternative would be to let people keep their shoes on, stop worrying about liquids, and not scrutinize small objects in luggage that can't be identified, but obviously aren't guns or bombs large enough to crash a plane. Yes, people have tried to bomb aircraft using shoes and liquids, but those plots were not only ineffective but likely ineffectual.
One, Pre-Check rules for everyone. Shoes and jacket on, metal detector only. ID check or biometrics. Random subset of bags get X-rayed.
Arming cockpit doors went 90% of the way to preventing another 9/11.
We already made the sensible changes. X-raying bags, armored cockpit doors, and passengers who know to fight hijackers - the Flight 93 folks knew immediately the “be quiet, land, and everyone gets out alive” era was over.
We don’t need the shoe, laptop, and liquid rules that take most of the time.
There were very few plane bombings even when bombing was popular (Oklahoma city, wtc, etc). Planes are only interesting to terrorists as a weapon, not a target.
Pre-9/11 the assumption was most nut job with guns on a plane wanted to hijack it as part of some heist, etc. 9/11 changed that assumption, locks went on cockpit doors, a few protocols were tweaked, and that actually solved the problem. The naked scanners on the ground were for theater of “being secure”.
There are plenty of terrorist bombs that screening stopped (search the famous El Al case), or alternatively that terrorists were able to successfully bypass which led to stronger rules in the first place (e.g. the shoe bomber), or which they planned (e.g. the Bojinka Plot).
I can easily buy the argument that a lot of other commenters are making that a lot of the specific rules can be improved, or that there are other targeted approaches that could work better. What I absolutely don't buy, because there are plenty of examples to the contrary, is that screening itself is unnecessary.
We don't do any screening at FBOs/private terminals so long as the plane has less than some number of passengers. Every flight out of Oakland on JSX has zero screening whatsoever, you just walk on and those are 30-seat Embraers. Larger than some of the stuff going out of the regional gates at the main concourse. It's even in their marketing material under "bye bye hassle." [2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_airliner_bombing_a...
[2] https://www.jsx.com/flying-with-us
So, in other words, airline bombings have gone way down as screening procedures have increased?
Either there’s some other non-security reason the likelihood has gone down and we don’t need the TSA — or it hasn’t, and something else (like reinforced cockpit doors) is stopping them and again we don’t need the TSA.
We’ve been running an A/B test the whole time between the public and private aviation terminals, and the results seem pretty compelling.
To answer your question directly: the procedures at the private terminal haven’t changed at all.
We already did it. The only thing we did to materially improve security in air travel since 9/11 is fortifying the cockpit doors. It's super effective.
This means the only really viable attack on aircraft is to blow them up mid-air which:
1. Is much less impactful
2. Still achievable by a determined actor today
1. Taking off your shoes
2. The liquids rule
3. Taking out your laptop.
To which I totally agree (and since as a TSA Precheck member I never hit those issues anyway I don't notice them as much).
Yes, you can bypass the measures, but there’s a fallacy in assuming they don’t still stop bad actors.
iirc the TSA failure rate is an abysmal 70%, but I’d wager that for determined, organized individuals a lock has the same failure rate. You can easily break past a lock but does that mean we should be leaving our doors, cars etc unlocked?
The solution is probably to replace them or improve them but not get rid of them altogether. Or perhaps the solution is to increase the purview of DHS here, which is generally more skilled and has comparatively stellar performance stopping domestic threats.
"TSA agents failed 67 out of 70 tests, with Red Team members repeatedly able to get potential weapons through checkpoints...Two years later, a Red Team test at Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport achieved the same 95 percent failure rate to detect explosives, weapons, and illegal drugs. Repeat national tests in 2017 also went badly, "in the ballpark" of an 80 percent failure rate."[1]
[1] https://reason.com/2021/11/19/after-20-years-of-failure-kill...
1. First, the prospective enrollee needs to be matched to their ID. The normal way to do this is to take the person's picture, and then facial recognition software matches that face with their ID. However, since facial recognition isn't perfect, there is a "manual override" process where a Clear employee manually checks your ID and says "yes, this is you." That's why I don't think the sentence about "Enrollment photos seen by Bloomberg in some cases didn’t show a face at all and instead, for example, a shoulder and ceiling" is really that big a deal, because in those cases the photo was just ignored, and the person's ID was manually verified (which is what TSA agents do anyways).
2. Once your ID has been verified, then the Clear system scans your retina and your fingerprints. For any flights then that you want to board, Clear just does a retina scan to look up your ID.
The problem is that if the original ID verification is wrong (e.g. the applicant had someone else's ID that just happens to look similar to them, think of the 20 year old trying to get into the bar with their older sibling's ID), it basically would allow the person to fly unlimited without their ID ever being checked again. That is, you only need to "sneak in" once.
I think a better solution is to just more periodically revalidate IDs, and pick some percentage for random additional verification.
I have both and I've sometimes waited for CLEAR kiosks/agents to open up, and got impatient and went to TSA Pre, and vice versa.
edit: okay from the article it suggests at one point they did let you skip security completely with CLEAR.
- Clear does not allow you to bypass either regular security or TSA Precheck security, just to get to the front of the line.
Are you mixing up Clear and Global Entry? Clear only expedites domestic flights [EDIT: departures]. And it never let you skip security, just get to the front of the line.
Sorry, you’re correct. Clarified. Point is, someone ”who lives and does business completely in the USA” is Clear’s target market.
Clear's business model is to give airports part of the subscriber revenue in return for allowing their employees manage the queues, which they use to direct subscribers into checkpoints with shorter lines.
Of course, I'm cynical enough to believe that they, too are about reducing pushback against security procedures from the sort of people politicians actually listen to.
I completely agree with this, but at the same time I paid for Global Entry. It feels ok to me since it's really a government program that helps with a government requirement.
I find CLEAR offensive because of the way it blurs public/private boundaries.
Also, agreeing with GP, it generally creates a lower class of government trust based on wealth.
I maintain it is latter, at the expense of multiple very real and often dismissed constitutional issues
When we force the same process on the powerful and wealthy as are applied to everyone, suddenly these programs that inconvenienced tens of millions without any careful evaluation are put under close scrutiny to determine their value.
The most poor are completely and totally helpless to change things.
It's the group between those extremes that sign up for CLEAR; as a group though they could push for removing the need for CLEAR.
Look at it this way, if you can afford to donate $6,600 to a house candidate every two years (current max donations for primary and general election for a single candidate), you're absolutely wealthy enough to get a member of the house of representatives to listen to you and take your concerns seriously (at least for a brief period during the election cycles).
You're also not nearly wealthy enough to be flying private, but you are probably wealthy enough to be paying for CLEAR, TSA Pre-Check, or another option to reduce the hassle of security lines.
Seems a weird place to draw the line, eh, $30 burgers and $8 water - equally optional - are fine, but $179/yr for people who value their time disproportionately highly is a step too far? Despite the average ticket costing some ~$300? [2]
This whole thing is kind of silly - the identity and name of the passenger shouldn't even matter in the first place, the security checkpoint should remove anything dangerous no matter what their name is. They don't though, TSA fails over 90% of their own red team operations. That's where the focus should be. [1]
[1] https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/tsa-agents-minneapolis-airpo...
[2] https://www.bankrate.com/finance/credit-cards/domestic-airfa...
Why should airlines or Clear have any authority over the security line when they're not the ones requiring or conducting the security check?
So I guess my question is, why shouldn't the airport - who you're paying admission to - get to decide who can line up where, any less than security at the ballpark? Why should they not defer that authority to someone else? The airport is a business too, generally speaking, and they have customers who value getting through the line faster. They've deferred that determination to a third party who also manages said line-up.
What difference does it make who's running the line - SFO staff or Clear staff? They're going to be private contractors either way. And at SFO you're just going from one private contractor who manages the line-up (Clear) to another one who manages the actual security (CAS, not the TSA) - to another private company who flies you somewhere. Unless you stop at the privately operated restaurants or lounges (almost certainly Aramark).
Would you feel differently if CAS ran the lines, or if Clear did the security?
The TSA should run its own line because it's the one imposing the screening requirement.
You are right then that SFO is public property but of course that doesn’t make it freely accessible.
It’s odd take to think that is something that is only attainable for wealthy travelers.
What’s the point of money if it cannot be exchanged for increased convenience?
What should that target number be?
Also, how many people who arrive within the recommended window (2 hours before departure time for domestic, 3 hours for international) miss their flight due to security checkpoint delays, and how many people over all miss their flight due to security delays.
The purpose of the onboarding process (of which TSA checkpoints is one portion) is to maximize passenger safety, not minimize frustration. How much should US tax payers be expected to pay for better customer service?
[1]: https://usebounce.com/blog/airport-wait-times-2023
For families it'd be worth it sooner, but if 2 parents join, you'll need to fork over $380. You could also put that towards your family holidays. E.g., it's enough for three tickets to Disney World.
(1) another comment stated that average regular TSA wait time was 26 min worst-case.
Because of the above, I demanded to only fly Delta, and I got the Amex Skymiles credit card. I built status, and often, got free upgrades to First Class. Another "not-a-luxury" thing. When you're boarding and you walk by all the First Class passengers, most of them are there on their company's dime, and nearly all got a free upgrade or paid a highly reduced rate.
The AMEX SkyMiles Credit Card also pays for your PreCheck or Global Entry. So even that was "free" for me (depending how you define 'free' and 'credit cards')
Once my wifes work schedule settles down, I plan on upgrading to the platinum amex.
If you fly infrequently, it's probably not worth the cost. If you do fly frequently, it probably is.
However, in response to the commenter whom I originally replied to, my opinion is Clear is not a luxury for only the wealthy. And it seems silly to prohibit Clear because of philosophical opposition to paying for expedited access.
This isn't universally true, for instance at SFO checkpoints are run by a private contractor: Covenant Aviation Security or CAS. [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covenant_Aviation_Security
As for one of the more bizarre comments here: No minorities are signing up for clear to skip TSA, it doesn’t do that… it merely puts you at the front of the TSA line.
This just seems like a rebel-without-a-clue ranting about … something?
The author concludes as much: “There’s been a lot of speculation that the requirement to show ID somehow undermines the usefulness of CLEAR. But maybe not showing ID is an ancillary benefit at best to the customer, even if it’s how the program is sold. We pretend it’s about identity verification when really it’s about priority in getting through security faster. It still does that. The usefulness of the service would change not at all.”
It's exactly this - a shorter line you can pay for under the guise of technology.
Which is what the price gate confers.
But it is a benefit. I have flown without ID on account of losing it. Without Clear, TSA concocted an opera out of the matter. With it, it was entirely unremarlable.
It's basically a tolled express lane for humans.
Just roll them to the back of the line and stop acting like the fact that they surrendered s generation of biometric data to a startup entitles them to anything more than equality.
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/YOU/clear-secure/m...
Seems like a better option than paying a corporation for "convenience".
I'm not sure how someone could get through with the incorrect identity unless their eye scan results in the record of someone with the same name.
The process for CLEAR is:
1. Stand next to the kiosk for recognition. For whatever reasons, the machines always seem to have problems with me, but eventually get a good scan and bring up the correct record.
2. Scan your boarding pass at the kiosk, which (supposedly) validates that you're on a flight at this airport and that your name matches what's on the boarding pass.
3. You're escorted to the TSA agent, the CLEAR agent vouches for you, and you just wave your boarding pass in the air to the TSA agent (no scanning).
Often (including this week), I get flagged to show my identification to the CLEAR agent and to the TSA agent. Ultimately, I could have gone through less hassle with simply the TSA Precheck line.
Many times the TSA Precheck line is actually faster. However, when that line is backed up (usually at certain airports like DCA), having CLEAR is a winner. YMMV