Comment by rdslw | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rdslw | Hacker News Reader

Might be slightly off-topic, but I'm still curious about one experience:

On return flight from US I refused to use full body scanner. I got 'thorough pat' (called that way probably to scare us, although it wasn't so bad), also my carry-on was checked in detailed way.Interesting things happened further, I have two stage flight.

1. On first landing in Germany, while moving by foot to next connection, I was picked by Germany border officers from all passengers going through corridor, and examined for about 5 minutes, also my carry on was scanned. Nothing serious, but happened first time ever (try of 20 I would say)

2. on final destination, while I picked my checked bag, it was marked with stickers, and I was picked by border people of my country, also asked, both bags checked.

3. At home I saw TSA notice inside of my checked bag.

Last thing wasn't unusual, I would say I had it on 30% flights from US, but all three items in a row connected somehow (?) to the full body scan refusal, were a little bit too much for a pure coincidence.

As someone who refuses body scans every time and have never had anything happen (Other than a brief secondary that involved waiting for 5 minutes and a "Sorry, you're good to go"), I don't think refusing the full body scanners has anything to do with it

Likewise, I have refused scanning in the US, England, and the Netherlands, for the last 8 years and don't have much to report. As much as I hate security theatre, I try to be polite and when asked for the reason I opt out I state that it is political, the devices don't make us safer, and I'd like them to hire more personnel instead ("just like you fine Sir"). In the US, apart from an occasional sigh, my worst experiences have been being insulted by an agent at SFO and an agent putting my shoes with the soles down on my laptop at ORD despite me asking him not to. I do however find that agents in the UK are much less cooperative with "nutcases" such as me, with one officer stating that I made her feel "uncomfortable" by standing as opposed to sitting while waiting since I insisted on seeing my belongings as they take no responsibility for them.

Can you opt out in England? I was under the impression you can't do that. Quick search confirms: http://www.civilrightsmovement.co.uk/consequences-for-refusi...

Legally no. But if you say you opt out and insist, I've never had an issue

Same, request the pat down instead of the body scanner.

> with one officer stating that I made her feel "uncomfortable"

This is becoming a common reaction in the UK, not just at borders and not just with customs and immigration officers. I encountered a similar attitude once when I was accosted by a security guard in Tesco who demanded that I put shoes on. When I politely asked him why he immediately called his supervisor on the radio and told her that I was threatening him.

Uhh, why were you wandering around Tesco with no shoes on?

Seems like it's a statement being made about excessive hygiene norms. Personally I feel the soles of my feet afford some protection, but not enough for certain public places. I have no direct experience of Tesco, maybe they are especially clean.

I think it may be more a question of how clean the patron is. If they tend to walk around public places with no shoes on, one might imagine that their overall hygiene may not be particularly good.

Most likely though it's a health and safety policy - sharp things on the floor, etc.

I'm a fairly square, non-trouble-making, shower-positive individual who loves going around barefoot. I might think Tesco is the wrong place, but I wouldn't assume anything about a barefooted person.

Wearing shoes in a public supermarket is an excessive hygiene norm?

No. Sorry to have expressed myself poorly. Requiring people to wear shoes or else leave is the norm that I was thinking of. And to be clear I was trying to imagine what the reason would be for someone else to go barefoot.

Not OP but I've done that on occasion. Going barefoot has a certain liberation to it and an extra level of connectedness - I'd never know, for example, how frigging freezing the floors in the cold-produce aisle were if it weren't for having been barefoot (though it's obvious if one cares to think of it, I hadn't thought of it, like I said it's an extra awareness about one's surroundings). Pavement is really sore after only a few hundred metres if you're not used to being barefoot, grass is very comfy in contrast.

Try it!

Because I dislike wearing shoes; I didn't single out Tesco. And why not?

There's something in the idea that someone already in nonchalant violation of one social norm (wear shoes while in a public establishment) may well nonchalantly violate another (do not assault another person). It being the UK, I'm sure private security staff aren't permitted any more effective armament than a moderately harsh word, so it's quite plausible the guard with whom you spoke actually did feel threatened. Of course you're the sweetest fellow ever whelped and wouldn't so much as look crossways at a frog, but did he know that?

We are, after all, a species capable of some pretty astonishing levels of savagery, when we really put our minds to it. This is true of any ape, of course, but we're clever. The primary reason for social rules and norms to exist is to restrain us, by some means short of battery and homicide, from exercising the inventive nastiness that is our heritage. Of course one may break some such rules, like that about shoes in public places, and harm no one - but an important secondary function of compliance is in signaling probable harmlessness: "I follow the same rules you do," it says, "and therefore will not hurt you." Of course this may be false or even deceptive, as when serial killers use it to improve their ability to obtain victims. But the signal is itself meaningful, and the choice not to present it likewise.

Break what rules you will, to disregard the importance of such nonverbal signals is frankly foolish - potentially dangerous, too, in that you may through ignorance or carelessness betray yourself into another situation that poses you a real risk of harm. I don't know whether you still omit footwear at Tesco, but if so, perhaps at least now you'll better understand why people look at you funny when you do.

A safety signal set off by comedians (eg, Tim Minchin) but that fails to detect serial killers seems anything but "meaningful". It's just noise.

It actually sounds like a cognitive fault where an old instinct (that used to be useful) is counterproductive in the modern world.

Coddling that behavior leads us (pretty much invariably) to tragedy.

Do you think it's possible that serial killers, deliberately or otherwise, send an intentionally false signal in order to disguise the danger they present? I think it's possible.

Therefore, no signals sent in public by anyone should ever be trusted from now until eternity. Ergo, off to jail with you if you shouldn't want to explain in detail your actions of the day, no, of the week that lead up to this moment, along with corroborating proof and witnesses, because I just can't trust that air of sadness/indifference/joviality about you.

I'm not sure what claim you're arguing against, but I'm quite sure it's not one I've made.

Well of course it is.

But again, a "signal" with a high false-positive rate (eg, most people not wearing shoes pose no threat) and false-negative rate (eg, most criminals, especially the dangerous ones wear shoes) is not a good or meaningful signal. You can't make reliable predictions of danger from it, while attempting to distracts from more useful signals and gives us false confidence.

So not only does it not reveal danger, it gives us false confidence we can reliably detect danger, making us more vulnerable to real danger (eg, serial killers).

The instinct was likely useful as primitive humans (eg, preferring our species or pack to other species or packs), but likely is a detriment in modern society.

So is our default habit of eating extra when we have an immediate surplus, because it may save our lives when times are lean. Now that there's effectively always a surplus, that's a great way to get fat.

It's also how humans work, and it is worth bearing in mind in discussions like these that our entire recorded history has yet to recount any evolutionary meaningful period of time. Confusing how humans in modern society ideally should work, with how humans actually do work, leads nowhere productive that I've ever seen.

I don't disagree, but my point was regardless of why we're prone to it, it's a behavior with a net negative, and not to be encouraged. The comment I was originally replying to implied that it was a useful or meaningful signal.

It's not, it's a detrimental evolutionary holdover we should (attempt to) train ourselves to ignore.

Much like the behaviors that lead to obesity.

If it were possible to draw a clear line between "primitive human" and "non-primitive human", I might agree. But it's not. Perhaps one day it will be, but that day has yet to come, and the smartest, cleverest, most capable Mark One plains ape is a Mark One plains ape nonetheless. Imagining oneself otherwise seems like a sure path to regret.

Perhaps one day, too, there will exist a human or posthuman being of sufficient perceptive, cognitive, and mnemonic capacity to understand how our species and our societies work in sufficient detail and completeness to usefully contemplate its directed modification. That day also has yet to come, and judging by the results of those attempts at social engineering our histories document, I'd have to say that to suggest any such course of action is, in the most charitable interpretation, an expression of optimism very far beyond the possible.

Until such a day arrives - and I suspect we'll know it when it does - I might make so bold as to opine that a much more productive avenue for our efforts would instead be to perceive and understand how our species and our societies actually do work, with an eye toward optimizing our own behavior toward whatever goal we find best suits us, while not making ourselves so intolerable to our fellows that opprobrium becomes condign.

Granted, this requires not only humility but the total abandonment of faith in human perfectibility and all other such nonsense beliefs - neither of which changes is terribly palatable at first blush. I have, though, in my experiments thus far toward modeling my own behavior after this apparently heterodox ideal, observed the results to be quite strongly beneficial in my own case, and to the limit of my perceptual ability, in the cases of those who regularly interact with me as well. Perhaps others might observe a similar result.

There is a great range in how humans actually do work, so there is no clear line between optimization/improvement and perfectability--after all, isn't "perfection" just another synonym for improvement?

No, "human perfectibility" is a Rousseauvian strain of explicitly atheistic utopianism which crops up a lot in modern philosophy political and otherwise.

At its core, it is precisely the Christian doctrine of the new life in the world to come, only with the serial numbers filed off, and God and the eschaton elided from the picture. As such, it makes no bloody sense whatsoever, but still has a strong appeal for Unitarians and others uncomfortable with religion and thus unavailing of the Christian utopianism of which "human perfectibility" is a corruption.

On the other hand, expanding the range of social norms is fighting the good fight :-) We should insist on being judged purely on objective ethical criteria, demand tolerance and fairness and don't submit to herd mentality so easily. The social mechanisms you describe have been the basis for a different kind of savagery altogether.

...especially since being barefoot makes you less likely to start trouble for practical reasons anyway.

You make an excellent case for the prohibition of footwear: it makes it too easy for criminals to run away. Imagine a world where only the police wear shoes but criminals will be slowed by the extreme discomfort and injury cause by running away barefoot.

I used to refuse the scanner every time. I now have TSA Prime and don't have to anymore. When anyone asked me why I'm refusing I always made sure to give them as one of the reasons that I'm concerned about the TSA staff being exposed to radiation and the fact that they are prohibited to wear dosimeters. Makes it really hard for them to dislike you. Several got much friendlier after that.

What's TSA Prime?

It sounds like a way to sidestep the security theatre somewhat.

I'm guessing they mean TSA Precheck. It's basically a little background check that allows you to largely skip the screening process.

I mean TSA Pre. I just like to call it "Prime" as a joke.

A relative of mine used to work security at a busy airport for the TSA. I think a lot of discretion is given to the individual officers to decide who gets extra scrutiny - so one experience either way is not really going to light up a potential policy.

>I don't think refusing the full body scanners has anything to do with it

It might have had very much to do with it though, as in, the person refused body scan, and the TSA agent, who now had a chance to focus on them more, found them suspicious.

(In that, if they just went on an complied with the full body scan, the agent might not have thought about them twice).

I opt out 100% of the time in the US.

There is no readily available linkage between my presence at the pat down and my identity. I have never had to identify myself for scanning or for pat down.

It would take some effort to link me, either via facial recognition or surveillance tracking back or forwards to a sign-in location where my identity is known.

After opting out 100% of the time for years, I've had my bags inspected by TSA (the little note inside) only twice (out of probably 10 domestic trips and 40 international trips). Both times were international and both times were where I was carrying random wires, Arduino experiment kits, etc. (things that probably look suspicious on an Xray).

I doubt either had to do with opting out.

>I opt out 100% of the time in the US. There is no readily available linkage between my presence at the pat down and my identity. I have never had to identify myself for scanning or for pat down.

It's common to get a mark on your bags (marking you for further checks) as they pass through the belt, which can be put there depending on whether or not you seemed suspicious to the guards. No need to actively identify yourself for that.

My checked luggage has long ago been separated from me before I even stand in the TSA ID check line which is before I opt out of the scanner.

> There is no readily available linkage between my presence at the pat down and my identity. I have never had to identify myself for scanning or for pat down.

This is false. I apologize in advance for not being able to substantiate this beyond my own anecdote, but I was once flying cross country, at the part where they scan your ID before standing in line to have your genitals irradiated. A part of the agent's screen that isn't normally visible was facing me for whatever reason, and when my ID was scanned, "opt out requested" or similar appeared in green text.

I had previously also been 100% opt out. Presumably they were referring to times I had opted out in the past.

I won't speculate about how they link this data, it's not terribly hard, but FWIW, they know, and keep track.

I've never gotten a TSA ticket, despite also flying with lots of questionable-looking microcontrollers. I've even gone so far as to leave a note in the bag explaining what each piece was.

They've retired the dangerous X ray scanners at all but tiny airports. (Thanks, Obama.) It's reasonably safe to just let them do the full body scan now.

Of course, it's still your right under the written procedures to ask for a pat down instead.

This is no longer true as of about three weeks ago:

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-tsa-changes-policy-201...

That article is from 2015.

My refusal is on political grounds; it was never for medical safety concerns.

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