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Comment by codyb | Hacker News Reader

Huh, I do it every time. Never behind a privacy screen. Never bothered me at all.

The only shitty part is when agents let your stuff go through the scanners but you’re stuck behind the machines. I’m always trying to crane my neck to make sure no one walks off with a laptop.

Usually the TSA agents are very nice. I ask them about their days, how things are, and then I’m on my way.

I like to exercise my rights just to make sure they keep being available, and there’s not much better to do inside the airport anyways.

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The sad thing is that even if you're not in the machine, the machine can still scan you -- as long as you're within a certain distance of it.

When the machines first started being used there was some expose on them where pics from the machine were leaked, and you could clearly see that even people waiting in line within about 10 feet of the machine or so were scanned, and you can clearly see their bodies appear in the images, just as you can those who were in the machine itself.

Now, being scanned outside of the machine probably doesn't give them as good an image as outside of the machine, and they won't get an image of both sides of your body, but nevertheless your body will be covered to some extent with radiation from the machine.

I've always opted out of the machines at the airport, and they've always made me wait in a chair within 10 feet or so of the machine. So I know I'm getting some radiation dose from it, but really don't know what to do about it.

Tell the TSA agents that they need to tell their doctors to aggressively screen for cancer. Standing next to these things for 40 hours a week for months has NOT been proven safe.

Hopefully, the cost of supporting this useless security theater will make it infeasible eventually.

The TSA got rid of all the backscatter x-ray machines, so the body scanners aren't using ionizing radiation anymore. This was the biggest health concern with the old devices, and I was really glad to see those gone.

The newer scanners use millimeter wave RF, which is non-ionizing and much safer. The primary concern with RF is classic thermal effects, which shouldn't be significant at low power levels.

There's still plenty of room for research on the topic, but no direct causal link to any health effects have been found with these systems at present.

(That said, the TSA agents are also standing next to the baggage x-ray machines all day. And I do still see backscatter x-ray body scanners in use in other countries.)

Fortunately and unfortunately, I nearly always travel with one or more young kids, which means I can't realistically do stuff like this that'll delay things (they have small bladders, little patience, and are curious). However, they usually have me go through the metal detector instead of the backscatter machine, so I tend to avoid that part of it.

Before our last trip, I read about the facial ID thing, and I was worried because my passport was expired (we were traveling domestic). Fortunately, it seems neither of the airports we went through were implementing it yet, so I'll have time to renew before it's a thing.

I just wish we can all come to our senses and realize that the TSA doesn't really make us safer and that it just makes everyone mad. Unfortunately, people just seem to put up with it.

> I just wish we can all come to our senses and realize that the TSA doesn't really make us safer and that it just makes everyone mad. Unfortunately, people just seem to put up with it.

Because people don't feel like they can make any real impact, and for those who can (our representatives), it's political suicide. The TSA is a giant waste of money but turning the front line of security back to airports would extremely easy to attack as weak on crime, inviting in terrorists, etc. (But who knows, maybe the sight of the TSA line makes terrorists give up in frustration because they're too busy to wait an hour or more just to hijack a plane.)

Are there regular studies examining broader public opinion on this? I have to assume that at some point it is going to shift, and suddenly scaling back (or privatizing) airport screening will be a no-brainer.

The problem is that it only takes some passive support to establish the system initially, but removing it takes the majority of people actively complaining.

The TSA was implemented during the Bush era "economic stimulus" drama.

It was never about security, it was only ever about job creation. 9/11 was a convenient excuse to put lots of underqualified/underskilled people to work overnight.

For a politician to go against that now, they get doubly fucked on both the "made America less safe" and "got rid of thousands of jobs" fronts.

Slight derail

> Because people don't feel like they can make any real impact

I'd say this generalization applies to a lot of topics that we're having with democracy. That people don't feel that it's democratic. I think there's this weird feeling where most believe we're both in a democracy and autocracy (which may not be untrue, but the less we try to fix it with democracy the harder we'll leave to autocracy)

> I just wish we can all come to our senses and realize that the TSA doesn't really make us safer and that it just makes everyone mad. Unfortunately, people just seem to put up with it.

Indeed. What makes us safer are 2 things:

1. Secured cockpit doors 2. Passengers

Now, if someone tried doing something bad/unsafe/terrorist, everybody would jump them, and stop them from doing the thing. That's how shoe-guy was stopped. The passengers about killed him.

It used to be the chokepoint was departure. Now the TSA shoves a chokepoint to "terrorize" at the lines in front the scanners. And wherever you move the scanners creates yet another chokepoint. I'm surprised someone of ill intent hasn't done something at the lines of people.

But in the end, there's little we can do. Ideally our politicians should reconsider their roles, but thats 'reducing security yadda yadda', and political suicide.

On #2, I think people may forget that prior to 9/11, the idea was to let the hijacker go where they wanted, as the passengers usually ended up safe due to cooperation. Even on the day of 9/11 itself, once passengers realized cooperating was going to get them killed, then fighting back gave them a higher chance of survival.

The 2016 Brussels bombing did involve explosives in the check-in area of the airport.

We are cut from the same cloth as I do exactly the same for the exact same reasons. I've 'trained' many a new TSA agent only because I assume it doesn't happen much. I would say half the time I opt out I am used to train a new agent.

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