Hacker News Reader

Comment by mehrdadn | Hacker News Reader

Precedents are interesting:

> Bond v. United States, 529 U.S. 334, 337 (2000) (concluding Border Patrol agent searched a bag by squeezing it)

> Arizona v. Hicks, 480 U.S. 321, 324–25 (1987) (holding officer searched stereo equipment by moving it so that the officer could view concealed serial numbers).

The idea seems to be that pushing the power button is what constituted a search, not taking a picture of the lock screen. Presumably if the lock screen was somehow already on at that point (which normally it wouldn't be) then it might be fair game to take a picture without a warrant.

View on HN

That first one is interesting... I once stopped for a load of pumpkin bread before boarding a plane. I put it into my backpack. The tsa agent saw the buldge and started to punch my backpack! I yelled at him to stop and he said he thought it was a water bottle... Yeah, like it is a good idea to punch something you think might be explosive.

I’m pretty sure that most TSA employees forgot why water bottles aren’t allowed a long time ago (if they ever knew), and now are just searching for water bottles directly. That’s the consequence of hard and fast rules — people stop using their brains.

Yeah, it really feels like that. Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/651/

TSA employees are paid for security theatre - not actual security. I don't mean to denigrate these folks too much but ... they're not exactly the kind of people I'd hire to, say, walk my dog. They stand there and pretend they're doing "security" but what they're really doing is bureaucracy and political patronage.

Suppose for a moment we wanted to implement the kind of security that TSA pretends to represent. We'd thus deputize them as part of DoD (or DHS) and they'd carry MP5s and have actual training standards, weight standards, quarterly fitness reports, have to get security clearances etc. etc. They'd do drills at a mock airport, and we'd eventually do away with the "checkpoint" style of security at airports that's really just an invitation for a suicide bomber.

I once saw a TSA employee at LAX insist on putting a kid's balloon from Disneyland, that was clear and 100% see-through, through the X-ray machine. I watched this and, as I suspected, the TSA agent never even considered that because the balloon was filled with helium it of course wouldn't move through the machine on the conveyor belt and it got stuck. "Checkpoint" indefinitely shut down.

Security Theatre, indeed.

Why does the balloon being filled with helium mean it wouldn’t move through the machine on the conveyor belt? Just curious.

You're kidding, right?

The balloon would float and not stay in contact with the belt.

The balloon floats and will not touch the conveyor belt?

Hey thanks for the answer. I can be too literal, so at the time I wasn't sure if that's what he was implying, or if there was some other special property about helium in a balloon in an X-ray machine that I didn't know of.

the charitable interpretation of this question is “Why wasn’t the balloon tied to something that could move through the conveyor belt?”.

Which is a much more reasonable thing to ask.

Although I was very tired when I originally posted this around 2:30 AM, I think my train of thought was that if they got it from outside of the machine in the conveyor belt --> inside of the machine in the conveyor belt --> it's the same mechanism which will get it to pop out of the other end.

But I suppose I was giving too much benefit of the doubt :)

I agree with your assessment but I would not be that harsh with the TSA agents.

They are the cogs that need to make the security theatre run. I would bet that the vast majority of them know for a fact that their job is highly useless and only see it as a way to get some money at the end of the month.

What I still don't understand is how did we get here and why is it still going on even though most people would agree that it's a security theatre.

I think we can all play the stupid 24 hour news cycle headlines in our head at this point. [insert politician here] disbands security at airports! They don't care about lives!

Politics is so highly partisan that stupidity sticks around, because changing it would look bad. It's kind of ironic.

Did the agent eventually stick their hand into X-ray machine to fish out the balloon? If so, did they have the sense to at least turn off the machine first?

You're literally just describing security theater. Why would they need to carry MP5s? Because that's what you've seen in movies? MP5s are practically antiques at this point. Not every dude operating a bag scanner needs to be armed for the same reason your IT security doesn't need to be armed. They're not THAT KIND of "security".

Why do they need security clearances? For all that Secret-level intel they're getting briefed on? Or because you're under the impression that clearances are "security-ish"?

You want to mitigate "security theater" by making security wildly more dramatic and aimless. Someone needs to do the basic step of checking bags and passengers. That person does not need to be Jason Bourne.

MP5s are modern high-quality weapons.

They'd need MP5s in case a group of terrorists attacked the checkpoint, or got caught going through the checkpoint and decided on plan B (just kill as many people in the airport as possible).

They need security clearances to ensure that they're not going to help someone get a bomb onto the plane.

No, I'm describing how a serious country would implement security at its airports.

>Why would they need to carry MP5s? Because that's what you've seen in movies?

The MP5 is a "it just works" close battle weapon that is very popular for urban combat and, speaking from experience, is a weapon that is very balanced and is also gorgeous to look at. The greatest critiques against it probably have to do with the fact it's usually chambered in 9mm. Now, HK makes a bunch or other variants but the 9mm is the most popular.

>Why do they need security clearances?

Because I don't want people who harass me to open my baggage in front of them to have questionable contacts that could otherwise be a means for a would-be terrorist (or other state actors since Cold War II just kicked off) to get a bomb onboard an aircraft.

>You want to mitigate "security theater" by making security wildly more dramatic and aimless.

I want to do away with the security theatre, and replace it with a serious organization that is trained and understands what they're doing.

Eh, I also usually go through security with an empty metal water bottle in my bag, that would be pretty unpleasant to punch with any force.

That's hilarious. The attacker can exploit the fact that the TSA agent punching the suspicious bag and using him as an detonator. I don't know. Did he suffer a serious brain damage? You're looking for a potentially explosive material and punching it is the best way to test?

Are there explosive materials vulnerable to punching?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_powder

From what I'm told my grandfather had fun with the cleaning ladies at the pharmacy he worked in by sprinkling flash powder ingredients on the floor, so that when they swept them up together the mix would go off, making a small poof, scaring the cleaning ladies.

I wonder how this works with "raise to wake" features modern phones have. If it goes to intent, it would be hard to prove that intent was to search the device.

I also wonder if a different legal distinction will be drawn in the level of protection you might receive in fingerprint vs facial recognition auth.

I think that’d fall under inevitable discovery. Even avoiding trying to look at the phone would reveal its lock screen.

Since simply moving a phone can turn on a lock screen, police could probably look at it that way, at the time of arrest.

> holding officer searched stereo equipment by moving it

That seems pretty similar?

It’s not. If you’re arresting somebody, you can empty their pockets.

This is about after that.

> Judge Coughenour ruled that the police were within their rights to look at the lock screen at the time of Sam’s arrest, as there are circumstances in which a search can be made at the time of an arrest without a warrant.

> Investigators conducting a search later, however, need a warrant, said the judge.

That is not what the judge ruled (though it is what the article said). The judge actually refused to rule on the police search at time of arrest:

Section II.B:

> The police’s examination of Mr. Sam’s phone raises different issues because the examination may have been a search incident to arrest or an inventory search—two special circumstances where the Government does not always need a warrant to conduct a search. Unfortunately, the Court cannot decide whether the police needed a warrant because the circumstances surrounding the police’s examination are unclear.

> ...

> The Court hereby ORDERS the parties to file supplemental briefing addressing the circumstances surrounding Office Shin’s and the Tulalip Police Department’s alleged examinations of Mr. Sam’s phone. That briefing should also address the relevant legal standard for searches incident to arrest and/or inventory searches.

What kind of phone does that?

An iPhone wakes up the screen if it detects movement it thinks is someone picking up the phone.

My iPhone does no such thing. Does it have to be a Face ID phone?

The feature is called Raise to Wake and (I believe) has been in every iPhone since the 6s. I thought it was enabled by default, but it’s in the Display & Brightness section in Settings.

My Samsung J3 does that.

I just wrote a similar thing. It is the action taken and state change at issue here.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com