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Comment by Ansil849 | Hacker News Reader

> Getting knives past airport security seems not particularly difficult from the experience of my circle and other anecdotal sources. I've had friends and family accidentally get knives through security on many occasions, and I have also accidentally done it myself. To my knowledge none of them has ever been caught in the converse situation and had to give up a knife.

May I ask what your race, and the race of your circle, is?

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I am white but with black (and now slightly grey) hair and a beard with tan-ish skin. More pertinent to your implication I assume is that my middle name is of Muslim descent and can pass for being of middle-eastern descent, and I seem to get stopped for "random" checks and patdowns more frequently than my white-bread looking friends and colleagues. Observation bias perhaps on my part, but also maybe not.

I've accidentally gotten multi-tools through the body scanner before. I just forgot I had it in my pocket.

Are you suggesting that metal detectors are racially biased?

No. I am suggesting that the discretion of airport security staff about whom to pay closer attention to is. And my suggestion is known as 'profiling'.

Generally, once you get through the metal detector, the knife that was accidentally smuggled through won't be found by a simple body search, if that's your inclination?

This happened to my friend (not White if that's so important to you) when an old pocket knife had gotten stuck beneath the bottom of her handbag. They kept running it through the detector, took everything out of it to check, couldn't find the source, and so eventually let her go.

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