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Comment by graffitici | Hacker News Reader

Just as I suspected. Those that really want to smuggle weapons and such can do so with some minimal amount of homework. And yet the other 99% of people that are about to board a 10 hour red-eye have to waste time in lines, taking shoes off and have semi-naked 3D models made...

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You don't have to have nude photos taken. You can ask to "opt out" (that's the key phrase, the TSA clowns know what it means), and they will take you aside and pat you down by hand.

I do it because it takes longer. If everyone opted out, the lines would become so ridiculously long that they'd have to change their system. I'm doing my part.

That's half of why I do it too, whenever I (grudgingly) fly to the US. The other half is that I don't want people taking naked photos of me, and especially not for security theater.

I wish more people did it, though. Whenever I fly I'm the only one I see opting out. When I was flying from Munich to DCA they had one of these scanners installed to a lone US-only gate, and I said I wanted to opt out, and the (German) airport employee looked at me surprised and said "why?". He couldn't understand why someone would opt out of the machine, I guess he thought it was some kind of metal detector or something.

I opted out for years and realized that I don't have to anymore.

After they direct you to the scanner, just say "I can't lift my arms above my head" and they'll put you through the metal detector and swab your hands. They don't "test" you because if it's true, they could hurt you.

I've been doing it since last fall (30 flights?) without issue now.

(These have all been US domestic flights.)

Doesn't this knowledge completely invalidate any legitimate use case for the pat down? If a bad actor only requires a simple lie to avoid a pat down _and_ the mm wave machine, what advantage is there to having either?

Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/651/

Everyone knows that bad actors would never lie.

I am going to try that next time I'm in a hurry, thank you! I'm half opting out for the principle of the thing, though, which this doesn't have, but it's great to know.

I just did this again out of Austin this morning. Zero issues.

Whenever I opt out (which is every time they try to send me through the scanner) they always attempt to take me to a "private" screening room for my "privacy" concerns. And every time I insist they do it right therein front of everyone, at the table where they're looking through my bag. Mostly because I don't trust what's in a "private" screening room, and partly because I think if we're gonna do this...then lets do this all the way.

That's interesting. I've always been asked if I'd like a private screening area, but they've never insisted on it. I just say nah, here's fine.

I always opt out and when they explain the pat down to me and use the "till I meet resistance" euphemism, I look at the officer and say "excuse me, im unclear as to what you mean by resistance. do you mean my penis?". Similarly a woman might say vulva. One time an officer said no, its the groin and I pointed out to him where the groin actually is (between the belly and the genitals)

Oh, I like that. I might take a tack like "How'd you know I named my penis 'resistance'?"

You mean you can opt to get groped instead.

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