[tw04]

Let me start by saying I'm no fan of the TSA having been traveling for business for 20 years. But we do know exactly why it was originally enacted. Which is that someone tried to hide a bomb in the base of their shoe to blow up a flight.

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

While we don't know why they've stopped, it could be any number of things: from they have other ways of detecting explosives that don't require your shoes going through a scanner, to they just don't think it's an issue anymore.

While a lot of what TSA does appears to be security theater, saying "it never made any of us safer" is a claim you have no way of backing up.

[Analemma_]

The problem with this theory is that plenty of times (not just for PreCheck flyers), they arbitrarily decide you don't need to take your shoes off. It's not a technology thing, because they change it back and forth at the same gate at the same airport-- I fly enough to know. And whatever they've changed it to, they bark at you for not knowing, as though you could've known about whatever RNG generates TSA policy this week.

It's a power play, nothing more.

[haiku2077]

> they change it back and forth at the same gate at the same airport-- I fly enough to know.

Are you using the same scanner machines every time? (They can look similar externally but operate on different principles)

[tw04]

>The problem with this theory is that plenty of times (not just for PreCheck flyers), they arbitrarily decide you don't need to take your shoes off.

At what airport? How do you know it's "arbitrary" - do you have some additional information the rest of us don't?

>It's not a technology thing, because they change it back and forth at the same gate at the same airpor

What airport? Because I fly enough to know they don't do that at LAX, SFO, SJC, or ORD.

>It's a power play, nothing more.

By WHO? The guy who implemented the policy hasn't worked in government since GWBs term. The random TSA worker has literally 0 say in the policy of taking your shoes off.

[dataflow]

> It's not a technology thing, because they change it back and forth at the same gate at the same airport

Are you of the opinion that unpredictability has zero security value?

[recursivecaveat]

Doing something at random half the time is definitely better than doing it 0% of the time, or predictably half the time. From a security standpoint it's certainly worse than doing it 100% of the time. If you're randomizing day-to-day its pointless though. If you had something in your shoe, you could just walk away once you saw other people taking off their shoes. You're not obligated to continue. If anybody asks then you forgot your phone in your car.

[unethical_ban]

Sure, randomly pulling people over or demanding access to their bank records might reveal patterns, but we supposedly have rights in western countries.

[ranger207]

In general, no. In this specific case, yes