[a_c_s]

I tried to make my situation clear so as to avoid making it seem like I was commenting on other people's situations. Not everyone can easily avoid taking liquids along for example, and I certainly don't want to imply that people in other situations than mine 'invite' security hassles.

But part of what I'm trying to understand is why any of the current rules "should" make me feel like shit to go through - taking a few things out of my bag and removing my shoes are easy and quick. [Of course I sympathize with people who have horror stories, but I don't think everyone posting on HN, Slashdot and Reddit have personally been treated egregiously].

What is it I am missing? Is there a moral principle people of having to go through security people are upset about? Or frustration that the TSA is a large part security theatre? Or is it that so many people traveling do so in configurations that get much more hassle than I do - traveling with children, unavoidable liquids, medical devices, etc. ?

[smsm42]

For me, it is a feeling of being subjected to stupid and demeaning procedures which exist only for show. When I pass, for example, Israeli security - which may take more time, but does it in a completely different way - I do not feel this, because I feel I understand what they are doing and why. TSA has no real reason to grope my ass and my balls - they do it because somebody somewhere decided they should, and his reasons probably were nothing but covering his ass in case something happens.

[bzbarsky]

I appreciate you making your situation clear. I just pointed out that you are indeed correct that other situations end up very different, since I have experience with both.

> taking a few things out of my bag and removing my shoes are easy and quick

There's also taking off your belt or suspenders (and then trying to keep your pants from falling off, or risking arrest if they do), taking off your watch, putting your wallet on a belt where random people can make off with it, and having to choose between a pat-down search or standing in a machine with your arms over your head for a while, all for no particularly good reason.

Even the shoes thing is pretty ridiculous, especially given the state of cleanliness of the floors in airports, speaking as someone who distinctly recalls a time when you just wore your shoes through the metal detector, just like you still do in most countries. (Oh, and I should note that at Reagan National there are booties available at the security checkpoint so all the Congress-folk won't have to deal with the dirty floors like people at other airports.)

Back to your questions, in order:

The frustration _is_ in large part about the security theater aspect. Little things like having to throw out the water bottle that Israeli security already cleared through, the completely arbitrary and nonsensical rules about liquids, the perfunctory pat-downs whose only purpose is to be annoying so as to force people into the scanners, the ineffective scanners, and the general disproportionality of the response to the problem being solved. Basically, I would be a lot more OK with more stringent security if I felt there were a point to it, not just official ass-covering.

The other part of the frustration is that even the rules that are in place are enforced pretty arbitrarily. At some airports, in some security lanes, walking through a metal detector with a sleeping baby in a sling is OK; at others they will force you to take the baby out (waking him up) and hold in arms through the metal detector. You don't know which until you show up at the metal detector: it seems to be the TSA agent's call. Same thing for whether the 3-month-old's booties have to come off and go through the X-ray, just in case you stuck 3-4 grams of explosive in the soles or something.

And a last, most important, problem I have with all this is that I _do_ travel with kids a good bit. And my concern is that my children are learning that having to take off your clothes and be searched because someone randomly decides so is OK. The basic fact that government power is, and should be, limited and that there is such a thing as human dignity is that much harder to teach to kids who're dealing with airports on a regular basis. And _that_, of all the TSA activities, is what I despise them most: that they're in the business of making people be used to being treated like criminals.