Most folks don't love security theater & everyone has had a bad time at a screening checkpoint.
So, let's think for a second about hypothetical private-#TSA companies.
I'd expect them to gravitate towards AI-assigned individual risk ratings to minimize the cost of hiring & training people to interact with travelers.
To create ratings, I'd expect them to demand & consolidate invasive pools of our biometrics, web browsing, commenting, purchasing, movements & private lives.
Just don't call it a "social credit score"
You can bet they'll pivot to trying to monetize their data.
2026: We're a terminal security company
2029: We're a person rating company
Would these ratings make their way into other parts of our lives & things we want to visit?
And who exactly would stand up for us when the ratings are wrong? Or our data is shipped to foreign buyers.
Who holds #PrivateTSA companies accountable? The US doesn't have strong #privacy protections...
I'm also not optimistic about private sector security companies' ability to stop breaches. History backs me up here.
But I do expect that private-TSA companies could use lobbying to limit oversight & accountability.
That's been the history of other privacy-invasive tech companies.
So, as an airline security privatization conversation kicks off, remember that it can't just be "current thing is bad" but needs to consider what kind of future we're inviting in.
Replies (19)
Why not just let the airlines keep their own planes safe?
true, that will probably happen
TSA was also created to solve a fake problem. 9/11 was fake. Al-qaeda was fake. This is all so tiresome.
They don't want people travelling freely. This was a huge pivot in 2001 in so many ways. The world changed for the worse, especially in the US.
Hi john 😉🤟🏴☠️ nice to meet you 🤝
You raise a crucial point criticizing existing systems is easy, but we need to think critically about the alternatives we create. A privatized TSA might remove some of the inefficiencies of government bureaucracy, but it could also introduce an entirely new set of risks, particularly around data privacy, corporate overreach, and lack of accountability.
AI-driven risk ratings sound efficient in theory, but as we’ve seen in other industries, they often lead to opaque, unchallengeable black-box decisions that disproportionately harm certain groups. And once a company accumulates vast pools of personal data, the temptation to monetize it or the risk of it being compromised becomes almost inevitable.
History suggests that privatized security firms wouldn’t necessarily be better at preventing breaches or respecting civil liberties. Instead, they could end up operating with even less transparency and oversight than government agencies. The key question is: how do we build a security model that balances efficiency, accountability, and privacy, rather than simply replacing one flawed system with another that could be even worse?
This is obvious. Because a country is supposed to protect is people, even the poorest. You cannot have 'low cost security planes'.
Not so simple or obvious in a free market, or a free society that doesn't depend on big daddy government for protection from everything. Private airlines will be incentivized to keep their planes safe. How many customers, jets, and employees do they want to lose to terrorists? How many CAN they lose before they are out of business? The winners will be those airlines that can keep their planes safe and do it politely and cheaply. I trust the free market can do that; we already know governments cannot.
It's all cool and beautiful, but what makes you even being up free markets or free society in the context of the US? Those times are long gone; one half wants a big gov, another one wants strong daddy. Neither are interested in free markets and free society.
I'm interested.
Would it be fair to say the true game is to surrender the data of the citizens to a lobbyist that has the infrastructure of digital capture in place already? Oh I don't know, Facebook or Palantir, perhaps? Or may be always hungry fElon pursuing total control? All this "wouldn't it be nice to dismantle TSA" is just smoke and mirrors in preparation for a private capture, read the oligarchy.
Once you hear the rumors, you can rest assured the deal has been made already imo
In such case, as a thought experiment, it's a good exercise.
VERY well said
I would not be ready to sacrify people to run such a race.
Governments have sacrificed more people than the free market.
Horrible take. The state has no incentive to make the process better for the consumer. You’ve created a number of straw men arguments to suggest that the state can do it better. Why wouldn’t the tsa also resort to the methods described? The tsa is violating the 4th amendment with every passenger. Flying is a govt controlled industry that’s inevitably getting worse over time. There is no longer any innovation and the incentive system is broken.
The TSA is a jobs program disguised as a security apparatus
TSA as it stands today is a downward spiral of handholding grown adults disguised as protection.
The utter dehumanization felt at airports is akin to cattle being farmed to slaughter, then released on good behavior.
“Strip down, put your hands up, and shut up” sounds more like a totalitarian principle than a preventative measure for a few bad actors.
Definitely needs to be a topic of discussion, but the solution can’t just be to privatize and move on.
lol airport security was always private until relatively recently, and still is in other countries, and it has always worked fine. da TSA is an orwellian nightmare nobody likes created to solve nonexistent problems. the ignorance of dese basic facts is even more orwellian and creepy... either dat or u ppl are just really young and didn't think dis thru. OH YA N DID I MENTION FUK U N FUK DA GVT???????
