(1/4) I fly in & out of my home airport at least once a month — often 3x/month.
#TSA agents have become more aggressive the last year.
I have CLEAR¹, so I'm autoidentified by the time I reach TSA, but opt out of photo. I always approach with hood up & mask on, & let CLEAR staff know I'm opting out of TSA 📷. I hold up my RFID blocked passport booklet holder in front of camera.
Today, agent— no older than 25 —got aggressive & insisted I not block the camera — insisting it wasn't on.🙄…
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(2/4)… #TSA agent left me with impossible decision…do not block camera w/ my coat or RFID-blocking passport wallet, & step back so that I am in view of both her camera & adjacent TSA camera.
Now, again, I do this dance 1x/month: I block camera with something, step past it, & take hood & mask down for human ID. I just kept saying louder and louder that she could not prove to me cameras were off. In end, I wrapped jacket to limit peripheral camera view and pulled hood & mask down…
(3/4)…as I left, I said “seems like #Trump has got you feeling as invincible as ICE, huh?”. TSA staff was clearly politically mixed as I could tell this stung for some of them, & they *didn't* pull my bags for 2nd-ary screening as usually happens in such scenarios.
While TSA are cuddly 🧸 vs. ICE, this is definitely related: fascism inspires anyone w/ a badge to stretch the limits of their authority, b/c power is 🤬 addictive for humans.
At least TSA gets 10x more training than ICE. 😐…
(4/4)…
¹ You should definitely ask why it is that I let CLEAR — some for profit company — take my photo for id purposes but still refuse #TSA. The answer is: I have a contract with CLEAR that limits how they'll use the photo to just entry into locations. #TSA offers me no such terms, so once they have the photo, they can and surely *will* hand it off to $PLTR to train their LLMs — which in long term helps #ICE as much as it helps TSA.
& I can sue CLEAR if they give data away!