A new bill, the first of its kind in the U.S., would ban security screening company Clear from operating at California airports as lawmakers take aim at companies that let consumers pay to pass through security ahead of other travelers.
Sen. Josh Newman, a California Democrat and the sponsor of the legislation, said Clear effectively lets wealthier people skip in front of passengers who have been waiting to be screened by Transportation Security Administration agents.
“It’s a basic equity issue when you see people subscribed to a concierge service being escorted in front of people who have waited a long time to get to the front of TSA line,” Newman told CBS MoneyWatch. “Everyone is beaten down by the travel experience, and if Clear escorts a customer in front of you and tells TSA, ‘Sorry, I have someone better,’ it’s really frustrating.”
If passed, the bill would bar Clear, a private security clearance company founded in 2010, from airports in California. Clear charges members $189 per year to verify passengers’ identities at airports and escort them through security, allowing them to bypass TSA checkpoints. The service is in use at roughly 50 airports across the U.S., as well as at dozens of sports stadiums and other venues.
So will TSA Pre-Check be next?
I feel like this post was astroturfing that went horribly wrong for Clear. I’d like to thank all my fellow travelers who see this is a horrible additional fee that they want to make mandatory not to wait behind their pointless service.
Anyone who thinks this is a good service deserves to wait in the regular line for every ride at Disney.
What’s the fucking point of the TSA if you can just pay extra to bypass it?
It doesn’t really seem like a stretch that a terrorist organization could come up with a little extra money per ticket to make sure their plan pays off.The company runs a background check to verify that the person isn’t a terrorist. Then at the airport they use biometrics to verify their identity.
So that means the TSA could do the same thing for anyone with Pre-Check or Global Entry since we already had to go through all that.
Ah so it’s for drug trafficking not terrorism
TSA has always been security theatre. Have they ever stopped a credible threat?
We would never know. The thing about the circus that is the TSA is that it does cut people off from even planning to go that route. And the simple fact is that annual hijackings since 2002 are way down.
I can’t believe I’m saying something positive about them, but they keep about 6,500 guns off planes a year. Irrespective of thoughts on gun control measures, I think most would consider a gun on a plane a credible threat.
Good to give them credit where it is due. They can be a horrible, mismanaged, institution and still do some good!
Sounds like what tsa should be doing. Either security is necessary or it isn’t. The airport is the most classist place in the country.
Sounds like what tsa should be doing.
That is what TSA is doing. Clear just lets you bypass the TSA Precheck line and go straight to the xray machine and metal detector (they don’t use full body scans on that side).
That’s the premise of TSA pre check. Clear just adds biometric verification instead of a TSA agent checking IDs.
Honestly, it’s stupid and I’ve refused to use it because I don’t trust companies with that biometric data. I saw TSA try to use similar at an airport once and I specifically opted out.
I had to travel with a school group recently so couldn’t use Pre. At the front of the TSA line, they took my ID, then had me stand in front of a camera and display screen. It showed it scanning my face and clearly doing face feature segmentation (eyes, nose, hairline, etc).
So that’s now happening too.
Tsa precheck is better than clear anyway. Clear just puts you at the front of the normal line. Precheck allows you to skip the normal line entirely.
I don’t trust a private company to do that screening. They will skimp on checks to save money the moment they have a bad quarter unless there are specific rules forced on them by TSA.
What’s preventing one of their software developers from just creating a bunch of approved people? Probably not much.
Clear sucks and I hate them, but:
I don’t trust a private company to do that screening
There are specific rules forced on them, and the real screening still happens at the checkpoint, by the TSA.
Keep in mind two things:
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Prior to the early 2000s, there was so such thing as the TSA, and all airport screening was done by various third parties, though still according to rules set forth by the federal government. But it was just a vendor doing the screening, usually the same vendor that pushes Wheelchairs.
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Since it’s creation, the TSA has failed audit after audit after audit letting prohibited items through, so they are not a paragon of security
You could argue it’s all moot, and this is largely security theater anyway, which wouldn’t be fully wrong.
I flew before 2001 and man flying was so much faster and easier before TSA. I get it’s not perfect, I just trust something with no profit motive more than companies who will justify anything for a dollar. Either way, I prefer Clear not exist because there is enough pre-paid privilege in the American caste system.
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Isis: we would love to suicide bomb a plane, but the budgets a bit tight this month and we just can’t afford cover the TSA skip.
Clear doesn’t bypass TSA. It just skips you to the front of the line.
It does bypass TSA. The Clear agent goes up to the front of the TSA line, tells the TSA agent “This one is okay, I checked, you don’t need to,” and through you go.
It doesn’t bypass TSA. Maybe it is different at different airports, but all of the ones I fly through on a regular basis the Clear people only take you to the normal TSA screener, where you still get screened. They don’t bypass that screening and they don’t take you to the TSA Pre line. In other airports they might take you to the TSA Pre line, but you still get screened there. Just less intense baggage and body scanning.
They take you to the front of the line but, they still need to go through the actual screening (metal detector, bag scanning).
From the clear website: Simply step up to a CLEAR Pod at the airport where you’ll scan your boarding pass and eyes or fingerprints, and an Ambassador will escort you to the front of the security line for your screening.
The TSA Precheck line for xray and metal detector is far less stringent than the “regular” line. They use metal detectors only, not body scanners. You don’t have to take your shoes off or electronics out of your bags. It’s like going to the airport in the 1990s.
Clear and its counterparts allow you to have access to that lower level of screening without having TSA Precheck.
Not at all airports. In LAX and DEN CLEAR only skips you to the front of the normal line, not the TSA Pre line.
Unless you already have TSA Pre
Right, I didn’t realize that part when I posted. So the people who skip the TSA Pre line are paying for both, not just Clear. Just paying for Clear only brings you to the front of the normal line.
How often do you fly in the United States? That’s not how it works.
They walk you up to the front of the ID check line. TSA still checks your ID, and you still go through security.
Nope definitely not. I had a one year trial of it. They skip you to the front of the precheck line and you don’t need to show ID, but your stuff still needs to go through the xray and you have to go through the detector.
Edit: in some airports I guess it depends on if you have TSA Pre as well which line you get put into the front of.
Neoliberalism y’all, TSA’s equipment and all the services that go along with it are actually revenue streams invented by mega donors. The “free” market in action.
Everyone is beaten down by the travel process
TSA has been proven to be a sham time and time again. They’re ineffective at best. Just get rid of it already.
I also fail to see how this is really any different than paying for TSA pre check. The only main difference is skipping the security line but what difference is that really? Both are paid for services that allow the “rich” (yeah right) to get through security quicker. The real rich aren’t traveling in public transportation. Why don’t we ban private planes?
Oh and no offense to the, mostly, good people working there with the public on the front lines. They’re typically pleasant and great with the kids in my family’s experience.
The real rich
What some lower-middle class Americans don’t realize is that to the great majority of people in this world… we are the rich.
In the US we look at someone making $75,000+, $100,000+, $150,000+, $250,000+, 500,000+, 1,000,000+, 1,000,000,000+ as rich… depending on what our current income level is. The reality is that even making 30k in the middle of nowhere is still better than 85% of the world’s income and quality of living.
If you can save $10,000 a year you can save more than 60% of people in the world actually earn.
When I point this stuff out though I get a ton of downvotes. Imagine buying a car, a plane ticket, or personal electronics when your total pre-tax pay is 10k or less… that is most people’s situation who are alive today (but less than 30% of Americans!) As a bonus, imported goods are typically cheaper in the US then almost any other country. Hair Gel that is $5 here is easily $20 USD in Santiago, Chile.
There should be way more taxes on the highest earners and more mechanisms that siphon wealth away from those with extreme excess. Just be aware that Americans overall have the most to lose if this goes to a global scale. A lot of things we take for granted and expect are luxury for billions.
And when those people have to live in the US you can make the direct comparison. Go look up PPP. That’s why you get downvoted so hard. For example 30k US is 90k in India. Solidly Middle Class but not wealthy. And before you shout about how much 90,000 USD would buy in India, that’s not the comparison. The comparison is in lifestyle. So they’re living in the US the way a middle class person in India would live. The number just contextualizes it.
Also, using a country that’s the dictionary example of monetary and fiscal mismanagement might not be the best way to go.
PPP falls apart when you consider the price of consumer electronics, electricity, gasoline, airfare…
In the Dominican Republic you can’t get completely stable electricity. It just doesn’t happen without generators/batteries. Generators aren’t suddenly cheaper in DR. It’s 20DOP for 1kwh of electricity in DR, or $0.34 USD/kwh. I pay less in the greater Boston area. Wages there are way, WAY below 30k/year. The thought of having air conditioning at home is practically impossible for almost all who live there.
I love how you nitpicked the chile reference (with no counterpoint whatsoever) but it’s true across Latin America. Imported goods to poorer nations generally cost way above and beyond what the US pays…unless it’s prescription drugs because almost all other nations negotiate those prices to be much, much less than what the US pays (and only just started negotiating… for JUST Medicare.) I’m sure there are other examples as well. The PPP is so far apart on imports it’s insane. Often times things are sold in the US even if they are made locally because the price in the US is way above and beyond what the locals can afford.
And you’re not cherry picking? I’ve been to developing countries. It’s not cardboard shacks. Yeah they don’t generally have central air and electricity cuts are common. But they have houses, mass transit, good food, bars, smartphones, etc.
Things have improved a lot over the last fifty years. If you want to complain that a bag of Cheetos is expensive and they have to buy Rosquillas de Quesito instead you’re not going to find much sympathy among people actually trying to improve lives.
Also, I did provide a counter example. I didn’t mention India just for giggles. It’s got one of the largest populations that still score as poverty stricken in the global sense. That don’t have running water, don’t have access to transit, smart phones, healthcare, good jobs, electricity, or safe food.
Huge qol improvements in india https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXTZVKYYyig
I’m not really a fan of BI for hard info but I checked back in and it looks like they’ve basically eliminated extreme poverty.
This is the stuff I like to read about -
These include a national mission for construction of toilets and attempts to ensure universal access to electricity, modern cooking fuel, and more recently, piped water. As an example, rural access to piped water in India as of 15th August 2019 was 16.8% and at present it is 74.7%. The reduced sickness from accessing safe water may have helped families earn more income. Similarly, under the Aspirational District Program, 112 districts of the country were identified as having the lowest development indicators. These districts were targeted by government policies with an explicit focus on improving their performance in development.
So yeah, I’m absolutely elated to read that.
Man… they use a metric of $2.57/day in 2023 dollars to define the level of extreme poverty? That’s $938.05 a year. Just wow.
TSA Precheck involves a background check and interview. This allows the actual screening process to be lighter.
I don’t recall an interview, just fingerprinting.
I had to go through a full interview to get a TSA precheck. Lots of invasive probing questions about who I am and where I work and what my family ties are.
My initial application was like eight (?) years ago, I wonder if they’ve changed it? Maybe they don’t interview everyone?
Did it this year. Some web forms, then went to a place that finger printed me and checked my ID. That was it.
Based on this completely ad hoc “survey,” that would indicate that they do perform interviews, but not for everyone.
I’m sure there’s not any racial profiling going on, no sir.
I’m pasty white and had a TSA pre-check interview about 2.5 years ago.
Waiting on a Global Entry interview.
I had to do an interview for Global Entry, not Precheck
Improve TSA? Nah. Let’s ban the better system instead.
This is 100% political pandering. It has nothing to do with fixing a real problem.
Is it actually better security, or just a better experience for the people that are willing/able to pay for it? Maybe we could actually improve the TSA instead of allowing a “skip the line” fee that goes to a private for-profit company?
That’s 100% my point. Why not fix the problem for everyone instead of banning a solution.
It’s not a solution. It’s just an alternative ID check currently offering a way for people with more money to skip to the front of the line. They still have to go through the same TSA screening. If everyone used the service it would offer zero benefit. So no, it’s not a solution.
Wait till I release “Even Clearer,” and my customers will skip in front of the Clear people.
California is not able to set policy for a federal agency. What they can do is end the “relief value” that lets people skip the bad policies for money.
At that point, the people with money may start putting pressure on the federal government to improve the TSA.
So they are doing exactly what youre asking them to, in the only way they can.
No, they’re manufacturing outrage by saying “look at those people that are skipping the line, don’t you hate that.” They’re just trying to get popularity points. It’s a completely manufactured problem, and they’re wasting time and resources that should be spent on real problems.
If TSA lines are a genuine problem that these politicians feel need to be fixed, then they can do plenty of things without Federal TSA policy changes.
So since youre personally a fan of broken govermental systems that private companies use to generate profits at the expense of the the citizens of California, you think state reps should just “shut up and work on the things I think are important” while fully ignoring that this change might have been a direct request from their constituents.
Gotcha.
First off, waiting in line at TSA while some people get to skip should be pretty far down the list of problems to fix for any reasonable person. It’s unfair, but it doesn’t hurt anyone. There are finite resources available to fix problems, so why not fix the problems that actually hurt people every day.
Second off, even if you decide TSA wait times are a high priority problem, this proposal does nothing to fix it. Again, why not spend these resources on reducing wait time for everyone?
All this does is draw attention to people spending their way around an inconvenience, without actually fixing the inconvenience to for ordinary people. It’s generating outrage without fixing the problem.
So what’s the difference between this and TSA pre check? You have to pay for that too so the money privilege argument makes no sense here.
From what I can tell there are two main differences:
- TSA pre check isn’t guaranteed; you can have pre check and still be randomly selected for a full screening. Clear you always get a “light” screening.
- Pre check you still go through the TSA security, just with a less intensive screening and shorter line. Clear has it’s own little security area that bypasses TSA completely
There maybe others, but these seem to be the most important.
Clear doesn’t bypass TSA completely. They just walk you to the front of the TSA screening line.
These clear assholes are brought to the front of the line skipping everybody.
Kind of. TSA Precheck is <$100 for 5 years, so it’s significantly cheaper. That amount is a lot more accessible to average travelers than CLEAR.
Most people enrolled in those programs are frequent business travelers who charge it to the company.
When I was traveling all the time I did global entry. Since it was for work, I paid for it with my companies credit card. I also did the interview during company hours, drove to the interview in a company vehicle, and paid for parking and lunch on the company dime.
Nobody blinked at the expense. Of course it was the same month I traveled for 3 weeks, hit 5 countries and 10 states. It took me a full day to do my expense report.
This is my exact question, too. I have Pre-Check and I love it because it is like travelling prior to Sept-11.
Pre-Check is cheaper than Clear because it’s like $100 but it lasts for 2-3 years, so again, it’s a separation between those who can pay and those who can’t. Also, what’s next? Every airline removes First, Business, Basic Economy “classes”?
Banning Clear doesn’t resolve the “class” issue. What would be better is to just improve the entire TSA process so that it’s not so miserable for everyone, or let’s get more of those high-speed rails built so we have more travel options and airlines have enough competition to force improvement.
TSA Pre is $75 for five years.
The problem with services like Clear is that for even more money, you get to skip to the front of the TSA Pre line, too. It also means that a private company (with what kind of oversight, do we even know?) gets to do the security screening instead of TSA.
If you don’t think it’s all security theater, I don’t know what to say.
TSA Precheck involves a background check and interview performed by the government. This allows them to make the actual screening process lighter, because they’ve deemed you to be low risk.
With Clear, you still have to go through the full security check. And it also costs significantly more.
- Precheck: $14/y
- Clear: 190$/y
The cost of TSA Precheck is $70 for 5 years, so $14 per year (plus an additional $8 for the initial enrollment). If you travel internationally a lot you can upgrade to Global Entry for $100 for 5 years. Or if you travel to Canada frequently, you can get Nexus (a superset of Global Entry) at $50 for 5 years.
It’s hard to make the money privilege argument with Precheck at that price.
Good, absolute insanity it was ever allowed in the first place. Hope more states follow the same path.
Good Guy California getting rid of pay-to-win subscription for air travel.
More like pay to get to the gate and sit longer. There is no real winning.
Or you show up later so you wait the same amount of time at the gate, and you wait less in a line so you can do more things.
Pay to not have to go to the airport two fucking hours early to stand in line for the security theater.
Jesus, paying to cut the line could not sound anymore American capitalistic. Good on California for banning this!
I don’t know why clear pisses me off so much but it does. It’s just not fair imo, but life isn’t fair.
Because it says you are a second class citizen.
Security Theater
95% Failure Rate. Imagine if you had a 95% Fuck up rate at your job. How long would you last?
https://www.vox.com/2016/5/17/11687014/tsa-against-airport-security
We need to stop terrorists, unless you’re willing to pay a premium, of course!
Who thinks this shit up? That the idea gets in your head is one thing, that it leaves your mouth is another…
We need to stop terrorists, unless you’re willing to pay a premium, of course!
The only step Clear skips is essentially identifying your identity. As in, you are who you say you are. They do this by requiring your eye retina scan biometrics (no thank you). This replaces a TSA officer looking at your ID and looking at your face and letting you through to the next step.
After the identity check (TSA looking at your ID or Clear looking at your retinas) all the steps and priority are identical. Your hand carried bags are xray scanned, you go through a body scanner of some kind.
My mate and I were traveling for awhile where she had Clear and I just had TSA Pre. Out of 8 times traversing security, only one time was she through faster than I was. She dropped her Clear service (which was just a free trial anyway).
It doesn’t even do that. The TSA agent still checks your ID. And that’s not even the bottleneck at security anyway.
When I’ve seen Clear customer traverse, they are check by face/eyes with their machines, a Clear employee walks them to the front of the line, announces to the TSA officer that X number of cleared passengers are entering and the Clear employee shows their ID. I have never seen a Clear customer show an ID to a TSA agent.
Is it really retina, or is it iris scan? The latter is easier (therefore cheaper and more common), but more prone to false positives.
I have a buddy who accidentally tried to fly with a gun in his bag out of DFW.
He has his concealed carry permit, and this was in Texas, so he had to pay a fairly substantial fine, but that was it (yes, he’s a white guy). Still made his flight in time.
Same friend had TSA pre check and Clear. TSA precheck, to their credit, stripped him of the privilege. Clear is still fine with this, though.
Nobody (at the time of my writing) is reading the article or understand what Clear is or what this new law is doing.
- No, its not banning Clear (in all forms, only its present one)
- Clear is a private company NOT a government program. TSA Pre is a government program. Both allow a traveler to pay for extra background checks and biometric collection to allow them through the identity step of airport security faster. Neither of these skip the hand baggage and body scans.
- Nothing in the law is about TSA Pre
- No, its not removing the pathway for “pay to play” allowing those willing to spend more money to get through security faster. Its complicating it for the Clear company, but also perhaps ending a result which Clear subscribers get through even faster than today!
Important quote from the article:
“Newman said his bill, SB-1372, doesn’t seek to prohibit Clear from operating its own dedicated security lines separate from other passengers.”
Clear could set up their own end-to-end security (which would cost them more) but would be even faster to get through because they would bypass regular TSA security and scanning lines, which isn’t what is happening today.
That would defeat the business model - they don’t want to pay to do security, they want to be paid to walk you to security. If they did security and took the liability associated, this would be a great service.
I agree that their current business model wouldn’t work, but their current model only has limited value anyway. I would say it changes the best possible business model for Clear to choose to operate more like Delta SkyPriority where there is a whole separate line from beginning of security to the end, not just the first step of the line, which is what Clear does today.
Hmm I feel like it would be difficult for a private company to get approved to take over the TSAs job. It would create a conflict of interest- Clear would want to get people through as quick as possible for as cheap as possible.
