I've gotten plane tickets for less than $78. I think asking that much for what they're actually doing (checking your name against their terror watch list, then flipping a flag on your row in their database) is obscene. It should be free.

It's not free, because if it were free then everybody would apply for the lineskip privilege and it would cease to be a lineskip privilege because now everybody is in that line. So, like amusement parks selling lineskip passes, they price it high enough to discourage most people from buying it.