Working for a cruise line, I got pulled out of line in Genoa, Italy and had my stuff searched for having a multi tool. Which they kept.

So it depends I guess.

One security agent at Frankfurt would not allow me to take my toothpaste through Schengen security. I had many hours until my flight so I took my luggage (and toothpaste) back to the non-Schengen area and waited until that security agent took a break and then went through security. From what I could tell she told other agents about me (she talked to them each in turn and pointed at me while talking). None of them fussed over my toothpaste when I went through. I and felt like I won the FU lottery.

I had the same experience but in the Netherlands. This was after flying through Miami and London with the same tool. Totally forgot it was on me.

I live in Germany since 2014 and yes, I had ample example of both super-strict and fairly relaxed attitude about these cases.

I've had this happen in New Zealand but only once. It's probably a rule outside the US but not enforced as strictly as in the US.

I've always kept by boots on flying out of Dublin.

Same. Sometimes I've been asked by someone walking the queue to remove my boots. Never do, never a problem. I'm sure they just walk the queue so it feels like "something" is happening and you're not just waiting in yet another interminable queue.

So you'd rather that the taxes everyone pays, including the poor, goes to pay the costs of doing the background checks on the business travelers and other upper-class people who fly frequently? There is a cost to administer the program, and the program is useful in that adding a fast lane speeds up the lines for everyone, as the fast lane inherently has more capacity per hour. And it also means fewer people to be screened by the primary lanes, which means more attention can be put toward a group statistically more likely to contain a bad actor (because they have had no background checks).

The fee is tiny compared to the costs of a plane ticket. It's $100 for multiple years of validity.

You were 100% right until the random racism thing. I'm completely aware I'm paying a bribe for favorable government treatment. Paying the bribe is better individually though. I'd even agree if you said Global Entry is only $30 more because your fingerprints are part of the payment.

> anyone with any actually bad intentions and money will try to pay it.

Except it's not gated by the tiny fee, but with the background check. Only those who are statistically very low risk will be approved (which indeed is most people -- by design).

> The answer is probably racism. Not everyone is allowed a pre-approval

Is it racist to know the fact that say, zero schoolteachers from Iowa with no history of travel to the Middle East have ever hijacked a plane, but quite a few people from Saudi Arabia and Iran, or who have contacts there, have? And to allow the teacher to bypass the whole mess? I'd say that's efficient.

The fee is quite obviously not material to anyone who can afford air travel anyway. It would be a more serious critique if the fee were say, $1,500 a year. But for a hundred bucks every few years, this is neither extortion, nor a burden. It's just paying the admin costs of the program, which means not using general fund money (everyone's taxes) to pay for background checks for rich business travelers. That's progressive.

And the alternative to this type of program would be the silliness where some random grandma or child gets invasively searched because "we have to be random."

It’s mostly a background check. I’d guess that most denials are due to drunken stupidity.

I used to be in the same mindset as you.

Now, I have Global Entry (which includes TSA Pre).

I rationalized it in a few ways:

* "The Government" already has all the information GE wants. Finger prints, photo ID, "interview" (answering the question "Are you a terrorist?"). They got nearly all of this when I got a driver's license. (https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a32035408/dmv-selling-...)

* With modern corporate surveillance, corps already have a shit ton of "my data" that they will happily sell to anyone, including "The Government". (https://media.ccc.de/v/38c3-databroker-files-wie-uns-apps-un...)

* If I'm flying anyway, the airlines already collect (and are legally required to collect) all sorts of personal data that I would rather them not have. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_name_record)

>You do realize

Yes, because I did the interview. But then I've done the background check and interview for jobs as well. And honestly, there's a ton of that information about you in computers if you travel by air at all. Don't fly (in particular) if you want to be anonymous.