Originally Posted by
FliesWay2Much
Many others and I have written over many years about how this is nothing but extortion and identical to the Communist system of "privileges." Many of us wrote about how this was a brilliant move on the TSA's part to both create a "privileged class" and to silence criticism from an important group: frequent flyers. The government created a privilege that they can take away at any time for any reason or for no reason. If you have this privilege, you think highly of yourself and you are never going to criticize the government for fear of losing your privilege. This is pure and simple extortion, and several million travelers have bought it hook, line and sinker.
The non-Communist reason is simply that the U.S. Government cannot and will not ever admit that it went way overboard spending billions of taxpayer dollars and committing sexual assault on its citizens for a threat that simply didn't exist. "Anything for security" is about as bi-partisan as you can get.
DHS/TSA's way of catering to a nomenclatura -- whether relatively privileged members of the private or public sector -- continues in a way that would make the Soviet Commies and its legacy leader Putin proud; but, as has been shown with Global Entry, the benefits granted to the privileged nomenclatura class are subject to being taken away by the government willing and able to strip/deny membership or to make a membership benefit contingent upon the whims or program of the applicable government powers. As has been seen increasingly, GE membership doesn't mean that GE members will necessarily be treated better than the non-privileged proletariat masses entering the US at US airports of entry. Much the same can happen to TSA PreCheck users.