The point is, even if you are more equal than others you don't always get three beeps. That is why it is music. Being on the GEOS or NEXUS program makes it more likely that you will get that than if you qualify just for being an elite in FF programs, is what I have been reading in various travel forums.
Personally I think the Pre-Check based on GOES is more about doing the harassing in one concentrated interview once every five years and charging you for that pleasure rather than doing it for each trip. It is pretty much the way these things go. Anyone who is willing to shell out the $100 for applying for GOES and undergo the weird interview where false accusations are hurled at you sometimes, for you to defend and call the interviewer on it, can have the pleasure of hearing the three beeps most of the time. When you have to travel a lot you just gotta do what you gotta do to make it as tolerable as possible.
Being on those programs additionally makes the process of entering the country at airport CBP barriers a breeze too as an added bonus. One cost of doing all this is providing the biometrics to the same outfit one more time, beyond the several other times I have already provided it for gaining citizenship by naturalization. So I have much less of an objection to that part than one who is citizen by birth.
9/11 changed the United States and the world and that's a fact we all have to live with in a way that's comfortable for us.As for me, that means no flying or going anywhere that entails submitting to overprotective security measures if I can help it.
Actually airport security of equally arbitrary nature existed even before 9/11, but was somewhat more relaxed before 9/11 in the US when compared to the rest of the world. So naturally people in the US became more aware of it after 9/11. Airport security started originally as a response to a spate of hijackings in the '70s. 9/11 only caused it to be brought under a single federal agency in the US. In other countries airport security was already handled by government agencies before 9/11 in many places.
I have flown extensively before, during the post 9/11 panic, and after that, and specially in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 was subjected to profiling a lot more than after they figured out a more non-paniced mode of operation. All that changed is that the security check became a bit more officious after the 9/11 panic passed, and non-travelers were finally completely banned from entering the secured area.
I flew eight days after 9/11 (i.e. on 9/19) on a Virgin Atlantic flight to London when the country was in such panic that there were only 15 people on a 747 (as a nice gesture Virgin promoted all of us to Upper Class that day
). I was patted down twice at the gate after having passed through the same deal at the security barrier. Such was the state of people's mind in the US then - and understandably so. I am glad we have recovered from that state of panic to the extent that we have. That day on the connecting flight from London to Kolkata (British Airways) there wasn't a single empty seat. So the panic was understandably mostly in the US.
Actually pre-9/11 already airport security was much more through and intrusive in most of the rest of the world, than it was in the US.Even though non-passengers were allowed in secure areas in airports like Singapore Changi, they had to go through a more thorough check at the security barrier than was the practice in the US back then. All that happened as a result of 9/11 is that the US system became more like the rest of the world was already experiencing. US came out of its denial and the state of mind that lived on the fantasy of exceptionalism. That's all that happened from my vantage point.
