Thank you Jake Torros, erin, Donna, Tamera, Bob Jones, and many others for tuning in. This week on the live chat, Zahra Sethna and Susan Harley unpacked (!!) how travel is quietly being transformed from a freedom into a conditional privilege. What used to mean showing up with a passport now increasingly requires pre-approval, biometric scans, digital IDs, and even social media scrutiny — often before you’re even allowed to leave home at all.
They walk through real experiences with electronic travel authorizations, facial recognition at airport gates, biometric “exit” systems, and the growing normalization of surveillance disguised as convenience. The conversation highlights how these systems are being rolled out unevenly, how “optional” frequently becomes mandatory, and how opting out often comes with delays, penalties, or exclusion.
Beyond airports, the discussion widens to a broader pattern: automation replacing human interaction, data being centralized across governments and corporations, and a creeping presumption of guilt built into everyday transactions. The result is a travel experience — and a society — that feels increasingly dehumanized, conditioned, and monitored.
A central question is how much friction people are willing to accept for the sake of mobility, and whether participation in these systems is becoming unavoidable — even when it conflicts with personal values, privacy, or freedom of speech.
