Hitchens: The truth about airplane security measures
slate.com
slate.com
In my boyhood, there were signs on English buses that declared, in bold letters, "No Spitting." At a tender age, I was able to work out that most people don't need to be told this, while those who do feel a desire to expectorate on public transport will require more discouragement than a mere sign. But I'd be wasting my time pointing this out to our majestic and sleepless protectors, who now boldly propose to prevent airline passengers from getting out of their seats for the last hour of any flight. Abdulmutallab made his bid in the last hour of his flight, after all. Yes, that ought to do it.
Remember this rule had to be put in place quickly (And also note, for a limited period of one week) - while we tried to figure out if another attack was imminent. Think about how stupid we'd all be feeling if someone else had run _the exact same attack_ - we may not be able to defend against the unknown. But at least we can avoid handing out the freebies.
Presumably, the concern was that there would be a repeat of this attempt to set a bomb off _just prior to landing_. One of the major reasons why the Christmas underwear bomber was stopped was he was in his seat.
The next bomber would probably have been better served by trying to set off a bomb in the bathroom. The rules in place for the next week are to call attention to those people.
That would have been the logical from the start, with the shoe bomber. However, intelligence and committing a suicide bombing appear to be mutually exclusive, in that there doesn't appear to have been a single intelligent suicide bomber to date.
If any of these terrorists were intelligent, they could have rigged a time bomb from a damn cellphone, laptop or any carry on electronic device that allows timed outputs. Yet the suicide bombers climbing onto planes appear to have forgotten a few steps in their devices, like blasting caps or remote detonation. Being next to the bomb and surrounded by people kind of make it difficult to perform a detonation, especially when you're trying to light your heels on fire. Consider this, the TAPT placed in the shoes would have detonated just as readily if he'd banged the heels of his shoes together like he was trying to clean them, and no one would have suspected a thing, but common sense doesn't exist when you're trying to blow yourself up for illogical reasons. [Edit: IIRC knocking was the primary cause of premature detonation in improvised explosives, so why this wouldn't be your plan for detonation if it works too well already is beyond me]
It's a lot like the people who refuse to use OSS software (with some exceptions like redhat) because it doesn't come with a service contract; when something goes wrong, there is nothing to point at and go "See! We did everything we should have to prevent this!"
The TSA doesn't want to look like a bunch of idiots if something like this happens again because they did nothing to prevent it.
With this, they're doing something and people, on some level, like it or are at least comforted by it.
Some will say "well their very existence prevented any terrorist from even trying to get a bomb through" which is just as valid as "their very exitence prevented pink elephants from Mars from landing and stomping us all to death."
> The TSA doesn't want to look like a bunch of idiots if something like this happens again because they did nothing to prevent it. With this, they're doing something and people, on some level, like it or are at least comforted by it.
In general terrorism and security theatre is about managing perceptions. They are two sides of the same coin. Terrorists are not in the business of killing as many people as possible they are in the business of scaring as many people as possible. Likewise the reponse of the government -- TSA is not in the business of making traveling safe, they are in the business of _seeming_ to make traveling safe.
They provide the comfort of the witch doctor that tries to cure cancer by shaking a rattle. Sadly people seem to buy it so far. As long as everyone buys it, they will keep hanging around, feeling everyone up (with a back of their hand of course), puffing air up womens skirts, making mothers drink their milk and push disabled out of their wheelchairs. Nobody minds that much, so that will continue and intensify as time goes on.
My claim is that is hasn't even started working.
I was able to board and fly on a plane before TSA existed, I can board and fly on a plane now, albeit I am felt up by some random dude, I am standing one hour in line, I have to take my shoes off at the airport, I can't get up to go to the bathroom for 1 hour before landing, I can't even keep a blanket, a pillow or magazine on my lap any more. That's the only tangible and visible result of having the TSA that I experienced.
> Their service is like the electric company (and IT)
My lights are on, I know the electrical company is providing me electricity. My servers are accessible, so I know the IT is doing their job. So it is not quite the same. How many real bombs has TSA stopped going through its security screening?
Are you kidding me! Utility companies don't try to place your gas line right next to a bad electrical circuit breaker "to keep you safe". Yes analogies always suck and this one is quite bad too, but it does illustrate the point. TSA's job should be contain and respond, not investigate and prevent. The latter should be left to investigative and intelligence agencies as that is their forte.
This was some time ago and I have not flown since so it might have changed, but things like: - dumping all the contents of all passengers water bottle into one big trashcan is stupid. Of course mentioning binary explosives will only get me into a lot of trouble. - spending 7m+ dollars on GE entry scans that make a ton of whooshing noises but are not really any better than plain ol' bulge under the shoulder check - checking your shoes when you can mold semtex or c4 into your belt just as easily and detonate it with something that looks like a fountain pen - turning on your laptop (what about the extra bay - how much explosive can you pack in there?)
Lets face it, unless we as consumers force the politicians to implement transparent, clear and measurable security policies and are willing to spend the time to think about it a bit, this sort of stuff will keep happening again and again and again.
No, it's not the same. One is plausible, the other is not.
Yes. Now let's not give the propaganda machine any ideas ;-)
Of course, one is plausable and the other is not. One is also a hyperbole to illustrate the point. Basically, in the last 10 years we had about 400 people/year die of terrorism on average (took 9/11 number and spread them over 9 years). There is a higher chance of being shot by your neighborhood cop than dying from terrorism. Now that's plausable. So lock up all the policemen in jail, that's more effective at preventing American death than what the TSA has been doing.
The point was that TSA in all these years has nothing to show for. There have been bombing attempts but they have been stopped by near by passengers and/or air marshals.
By now, instead of millions of harassed citizens TSA should have had a glass display case of at least a couple dozen explosive devices + some terrorists behind bars.
I mean, think about this: the poor terrorists-that-we-call-terrorists blow themselves up ... and we don't even listen to their message. (Which is usually "hey, leave us alone pls, kthnxboom") Then some yokel gets his 15 minutes to tell us how we need to spend billions on something he's getting kickbacks for. Who here is using terror more effectively?
Once the public has realized that there is (statistically) no root-cause terrorism, we can have appropriately relaxed security once again. And more money.
People do not blow up buildings, crash airliners, and wreck passenger trains because they want to be left alone. They do these things because they want to be feared, or barring that, paid attention to.
In the New Testament (Christianity) there isn't a clear cut statement about killing the unbeliever. There is Matthew 1:34, "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword" and Luke 22:36, "Then said he unto them, But now, he that hath a purse, let him take it, and likewise his scrip: and he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one" but no direct commandment to otherwise kill the unbeliever.
In the Koran, I found three passages that directly state the killing of unbelievers (translation by Mohammad Habib Shakir):
2.191 And kill them wherever you find them, and drive them out from whence they drove you out, and persecution is severer than slaughter, and do not fight with them at the Sacred Mosque until they fight with you in it, but if they do fight you, then slay them; such is the recompense of the unbelievers.
4.98 They desire that you should disbelieve as they have disbelieved, so that you might be (all) alike; therefore take not from among them friends until they fly (their homes) in Allah's way; but if they turn back, then seize them and kill them wherever you find them, and take not from among them a friend or a helper.
4.91 You will find others who desire that they should be safe from you and secure from their own people; as often as they are sent back to the mischief they get thrown into it headlong; therefore if they do not withdraw from you, and (do not) offer you peace and restrain their hands, then seize them and kill them wherever you find them; and against these We have given you a clear authority.
And one passage about killing those that wage war against Islam:
5.33 The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His messenger and strive to make mischief in the land is only this, that they should be murdered or crucified or their hands and their feet should be cut off on opposite sides or they should be imprisoned; this shall be as a disgrace for them in this world, and in the hereafter they shall have a grievous chastisement,
I only looked for passages that directly stated it was okay to kill unbelievers; I did not look for mor subtle passages that implied such. If you think I'm being unfair here, please point out any other passages from The Old Testament or New Testament that I may have missed.
Perhaps you are not aware of this, but Judaism's "canonical" text is not the Torah but the Talmud. Talmud is not equivocal regarding the nature (and constraints) on relations with the non-Jew ("Goyim") and its instructions are not dead-letters but accepted to this day.
That being said, more terrorists are probably motivated by meddling or foreign troops on their soil than what is written in the Koran, so I'm guessing it's more like adding fuel to the fire than the root cause.
The Crusades are an off-mentioned bugbear on the lips of moral relativists, and of course the Bible claims that the Hebrews drove out pagan tribes from the land of Cainaan. But in my opinion we ought to weight recent killings in the name of God slightly higher than those which occurred five hundred or three thousand years ago.
I could be wrong and biased because of the media I consume. Could you point me to a recent news story about a Christian or Jewish suicide bomber?
Meaning what? Stop satellite broadcasts of Baywatch? Stop consuming oil? Change our minds about Israel's right to exist? Decide that honor killing isn't so bad?
Al Qaeda have already shown they are cynical enough to employ teenagers as suicide bombers, mosques as headquarters, hospitals as munitions dumps. Waging war against the Great Satan makes them a headline act on the global stage. They've probably even figured out a way to get paid for it. Isn't it possible that the Al Qaeda leadership -- who let others take on the suicide missions -- just like this state of affairs?
Is it so hard to believe that their narrative of grievance and justification is self-serving, and exists primarily to help them recruit more ammunition?
We can debate the usefulness of a security measure, but the real problem is that the TSA is acting as if this was some kind of unknown attack vector. What have we learned that we didn't know before? Did we not know that people could hide explosives in their underwear, or in their body, or, to take just one more example, in prosthetic limbs? Is this news to anyone? So why the new rules?
Since these are all long-known methods of attacking an airplane, it makes no sense for the TSA to wait until an actual attack to implement "preventative" measures. Either implement the measures long beforehand or decide they're not useful and never implement them. What they're doing is like waiting for your hard drive to crash before you make backups.
"the pledged supporters of a wicked theocratic ideology. These people will kill themselves to attack hotels, weddings, buses, subways, cinemas, and trains. They consider Jews, Christians, Hindus, women, homosexuals, and dissident Muslims (to give only the main instances) to be divinely mandated slaughter victims."
This kind of insane toeing of the official line of good vs. evil is exactly the counter-productive foolishness that allows the security services to carry on with their ridiculous "responses" to these events.
Putting our heads into the sand about the actions WE have taken and supported in the past 100 years that have motivated these attacks does no one more disservice than ourselves. Just a few weeks back there was an extremely revealing article with statistics on the number of Muslim civilians directly killed by American forces in the past 30 years and vice versa.
Even when these attackers ARE explicitly motivated by religion, it is on the basis of worldwide injustices of our government that that religious motivation is invoked. It is never a question of killing because that is all Americans are good for, as is often implied in pieces like this.
"We had better get used to being the civilians who are under a relentless and planned assault."
Seriously? After bitching about the ineffectiveness of the TSA, the best idea for a replacement is to raise our hands and say "oh well, shit happens and planes go boom"?
FTA: "A terrorist attack cannot possibly destroy our country's way of life; it's only our reaction to that attack that can do that kind of damage."
I read Bruce Schneir's interview with Kip Hawley back in 2007, and came away with the belief that we have a team in place that has some significant knowledge of managing aviation security:
http://www.schneier.com/interview-hawley.html
As for what happened on Christmas, Bruce concisely describes a fairly common mantra about aviation security:
"Basically, there are three broad ways of defending airplanes: preventing bad people from getting on them (ID checks), preventing bad objects from getting on them (passenger screening, baggage screening), and preventing bad things from happening on them (reinforcing the cockpit door, sky marshals)."
And, with the exception of not getting millimeter-wave/back-scatter technology in place for full body scanning (which would have trivially caught the Christmas underwear bomber - and the lack of this technology at security checkpoints is perhaps the one real-failure of the TSA), I think the TSA has done an admirable job.
Note - one thing most people don't understand, is that by creating a rule which states "You must sit down in the last hour of flight" - the goal isn't to prevent mad-bombers from standing up, it's to make it very clear which ones the mad bombers are for the Sky Marshals and Airline crew - it's for a week, and the rule (hopefully) is given a pass for those who clearly need to go to the washroom, need a blanket, etc...
Is nobody noticing this guy got on a plane in another country? Why the mindless hammering on the American TSA?
Planes running into buildings are pretty spectacular, but even if we removed ALL security measures, airport security would be WAY down on the list of things that result in needless death.
There are infinite cheap/free ways to terrorize people if you're willing to die. There is no way to be secure from it short of spending gazillions on preventative measures.
Being terrorized by lunatics will always be a cost of being hated. We should stop spending significant money on it, consider it a painful cost of being free/prosperous, and focus on not being so worthy of hate.
The fact is that we have had a history of ignoring early warning signs, and that when we have taken action, we have been succesful. Terrorists make mistakes, and when we ignore them (like the Bojinka plot), it has directly led to disaster (9/11). On the other hand, since lugagge scanning has improved, we rarely see bombings like Lockerby or Air India any longer.
I think the end-user vs. IT department analogy is one anyone who agreed with this article should ponder on. When a low-level employee causes a security breach, he's not the one who has to deal with the effects. The experts have to come in and fix the problem, andm management has to bear the responsibility.
Similarly, in the event of an airline catasrophe, it's the emergency services who have to pick through the wreckage andook for bodies; the airlines and their employees who suffer financially. Pilots and flight attendants who know they are at highest risk, due to the ime the spend in the air. And leaders of countries, who can have their entire presidency redefined in a single day.
I'd rather hear their opinions than those of a professional troll lime Hitchens.
Some of the people criticizing the TSA (like Bruce Schneier) are absolutely experts on security.
You're also right, the analogy of IT vs the users is a valid one. In this case, the IT department has told the users that they are no longer allowed to browse the web between the hours of 3:30 and 3:38 because it was during this time that somebody downloaded and installed a virus.
Instead of actually addressing the root of the problem (our users can download and install viruses), the IT department has put a band-aid over it so that they can say that it has been fixed.
Screen everyone carefully. Careful tests of everything brought aboard, if any is allowed at all. Require background checks upon passport application (or application for plane tickets). Also, have a security officer on board, with orders to shoot to kill if anyone tries any funny stuff.
Of course, organizations like local police forces are in a far better position to make a difference. Better detective work, with the goal of breaking up terrorist rings and locating individuals, would certainly be an effective step to combat terrorism. As this article points out - these people are often already suspects.
A reasonable solution would be to give up on complete security. Put in the obvious deterrents - a security officer on board the plane, and reinforced cabin doors that don't open for the duration of the flight. Other than that, don't worry about it. When you look at other threats like drunk driving or heart disease you should realize that our panic is misplaced.
So to the extent that the TSA can efficiently and effectively scan for weapons, explosives and known terrorists, they should. To the extent that they can't detect certain explosives (the theoretical binary liquid concern), it's reasonable to take measures to mitigate risk. (E.g. limit quantities when feasible)
Beyond that? Nothing.
There are scads of targets that ought to be attractive to terrorists: sports arenas, various tunnels and bridges, power generation and transmission, etc. None of these get anything like the security attention, despite their potential to cause far greater harm than the WTC attacks did.
I have the mental picture of a building with many doors. We're putting solid steel doors, deadbolts, triple padlocks, etc., on one door, while the other entries are nothing but screen doors. This is ridiculously ineffective in cost and freedom.
Bruce is dead-on right in this case. Fighting the previous war won't prevent the next one.
Should I care what the head of the TSA has to say about RockYou's password data theft, too?
A. I don't think anyone has seen a reason to believe that the TSA really are experts. For example, everyone I know has some experience in accidentally carrying contraband onto an airplane, and has seen countless ways to do so intentionally based on gaping holes in the processes.
B. We don't live in a Platonic republic, governed by experts. Our government is of, by, and for the people. Even in instances when we the people have decided to delegate some authority to an expert, it's still inherently the responsibility of that expert to prove to us that they're doing the right thing. TSA has failed dismally at that.
I actually do it intentionally in the sense that if I know my sunblock is more than 3oz and I don't want to throw it out, I just hope they don't find it. I get it on the plane about 50% of the time.
When I flew out of SJC on the 24th, they weren't even reminding people to take their liquids out; I left mine in my luggage with no issues.
When I flew back from BWI on the 29th, there was a guy a little bit in front of me who walked through the metal detector with his coat on. The machine went off, and they had him go back and take his belt off and empty his pockets... but said nothing about the coat, despite the facts that the signs along the line specifically say to take off your coat and put it in a bin.
If the TSA doesn't even enforce their own policies, what's the point?
How can they deny that this is security theater, when they're only reacting to the most recent threats, while older attack vectors just scroll off the regulations?
I've started to call the bizarre new TSA rules "magical thinking": if we somehow protect against the specific tactic of the previous terrorist, we make ourselves safe from the next terrorist. http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/12/me_and_the_chr...
Only two things have made flying safer [since 9/11]: the reinforcement of cockpit doors, and the fact that passengers know now to resist hijackers.
As to the current 'articles about how stupid airline security is' I'll quote again:
And what sort of magical thinking is behind the rumored TSA rule about keeping passengers seated during the last hour of flight? Do we really think the terrorist won't think of blowing up their improvised explosive devices during the first hour of flight?
Only one carry on? No electronics for the first hour of flight? I wish that, just once, some terrorist would try something that you can only foil by upgrading the passengers to first class and giving them free drinks.
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/12/separating_exp...
Joel Johnson at Gizmodo has a good argument about all of this: http://gizmodo.com/5435675/president-obama-its-time-to-fire-...
Question for you, what's the airline with best security record in the world? El Al, who have been under constant terrorist threat for 40 years. Yet no-one mocks them for their boneheaded ideas (e.g. let's confiscate everyone's liquids based on volume alone and toss them all into a big bin right near the checkpoint) because they really do know what they're doing. No bullshit, no security theatre, just a track record.
TSA and Homeland Security are amateurs. Both the shoebomber and now the pantsbomber (both of whom were utterly incompetent themselves) breezed through all their security measures. Ordinary passengers dealt with it, the old fashioned way. There's a lesson there.
After that, it was a third metal detector (not x-ray this time) and finally a full on frisk by another representative of the national military. Let me tell you, this was not a friendly pat, pat like what TSA gives you. This was a full on search like I was an enemy prisoner that they were concerned had a knife hidden somewhere on me.
After all of that, they stuck me in a windowless room with all of the other passengers until our flight was ready to board (About 1/2 an hour). There were no shops, no bathrooms, and only one room with men and women with automatic rifles posted at the exits.
What it gave me the impression of was people who had had issues with hijacking and terrorism before and REALLY didn't want it to happen again. People who didn't give a shit if I was inconvenienced or annoyed because they knew that it would be far more of an inconvenience for me if some asshole blew the plane up over the ocean somewhere.
Is this true? TWA Flight 800 crashed in 1996. Weren't screeners asking passengers if they packed their own luggage before this?
I believe Hitchens is also wrong on the second point here:
These two questions are the very ones to which a would-be hijacker or bomber would honestly and logically have to answer "yes." But answering "yes" to both was a condition of being allowed on the plane! Eventually, that heroic piece of stupidity was dropped as well.
My understanding was always that this question was designed to weed out any cases where a second party might have covertly sneaked explosives into your luggage without your knowledge.
In other words, let each airline compete (and innovate) with it's own security solutions, and spend it's own money to implement them. This would essentially bring the power of the free market to bear on the problem. A terrorist getting onto United (for example) with a bomb would be a huge PR problem and a mark against the airline not the TSA, causing them to lose business and competitors to scramble to learn/capitalize on it.
As it stands if you have a complaint against how the TSA is handling things, there isn't much you can do. But if airlines provided their own security, passengers could "vote with their dollars" on who was finding the right mix of effective security vs. inconvenience to honest passengers, and the best solution would be rewarded economically.
Btw, I realize this would probably never happen given the political climate, but I also can't think of any reason why it wouldn't work better than the TSA. Thoughts?
Putting a burden of airport security on airlines will be a final nail on their collective coffin though.
Besides, many airports (at least here in Europe) already have private contractors doing airport security. So what? It doesn't matter who does the job, they simply implement the policies regulators impose.
Now having private entities producing ad hoc security policies with primary goal of maximizing returns - that's what I call a Disaster.
As it stands, TSA is paid for by taxes (from both airlines and consumers).
In the privatized scenario, airline companies and consumers pay less in taxes, ticket prices increase to pay for private security.
You could call it a wash in the worst case, but in reality it would likely end up as a net gain to society because privatization has a strong history of cost savings over government solutions: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privatization#Pro-privatisation
Regarding what you said about "they simply implement the policies regulators impose" - this isn't full privatization of course. In the scenario I'm imagining each airline would have the freedom to chose their own policies and there aren't regulators.
Finally, just wanted to look at what you said about a focus on maximizing returns leading to a disaster. This is the counterintuitive argument and greatest discovery of capitalism in my mind - that a selfish focus on maximizing your own benefit can actually lead to the greatest benefit for society as well.
Think about how an airline would actually maximize their returns. They'd probably need to get more customers right? To do that they'd have to convince customers they provided the best product at the best price. Customers aren't dumb. You couldn't just provide "security theater" that had little actual benefit, customers would call your bluff. So you'd have to actually convince them you were doing a better job for the cost. What I'm getting at is that maximizing returns is the most honest way we've ever devised to get real results - either you're doing a good job (and people let you know by giving you their hard earned dollars) or you aren't and your company is unapologetically weeded out (bankruptcy, acquisition, new management). It's a lot like natural selection.
Yes, at some point there will probably be an airline who makes the mistake of using short term thinking - (cutbacks on security which aren't apparent at first but lead to a disaster). But this is a self correcting problem in that if it comes back to bite them their business will likely be sued out of existence. (You can't say the same for the TSA.) It's unlikely to happen often though. I think in the same way you trust a Mercedes over some brand new car company who is only focused on short term thinking, customers would buy tickets from airline companies they trust with long track records. This is another way of saying the market rewards long term thinking companies when appropriate.
Naturally, some companies will spend less on security and offer cheaper tickets - this is actually a good thing - it segments the market for people based on their risk tolerance. If you think the whole thing is overblown and know the real risks (as someone mentioned above you are more likely to be shot by your neighborhood police officer then die from terrorism) you get cheaper tickets!
Anyway, this is a long winded explanation, but the gist is that free market competition has been shown to produce better results in areas like this. I'm perfectly willing to admit it doesn't work in all cases. I just haven't heard or thought of a good reason why it wouldn't work here yet.
Also, just wanted to point out it doesn't require deaths to judge the effectiveness of the TSA (or this solution) as shown with the "close call" over Christmas.
Our representatives in government aren't going to revoke these powers any time soon unless we ask them to.
It seems the only deaths Americans are willing to accept as part of life are car crashes. All other causes are unacceptable and should be sued or enforced out of existence, even if they constitute a small fraction of that number.
o They have a grand total of 37 airplanes in their fleet.
o They engage in aggressive racial profiling.
o Their passenger pattern typically consists of people flying to and from Israel. It's pretty straightforward to identify the aberration in that crowd.
o By simply using the filter of "You are likely among the racial/ethnic/cultural target-crowd that is likely to be a terrorist" and then applying selective screening, you pretty much eliminate a fairly major vector for attack.
Admittedly, one of the reasons why profiling takes place at El Al, is that is because it works for that particular target. The United States, even if it were willing to engage in profiling, has a much broader set of attackers - you'd end up finding everyone included in your profile.
But, because the United States doesn't have the same straightforward problem of identifying who the _attackers_ are, they need to engage in "defense in depth" that El Al has the luxury of not requiring. Ergo - no large volumes of liquids (Note - the bottle size maximum is likely related to the highly oxygen reactive properties of the target liquids - you can't really combine them into one large bomb after the security checkpoint - and the small bottles aren't large enough to do _too_ much damage. A few people might be killed, or seriously injured - but it's unlikely you could bring a plane down within the restrictions of the TSA liquid size)
Shoes, likewise, with their metal inserts and large and easily concealed compartments, need to be scanned in the X-Ray machine.
Here are some simple steps that would dramatically increase security:
o Eliminate Carry On Luggage. This would be an issue on long flights for the work crowd though, as well as people carrying food/supplies for babies, anything valuable that they don't want to check, and people with medical requirements. Some Canadian Ports of entry were effectively doing that this week though.
o Full Body Scans with Back-Scatter/Millimeter Wave scans. This is way overdue, and the number one tactical failure of the TSA. Start your stopwatch - within 48 months 100% of inbound international passengers will be subject to some type of Full Body Scan or Pat Down. It will be interesting to see if the same thing will occur domestically.
o Full Pat-Down for all passengers - They actually did this at YVR a couple days ago. Slowed things down a little, but that's because they didn't have enough staff to do it quickly. They need to get over their tendency not to search sensitive areas if they want to ensure it's done with 100% effectivness.
o Bomb Sniffers/Dogs - I'm surprised nobody has automated this more effectively yet.
Note that any _one_ of these last three would have caught the Christmas Underwear Bomber - in fact, would likely have dissuaded him, and a large class of attackers, in the first place.
Either it costs too much or people don't want to give up their liberty (though really, the pat-down is the only one that should offend people).
Like too many things, this is a political problem and not a technical one.
#1 - that's not to say that, for the privacy sensitive individuals, appropriate safeguards should not be taken. Penalties against displaying the information, no ability to save it, faces blurred. These types of scans can be made as secure as medical records - and those are far more sensitive than a faceless body-scan.
#2 - I'm interested in hearing about alternative ways to defend against the PETN in the underwear + Liquid Detonator. It seems to me to be the most straightforward attack vector possible on an airplane right now. I recognize we can't forsake all our privacy for a small amount of security, but neither can we forsake all our security for a small amount of privacy.
#3 - for those really opposed to the bodyscan, they can always subject themselves to a full pat-down. That has always seemed more intrusive to me, and less effective as well - as they sensitive areas (Groin, Chest) are never searched and would seem to me to be ideal locations for explosives.
#4 - I really don't consider Body Scans to be much of a privacy issue - Any nudist or burning man attendee will tell you that real-actual-nudity, even in person, really loses any excitement for the viewer after being in its presence for about 90 seconds. The people working a shift scanning will not be getting any visceral enjoyment from eyeballing scan after scan. (Particularly as they will probably be monitoring several dozen scanners over all the terminals simultaneously)
#5 This is all moot anyways - BodyScanning/X-Ray scanning is going to be a prime candidate for automation. I'm guessing within five-seven years, no human alive will be as effective at spotting issues on a Luggage X-Ray/Body scan as software, and so you will basically either sail on through under the observation of software (which only the most extreme privacy advocates would have an issue with), or be flagged and subjected to a pat-down/luggage search.
As others have pointed out, the mm-wave scans amount to strip searches. A full pat-down just has too many associations with a criminal arrest. Eliminating carry-on luggage is probably more under the "inconvenience" category, but it is, as you somewhat note, an inconvenience that would be a significant problem for a lot of people.
Bomb sniffers -- especially if they're machines that are used passively -- sound like a good idea. Better scanning equipment that doesn't violate my privacy, but is able to do an adequate scan of both me and my belongings, without the need to take off my shoes or remove things (laptop, bag of liquids, etc.) from my luggage, or to limit the quantity of liquids I can carry... we need all these things.
With the amount of money supposedly being thrown at "making us safer" on airplanes, why have these scanners not been invented and mass-produced yet? It's been over 8 years since 9/11, and, technology-wise, we just have a few poorly-deployed pieces of technology (the air-puffer things, whatever they do, and the mm-wave scanners that have been a PR nightmare) and no actual universally-deployed solutions. I've been seeing signs at airports for a while now claiming that they're "working on" a solution that will let us keep our shoes on... but this solution hasn't materialized. Gimme a break...
This attacker screwed up and got tackled before the detonator was able to set off the PETN - the next one will likely be smart enough to set off a bomb in the bathroom.
I actually am very interested in hearing what alternative approaches there are out there.
But maybe that's ok. Maybe preserving our privacy and avoiding making us all feel like criminals while we're traveling is worth a successful attack every now and then.
Yes, I know: easy for me to say, not having been on that plane, and never having lost anyone to terrorism. But I'd argue that the people who have been victims of terrorism (directly or indirectly) are way too close to the situation to be able to make a decision like that for the rest of us.
What is so magical about planes that make them such huge terrorist targets? How many passengers are on your average commercial flight? 200? 300? Hell, you could kill that many people just by setting off a bomb in the pre-security section of a decent-sized airport on a moderately-busy day -- and it would be comparatively trivial to accomplish.