Man Arrested At Airport for Unusual Watch
depletedcranium.com
depletedcranium.com
This insanity has to stop. Has anybody seen the progaganda the agency puts out? The idea that TSA is now using little stacks of toe-nail clippers and such as proof of how great a job they are doing should be ringing alarm bells somewhere.
It's perfectly possible that the way the TSA works (e.g. knowing that you'll go through body scanners or thorough patdowns) has deterred potentially nasty attacks. Luckily we'll never know.
Everyone who criticizes the TSA (and with reason) should also think about what they would do if they were given the task of trying to prevent Black Swan events with minimal disruption to the 99.9999 percent of normal travelers.
It's an extremely hard problem. Most people who talk about it simply don't have enough knowledge of statistics, or the psychology of deterrence.
Right now the weak spot is you usually have thousands of people hanging around outside the security gates waiting to get screened. Maybe they should have a pre-screening area for screening people who want to go into the screening line to make sure they're not going to do any terrorism!
If the TSA was disbanded, and instead a Keyser Söze-style response was instituted, where every week a random plane was blown up, the number of casualties would still be vastly lower than the number of people killed in vehicular accidents in the United States alone. Even with this absurd "lottery", air travel would still be safer than most other forms of transportation.
The thing is, air travel is largely safe even with infrequent and devastating incidents.
Reasonable security measures should obviously be employed, but the things they're looking for are not the real dangers.
For instance, if nail clippers pose a threat to the plane, then surely any of a hundred items in the aircraft itself are just as dangerous.
There are thousands of ways to bring down an aircraft and the TSA tests for, at best, a few dozen. It's like fencing off the drive-way of a high-security facility and leaving the rest open.
Motivated individuals will find a way around your security theatre. Meanwhile millions of travellers just trying to go about their business will be terrorized by the absurd TSA screening procedures that make almost anything seem suspicious and criminal.
"Why are you bringing an unusual amount of baby formula?" Arrest that lady with a baby who has an allergic reaction to other kinds of formula!
The FBI, by contrast, has uncovered and disrupted actual attacks because they use an entirely different approach. They try to discover the plan long before it ever reaches the airport.
That's what you should do to eliminate these 0.00001% type events.
The thing is, an attack in a queue could happen anywhere, not just an airport. But the effects are highly localized. Part of what makes plane bombs extra-scary is that they could go off anywhere, so not only does the plane blow up, but it falls out of the sky and lands on people. That's more terrifying than a bomb explosion in a fixed location, plus it impacts all other travel arteries, giving the travel network in question the equivalent of a heart attack. A bomb in the air causes a lot more problems than one on the ground.
So of course it serves a function, however badly it does so. They overstepped in this case, but I don't have that much sympathy for the artist. He knew quite well that what he was doing looked like a dry run for a bombing; I'll warrant he just didn't expect to actually get arrested.
Reducing the public perception of risk is not the same as reducing the actual number of casualties (otherwise people would stop driving). Most people do not behave as Bayesian rationalists, and policy must take this into account.
By the way, the HN feature of delaying the option to respond as a thread grows (presumably to prevent flame wars) is not a good idea. It stifles interesting and civilized exchanges like this one, and flame wars happen regardless; people just start new comments or edit their existing ones.
Edit: to the commenter below, you argue a false dichotomy that has nothing to do with my comment. Besides, that would be similar to asking the public about the next chess move for Kasparov; most people are not qualified to answer. There are reasons not every public policy decision is a votable proposition.
That's not the government's job, though. It is not the role of the government to make people feel safe. It is not, in fact, the role of government to make people feel anything in particular, be it safe, happy, calm, or sexually aroused.
It can be argued that the government should -actually- keep people safe, but it is very hard to defend the position that we need to have the Feeling Police, which is a few neural folds away from being the Thought Police.
edit: If you'd like to ask "then, who should make people feel safe?", my answer is "psychotherapists".
> you argue a false dichotomy that has nothing to do with my comment
I'm not really sure what dichotomy you think I'm arguing. I'm not saying we can only do one of (a) make people safer and (b) make people feel safer, I'm saying that only one of those is a good use of public resources.
> Besides, that would be similar to asking the public about the next chess move for Kasparov; most people are not qualified to answer.
If you're asking people what should be done to make them safer, that is outside their area of expertise, and I'm happy with not asking them about that (they'd probably answer stupid things like a Transport Security Administration or more scanners, or fewer liquids on planes or racially segregated flights, with only English being allowed to be spoken).
If on the other hand the question is 'how much are you prepared to pay to feel safer (while not actually being safer)', that is definitely within the competence (and right) of the public to decide.
To decide that people's money should be spent 'for their own good' on making them feeling safer and not even being prepared to ask them if that is true is arrogant, patronising and the opposite of safeguarding freedom.
How many people have had heart attacks and strokes brought on by TSA-induced stress?
I believe that actually depends on the metric you use. I think it was something along the lines of, compared to car/bus/train/etc it is the safest per mile, but not very safe per trip.
I'm deeply annoyed by your implication that we haven't. I'm not aware of any TSA critic who hasn't thought of a different approach that they'd prefer to see. Sometimes that preferred approach is "cut way back on airport security and let airplanes get blown up sometimes", which is still a completely valid opinion.
You're absolutely right that it's a hard problem. However, the problem can trivially be solved better than the TSA is solving it. There's a big difference between a problem that's hard to solve extremely well (as this is) and a problem that's hard to solve better than it's currently being solved (which this is not, at least not in the US).
As an analogy, it's a hard problem to achieve six-nines reliability with a network service, but we can still observe that holding nightly chants outside the datacenter to appeal to the gods of uptime for their blessing is a bad approach.
Bruce Schneier has observed that only two things have been done to improve air travel security since 9/11: locking and reinforcing cockpit doors, and convincing the passengers to fight back against hijackers. I agree with him completely. None of the other measures taken have helped at all.
I can easily do better than the TSA. Easily. For example, ditch the liquid restrictions. Done. We're no less safe than before, and a huge hassle and cost has been removed. Improvement!
For a more comprehensive approach, you'd probably want to cut down on the invasive screening of every passenger. Ditch the body scanners, which provide very little benefit but huge costs. Go back to the metal detectors and regular X-ray machines for baggage. Then take the money you save from this and put it into behavioral profiling, to detect nefarious people rather than nefarious items, and intelligence, to find terrorists before they get anywhere near the airport.
The TSA has not actively stopped any terrorist attacks, we know this. More so, we know that the TSA has failed to stop several terrorist attacks which have only been foiled through other means. The shoe bomber, the underwear bomber, the Christmas Day Detroit attack. The TSA was powerless to stop these attacks. Instead, what has worked has been police work (both in the US and abroad) and passenger vigilance. It's possible that the TSA has deterred some attacks, but given how easy it is to get a bomb on an airplane despite the TSA it raises the question of whether it's worth the expense, the hassle, and the degradation of our civil liberties.
An Israeli-style defense is far more likely to catch the black swan events, but it requires much more training for agents. We'd rather build an obscene list of everything you can't do and pay cloned storm troopers to go down each item on it.
Also, Israel and the US are not easy to compare. The types of threats, population sizes, and public opinion are so different that it probably would not make sense to go for the Israel approach in the US. That said, Israel is a testbed for approaches that the US sometimes adopts.
You can't justify national policy by saying "it's immeasurable, it could work!" That is like proving the existence of god by saying "we haven't not seen him, he could be there!"
>Everyone who criticizes the TSA (and with reason) should also think about what they would do if they were given the task of trying to prevent Black Swan events with minimal disruption to the 99.9999 percent of normal travelers.
A key feature of black swan events is that you'll never be able to predict them. It seems like this fact is behind 99% of the criticisms you hear about the TSA. Perhaps we should stop chasing the boogeyman and start figuring out how to deal with him when he comes.
First, I'd consider if it was worth it.
It seems to me that by the time you get to the point where a group has come up with the desire, the plan, and the execution of a terrorist attack, then stopping them at the airport is too late. Sure, it might work, but they could just target something easier.
I'd spend all these resources beefing up our intelligence agencies and go back to pre-9/11 air travel.
That's if the end goal is decreasing deaths from terrorist attacks. Ideally, I'd prefer to live free and unconstrained and accept a slightly higher chance of dying in a terrorist attack.
The TSA seems to be redundant.
I was thinking they should probably reinforce and lock the cockpit doors. That would eliminate all attacks that are more deadly than hitting a high school football game or even a crowded mall.
If they ever do that, they can get rid of all of the nudity scanning devices and we'll be back to the same amount of danger as walking around in public.
I suggest you look up a guy named Bruce Schneier. He's my go-to authority on these sorts of things.
HN friends, please, please, make sure you opt out of the body scanners. If for nothing else, I can assure you the dude that's feeling your junk is far more embarrassed than you are and if he has to do it often enough, maybe he'll quit.
Last time I flew, I got a new guy. It was his first time and one of the veteran BT's had to coach him through it. He seemed mortified and I think that might have been his last day on the job.
Once I opted-out by walking to the metal detector and (after being told to go into the other line for the L3 ProVision unit) asking for a pat-down, the agents handled it as usual (a bunch of awkward shouts for a "male assist at station 3", an embarrassed guy walking over and asking if I knew how this process worked and had done it before, and then a pretty perfunctory pat-down) - but if I didn't a priori know that I had that right, it wasn't listed on any of the many signs in the security scanning area.
Unfortunately he was coached to move his hand along my inner leg until he 'felt resistance' which to him meant banging his hand, hard, against my testicles. It hurt.
I'm not sure if I'll continue to opt out. If it's a choice between being seen without clothing and possibly being punched in the nuts, I think I'll choose the former.
How is making someone with some decency quit a valuable objective, when he will only be replaced with someone with no decency?
Let's supposed eventually that position is filled by "someone with no decency." Then passengers getting screened become more and more annoyed and outraged, complaints rise, and potentially leading to change.
Now, that change might be to no longer have opt-out. But in either case, the possible course of events is likely not as simple as what you outlined.
While I agree that they'll be reluctant to raise prices, the damage of being represented as the airline that refused to "contribute to public safety" would be worse.
One of the greatest purposes of art is to hold up a mirror to society, and McGann has done that very well here.
If that was his intent, I applaud it, and will be happy to chip in to his defense fund if one of his friends will start a collection.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes
There quite possibly could have been a reason why Sgt Nelson thought this went beyond a piece of art.
The facts of the case so far are:
1) Dude is outfitted in camo, watch that looks like an IED timer, and shoes rigged out like the "shoe bomber".
2) Dude gets pulled aside and claims it's all art.
3) Dude gets arrested.
Getting flagged for questioning because of (1) seems straightforward to me.
How it went from (2) to (3) is less clear, and it might be prudent to hold off the hand-wringing for now.
I'm betting X * Y * Z is still much larger than W.
And lets not forget that they could have easily break his shoes and see if he was actually hiding something inside those.
The fact is that he was arrested for having a wierd outfit. If somebody believes that this guy who has been an artist for many years, flies a lot and registered his domain in 1995 is a actually a terrorist they are delusional and shouldn't be in charge of any kind of law enforcement.
It's not possible to know that yet. It may never be possible, if the TSA withholds certain information, or that information never becomes part of the public record.
I tend to think there is more to this as well, including plenty of Gestapo ass-hattery from the police and the TSA. I just wonder if part of the art project included being arrested. We may be witnessing a piece of performance art.
Unfortunately every member of the TSA cannot be an expert in this man's artwork to understand what he actually had in his posession. Suspicious watches (and protruding wires!) are one of the things they are trained to look for as all of the 9/11 hijackers had digital casio wrist watches. So yeah, honestly I think confiscating the watch and stopping him was a good move. Maybe even denying him his flight would be sane.
What does it take for you guys to agree that someone shouldn't get on a plane, a backpack full of c4!? The idea is to stop the disaster before it happens, and at this point all we have are vague clues. Not to mention the fact that for economic reasons, each TSA officer is going to be a layman who probably isn't well versed in electronics.
Combine this with the fact that it looked like he "hid" it under his coat... This guy needs to use some discretion when flying, I'm sorry!
As much as I disagree with the erosion of our civil liberties, wearing a watch that looks like a bomb detonator onto a plane is not a smart move. Sure, us HNers would know the difference between art and a real device. The general public does not, and we cannot expect them all to gain our same level of competence with electronics.
Finally, the TSA stopped someone that was actually suspicious.
What's totally unreasonable in any context is the fact that this guy was CHARGED WITH A CRIME, and is now sitting in jail on $150,000 bail. He will have to go through a lengthy trial process and potentially serve jail-time. Unless the facts are contrary to what the article presents (which is possible), this is totally unreasonable.
Are you seriously satirizing the idea that the line should be drawn at items that are actually dangerous?
Mainly, because a terrorist would not walk by the TSA with a gun, bomb, knife, or whatever now. Unless they were just an idiot. Most terrorism is organized. So they would have a plan. They send people in advance to take pictures of the airport and find other entrances. There are ways into the secure areas of airports if you look.
That's why at an airport every employee has the task of challenging people. Every single employee is always watching for suspicious behavior.
So if it is a terrorist attack, the TSA is not going to see a bomb. They might see a tiny hint of something to come, but no one is going to walk by the TSA with a WMD. They are more sophisticated than this and have other ways of getting them in.
If there is no penalty for trying to board a plane while with lookalike dangerous items, then there is nothing to deter one from "probing" the screening for weaknesses, and the system is worthless.
Everyone who has a timer/watch/cellphone does, which is the point of why this is so ridiculous. If you arrest everyone who has all the materials necessary to make a bomb minus the explosives, everyone would be arrested.
Now it does take skills which most people don't have; but this isn't about skills it is about physical kit, and purely in terms of the physical stuff needed I'm almost certain you could buy it all at the airport in the "secure" part (e.g. travel clock).
I don't know what's worse...
The idea that knowing how to blow stuff up qualifies you to profile folks as potential terrorists or that being consulted for a TV show qualifies you for anything.
Based on this interview: http://boingboing.net/2008/09/22/star-simpson-one-yea.html
She was in and out of court for a year, nobody was punished, and nothing was altered. This could and maybe will happen again.
I personally ALWAYS put my jacket on top of my items when at the airport. As I go through security, I take off my belt, remove my wallet, cell phone and other devices from my pockets and put them in the trey to go through the x-ray machine. Then I put my jacket on top of them. Is it because I’m a terrorist? No. I just don’t want my wallet and cell phone being out in the open as they emerge from the x-ray machine. Like most people, I’m always a little nervous that if I get stuck at the metal detector, someone could grab my wallet and slip away with it. Hence, I don’t want it to be so plainly obvious.
It's not right that this is the case, but like it or not, it is.
How is this different from countries like Russia, which can send anyone to prison for anything?
Art is art within a specified context. Outside of which, it's usually something else. In this case, a security threat.
At least they caught the guy - imagine how he'd try to paint the TSA as useless if he was allowed on through.
You poke the bear, you get the horns.
2) Being able to smuggle a watch through security at an airport wouldn't be grounds for much celebration.
3) What kind of bears have horns?
4) We don't know the full details (the official story could be wildly exaggerated), but if the TSA over-reacted then it doesn't really matter what the intentions of the artist were. If the artist was just a dude with a strange watch or if he was trying to show us the limits of our freedoms, our freedoms are still limited.
The fact that weapons are so much more effective and disguisable these days leads me to believe that, sadly, this sort of thing is only going to get worse. I can't imagine what the reactions will be when people are as concerned about biological weapons as they are about explosives.
Yes, there was. The unfortunate difference between then and now is that then there was a clear end to the hostilities. The "war on terror" has no such clear end. Doesn't matter that Bin Laden was killed, doesn't matter that there hasn't been a successful terror attack in more than 10 years (and that nearly all the unsuccessful ones probably wouldn't have existed if not for the assistance of undercover FBI agents). When will it end? You can always claim that there are still more "radicals" out there who want to kill us, and that further fear is justified.
Modern government seems to thrive on making people as afraid as possible, perpetuating the cycle instead of damping it.
For details, see the BBC documentary "The Power of Nightmares (The Rise of the Politics of Fear)" by Adam Curtis.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_Nightmares http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGo1DqmfHjY
I don't mind the edit, but I don't know that it was needed.
Paypal might not be "dependable" and Kickstarter doesn't really do "funding for a cause" from what I've seen.
I applied to Kickstarter for a project to create a PayPal alternative, soon after Kickstarter launched. They rejected it.
Idiot
Idiot.
The airlines exist in the civilian world, so there are civilian expectations.
> They will also do dry runs to see if tsa is doing their job before they bring in real explosives.
What is their job? Security theater?
> Liberties have to be sacrificed at times
You assume we will get our liberties back at some point. If the TSA expires, I would agree with you, but it looks like they've taken our liberties from here forward.
I don't understand why people ever defend the TSA at all. They not only make the experience of air travel fairly horrible, but they don't even keep us safe! I could understand defending them if you were afraid and they kept the bad guys away, but they don't even do that.
American society is currently going through a raving paranoia phase. This is not about terrorists, it is about the public getting off on wallowing in fear. Hence the TSA, Department of Homeland Security, Amber Alerts, escalating the War on Drugs, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, zero tolerance everything, transparent backpacks and metal detectors for schoolchildren, hysterical panics about the supposed dangers of immunizations of all things, and so forth.
We have met the enemy and he is us.
Bin Laden's genius was to realize this and trick us into defeating ourselves in detail. Fortunately for us he chose something relatively harmless like the 9-11 attacks. Imagine if he had arranged for Al Qaeda to be caught sneaking iodide and omega-3 fats into every major baby food factory. We'd now be defiantly raising a generation of retards to show those ragheads who's boss.
We seem to have that covered without their help.