Bruce Schneier: Fixing Airport Security | Hacker News Reader

Bruce Schneier: Fixing Airport Security

schneier.com

44 pointslamnk19 comments

Hear. Hear. I was just on flights out of town over the weekend, and it occurred to me that the terrorists have won by making air travel so inconvenient and annoying for every American who ever flies domestically.

"Maybe Secure Flight is a good use of our money; maybe it isn't. But let's have debates like that in the open, as part of the budget process, where it belongs." This is the general answer for review of current security procedures: we should check whether they are worthwhile for the amount of improved security they promise to provide.

This made me think of the current ACLU lawsuit against the TSA, where a man was detained for carrying a large sum of money (he was the treasurer of a political party). A recording of his interrogation is available on their website, and although he was, admittedly, causing a bigger scene than was necessary, it clearly illustrates that not even the TSA officials are completely familiar with the rights of passengers.

it's remarkable to me to consider how outlandishly ineffective airport security is, and then to realize that it's just the typical sort of response. Why should we believe that any of the new financial regulations will be any more effective than making people throw away water bottles?

Why should we believe that "fixing healthcare" will be more effective than "fixing airport security"?

Because it isn't about being effective, it's about doing something, or rather, appearing to do something. It's all about appearances, as many things in life are for better or worse.

Not sure why you're being modded down - but you're right, airport security won't be "fixed" because most people are not aware that it is broken.

I'm Canadian, and airport security in Canada, while we still have the ludicrous liquid rules, is still considerably less asinine than it is in America (e.g. I get to keep my belt AND shoes on).

I had a chance to discuss this with my American coworkers last year (a bus full of them), and I was surprised that most vehemently defended the need for the "security". When I remarked that another 9/11 was more than remote, due to the fact that passengers can no longer be subdued by hijackers (knowing that certain death awaits), I felt as if the entire group was ready to lynch me.

Like it or not, these security measures make people feel safer, and as such there's not a chance in hell of them disappearing anytime soon.

Try having a British passport and traveling in America. I was put into a little glass room, so my pockets could be searched, along with the other major threat to America - an old Hasidimic guy with an Israeli passport.

Simple logic, terrorists are the enemy, the enemy are not us - therefore all foreigners (and only foreigners) are potential terrorists.

Generalizing from a small data set is always dangerous. But seeing as you have, I will counter: I am British, I have traveled a lot in America, in the company of other foreigners, and I have never seen a shred of evidence that airport security is anti-British, nor that they suspect foreigners (and only foreigners) are potential terrorists.

Are you being as fair to them as you expect them to be to you?

It was a definite - all foreign passports = extra security policy. I have hit this at a bunch of airports, including well known terrorist targets like Salt lake city. Wether it was the individual airport policy or DHS were at alert level fuchsia they didn't say.

I'm just saying that as an intelligence led response it's a bit like Heathrow searching everybody who's surname begins with A because of Gerry Adams.

When I remarked that another 9/11 was more than remote, due to the fact that passengers can no longer be subdued by hijackers (knowing that certain death awaits)

Good point. Now passengers will fight to the death rather than cooperate with hijackers. United 93 was a very inspiring movie about ordinary people in very unexpected circumstances.

Yes... the solution for preventing another 9/11 was discovered, ironically, on 9/11 by the passengers of flight 93. All the rest of the measures such as cockpit doors, removal of shoes, etc., have been theatre.

Actually, Schneier says that reinforced cockpit doors are a good idea. A quote:

"I've said there are two things - reinforcing the cockpit doors, and convincing passengers they have to fight back. Everything else has been a red herring."

(From http://www.schneier.com/news-071.html )

Well they are an OK idea... but the question to ask is whether they are likely to have a significant impact on safety. My guess is that the impact is slim, which is OK since they are cheap and easy to implement.

But note that it took way longer to implement the cockpit doors than it did to nationalize airport security and start making people wait on 3 hour lines.

Also note that the GAO was able to get bombs through security at most major airports without doing anything particularly sophisticated.

There's a big difference between terrorism security and both financial regulation and (especially) healthcare. In the former, CYA is actually the only thing that can be done. Of course no politician can ever say the truth, that when dealing with suicidal attackers there's really no way to even approach anything resembling comprehensive security--all our civil liberties and money would be spent well before we got there. Sane measures like regular police, intelligence actions, and refraining from jabbing political hornets' nests are just not going to be seen as enough by coddled middle America who remain blissfully ignorant of conditions in the rest of the world.

With healthcare, on the other hand, the problems of uncovered individuals and waste in the system are measurable and ongoing. Obviously there's no magical solution, but the problem can be attacked and the situation can be improved by a variety of metrics.

Financial regulation falls somewhere in between... even though those rich wall street cocksuckers totally screwed the rest of us and stole our money, it's not like they wanted this to happen. The problem of systemic risk in the financial system is something that you can bet thousands of the best minds in the private sector will be working on, and it's considerably more tractable than the issue of how you prevent all terrorist attacks.

I don't claim that terrorist attacks are not preventable. Flight 93 shows that the solution to preventing another 9/11 style attack was discovered the same day, on 9/11.

Is there anything about the new financial regulations that actually reduces systemic risk?

If anything, the government has sent a signal that big firms are "too big to fail" which ought to make them feel comfortable that if things go badly in the future they'll be bailed out again. This would seem to increase systemic risk, or at least reduce the incentives to mitigate it.

As for healthcare, the real issue is nutrition -- the government tells us that we should eat lots of beef (by subsidizing its price) and other things that make us unhealthy and obese, and then the public demands things like cheaper prescription drugs to help with all the diseases related to obesity, heart disease, etc. So I'd say that at a broader level "health" is way more screwed up already than airline security or financial services.

Politicians tell us that, for example, cheaper satins are the solution to the problem and that cardiologists make too much money. Could you ever imagine a politician telling the public to stop eating fast food, eat mostly fresh fruits and veggies, and get plenty of exercise? Of course not, that would be as reasonable as saying that dumping out water bottles and taking off shoes isn't making us any safer.

Because healthcare is "fixed" in many other nations?

So is airport security...

Airport security should be about securing airtravel, not securing the collective asses of TSA or whatever lump of agencies and companies it is these days.

And IMHO, even airtravel doesn't need that much securing. And the collective ass needs even less.

Sealed cockpit doors are definitely a good measure for the decades old hijacking problem and the newer, though much more unlikely, 9/11 copycat situations. Other than that, the passengers can't really do much on a plane.

Even including 9/11 more commercial flights have been crashed due to the deliberate actions (murder or suicide) of the flight crew than due to hijackers.

(if you count a FedEx flight where a transiting crew member killed the pilots)

If private industry behaved like government:

When someone screws up royally, fire them, then hire them back as contractors to do the same job. Oh wait, never mind.

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