Comment by ilamont | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ilamont | Hacker News Reader

A string of incidents starting not long after 9/11 revealed to me what a farce the system is.

The first was seeing old men in their 80s being frisked at TSA checkpoints.

The second was a close friend, mixed race and wearing a beard, who was repeatedly stopped for "random" in-terminal personal questioning and searches (that is, beyond the checkpoint). He was the only person I knew who got this kind of treatment, and the only obvious difference was his appearance.

And then there was this (1):

Washington Post: Sen. Kennedy Flagged by No-Fly List

U.S. Sen. Edward M. "Ted" Kennedy said yesterday that he was stopped and questioned at airports on the East Coast five times in March because his name appeared on the government's secret "no-fly" list.

Federal air security officials said the initial error that led to scrutiny of the Massachusetts Democrat should not have happened even though they recognize that the no-fly list is imperfect. But privately they acknowledged being embarrassed that it took the senator and his staff more than three weeks to get his name removed.

If it took a powerful senator weeks or months to fix the problem, I knew it was hopeless for us mere mortals.

When I was in college many years ago, a punk band called the Dead Kennedys released an album called Bedtime For Democracy that had this famous piece of artwork (2). It was a cartoon representation of the Statue of Liberty, crawling with Wall Street thieves, jack-booted SWAT teams, Madison Avenue shills, and other cons and clowns. There were tears coming out of the statue's eyes. Take a look at it zoomed in if you can, or buy the LP with the full-sized cover. I liked the DKs for their music and lyrics, and the cover went right along with the band's brand of socio-political satire. Nevertheless, at the time I thought the image was a little over the top.

Not anymore.

1. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17073-2004Aug...

2. http://punkygibbon.co.uk/bands/d/deadkennedys_bedtime_cd_uk_...

> If it took a powerful senator weeks or months to fix the problem, I knew it was hopeless for us mere mortals.

I see there've been a few references to the no-fly list and Judge Alsup, in this discussion, but I find this quote to be pertinent enough to warrant highlighting:

"At this point, Judge Alsup interrupted to ask a hypothetical question about the process. Suppose there’s some wrong information in a file that suggests that someone is a Communist, and as a result they get put on a watchlist. They apply for redress, and say, “I’m good person. I’ve never done anything wrong.” If they don’t know that they’re on the watchlist because they have been accused of being a Communist, how do they know to say, “And by the way, I’m not a Communist”?

“I can see that DHS TRIP would clear things up in the case of misidentification.” But how does the TRIP process allow the aggrieved party to address the secret information. “How does a person know that there is an improper reason that they would need to try to rebut?”"

Taken from the summary at: http://papersplease.org/wp/2013/12/07/no-fly-trial-day-5-par...

Discussed on hn: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6868845

Is there some courtroom subtlety going on that I'm unfamiliar with, or is the judge seriously taking for granted the idea that being a Communist is sufficient reason to be placed on a watchlist, and that the only injustice would be if you weren't really a Communist?

I believe it's a historical reference on the part of the judge. It certainly used to be enough to be placed on a watch-list in the US.

On a related note, I see the question about communism is now gone from the form for applying for a visitors visa to the US -- I can't find any documentation as to if it was ever there, or if I just remember it being there:

http://forms.cbp.gov/pdf/visa_waiver.pdf

I'm pretty sure that line about terrorist organization has to be from after the first time I was in the US (the early 90s) -- but I could be wrong.

There's still this:

(a) Classes of aliens ineligible for visas or admission Except as otherwise provided in this chapter, aliens who are inadmissible under the following paragraphs are ineligible to receive visas and ineligible to be admitted to the United States:

(D) Immigrant membership in totalitarian party (i) In general Any immigrant who is or has been a member of or affiliated with the Communist or any other totalitarian party (or subdivision or affiliate thereof), domestic or foreign, is inadmissible.

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1182

On #1: If the TSA didn't frisk 80 year old men, any smart terrorist would begin recruiting 80 year olds. You can't have gaps in enforcement by policy or they will be exploited (sadly).

Are you being serious here or is this facetious?

Why is this laughable? There are stories of kids and women being used as suicide bombers.

The comment above makes the dreaded profiling word seem like a dirty thing, it should be a perfectly acceptable thing. Follow Israel's lead and behavior profile people as soon as they step into the airport and flag them appropriately.

Why is "be like Israel" the be all end all solution? Profiling does not scale to the 800 million US travelers. Who are we profiling for? Arabs? Don't forget the 2nd largest terrorist attack on US soil was committed by a white Gulf War veteran who was raised Christan.

http://www.examiner.com/article/exactly-what-are-israeli-air...

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/20...

> Who are we profiling for?

People who are acting out of the ordinary.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/20...

http://www.internationalpolicydigest.org/2012/06/19/what-isr...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictive_profiling

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Al_Israel_Airlines_Ltd

Bruce Schneier likes to say this too, as if it makes sense.

It doesn't. Your hypothetical terrorist group can't recruit with equal ease from any demographic group that strikes their fancy. So if we screen everyone equally, all[1] of the terrorists will be young single men.

If we start screening young, single, Arab men so heavily that it's more economical for a terrorist group to recruit Laotian grandmothers, that's exactly what we want. It will dramatically reduce the incidence of attacks, because it's extremely difficult to convince Laotian grandmothers to make them.

The optimal way to allocate screening resources is to produce the result that everyone is equally likely to be a terrorist. But you can't begin by assuming it; it's the goal you want to reach. If there's a demographic group with an elevated risk of offending, we want to dedicate screening to it until it has only the baseline risk. Even if that raises the baseline risk, it's a win for us.

With all that in mind, screening a particular group at a 0% rate won't get you there. But screening 80-year-olds at 0.001% of the rate you screen men 15-25, or less, is probably fine.

[1] most

> it's a win for us

Define "us"

The people the screening is supposed to protect. If you force terrorists to recruit from a group that is small and that is less likely to pull off the operation well, then everyone but the terrorists profits.

So "young, single, Arab men" not only aren't "us", but also aren't people who deserve protection from terrorism?

I'm glad that you can decide on their behalf that their rights are worth less than your imagined security.

He didn't say they aren't "us". They do legitimately and regularly fly and are thus those that are to be protected by the security mechanisms and thus by his/her definition a part of "us". Also that they are singled out for more intensive search does not mean they are not a part of "us".

I do agree with you though that this kind of ethnic screening has a ton of ethical problems. And that airport security is mostly security theater.

> airport security is mostly security theater

Agreed 100%. We'd be better off without most of it.

> this kind of ethnic screening has a ton of ethical problems

This, obviously, is a value judgment. If you think ethnic screening is unworkable for ethical reasons, that's fair. But you need to acknowledge that, by giving up ethnic screening, you're purposefully making your security less effective -- you would rather see some additional people die to terrorism, and some additional non-ethnics harassed in precisely the way you don't want to see happen to ethnics, than dirty your hands with ethnic screening.

(I habitually take a fairly aggressive tone. I really don't care whether you make the call one way or the other -- but I do care that, if that's what you believe, you should cop to it.)

That presumes that recruitment is a limiting factor. Given that there are thousands, perhaps millions, of young, single, Arab men willing to martyr themselves for the cause, and roughly zero of them attempt to blow up or hijack US airliners, that doesn't seem to be the case.

I wouldn't count 80 year old men out as recruitment targets for suicide bombing.

Traditionally, the rate of suicide among men only goes up as they get older and in the US is at ~29/100k/year after 65 years. If a group were well-funded they could make this an attractive offer to take care of families for folks who had no assets to pass on. The have less to look forward to and thus less to lose/more to gain. This already happens in other ways besides suicide bombing.

I think the perception that most terrorists are young single men demonstrates less about their willingness to blow themselves up than what they're willing to trade blowing themselves up for. Young single men, especially poorly educated ones, are generally dreadfully bad at cost-benefit analysis and planning for their futures. Terrorist groups tend to be incredibly poorly funded without state sponsorship and then it all depends on which state.

Tangentially, all[1] decisions are economic decisions.

[1] most

But this is exactly what I'm talking about. If the direct cost of sending a suicide bomber goes from "transportation" to "transportation + $2,000,000", there will be less of it.

Certainly there are additional complexity issues and those work to the benefit of law enforcement. However, there are some significant costs as well.

How confident really, is one that you aren't going to find 80 year old men willing to give their last few years of life for what they believe, money aside, or do we care whether their spouses are still alive?

The other real major cost is the social cost. If we do start making really fine-grained decisions regarding appearance, married status, etc. then we risk essentially ensuring that Americans are not equal before our government and that's something that is really hard to put a price on, particularly given the history of racial issues in the US.

"Bruce Schneier likes to say this too, as if it makes sense." I think you missed his point when he says this. His point was, if you give people an easy way and a hard way, they'll choose the easy way. Bruce has made this clear.

So replace recruit with "coerce" if you like.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2086353/Paul-Bradley...

Nothing you say changes this point - if you make it easy for 80 year olds to get through security, 80 year olds will be the ones with bombs. Whether by recruiting, coercion, or anything.

I'm really not sure why you would think otherwise, and your argument about recruiting rates, while possibly correct, is, well, irrelevant :)

> Nothing you say changes this point - if you make it easy for 80 year olds to get through security, 80 year olds will be the ones with bombs.

The whole point of my comment is to refute this idea, so I guess I'm in trouble. Let me try to phrase things differently.

For every person in the world, there is a cost to recruit them into your organization as an attacker, which I postulate is low for young Arab men and high for Laotian grandmothers (and also high for 80-year-olds generally). Call this cost function COST(x).

There is also a likelihood that if they attempt an attack, they will succeed. Call this EFFECTIVENESS(x).

I can only interpret "if you make it easy for 80 year olds to get through security, 80 year olds will be the ones with bombs. Whether by recruiting, coercion, or anything" as saying that a terrorist group sending an attacker t will strictly try to maximize EFFECTIVENESS(t). But that's wrong. A terrorist group sending an attacker t will try to maximize EFFECTIVENESS(t)/COST(t).

Imagine some categories like so:

    Age Sex Ethnicity  EFFECTIVENESS      COST
    19  M   Syrian     10%              $20,000
    80  M   Egyptian   60%             $150,000
    80  F   Laotian    80%             $250,000

Obviously, it's easier for the 80-year-old Laotian female to get through security (or they're just generally more competent, or whatever). But it's cheaper (80% of the cost), and more effective (25% more expected successes), to send 10 19-year-old Syrian men. So, in a world where these numbers were accurate, we'd expect to see terrorist organizations using young Arab men to make their attacks even though they're eight times less likely to clear security than 80-year-old Laotian women. That means the correct thing to do with extra security is to completely ignore the high success rates of 80-year-olds and try to drive the effectiveness of Arab teens even lower.

> your argument about recruiting rates, while possibly correct, is, well, irrelevant :)

I'm not making an argument about recruiting rates; point me to where I mentioned the concept. I'm making an argument about recruiting costs. Doesn't matter why the cost is what it is, or whether your attackers are there voluntarily.

"For every person in the world, there is a cost to recruit them into your organization as an attacker, which I postulate is low for young Arab men and high for Laotian grandmothers (and also high for 80-year-olds generally). Call this cost function COST(x)."

If you are including the cost of coercion in COST(X), then i strongly disagree with your theory that there is a huge cost differential between young arab men and 80 year old laotian grandmas.

Maybe you can explain why you believe there is?

It seems, for example, that holding the family member of an 80 year old grandma hostage is cheap and effective as a mechanism of recruitment.

Well, the first thing we can observe is that we're not getting attacks by these highly nonsuspicious types, so we can safely assume that for whatever reason they're not cost-effective (we do know that in fact nonsuspicious types get much less screening than suspicious types, so, theoretically, they should be 100% of attackers).

The real beauty of this logic is that it doesn't actually matter if it's correct. If it is, great -- we need to harass suspicious types even more than we already are. But maybe it isn't. If terrorist groups are sending suspicious attackers for irrational or idiosyncratic reasons... that doesn't matter to us! We're trying to defend against the people they do send, not the people we think they should send. So we need to harass suspicious types again.

That said, there are plenty of heavy costs associated with kidnapping foreigners from around the world and using them as hostages:

1. The language barrier. If you want to coerce someone, you need to be able to make them understand what you want them to do.

2. Security. Your target country will hate you and make great efforts to root you out. These groups survive in countries where they have popular support. Pakistan might be willing to look the other way while you hang out and make trouble for the US; they're much less likely to look the other way while you kidnap and threaten to kill Pakistanis.

3. Public relations. Again, these groups survive where they have a certain level of popular support. But the same populace that doesn't really care when bad things happen to the Great Satan might not feel the same way about randomly kidnapping and killing bystanders from around the world.

4. Morale. The internal reflection of public relations. Most of the people in the group are there because they think it's the right thing (or can be talked into it). Kidnapping and killing peaceful foreigners from around the world could be a blow to that. Telling 80-year-old women to kill themselves just doesn't feel like the right thing.

"Well, the first thing we can observe is that we're not getting attacks by these highly nonsuspicious types, so we can safely assume that for whatever reason they're not cost-effective"

[citation needed]

For example, there were plenty of IRA bombings by older folks, etc. Even if you only consider airplanes, there have been hijackings, suspected bombings, etc by older folks.

Just because today's media focuses on certain ethnotypes and attacks does not make them actually predominant in actual attacks.

Yes, a lot of people don't understand that.

To make it concrete: Do you skip screening of the young pregnant Irish woman? I hope not. That was Anne-Marie Murphy, whose boyfriend put Semtex and a timer in her bag. [1]

Do you skip screening of the attractive blonde woman? Sorry, that was hijacker Leila Khaled with a blonde wig and hidden grenades. [2]

(These are both very interesting stories and I recommend reading the links below.)

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindawi_affair

[2] http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2001-09-28/news/0109280226_...

Screener or not screener is just as useless; so what are you hoping for exactly? (http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/01/tsa-screener-...)

Well, you have to skip screening some people (in fact, most of them). Given the presence of holes in your net, positioning them over young pregnant women is going to give you much better results than just about any other policy imaginable.

The Anne-Marie Murphy example is interesting; as you point out, she was sabotaged and didn't know she was carrying explosives. So -- she would pass demographic profiling with flying colors, as she should. She didn't want to do anything. The very commonly suggested approach of behavioral profiling is also useless here. People who believe they're not carrying explosives act exactly the same as people who really aren't carrying explosives.

Network analysis ("passenger's boyfriend is Arab") could flag her. Would you support that?

If you really believe that then you have to think that TSA Pre makes a complete farce of the system. Or that it always was a complete farce.

You complain about old men being frisked, and then immediately complain about your friend being selected based on his appearance. Do you not see the massive contradiction there? Either it's reasonable to search people based on their appearance, or it's not. If it is, then why shouldn't your mixed-race, bearded friend be searched more? If it's not, then why shouldn't old men be searched too?

Personally, I am on the "not" side simply because it's good security: nothing stops attackers from recruiting old white men, and any appearance-based profiling you do can be exploited.

You complain about old men being frisked, and then immediately complain about your friend being selected based on his appearance. Do you not see the massive contradiction there?

Yes, I do. See "farce", referenced in my first sentence.

I'm not talking about the system. I'm saying that your two complaints completely contradict each other.

While I think your response is justified in this specific case given the small sample size, I don't think making two "contradictory" complaints is necessarily wrong in this context. If you make a lot of Type I errors, it might be the cost for reducing Type II errors, and if you make a lot of Type II errors, it might be the cost of reducing Type I errors, but if you make a lot of Type I and Type II errors, then maybe whatever you're doing just sucks.

They don't completely contradict each other. He's pointing out what he considers two examples of an unreasonable search, one is about racial profiling the other is about what he seems to consider common sense.

So called "common sense" encourages [racial] profiling. That's the problem with it, and why the two comments are at odds.

The only way that you remove the profiling, incidentally, is to remove discretion from agents and/or have some level of accountability for each stop. If they had to publish statistics detailing the profiles of everyone who went through additional security searches and why it was done I think you'd see a lot of action

so to him- its common sense to not search a demographic due to it being unreasonable, but also common sense not to search a demographic when it actually is reasonable?

sounds like a contradiction to me.

I don't think people really grok random.

Like when they complain that their MP3 player plays two songs from the same album when it's on random.

The "random" algorithm in a media player is not supposed to be "random pick with replacement". It is meant to be shuffle, and that's indeed what it is called instead of "random". A shuffle algorithm that plays the same song twice is indeed a broken shuffle algorithm (except if, of course, the playlist actually contains two instances of the same song).

Yes, but that's not what the GP was talking about. Sometimes shuffle will play two consecutive songs from the same album consecutively, just from randomness, and people will complain.

Incidentally, I prefer random pick with replacement, at least when selecting from a set of tracks greater than one album.

Sometimes shuffle will play two consecutive songs from the same album consecutively

only if it is coded badly

That depends: is it supposed to be a random shuffle or a 'random' shuffle?

Believe it or not, some of us quite like it when we are randomly presented with two tracks in order.

That's why some players (like Foobar2000) have "Shuffle" and "Random" as separate options.

They are only a contradiction inside of your worldview. What do you think that says about your worldview?

I think it says that you should explain what you mean instead of just making vague hints.

Wasn't that precisely the first complaint - observing a pair of incidents which make no sense as a consistent policy? (the second complaint being that even a senator had trouble clearing up a mistake). Both the original comment and reply are consistent with that reading.

It is contradiction only if you assume that TSA frisking people on airports makes it more secure.

Funnily enough, I watched Dr. Strangelove for the first time last night and was saddened by the assumed accuracy of its portrayal of political and governmental theater.

I take it you read the article "Almost everything in Dr Strangelove was true" [1] ? :)

[1] http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2014/01/stran...

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