Vanity Fair On the TSA and Security Theater 256
OverTheGeicoE writes "Perhaps it's now officially cool to criticize the TSA. Vanity Fair has a story questioning the true value of TSA security. The story features Bruce Schneier, inventor of the term 'security theater' and contender for the Most Interesting Man in the World title, it would seem. With Schneier's mentoring, the author allegedly doctors a boarding pass to breach security at Reagan National Airport to do an interview with Schneier. 'To walk through an airport with Bruce Schneier is to see how much change a trillion dollars can wreak. So much inconvenience for so little benefit at such a staggering cost.'"
Re:Good. (Score:3, Insightful)
Nope this is America they will just increase the penalty for this sort of thing and/or legislate it away.
Dwight D. Eisenhower quote (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
And the reason why, for better or worse (Score:5, Insightful)
Security theater, from this perspective, is an attempt to convey a message: “We are doing everything possible to protect you.” When 9/11 shattered the public’s confidence in flying, Slovic says, the handful of anti-terror measures that actually work—hardening the cockpit door, positive baggage matching, more-effective intelligence—would not have addressed the public’s dread, because the measures can’t really be seen. Relying on them would have been the equivalent of saying, “Have confidence in Uncle Sam,” when the problem was the very loss of confidence. So a certain amount of theater made sense.
After witnessing enough conversations about how TSA is worthless, or worse, yet another part of an effort to acclimate hapless Americans to living in a police state, I think it's valid to consider the reasons for even "appearances" of security, and I'm glad this article laid them out clearly. Even appearances can be a deterrent.
The other points in the article are also valid. I believe we need to ask ourselves the question that if at least some amount of "theater" is appropriate, what is that amount, and what would the damage been to the air transport sector if nothing (visible) had been done? Note I don't pretend to know the answer.
Some say that money might better have been spent "educating" people why such security measures don't work, so they won't be a afraid when they don't see it. That's a task far easier said than done. Alongside the constant drumbeat in some circles that the government is out to get them, it's important to understand there are actual legitimate reasons for things the TSA is doing, seen and unseen.
None of this means that our homeland security efforts should be exempt from criticism or thoughtful scrutiny, but it needs to be done against a backdrop of reason.
Interesting semi-related story:
Skies Are Now So Safe on U.S. Flights That Experts Turn Focus to 'Surface Threats' [wsj.com]
Re:And the reason why, for better or worse (Score:5, Insightful)
The skies aren't safe because of the TSA, it's because nobody really wants to blow up an airplane, jihadi style.
Think about it - the failure rate of the TSA is over 60% at some airports. If the so-called jihadis really want to blow up airplanes, they just need to send 10 people and they'll take out six airplanes, on average.
Or if you believe this liquid explosive nonsense, they can send 10 guys each with 3 oz shampoo bottles.
It may be because ordinary Americans solved the security problem over a field in Shanksville PA just an hour after the 9/11 plot became known.
Or maybe the secure cockpit doors had something to do with it.
Or maybe the 9/11 plot wasn't really carried out by jihadis.
Any of the above could be true, but what's clearly not true is that there currently exists a jihadi threat to airliners.
Re:Get a clue Big Sis (Score:5, Insightful)
Citation desperately needed. All the cases I've seen of the ACLU stepping in involved racial, religious or other types of profiling that involved profiling for groups not for behavior.
I realize that the ACLU is this conservative bogeyman that's out to prevent the government from doing its job, but let's get serious shall we. There's absolutely no evidence that the sort of profiling that you're suggesting would do anything other than harass innocent civilians for not being white enough.
Re:And the reason why, for better or worse (Score:5, Insightful)
> Alongside the constant drumbeat in some circles that the government is out to get them, it's important to understand there are actual legitimate reasons for things the TSA is doing, seen and unseen.
Name three.
Note that pumping billions into a crony corporation is not considered legitimate.
Re:Get a clue Big Sis (Score:5, Insightful)
The risk of terrorism is simply not severe enough to warrant that level of investment in security. We will save more lives focusing on clean drinking water, renewable energy, and public health and welfare in general. It would be a lot cheaper too.
If the TSA is ineffective, don't be surprised. It's not intended to be effective. It's intended to be profitable for well connected individuals and corporations. It is quite plainly a fraud on the American people.
Re:Get a clue Big Sis (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, but they live directly adjacent to everybody who wants to kill them (and, in the immortal words of Tome Lehrer - "...and everybody hates the Jews"). We're separated from them by a ocean on each side.
Not that it matters; I haven't heard of security screenings preventing a bomb from getting aboard a US aircraft, and yet we've had several bombs on them since 2001. Luckily, the passengers now understand that the "sit quietly and we'll land in Cuba and be home in a couple days" paradigm for hijacking is no longer valid. If a passenger gets rowdy, you take him down or you might die. And, so far, it's working pretty well.
A simple metal detector and carry-on x-ray is all that is necessary.
Re:And the reason why, for better or worse (Score:5, Insightful)
if jihadis really wanted to cause terror blow themselves up in security lines. Forget the planes, they could take out passengers and the TSA
Re:Get a clue Big Sis (Score:2, Insightful)
Funny. My father always thought of the ACLU as a liberal bogeyman out to prevent the government from doing its job. I was brought up to be objective and observant, and in the intervening years I've concluded that the ACLU is neither liberal nor conservative: they just want to cause trouble. At times the trouble makes sense, and at times it does not.
Re:And the reason why, for better or worse (Score:5, Insightful)
Blowing up US planes has been tried four times since 9/11. Each time it has failed because of intelligence, in-flight security or passenger action.
The TSA however been hasn't shown to be worth jack shit let alone a trillion dollars. They haven't stopped or prevented anything.
Passengers who responded in these situation got the full-blown hero treatment in the media. Every now and then the Flight 93 movies and documentaries are rebroadcast which further drives home the message.
IMHO the reason you don't see it much is that it doesn't work any more, not that terrorists don't want to do it. All it does is make heroes of ordinary people, which is not the result terrorists want.
Re:Get a clue Big Sis (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a big difference between profiling someone that's acting really weird at an airport and profiling someone by assuming that, for instance, they're Hispanic and therefore should have their immigration status checked anytime they come into contact with a police officer.
If there's reasonable suspicion I'm all for investigation. What I'm not all for, for instance, is assuming that every woman wearing a hijab is a potential terrorist and thus warrants investigation based on that fact alone.
Reasonable suspicion is a grey area, I admit, but that's what the courts are for. The courts have emphatically upheld that simply being of a certain minority is not a valid reason to suspect they are breaking the law. Despite what you may hear as of late, all Muslims are not terrorists.
Why do people never learn? Go read up on Manzanar and the Japanese Internment during World War II. That is the road profiling leads us down. They thought they were doing things in the best interests of the U.S. and its security, too...but it was still wrong, and we can all agree on that (I would hope).
Re:40,000 Dead each year (Score:4, Insightful)
If this same funding had been applied to highway traffic safety, imagine the REAL number of lives that would have been saved.
If this same funding had been applied to highway traffic safety, then highway speeds would be a maximum of 35 mph, TSA employees would be touching the undercarriage of your car at every on-ramp, and people would want to fly everywhere, even for a downtown commute.
Re:provide conceal carry? (Score:2, Insightful)
I understand not liking guns, especially in public. However, responsible gun owners can prevent crimes before or during the act. In general, the police show up after the crime. If you could go back in time and give a gun to a teacher at Columbine, would you? I would. Obviously there is the potential for unintended consequences, but that applies to both sides - if everyone has a gun, it might cause more violence. If only criminals have guns, it might cause more crime. I don't think "ridiculous" is an apt description of this form of security.
Re:provide conceal carry? (Score:5, Insightful)
Logic goes that if anyone is allowed conceal carry,...
No, the logic goes that people who are planning to shoot up a bunch of people are not going to be deterred by the fact that some place is a "gun-free" zone. As a matter of fact, that makes that place a better choice for shooting up a bunch of people because you know that no one else there will be armed. The argument is that these places should allow those who have been granted a concealed carry permit (a process that usually involves some evaluation of the mental state of the individual and whether or not they have a history of encounters with law enforcement) because then not everybody there would be solely a potential victim.
Of course, the big part of this argument comes from the stories very few people hear of where someone tried to shoot up a place where there were people carrying concealed weapons. Within six months of the first Virginia Tech shootings there were two or three similar attempts that did not make the news because the shooter only got off about six shots before someone with a concealed carry license pulled their weapon and shot him. The thing is, every time someone tries this in a "gun-free" zone, there are a lot of deaths, every time someone tries this where someone is legally concealed carrying there are at most three deaths (two victims and the perpetrator).
Re:Oh man.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Or just by using a negative connotation to a concept is enough to get people to change their mind.
I have learned to turn on my BS alarm when people start using words that give an emotional response. And challenged them much further to prove their point. Sometimes they do have a point, but using wording in your argument to evoke an emotional response isn't a valid argument.
Re:Get a clue Big Sis (Score:4, Insightful)
Luckily, the passengers now understand that the "sit quietly and we'll land in Cuba and be home in a couple days" paradigm for hijacking is no longer valid.
This and the locked/reinforced cockpit doors are all that is necessary to prevent 9/11 from happening again.
9/11 wasn't a bomb plot so all this attempt to stop everything possible is simply ridiculous.
Fight fire with fire (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, because the people who passed the PATRIOT Act weren't appealing to our emotions!
Re:Get a clue Big Sis (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Get a clue Big Sis (Score:5, Insightful)
You might eventually figure out how to scale the Israeli model to the US size .... but at what cost? How much do the Israelis pay per passenger? And what would it cost us?
Don't forget the most important question: is it worth it? Does the expenditure match the threat? (the answer is no, btw).
You might eventually figure out how to scale the Israeli model to the US size .... but at what cost? How much do the Israelis pay per passenger? And what would it cost us?
Don't forget the most important question: is it worth it? Does the expenditure match the threat? (the answer is no, btw).
You'll get no argument from me that it's not worth the effort, but if we are going to spend the money anyway, I'd rather that we spend it on something that works. I'd rather that we went back to the old days of metal detectors and random searches to help deter the casual criminal from doing something stupid. It's nearly impossible to deter a determined suicide terrorist, especially if he's willing to hide his explosives in a body cavity.
Even if passenger screening was 100% effective, there are still many many ways to sneak something past security. All you have to do a bribe one security employee at one small commercial airport anywhere in the country and you can bring in anything you want and transport it to any airport. And I'm sure you can find at least one employee willing to accept $10K to smuggle in some "drugs", especially if he's addicted to the drugs he thinks he's smuggling. He doens't need to know that the 2 kg of "cocaine" is really high explosives.
Or you hide it in a truckload of maintenance supplies. Or a caterer tucks it inside of a beverage cart. Or the bomber decides it's not worth the effort to smuggle his explosive on a plane and detonates his suitcased sized bomb in a crowded security checkpoint. Or, who knows how else they will do it - the problem with airport security is the same as computer security - the security is always reactionary and is only effective at stopping yesterday's attack there will always be new and novel ways to execute an attack. (and sometimes the security wastes time and effort to stop an attack that can't work anyway, like the ban on water to stop an improbable binary-explosive that would have to be cooked up in a lab on the airplane)
Re:Get a clue Big Sis (Score:5, Insightful)
Or you hide it in a truckload of maintenance supplies. Or a caterer tucks it inside of a beverage cart. Or the bomber decides it's not worth the effort to smuggle his explosive on a plane and detonates his suitcased sized bomb in a crowded security checkpoint.
All it would take is 10 terrorists with cheap explosives to blow up their bomb as they are first in line at the security checkpoint in 10 different busy airports all next year on September 11, and the US reaction will be sufficient to bankrupt all airlines and the goverment, crushing the USA for the cost of 10 suicide bombers. And if that doesn't work, repeat next year on the same date at baggage check-in. And the year after with car bombs out front. That will collapse the US airlines and US government together (most of the flights are "elective" as in luxury travel between locations they could have driven). Everyone I know but me who was scheduled to fly between Sept 11 and Sept 21 who couldn't fly just drove instead, including cross country. But I couldn't figure out how to drive from Dallas to Singapore on September 12, as per my ticket. There really is a delicate balance, and it wouldn't take much to bring down the house of cards. The absurd thing was the number of people who asked if I was scared to fly 2 weeks after 9/11. Uh, no. Probably the safest time to fly, and long before the TSA started screwing with passengers.
Re:Get a clue Big Sis (Score:1, Insightful)
Having been a victim of Israeli security, I sincerely hope we can stem the tide of fascism in this country and not turn into a fascist-theocracy* with a permanent underclass like Israel
Israel detained me and my companion for 24 hours with repeated interrogations. They held onto our luggage, so when we finally escaped that racist hell-hole called Israel, we had nothing. After several days of sleeping in the airport in Rome we finally got some of our things returned. No cameras etc. Of the valuables they withheld, only my camera (in pieces) was returned 8 months later. They pretty much stole everything else of value we were carrying.
Our crime? Checking our bags a couple hours before our flight.
So, you can have your 100% security, and move to the modern equivalent of Nazi Germany-- Israel. I would like to keep and expand the civil liberties here, and hopefully one day we can wrest our country back from those sowing fear while robbing the citizens of their rights.
*Theocracy: Israel has ~ 20 laws that provide privileges only to Jewish citizens, not citizens in general. Facism: both economic, the country is run by and for private interests- even to the detriment of Jews (witness recent unrest and demonstrations). And, social, the Israeli state murders 100 Palestinian children under the age of 13 within the lands it occupies per 1 Israeli killed in retaliation. The Israeli Jews have been engaged in a slow ethnic cleansing since the day the state of Israel was created.
Re:Get a clue Big Sis (Score:4, Insightful)
The only way this is going to be fixed is by wiping out the whole department. There's a primary coming up a candidate who would do that.
I and many of my friends have registered Republican this year, solely so we can vote for Ron Paul in the primaries. (I believe that is what you meant, and wanted to inform those who were unaware.) I also heard on NPR on the way home tonight that Newt Gingrich is basically out of money, and both Ron Paul and Mitt Romney have "super-PACs" that are not in their control, which are generating attack ads that Newt will not be able to afford to overcome, so he's effectively out of the running. The gist of that story was that it's a two-way race now, between Mitt Romney and Ron Paul! That is amazing, I always thought he was "fringe", but now he's about to attract some government lead. Too bad, I like his ideas.