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You Have Been 'Randomly' Selected?
dpbsmith asks: "One thing I've noticed is that the people who are told by the TSA that they have been 'randomly' selected for baggage inspection have a tendency not to believe it. I know one couple whose wife has been 'randomly' selected four times, while the husband never has been. The wife believes that it is because each of those times, she was traveling by herself, without checked baggage, (whereas she has never been inspected when traveling with her husband with checked baggage). In 'Uncommon Carriers', John McPhee accompanied a truck driver to write about the experience, and bought a trucker's cap to blend in. He says 'I would pay for my freedom at the Seattle-Tacoma airport when, with a one-way ticket bought the previous day, I would arrive to check in my baggage.' His baggage was 'randomly' selected for inspection, and later he was 'once again "randomly selected" for a shoes-off, belt-rolled, head-to-toe frisk.' So, what about it? Is the TSA simply flat-out lying when they tell you that you have been 'randomly selected?'" The better question to ask is: "Are random searches effective in keeping everyone safe?"
There's two seperate questions here:
If 'enough' random searches are done then I expect they would be effective. Clearly, it is unresonable to search everybody so it's a trade-off between cost, time and hastle. The exact number of searches you conduct will depend precisely on how you way up these trade-offs. It will also depend on how much training your provide to the people conducting the searches.
I believe that profile-driven searches are flawed. The flaw is that the attacker can always avoid the profile you're trying to detect. For example, if I profile for young Muslim men with turbans the attacker can simply pick disaffected white middle-class women. Sure, such people are hard to come by but it is fool-hardy to suggest that they do not exist.
Profiling by race and religion flies in the face of everything we've struggled to achieve in the last century. I think it was Martin Luther King who said:
Those words transcend race, religion and colour. We should not judge because a man reads the Koran any more than we should judge because he is Black. Muslims are not terrorists. To quote another great mind, master Yoda:
There's already a dark cloud gathering. The question is how dark can it get?
Simon.
It's simple really. The TSA has their risk model based on various factors such as race, ticket purchase habits, slow/fast day at the airport, etc. Each criteria that's met increases the chances of you getting 'randomly' selected. It's still technically random, just not uniformly random.
I've only ever been randomly selected when travelling by myself.
I have never been randomly selected when I was travelling with my wife and two screaming children.
Perhaps they don't want to deal with my wife's reaction. This would be wise.
Perhaps they believe that I wouldn't want to blow up a plane with my own children on it. This would be foolhardy.
I flew over to the US from Europe a few weeks ago. Six flights overall, three to California and three back.
I got "randomly" selected three times out of these six flights. In addition to this, my (checked-in) bag was "accidentally" delayed before being loaded onto the plane, and the flight attendant had to come and ensure that I was onboard before the "delayed" bag was brought onboard, just before landing (which was delayed due to my bag).
I'm mid-20s, with an Arab-sounding name, not married, travel a lot (including Eastern Europe), didn't carry a lot of baggage (I was only visiting for a couple of days).
Every time they told me they "randomly" selected me for inspection, I smiled and let them do their thing.
"Random" selection is profiling under a PC name. Of course they profile people. And of course they won't tell you that they do. Before travelling to the US, I was thinking about how suspicious I may appear and how many times they would search me, dig through my luggage and ask me questions. Surprise, surprise, they did it. Three times.
The whole mentality behind searching people to get on a airplane promotes false security. We can't even stop weapons in our prisons, and we will NEVER be able to stop deadly weapons on airplanes.
What we need to do is come to the realization that the ONLY way to make technically fragile public transit work is to promote an atmosphere where people do not want to attack us, instead of trying to prevent the few who do from being able to. "They" will always be able to, especially with increasingly cheap and effective technology.
As much as I'd like to confirm the presense of some formula I definitely cannot. I have screened people and baggage in every way. I will say that as far as baggage goes, have a look at your tags and the tags of those around you. You're likely to see a difference. Same goes for boarding passes... do a little comparison.
I don't pretend to know how the process works or what the criteria may be, but I can offer some advice:
1. Just go through with it... plan on it. It's about as annoying as a traffic jam.
2. The air carriers have more to do with the "selection" process than the TSA does. (I'm 90% certain of that) So take your bitches and complaints up with the airline... they just might put you on a white list somewhere if you threaten to give your money to another "almost bankrupt carrier." They can't afford to lose your business... none of them can.
To expound upon that, if "the people" want all this crap to get better, start complaining where the money moves, not with congress, not with the president and not with the TSA. (True, there's money there, but the influencial money starts with the air carriers.) If people start complaining enough and changing airlines, they'll listen.
Now THAT would be an awesome addition to the Slashdot moderation system!
I'm proud of my Northern Tibetian Heritage
I used to work at a major airline. Not at the ticket counter but I was there enough to figure out random means a profile. The profile has nothing to do with you the person. It appears to be a weighted average of what someone believes might seperate you from the average person. Last minute ticket, one way, no checked in baggage, do not fly often, paid with cash, part of a group that all did the same, many tickets for different people on one credit card, flying alone blah blah blah. I guess if they use such parameters that does qualify as a profiling but you the person are not being profiled, your habit or events that lead to your ticket purchase seemed to fit someones idea of what a terrorist might do as well.
Is this effective? I have no idea, some of those parameters might but they are easy to alter as well and a lot of those above are done by real every day Joes as well. That is why every day Joe gets those random checks as well. I doubt anyone outside the TSA really knows exactly what they look at to determine who might be a risk or how effective it really is.
Insurance companies profile as well. 16-24 year old male? You pay the highest rates regardless of your driving record. That age sets off a flag that you are of the highest percentage of unsafe drivers. Own a home or have a 4.0 GPA? You get lower rates then the person that does not own a home or is the sick in school. They have determined through profiling that home owners and kids that buckle down in school are more responsible and less likely to be involved in an accident.
Don't act so suprised that the TSA/NSA/FBI and what ever other 3 letter law enforment types think they can profile as well. Is this passenger profile thing worse then truely random? I have no idea. If you do not meet what ever criteria they are looking for, I guess you would have a less chance of being picked at random assuming they only pick a certain percentage of people overall. If they pick a certain percentage of truely random people AND pick people that meet a certain profile then profiling is not worse then random.
You're absolutely right, not protecting ourselves against known threats would be suicidal.
On the other hand, doing provocative, stupid things that are guaranteed to turn otherwise friendly or neutral people into our enemies is equally suicidal.
The whole "fuck what everybody thinks, we'll keep ourselves secure through military force alone" mentality is based on the assumption that we have the physical ability to do so. The hard truth, however, is that that simply isn't the case -- our military can barely keep the lid on Iraq, let alone any of the other 3-4 dozen countries where terrorism is a concern. Our only option is to enlist the aid of the rest of the world's governments and people in helping us stop terrorism. The good news is that that shouldn't be too difficult to do -- almost nobody likes terrorists. But to work with people (or governments), you have to treat them with respect -- in particular, you have to understand that it's a two-way street. Double-standards do not go unnoticed by the world's public.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
"Are random searches effective in keeping everyone safe?"
Random searches wouldn't have stopped the 9/11 terrorists. They used box cutters to threaten lives, but if such searches had been in place they would have used dental floss garrotes or their bare hands for the same purpose. Several times people have successfully defeated the searches just to prove it could be done and do not prevent even untrained citizens from bringing contraband on planes.
Random searches are not effective in keeping us safe. What they are effective at is lulling the public into accepting routine violation of their constitutional rights under the guise of protection. Back in the 80s, during the cold war, the paranoid and abusive treatment of travelers by the USSR due to "national security" concerns was properly seen as proof of a fascist government and held up for scorn and ridicule. How sad it is that we have allowed the destruction of a few buildings and loss of 3030 lives to turn us into what we fought against. Something several wars with much higher losses both economic and human failed to do. Many free and democratic nations suffered repeated terrorist violence before 9/11 but did not allow it to warp their societies. In contrast we have sacrificed our rights as citizens and our values as a country in response to a single attack and promote such sacrifices of rights and values by our allies.
The random searches and other intrusive treatment of passengers has not resulted in the conviction of many (any?) terrorists, but it has endoctrinated millions to accepting treatment they would not have tolerated previously. In pursuit of physical safety, we have sacrified liberty. A libertarian might say that the undefined risk of pre-9/11 security was less objectionable than the daily violation of the rights of tens of millions of citizens that takes place under post-9/11 security. It is worth thinking about.