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Schneier Talks to the Head of TSA
Bruce Schneier recently had the chance to sit down with Kip Hawley, head of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), and discuss some of the frustrations travelers experience head-on. "In April, Kip Hawley, the head of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), invited me to Washington for a meeting. Despite some serious trepidation, I accepted. And it was a good meeting. Most of it was off the record, but he asked me how the TSA could overcome its negative image. I told him to be more transparent, and stop ducking the hard questions. He said that he wanted to do that. He did enjoy writing a guest blog post for Aviation Daily, but having a blog himself didn't work within the bureaucracy."
Most of it was off the record... I told him to be more transparent, and stop ducking the hard questions. He said that he wanted to do that.
Hey buddy, if you want to be more transparent, hold less of your meeting 'off the record'.
Since this 3oz liquid horse shit has been going on, Hawley has been saying it's based on "scientific findings" like a broken record. But he has yet to show these "scientific findings".
So what would the justification be for prohibiting lip gloss, nasal spray, etc? There was none, other than for our own convenience and the sake of a simple explanation.
There you have it folks, Hawley freely admits that he's stupid and lazy.
Oh, I'll report if I get on the "No-fly" list for this. Because, obviously, I'm a "threat" for pointing out Government stupidity.
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
told him to be more transparent, and stop ducking the hard questions. He said that he wanted to do that
There's a million reasons why there will be practically no transparency. While it's easy to point fingers at the current administration and break out the tin foil hat, most blame goes right back to non-voters and voters alike.
It's nice that the TSA head honcho knows how to play Good Cop but that's about all one can expect.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Treat passengers with dignity. That, in my opinion, is the most important part. It does not cost very much — hardly anything at all.
For example, if you force people to remove their shoes (and I always refused to do that, when it was still optional — until a year or so ago), do keep the floor sparkling clean in the area — and make sure, TSA employees are bare-feet too as a reassurance. Thousands of people cross those spots daily — it is not only undignifying, but also unsanitary to be walking there without footware.
For crying out loud — a Ukrainian airport provides travelers boarding a JFK-bound flight with disposable footwear. Can JFK not do the same?
When I made myself a pair out of paper-towels, the TSA-thugs at JFK (both the drone and his supervisor) insisted, I take them off too...
Of course, my calling them names (as I just did) only further alienates them and contributes to the problems, which Mr. Hawley is trying to solve...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Ok, perhaps in person Kip Hawley is not an idiot. But he's still running an organization that's offensive, dishonest, unconstitutional, and a bunch of thugs, and the fact that he does have a grip on reality doesn't change that.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
KH: "If the TSO throws your liquids in the trash, they don't find you a threat."
If they really think it's not a threat, why throw it in the trash?
And I can take larger bottles of saline solution on-board, but not my Venti mocha-decafe Starbucks drink I bought just yards from the checkpoint?!
Dodging the issues, indeed. I thought his first answer was just in jest and sarcasm, but after reading the article, I'm beginning to wonder if he wasn't being honest.
And the worst part of it all... you can't complain for fear of the airline throwing your ass off the flight.
It's an attempt to confuse the when you do follow the scripted PR.
Right
That seems completely illogical to me. And the attempt at evading the specifics just illustrates how much of a PR flak he is.
If they didn't find (you) a threat, then WHY THROW THE FREAKIN' LIQUIDS IN THE TRASH?!?!?
Because they're engaging in some security theater in order to justify the existence of their own jobs, and the bureaucracies that support those jobs.
If they thought the liquids were really hazardous (as in, 'might be a bomb') then they'd need to put it in some sort of special disposal container. That they don't makes it clear that they know they're just taking people's shampoo.
It's all for effect. The idea is to make the shee--I mean, taxpayers--feel like they're getting something for their dollars.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I told him to be more transparent, and stop ducking the hard questions. He said that he wanted to do that.
Maybe he does (bwahaha, you don't get to a federal government position that high up by being "transparent", Bruce) - but if you think the Bush administration was controlling with scientists and public health officials (see recent stuff from surgeon general), I bet his control of "security" people is even worse.
Most of it was off the record, but he asked me how the TSA could overcome its negative image.
First off, why didn't Bruce say, "I'll only come if everything is on the record?" As it stands, this is basically a PR puff piece for nerds.
Second, to actually answer the question:
I'm too disgusted to keep thinking about this. Overall? Don't do something unless/until you can do it competently.
Please help metamoderate.
...I feel pretty qualified to suggest how to improve things:
Fire all the dumbasses that think they are either "federal agents" or otherwise "law enforcement."
They need to focus on customer service and let one or two guys at any given checkpoint be "the bad cop" in that the primary mission and focus for screeners would been to assist passengers in compliance with regulations rather than "getting the cattle through the meat processing plant" mentality that we have now.
I can partially sympathize with him. The TATP plot wouldn't have worked, but there are probably other things that could be smuggled onboard and used to bring down a plane. By limiting quantities and the sizes of things that could be used as mixing/pressure vessels, some risk may have been mitigated.
> Hawley has been saying it's based on "scientific findings" like a broken record. But he has yet to show these "scientific findings".
And I can even go so far as to say I agree with him on his lack of specifics. There's no need to censor recipes, but there's no need to publicize them. Better to let the bad guys Google it themselves, wind up with something copied out of a 60s-era cookbook, and Darwinize themselves out of the gene pool without hurting anybody.
> Oh, I'll report if I get on the "No-fly" list for this. Because, obviously, I'm a "threat" for pointing out Government stupidity.
And therein is the root cause: bureaucracy. Kip Hawley may not be an idiot, but he's a bureaucrat. It doesn't matter how smart you are if the system you're working with is fundamentally flawed. That applies from Kip all the way down to the goon who barks at you for failing to remove your shoes soon enough, or the goon who barks at you even louder for removing your shoes before you were ordered to.
Since the typical TSA Goon is too poorly-educated to understand chemistry, and the typical civilian is too poorly-educated to understand either chemistry or risk, that neither audience needs to know.
There's the first idiocy: A bureaucracy is happy to tell you "what" (three ounce containers, one Freedom Baggie) to do, but never "why". The TSA goon enforces the policy with mindless efficiency; he is trained to be mindless. His civilian subjects see the policy as wholly arbitrary unfounded in reason or logic, because no reason or logic has ever been supplied, and treat him as the goon he is -- and he likewise learns to regard the cilivian subjects as idiots, because they're too stupid to follow a rule as simple as "3 oz containers in a 1-liter baggie".
And here's the second level of idiocy: Since nobody has a "need to know" the reason, nobody's allowed to know, and it's not too big a step before you get is afraid to know and is afraid to even think.
Some guy ahead of me was raising a fuss about the 3/1/1 rule, and I would have loved to have explained to him the reasoning behind the rule. Of course, I didn't. If I'd said "Dude, it's about limiting the size of reaction/pressure vessels and the amount of reagents that can be smuggled in without having more than a certain number of people buying airline tickets within a certain timeframe, just chill out and toss the toothpaste", I'd probably still be in some black hole somewhere.
It's this second level of idiocy that's the real problem: the notion that, in a bureaucracy, anyone who does think through the reasoning behind a policy, must be a threat.
More than however many years since (a plot that's mentioned in TFA that I no longer want to type on a web form), more than 5 years since 9/11, two years since the bogus liquid plot, and only now, on an obscure web forum, does the bureaucracy actually come out and admit why the rules are what they are.
The original policy isn't a great idea, but it isn't exactly a dumb idea either. But it's taught arbitrarily to the goons, it's enforced arbitrarily against the goons' victims, and ends up with all three sides (Policymaker, Goon, and Civilian alike) regarding each other with nothing but contempt and suspicion. To the point that I (like
He said, "Can we have another option to fly? We'll call it Fly At Your Own Risk Airlines. We won't screen for anything and you can pay for your tickets five minutes before your flight just like in the old days-1997."
CDE open sourced! https://sourceforge.net/projects/cdesktopenv/
'' "If the TSO throws your liquids in the trash, they don't find you a threat."
If they didn't find (you) a threat, then WHY THROW THE FREAKIN' LIQUIDS IN THE TRASH?!?!?
Jeez Louise... ''
Do you people have a brain at all? What he is saying is: Football mum goes in the queue with a bottle of water. They take away the bottle, nobody checked whether she was a threat or not. Terrorist goes in the queue with a bottle of clear liquid that will blow up an aeroplane. They take away the bottle, nobody checked whether he was a threat or not.
By throwing _any_ bottle of sufficient size in the trash, dangerous explosions are prevented without a costly determination whether someone was a threat or not. On one hand, the danger is avoided. On the other hand, terrorists will go undetected and they can try again. That's what he said, and it sounds very reasonable to me.
"Terrorist - a person who terrorizes or frightens others." http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=terrorist . Looking at all the FUD from the TSA, Homeland Security, and the Airlines. I think the terrorists have accomplished exactly what they want - cause as much disruption in America's (and other countries) as possible.
1. Become a card carrying Republican.
2. Attend Church every Sunday.
3. Report UnAmericanism in friends and neighbors.
4. Watch FOX NEWS exclusively and echo its opinions.
5. Most Importantly of all.... Donate bucketloads of cash to the GOP!!
Anything less and you're siding with the terrorists.
May the Maths Be with you!
That was just an excerpt from the blog comments. I included it to show that there were actual comments of some merit or other on the site. Of course, I know it's theatre. That doesn't make it any less annoying to have your shave cream looted before you get to your business meeting. Or to have your Congressional Medal of Honor paraphanalia stolen from you: http://forums.realpolice.net/archive/index.php?t-2 5284.html
Personally, I think they ought to be forced to take down the posters of stuff they've taken from passengers designed to make them look good and us feel like criminals. Instead, they should put up posters of all of the stuff they had no business taking. It might make us non-criminals feel like someone in that agency is trying to keep the beast in check.
Of course, this is all stated from the realistic premise that TSA isn't going anywhere. I'd love to have the old America back, you remember: the America where you didn't even have to show id to travel and assemble... But that part of the Constitution isn't relevant anymore.
"If still these truths be held to be
Self evident."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
Many TSA screeners -- not most, but enough to matter -- exhibit an attitude towards the public that should be flat unacceptable. And that makes jumping through the hoops all the more irritating, and hurts TSA's image more than anything.
This attitude problem isn't unique to TSA. It happens frequently to low-status people who are given more authority than they know how to handle. It happens to cops and to computer systems administrators who forget that they are ONLY working for the benefit of the people they are mistreating.
If TSA wants to fix it's image, they should look around to law-enforcement and other public-facing agencies and find ones who have been effective training their front-line employees to be both firm and courteous, both vigilant and respectful.
It could be just the seat. I have been bumped to first class a few times and they do fuss over you and give lots of free drinks, among other things. I'd think though that if the whole plane had better seating the cost of the missing seats could be averaged out and wouldn't be a huge price increase. Then again maybe it would. INAAE (I'm Not An Airline Executive).
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
i WOULDN'T because no one has ever come up with any compelling reason to show that we SHOULD.
it's not like there's some magical explosive formula terrorists have come up with that no one has ever thought of before. so we in fact DO know the chemical makeup of any stand-alone liquid explosive, and mixing some otherwise innocent consituent chemicals together into a bomb just isn't going to work
I'd rather be inconvenienced and safe then killed in an avoidable plane crash...
And never question how one is necessary to prevent the other. Because if they didn't take that Boy Scout's 2 inch pocket knife, you would have certainly been stabbed to death before your plane was used in another 9/11!
the 3 oz thing... well it doesn't have to be a bomb.. I imagine a 3 oz container of some sort of chemical or biological substance could do some serious damage.
Yeah, or what looked like simple saline solution could pop out of the bottle and turn into a fucking dragon and eat everyone on board the plane! I mean, we are dealing with your paranoid imagination here so why not go whole-hog?
one thing I will admit however the shoe things sucks... it's needed but it could be done a little more polite as brought up by "mi" earlier it would be great if they'd just give you disposable shoes so you're not standing their bare foot or
I don't give a crap about the sanitation, though the possibility of picking up athlete's foot from somebody else's sweaty socks is probably the greatest danger to me in air travel these days. It's the humiliation of having to take off my shoes and shuffle like a convict through the line.
But here's a hint about how "needed" this little bit of security theater is: The same amount of explosives will fit in the sole of a shoe as will fit in the crotch of underwear. So when you took your shoes off to be screened, thus making you feel safe, did they also grope your crotch? And do you want them to start groping your crotch? Maybe shoving a finger up your ass; the human colon could fit as much C4 as the sole of a shoe. Do you want them to start doing that? If not, then you are admittedly sacrificing safety for the "convenience" of personal dignity. And furthermore, this means that the current inconvenience of having to take off your shoes is not making you safe.
Your bargain is a false one. You've let yourself be inconvenienced for nothing more than the paltry illusion of safety, and like most illusions it only works if the viewer believes and doesn't question.
The enemies of Democracy are
Yah, because the dragon popping out of a bottle was in response to the OP "imagining" some terrible biological weapon in a 3 oz bottle.
And what kind of intruder does your fence deter? The most half-assed. Certainly not anyone who was intent on robbing you. What kind of terrorist does screening your shoe but not your underwear or asshole deter? The most half-assed. When do the terms "serious security threat" and "half-assed terrorist" intersect? Never. No half-assed terrorist who thinks to put explosives in their shoe but not in their underwear is going to try to blow up a plane. The threat, in as much as it exists, is more serious than that.
It's not a deterrent for shit. It is trivial to get around the security procedures for anyone who actually cares to. I mean, you're actually telling me that screening the soles of your shoes for explosives is a deterrent, when it's at least as easy to stuff C4 in the crotch of your pants? We're actually screening for the more difficult method of delivery, and this is supposed to deter the guy who apparently wasn't really serious about blowing up a plane?
No, it isn't a deterrent, it's an illusion. It appears to be doing something to increase your security, when in reality it is doing nothing. Our security today is like the fence around your house -- if only one side of the fence had been built. You could make the argument that meddlesome teenagers standing on that one side of the house would see the fence and not investigate further... And if that actually makes you feel better, then you are doing nothing but willingly participating in Security Theater.
The enemies of Democracy are
You do the math...
One gram of anthrax about 0.04 ounces, or the weight of two paper clips -- contains enough doses to kill 10 million people.
Uh, yah, math. Let's see 0.04 ounces can kill 10 million people, and a terrorist is going to release it on an airplane containing perhaps 200. That math makes a lot of sense.
Botulinum toxin is one of the most poisonous substances known. The lethal dose is one billionth of a gram per kilogram, meaning that breathing in 70 billionths of a gram would kill a person weighing 70 kilograms or 154 pounds. The toxin is fatal within three days to 80 percent of those exposed.
Okay, so the terrorist is going to expose everyone on the airplane, including themselves, killing everyone but leaving the plane in the air on auto pilot, having done only a fraction of the damage that opening the same bottle in an office building would do -- or in the airport terminal before even going through security. What a fantastic terrorist plot you've concocted!
Here's what's really funny: You imagine on the one hand that a terrorist will smuggle anthrax or botulism onto a plane, and on the other hand you imagine that making said terrorist take off their shoes will serve as a deterrent in any way, shape, or form. It won't! In fact, none of the security theater that you say is a necessary inconvenience would do anything to stop our 3oz-bottle-of-anthrax-carrying terrorist!
That's why you may as well worry about terrorists using dragons. There's as much connection between that and your imagination of the terrorist threat and the actual security procedures in place to stop it. Shoe removal deters dragon-wielding terrorists as well as anthrax-wielding terrorists, which is to say not at all. If you feel safe it's because useless security theater makes you feel safe.
The enemies of Democracy are
And your forefathers* made the same decision; and for them it was not even "would" but "did".
It's terrible how many take our freedoms for granted, and how many willingly trade very real freedom for the illusion of security.
*Assumes US-ian, or one of many other countries where the ancestry fought for (and won!) their freedom, securing a very different and much better life for you.
If you think imaginary property and real property are the same, when does your house become public domain?