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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."
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.
I have flown quite a bit this past year and visited airports across the country (for pleasure, never for business) and have never once had a run in with the TSA. My issues are solely with the airlines and their "customer service".
Last night was a prime example. Flying from SAV to ATL and on to MSP. My flight out of SAV was delayed from 19:42 to 22:15 and then in ATL we were originally delayed out until 01:20 then moved back to 22:10 (which I would have missed the connection) and then back to 00:10 (which was actually 00:30). We arrived at MSP 45 minutes late (which isn't that bad overall).
The flight from ATL to MSP has a TERRIBLE track record according to Flight Stats (0.9 out of 5 stars).
Then with Northwest's pilots calling in sick and them dropping ~9% of their flights for the weekend (170 to 200 flights) is just a joke.
The TSA hasn't exactly been friendly or courteous but at least they are doing their job. The airlines, OTOH, aren't doing anything except making a big hole and getting bailed out by the taxpayers while paying their CEO's millions.
And they really seem to get into the details of airport security. Certainly doesn't seem like PR fluff, could be an interesting read.
...but is it art?
Don't forget, after banning fingernail clippers, the TSA never banned matches and is looking at unbanning lighters because while only terrorists want to look good for their interview, there are perfectly legitimate reasons to have a source of fire on board a plane, like smoking or setting your shoe on fire.
Definitely stupid and lazy.
He might also truly want to be transparent but the administration could be preventing him from doing so. Not everyone under the Bush Administration is as stupid as Bush. Some just have to keep their heads down to continue doing the fine job they have been. Don't forget what happened to US Attorneys in the DOJ. Gonzales has nearly admitted in some of the testimony I had been wathching there was politcal firings. I can also imagine the commitee wanted to strangle him because he couldn't answer a simple yes or no question. I watched a good portion of the hearing and wanted to stragle the guy. This just illustrates that people might keep their heads down to avoid the current situation with the DOJ.
I think you just have major OCD. There is nothing unsanitary about walking a few feet without shoes, especially on a dry, hard surface. You can't spread any diseases that way. If you are so concerned, wear socks or something. People walk barefoot all the time at the beach, which is far more unsanitary -- you could step on something sharp, for instance. And I've never been at an airport where the screening area was not perfectly clean.
As far as having the TSA employees barefoot: that's just an incredibly stupid idea. I don't think more needs to be said.
I actuallly agree with you, when I was flying a lot for work, I got into the routine, standing there with my my shoes and laptop in one hand, the bag in the other, coat off, ticket/passport sticking out of my shirt pocket. One day I was dreading being in the security line behind a large family dreading life. The TSA Agent stoped them, pulled them asside, and waved at me to go past. The Father protested why I got to skip in line when the agent answered "Because he'll be done and gone before you get your shoes off." Sure enough, I was too far away to hear the answer to the father demanding to know why they needed his shoes.
Not all of the TSA is clueless.
They're not first-class seats per se, but you can already do this on United and a number of other carriers. For more see:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=44 2986
More people are beginning to understand that security theater is nothing more than smoke and mirrors. But not enough to end this lunacy any time soon, I'm afraid. Some people are still convinced that this hoax somehow makes them "safer". Frankly, I'd rather have travelers scared crapless -- if the cowards would stay home, there'd be less congestion at the airports (and maybe fewer people bringing three-year-old kids to kick the back of my seat for five fscking hours!)
John
Flying from Seattle to Amsterdam on British Airways recently, I watched as their boarding pass barcode scanner went on the fritz. It appeared to be unable to scan about 25% of the E-ticket (printed at home most likely on an empty toner cartridge) passes. They had no backup procedures and simply waved passengers through when their passes didn't scan. I didn't think much of that until they lost my checked bag. Upon filing a claim and attempting to track it through their (practiaclly inoperative) on-line claim system, I realized that they don't have any idea where bags are in ther system. They think they know exactly where it is but seem unable to actually make it appear.
So, after doing a bit of thinking, I've already come up with several ways of exploiting their systems' flaws to get an unaccompanied suitcase loaded onto an airplane.
Does anyone care? Nope. As long as we have to take our shoes off (another interesting story there) and subject ourselves to a bunch of pointless searches (yet another story) that make the general public think they are safe, that's all that matters.
Interesting note: Before the infamous 'shoe bomber' and 'liquid bombers' I purchased a comfortable pair of walking shoes with gel insoles. Since these events, I've worn them (and had them x-rayed) numerous times. Nobody has ever raised an eyebrow.
Interesting story: A friend of mine was supposed to be across the state to meet some people. Upon attempting to drive, his car quit. Now late and in a panic, he called a local commuter airline and booked a flight at the last minute. After rushing to the airport (SeaTac), he boarded his flight and arrived successfully. Only after all of this he realized that he had just boarded and flown across the state carrying one pistol (he has a carry permit) on his person, plus another and ammunition in his carry-on luggage. Security never noticed anything.
Have gnu, will travel.
On my last few trips to the USA I have been pulled over by the TSA on about a third of the flights (several internal flights on each trip), and by customs once. Since they were not pulling over one third of the people in the line, I presume something about me had me flagged as a potential terrorist. Every single time, the operatives have been polite and efficient.
Last but one time it was not at all surprised to be flagged, since I had only noticed that there was a screw up with my booking when I went to collect my ticked and I was, in fact, booked on the flight exactly one month earlier (fortunately the airline just charged me a token 'don't be a numpty again' fee and let me on). Even I can see this is quite suspicious behaviour (although the fact my connecting flight was booked on the correct day would have been evidence of incompetence, rather than malice, on my part). The guy who checked my hand luggage was very friendly, and since I wasn't in a hurry (and the airport wasn't busy at that time) we chatted for a bit after he had decided that I probably wasn't a terrorist. I was a bit worried about being searched then, since my laptop had one broken hinge and being opened carelessly would have probably snapped the other one and pulled the screen off, but they let me open it and after I pointed to the damage were very careful with it. They wouldn't let me have another go in the machine that blew a puff of air at you from all directions to find explosive residue though.
The next time I think the security personnel were more interested in seeing what the Nokia 770 I was carrying could do. It took about five seconds to assure them it wasn't a bomb, and then another five minutes of demonstrating the various features and discussing with them and whether they should buy one. I felt like I was trapped in a parallel universe where 'does it run Linux' was a more important question than 'is it a bomb.' While that might be true on Slashdot, it probably shouldn't be to security people.
I haven't been in an airport where I couldn't see at least a couple of ways of bypassing the security[1], but I've also never been inconvenienced by it. At Narita, I arrived at the check-in desk as they were packing up and my flight was due to start boarding. They rushed me through the pilots-only lane in security and got me from the airport entrance to the boarding area in ten minutes (it would be the furthest terminal away from the entrance when I was running late...). It's a shame airports aren't always this efficient.
[1] Interestingly, some of the security is expressly designed this way, as a honeypot. They make a few ways of bypassing it obvious and then have a secondary check which picks up the people who do.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
(IANAL)
A terrorist with 5 pounds of C4 surgically implanted in his abdomen can do far more damage than I could with the liter water bottle that TSA just made me throw away.
But there is no effective screening method for that, so we'll pretend that little problem doesn't exist.
Ever departed from the Tel Aviv airport? That, my friend, is security. Sure, they have all of the neat whizzy gizmos that TSA has (better, probably, but it's been a while since I've been through TLV), but the crux of what they do is to interrogate the passengers. Not kidding. They stop and intensely question each and every passenger and assess their motives for being there. I was on a professional trip as part of a scientific delegation, and had to not just produce documents to that effect, but demonstrate that my name was in the conference program, and give part of my talk (naturally, since the agents aren't in my particular profession, I doubt they cared about what I was saying nearly as much as how I was saying it, and whether it appeared I was demonstrating fluency in some topic). There's about 10-20 minutes of this, and it's intense. They're trying to trip you up, to find someone who has something to hide. Like motives for having had surgery to implant C4 in their abdomen, as the parent post suggests.
The part that makes this mechanism tolerable, this mechanism which provides far better security than any purely technological solution, is that they have sufficient bandwidth to process many people despite imposing a 10-20 minute delay on each. There are banks and banks of agents, not just 2 or 3 inspection booths as in the US.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
This head of the TSA keeps on talking about liquid explosives as if there is such a threat. No one has been able to point out such a threat, at least not that I have seen in any of the blogs / slashdot and people have looked for it.
I know there are liquid explosives. Nitroglycerin is an oily liquid. There are blasting slurries. Those are all strange and suspicious-looking liquids, which no one would confuse for bottled water.
Are there any other liquids which are explosive and which are credible threats to airplane safety? What could this TSA guy be talking about? I don't believe him until some specific liquid can be described. The way he says it, the terrorists already know about this stuff so discussing it in a public forum shouldn't hurt.
Here's something I observed, and fortunately was not directly affected by:
United flight from Hong Kong to Chicago. There's two of these a day. The day before our flight, both flights had been overbooked and everyone showed up. So they had to pay people effectively $1200 each to stay an extra day in HK. The day we were flying everyone showed as well as the people who had been left over from the previous day. They paid 56 people $1400 to wait around in the hopes of getting the second flight that day. One of them had been bumped twice the previous day and had no reason to hurry home so he had gotten a total of $5000 in order to delay his flight a day or so. Keep in mind the plane tickets themselves were $1200 each when we purchased them.
The weird part is that once we were on the plane and they had already paid 56 people who were at the gate to not get on the plane, they had to ask another 10 to get off because of weight restrictions. So the airline paid out $92000 on that flight alone because they overbooked it. This is why the airlines are going bankrupt, because their predictive models of who is going to no-show isn't working anymore. I have several relatives who always build an extra 2-3 days into their travel schedules so they can volunteer to be bumped. As a result they usually end up essentially getting upgraded to business or economy plus AND getting to fly for free.
this is getting old and so are you
blog
That's the most insightful thing I've seen on /. in a long time; thank you for that.
That's the part everyone missed/is still missing post-9/11. There's no security that can overcome the compliance of all the people on the plane. The problem wasn't lack of security in boarding, or lack of air marshals on the plane (which may or may not have helped*), or even easy access to the cockpit.
The problem, as you state, was that everyone from the passengers through the captain was trained to do what the hijackers wanted. The (presumed) worst-case scenario was they'd all have a frightening three months in Tehran, then they'd all get to go home.
That is no longer the presumption; that attack will never work again. Flight 93 demonstrates that perfectly well. I imagine the group of people most irate at the 9/11 hijackers are all the other organizations who were thinking about hijacking a plane in the more traditional fashion; now they can't.
All the new tightening of security is, literally, meaningless. Boxcutters weren't the problem; the attackers having a scheme whereby everyone on the plane is helping them was the problem.
*Odds are not bad that the air marshal, even if present, would have judged the risk to the plane of acting against the terrorists not worth it - that's certainly what everyone else judged the case to be.
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
the airlines take the gate fees, fuel costs, all the required maintenance and the expected unscheduled maintenance, the staff to do it, the rent on the space to do it, Ticket counters costs the staffing of them and the airplane and everything else, roll them up into a single number and then figure how much it will costs the plane to traver per mile based on that.
Of course being High dollar union employees, Most of the workers get a large salary plus lots of benefits and all. Then for each route, they divide the amount of passengers up into weight that the plane can carry and then figure this into the the amount of passengers the plane can hold. First class might cost more because it takes the space of more seats up (potential passengers). They might subsidize the coach fairs but it is more likely that if your taking the space of two passengers, you ticket will cost relatively the same plus the added benefits like more personnel and luxury items being stored, profit and all that.
This is one of the reasons why if you book your flight several months in advance, your tickets are cheaper then last minute flights. they attempt to make up the short comings at the last minute. You can also look a this as why they over book flights sometimes too. The want to make sure that with all the last minute cancellations and all, that all the seats are sold.
When I got my pilots license, they taught us to calculated the cost of the flight on the total weight of the plane as it would fly along with a fraction of the required maintenance. It boiled down to a unit we could multiply against the cost of fuel and accurately cover our expenses. Of course I can only fly single engine small aircraft for private use but the principle is the same.
My favorite TSA brain-dead incident happened while returning home from a recent trip to South America.
My original flight out of South America was canceled and I was forced to stay an extra day (this fact will become important). The flight the next day ended up leaving 3 hours late. When I arrived in Miami, instead of the close to 4 hours I would've had, I had 45 minutes to clear customs and get my luggage re-checked and get to my connecting flight. Everything went surprisingly well with customs and the airline...the ticketing agent even accompanied me so that I could skip the TSA line. And it actually looked like I would be able to make my flight on-time (they were waiting to take off, so there was no chance I'd actually miss it). It all looked like it was going to work out well.
That was up until the TSA decided that I needed a secondary screening due to the fact that my ticket had been purchased the previous day (by the airline in South America). Somehow the fact that it was part of an arrangement replacing tickets purchased months before made no difference. Neither did the fact that I could prove I'd only been in Miami for less than an hour and my luggage had just been checked by customs officials (also TSA). I'm sure it was important that they ensure that I hadn't met up with an accomplice in Miami (a city I wasn't even supposed to travel through on my original tickets).
Anyway, the secondary screening took over 15 minutes. My flight ended up leaving 30 minutes late (because we missed our scheduled window, we had to wait until there was a free window to take off). That 30 minute delay no doubt had repercussions for other travelers for their connecting flights. So in many cases, the GP's complaints about delayed flights can actually be caused by TSA incompetence.
Maybe he's just doing what he's told?
After all, you've got to pay the bills. Perhaps this guy has a very good grip on what he can and cannot change without getting fired.
I'd rather have somebody with good intentions and good goals running the system, helping to slowly erode the bureaucracy than somebody who actually feels that the current state of the TSA is perfectly acceptable.
Flying isn't a particularly pleasant experience, but in my experiences, the TSA isn't complete and pure evil, and they take a lot of crap for enforcing policies over which they have no control. Quite frankly, the airlines are being run incredibly poorly these days, and the FAA's current air traffic woes aren't helping things at all.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Imagine this: Airlines advertising that they are safer than the competition because they perform more background checks, more screening tests, and have a better record of finding threating materials. I would pay an extra $20 per ticket to have measurably better security. And the extra bonus is that this screening would not infringe any 4th amendment rights.
Let the airlines handle security. They have the motivation to make the process both safe and sane. The federal government does not have the ability to do either.
engineers are all basically high-functioning autistics who have no idea how normal people do stuff
I never said I feel "safe" just safer... and i'm not saying alot safer either
Okay, that's fine, the part about "I'd rather be inconvenienced and safe then killed in an avoidable plane crash... " was just hyperbole, because you know that you aren't being made safe, and that none of this security theater would make a plane crash "avoidable".
The question is why do you feel any safer when you're forced to take off your shoes? That vector has only been attempted once, and any future terrorist is going to hide their explosives somewhere that isn't checked, an absolutely trivial exercise. Would you feel safer -- not a lot, but some -- if there was a switch on the side of the metal detector passengers could hit to disable it? I mean in theory a really half-assed terrorist wouldn't hit the button so they might be caught! Is that easy enough security to get around for you to not consider it a deterrent? Because that's what checking shoes is like.
I mean, you yourself thought of an attack vector that completely avoids 100% of the security currently in place, and I think we will both agree that you aren't very serious about planning and executing terrorist attacks, no? So you don't think even the shoe-bomber, clearly not the brightest match in the book, would if given another chance be able to think of a way through security? Even he could think "put the explosives on me, but not in my shoes".
life isn't safe...if I wanted to be safe i'd curl up in a ball in the corner of a bomb shelter somewhere
Exactly. So stop adding completely useless and unnecessary "safety" precautions to my life just so you can feel "safer... and i'm not saying alot safer either ". It doesn't actually help, we could all still be killed by a thousand things including but certainly not restricted to terrorists, so why would you even support something so superfluous?
basically it's only a minor inconvenience and you are all a bunch of whiners...
And you are perfectly willing to inflict inconvenience on me for no reason, because you're a scaredy-cat who thinks terrorists are going to release botulism on an airplane, and somehow thinks checking shoes makes you even the tiniest bit safer. You're happy to be inconvenienced for the Paper-Thin Illusion of Security that can quell your fear, even if only a little.
It's not the inconvenience. It's that it's pointless outside of convincing the gullible that Something Is Being Done. That is why I'm against it.
The enemies of Democracy are
"Yah, it's collecting a massive amount of pocket knives, nail clippers, shampoo bottles, baby formula, and other completely harmless things from completely harmless people. That's great "proof" of just how stupid the whole exercise is."
And massive amounts of guns, bludgeoning weapons, knives, etc.
The proof is in the statistic probability that removing these items from the chain decreases the likelihood that someone would use them. The "harmless" people comment is a moot argument.
"Not all of it is entirely worthless"
Then why did you state so previously using the form of rhetoric you did?
"Taking off your shoes? That's pointless. That's security theater."
Hardly. Looking at it from the perspective that you also have to remove your coat, hat and generally anything from your pockets, it makes sense.
"You aren't checking anywhere else I could hide explosives."
No, just the obvious places that passengers wouldn't b*tch about (i.e. cavity searches).
You seem to be hung up on the shoe thing way too much for something that takes absolutely no time or effort.
More time waiting is equivalent to a higher cost ticket. Perhaps your time is worthless?
Tickets are transferable if you give up any money you would have saved by purchasing early. In reality, ticket prices should go down as the flight nears, in order to encourage sales of the remaining seats. Additionally, agencies should be able to purchase discount tickets and resell them later on. Both of these things are only possible if all classes of tickets are transferable, and they also both reduce the costs to you as a consumer. Additionally a transferable ticket allows you to cut your losses if it turns out you can't travel as planned. You're a complete fool if you think non-transferable tickets save you money. They exist to extract the most money possible out of you, not to save you money.
but it's an organized way to solve problems if that goes of at the terminal it will kill hundreds if it goes off in the plane.. probably a few more.. if it's used to gain control of a plane and crash it into a building... ALOT... not to mention nation wide mass hysteria
OK, so we are trying to prevent terrorists from crashing a plane into a building..... by making sure they don't have explosives with them? That makes no sense. The banning of liquids is to prevent the terrorist from detonating it on the plane, not preventing hijacking. In that regard, the bin at the security checkpoint would likely take out more people than having it go off on the plane. As for the hijacking part, that's already covered without a liquids ban. It was a really simple fix, no one gets into the cockpit. Also, if the crew veers off course and doesn't have a good explanation for the FAA, someone is going to shoot it down.
So why do I have to fly thirsty?
BTW, DHS has the threat level at "high" right now. Apparently, the empirical definition of "high" is:
- No terrorist plots successfully executed in the US for six consecutive years
- No terrorist plots attempted in the US for six consecutive years
- No terrorist plots thwarted in the US for six consecutive years
- Daily killing in a war zone by a smaller and less armed enemy using guerilla tactics
This sounds more like an example of a "time of peace and tranquility" than a high risk situation. It's been a long time since the US has had six years of peace (not counting the war that we started). I wonder what DHS would have said about the threat level on December 8, 1941? Maybe ultra-super-mega-high?
Prior to 2001, here are our streaks of time between politically motivated attacks on our people:
1 year from the USS Cole to 9/11
2 years from the US embassy in Kenya to the USS Cole
1 year from a sniper on the Empire State Building to Kenya
2 years from Oklahoma City to ESB
2 years from the first WTC attempt to Oklahoma City
10 years from the US Embassy in Beirut to the first WTC attempt
Even leaving out the unprovoked attacks on US targets outside of the US leaves us in a pretty good era. Of course it doesn't hurt that we are hanging 125,000 of our soldiers out to dry so that we can draw fire away from "The Homeland".