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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."
Ask him the procedure for getting yourself off the no-fly list.
I'd ask myself, but I'd rather stay off that list, and since no one can say how you get on, this post might put me on that list, but I wouldn't know it until I couldn't fly next week.
P.S. Ask him if he admires Kafka and is trying to emulate his writings...
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?
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.
n/t
--- What?
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.
Bruce should have asked him why "Toy Transformer Robots" are included on the Permitted / Banned items list, but the threat of actual Trasnformer robots are ignored by the TSA.
Haven't they seen the documentary currently playing at theaters across the nation?
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
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
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
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.
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
Since no one else has posted yet: http://geekz.co.uk/schneierfacts/
"It doesn't cost enough, and it makes too much sense."
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)
Not to defend these abhorrent procedures, but these are two ways they use to reduce the overall ticket price at the expense of people who don't actually use the tickets they pay for. If you kill these practices, then the average ticket price would necessarily go up. If only one airline killed these procedures, then the market would drift away from them as their prices rise. If these practices are ever done away with, it will have to be due to an act of congress or the FAA in order to raise all ticket prices on all airlines by a similar (if not equal) amount.
If you meant "reading that site about how Kip Hawley is an idiot", then yes, I do feel better informed after reading that.
--
make install -not war
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
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
P.P.S. I'm doing Science and I'm still alive.
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.
Overbooking happens because on a certain percentage of flights business travelers always fail to show up. By overbooking the flight they can sell the seats of those no-shows. More bums in the plane = Cheaper airfares. Therefore, I don't want them to stop overbooking as airfares I pay will by extension go up. Bumping = cheaper airfares. Typically most overbooked flights are swarmed with volunteers willing to be bumped in exchange for perks, so this is a red herring. If you show up sufficiently early to check in it's unlikely you'll be bumped due to an overbooking scenario.
Allow tickets to be transferable. That would allow people's plans to be more flexible (but prevent some of the ways they price gouge).
Tickets *are* transferable if you purchase the correct fare class. If you purchase a cheaper ticket there are more restrictions. As a consumer, I don't want all tickets to be transferable, as 'cheaper' fares will disappear.
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
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
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.
Nope, but if I'm travelling in business I can just get to the airport and work on my laptop. Who cares whether I'm at my desk or at Starbucks? And if I'm travelling for pleasure I've already taken the day off so who cares if I'm hanging at home or at the bar in the airport?
In reality, ticket prices should go down as the flight nears, in order to encourage sales of the remaining seats.
Incorrect - The vast majority of people who purchase tickets "last minute" are people who MUST travel on date X at time Y. As a result, the airline can and does charge more for these seats, for the 'privilege' of booking last minute. If you study airline economics you'll see that there isn't a pool of last-minute travellers who snap up the cheap seats. There is, however, a pool of last-minute travellers who will pay more to travel right now.
Additionally, agencies should be able to purchase discount tickets and resell them later on.
They do: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airline_consolidators
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.
As a passenger, I don't want to subsidize other passengers who can't 'travel as planned.' Those pax should be purchasing insurance or more expensive tickets, not asking me to subsidize them through my ticket.
Profit margins on the airlines are razor-thin. If 'all classes of tickets were transferable' then the higher costs of administering this would be passed on to the flying public. You and I would pay higher fares. And I don't want to.
You're a complete fool
And you're a complete fool for accusing others of being fools without doing your homework first.
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.
They save me money. The airline has said "If you're willing to commit to this flight on this day, X days in advance, and you're not going to change your ticket I'll only charge you $Z. If you want additional services on your ticket, we'll charge you more."
Bruce, you should have asked for a spoiler for the next episode of Security Theatre!!
Scene: Little girl crying no the plane and her mother is explaining to the person next to her how the TSA disallowed her Teddy Bear because it could have shed Lint.
LINT!
Haven't you ever heard of a lint bomb? All those fluffy pieces floating around just WAITING for someone to set fire to them. If ONLY they'd kept the ban on disposable lighters in place, we could have been safe from lint bombs and my little girl could have carried her Teddy Bear... *sniff*
[Fade to black over heroic music]
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.
You go in the line with a bottle of clear liquid that is innocuous, but incidentally happens to react with the clear liquid the terrorist was bringing. They take away the bottle, toss it into the trash, it leaks...
BOOM.
In a busy terminal full of people.
The fact of the matter is, if there is the SLIGHTEST bit of suspicion that a container contains liquids which are a danger to the people around them, then proper handling procedures must be followed, including isolation and proper disposal. The fact that they're not checking for threats is not the point... the point is they are tossing potentially explosive liquids together in a standard trash can in a terminal full of hundreds of people. If the liquid wasn't potentially dangerous, then why do they take it away?
For security, the MD5 hash of this message and sig is 09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0.
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?
You've got the cause and effect backwards. The only reason the airline can charge more is because they can prevent you from buying a seat from a third party. The only time tickets should be more expensive as the date grows nearer is if the flight is sold-out. The economics for ticket sales for air travel are minimally different than for concerts, theater, anything with a limited pool of tickets. And you'll be hard pressed to find disagreement on that from a non-industry source. With cheaper seats as the departure time nears, more flights would be full. People would be forced to pay a premium to book early and guarantee a seat. Business and casual travelers would be more likely to fly at the last minute, and the need for overbooking would diminish, as travelers who now stay home would once again start flying standby. Do you not remember what it was like before the rules changed in the '90s?
The flaw in your logic is two fold. First that $Z is the lowest you'll pay even if the rules were different, and second that you don't consider the costs of inflexibility. Yeah yeah, your life makes it easy to plan in advance, and you can work from the airport. Bully for you. Most people aren't like that.
And before you accuse people of not doing their homework, you should read your own link. The ability to make airline tickets non-transferable has all but destroyed the consolidator's market within the US; it remains only for niche travel and for associated group rates. Outside the US without the artificial restriction they are still flourishing and keeping airfare lower than it is here. You, sir, are the one who needs to do his homework.
Yes and no - United says 'we're the only ones who can sell you a ticket' but they can't prevent you from buying a ticket on Southwest, JetBlue or Delta. They're in effect the 'third party' - The competition. Competition in major markets has also pretty much determined the lowest fare available anyway - So even if these mythical 'third parties' could resell tickets they probably wouldn't have a discounted fare to offer you anyway. This is one of the reasons Priceline hasn't done as well as one might have expected. In the air the fare you have to bid isn't much, if at all, below what simply purchasing a ticket would have cost.
The economics for ticket sales for air travel are minimally different than for concerts, theater
They're quite different, actually.
Here's something someone recently sent me that helps explain it -
Major airlines have rarely, if ever, posted reasonable profits. So, keeping in mind that a good percentage of flights are always going to lose money, the airline industry has a system that tries to keep this in check. Basically, every flight has its seats divided up into 'classes' (this has nothing to do with first class/business etc) that we'll call A, B, C and D. These classes have mostly to do with price.
When an airline plans a flight, they look at how much it's going to cost, and divide the seats up in different price classes. A simplified model might look like: Cost of flight : $20,000 When the flight is announced, the airline will say 'if we sell 20 seats at $1000 we break even'. So, They add 20 seats to the plan with an A class.
Then through some process of voodoo economics, the number of various classed seats that must be sold is decided.
So, 3 months before a flight, you can get a C class ticket quite easily, as they expect that in that time they might sell 80 seats. As it gets closer to the flight day, all the $250 seats may have sold, or they start to realize that they are not all going to sell, so they stop selling C class tickets and only have B. Twice the price, but you need half as many customers, which is half as many seats, meals, bags, etc etc.
A few days before the flight there may only be A class tickets, as they'd rather sell just one ticket at A class price than 4 at B class. If you _really_ need to get somewhere you'll pay whatever they ask right? Besides, if they've sold all the C class, they break even. Adding cheap seats at this point can actually lose money (more staff needed, more fuel needed etc.)
Then, standby is D class.. since we're about to leave, and we're not going to sell these seats, we'll get you on board... but only if we need the money.
So, they don't want to sell you a seat at any old price, because it takes a seat away from someone who *might* pay more for it. This is why pricing flights is so complex. It may not even be NP complete, and it's nowhere near O(n).
This is very different than the theatre, where they have three or four 'classes of service' and sell off tickets cheap the day of the show.
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".