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Time To Close the Security Theater
An anonymous reader writes "An editorial at Forbes calls for the dismantling of the TSA, pointing to recent headlines as the latest examples of 'security theater' at its worst. From the article:
'The problem isn't that the TSA is harassing the wrong people. The problem is that the TSA is harassing anyone. The TSA is encroaching on fundamental liberties and providing no discernable benefit. ... Naturally, the TSA responds to incidents like these by saying that the agents are highly trained and that they have followed proper procedure. This indicates a signal failing for the agency: if "doing it by the book" involves touching people in ways that would be considered sexual assault in virtually any other context or telling a 90-year old breast cancer survivor to remove her bra lest it contain explosives (as happened to a friend's grandmother), then the book needs to be shredded and rewritten. Better yet, it needs to be replaced with a competitive market for air travel in which the airports, the airways, and the airliners are in private hands. Some might object that private firms will have incentives to cut corners on safety. It is a legitimate concern, but competitive mechanisms tend to weed this out.'"
The Israel's airport security model is very effective. But it is very difficult to follow in the US. You can google for a number of sources such as this. Excerpt:
While American and European security procedures rely mainly on technological solutions for screening luggage and passengers, Israel’s security philosophy is based on a mix of advanced detection devices and personal interaction with the passengers.The multi-layer system begins outside Israel’s biggest port of entry — Ben Gurion airport. Cars approaching the terminal are stopped by guards and asked one or two questions, usually about where they are coming from or what is the purpose of their visit. A nervous response, or one revealing an Arab accent, could trigger further scrutiny even before entering the airport.
When walking into the terminal, visitors pass by another set of security agents searching for passengers behaving suspiciously. The next stop for human evaluation is before the check-in counter, where passengers are required to show their travel documents and answer a series of seemingly standard questions from trained security personnel. (Did you pack your bags by yourself? How long did you spend in Israel? What was the purpose of your visit?) Screeners are interested more in the tone and body language than in the content of passengers’ replies.
This is also the point where profiling takes place: While most Jewish Israeli citizens will be waved through after the brief conversation, others, mainly Israeli Arabs and non-Jewish visitors, will be taken aside for lengthy questioning and a thorough luggage and physical check.
Couldn't you just replace TSA with Federal Government in that story?
Couldn't you all vote to replace the Federal Government if you all really disliked it so much?
Yes, and we have the opportunity to do so with great regularity: 1/3 of the Senate every two years, the entire House of Representatives every two years, the the President every four years. We, as in the US voters, fail to re-elect a new government with equal regularity. Even with in-the-sewer approval ratings, Congressional incumbents tend to enjoy a remarkable re-election rate (I've seen figure in excess of 90%).
I worked with a guy who had the right idea: whomever the incumbent is, vote for the challenger. Don't worry about party affiliation, they're both essentially the same anyway. The effect on the Senate would be less dramatic then the House, since only 1/3 of the Senators are up for re-election at the same time. Can you imagine a House of Representatives where all 435 members were replaced at the same time?
Government's idea of a balanced budget: take money from the right pocket to balance...oh who am I kidding?
A first post AC who has something insightful to say? Color me shocked. The gist of the editorial isn't that the security theater is ineffective, it is that the government shouldn't be groping grandmas when the free market could provide security without having to grope grandmas. This is nothing but the standard trope of "government is evil" mixed with taking advantage of people not understanding security.
But that's a sham.
#1 Physical profiling doesn't work. Terrorists would just do dry-runs until they find a combination of people and materials that is outside the profile.
#2 Behavioral profiling is somewhat better, but requires much more expensive training. It is unlikely to be implemented in all airports.
#3 This leaves random sampling. In order for random sampling to work, grandmas and babies have to be groped. Otherwise, we're right back at #1.
Do people have to be groped? Honestly, I'm not up-to-date enough on the latest explosives to know what kind of damage a fake boob or a full diaper's worth of C4 can do to a plane. I'll leave that decision to the experts.
What I can guarantee you though is that the free market doesn't have a better solution for this? Why? Money.
There are two ways to pay for it: airports and airlines pay for it, or travelers pay for it.
If airlines and airports pay for it, the motivation is to keep bringing as many people in as possible - which, since everybody thinks they're innocent and shouldn't be hassled, means a reduction in safety. If individuals pay for it, they'll want to pay for it only when they travel, which is a huge individual expense. The only people able to afford proper security are the wealthy, and at that point, they might as well rent a private jet.
If the American people want airport security, the only way to do it right is through a government agency that takes a little bit from everybody to provide some expensive security to a small subgroup of people.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Because, at the time, no-one saw box cutters as a risk. The security then was aimed at non-suicide terrorists - either trying to put a bomb on an airliner, then leave it, or with a gun which provides a credible hostage situation. No-one had foreseen a certain-suicide attack in which the intention was not to hold the plane hostage but to use it as a missile.
This was not a public/private problem, but a foresight problem. And what we have now is a hindsight problem. The TSA, and other security agencies, are trying to prevent repeats of every attack that has happened in the past. Shoe bomber? Check shoes. Underwear bomber? Design machine to check underwear.
The trouble is that we have here a situation resembling that by which the US defeated the USSR Essentially, the US outspent the USSR, which simply could not keep up. But that was a level playing field, which the US won by being richer and able to throw more money at defence. This is an asymmetric situation, in which an attack, even a failed attack, by terrorists which costs a few thousand dollars causes a response by the security forces which cost hundreds of millions or billions. How much did it cost the hidden powers of Al Qaeda to set up the shoe bomb attack? How many extra sniffer machines have been bought and how many millions of hours wasted in queues as a result?
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
The vote doesn't matter!
Once again, for emphasis..
The vote doesn't matter!
Bush did not get elected nor did he get re-elected, do you really think that the government is really those mindless clownish petty crooks in Washington? The Government is and has been made up by the largest corporations in the world, both in and outside of America! The little crooked scumbags in Washington collect money and read from the scripts provided to them by their corporate masters!
Obama is Bush in dark pajamas.
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
There is no information about how good a job the TSA is doing.
They could be collecting thousands of pounds of explosives every day and we would never know about it. There could have been 20 major airline bomb incidents this year that were stopped and we would never know.
Or there could be nothing. With no information most people are assuming that there has been nothing. I have heard from "reliable sources" that the TSA has actually prevented some significant incidents but no information beyond that. If they think they can continue to spend billions of dollars and provide the current hassle to people they are with no justification whatsoever, I think they are wrong. Eventually the PR nightmare will catch up to them at a Congressional level. Either their funding will be cut or they will be forced to go public. If there is in truth nothing being being found by the TSA searches, it is likely the agency will cease to exist.
How damaging would it be to reveal what they have actually done last year or this year? Like an annual report? Nowhere near as damaging as not reporting anything to the public. I suppose there is some top-secret report that a few in Congress get to see, but that does nothing for the public distrust.
"You're really using the Flight 93 situation as a citation of functional security? It fucking crashed. Everyone died. Way to go, security."
The point is that it reduces the expected value for hijackers to something much less than their objective, i.e., no longer a good investment.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes