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Aviation Security Debate: Bruce Schneier V. Kip Hawley (Former TSA Boss)
Fluffeh writes "A nice summary at TechDirt brings word that Bruce Schneier has been debating Kip Hawley, former boss of the TSA, over at the Economist. Bruce has been providing facts, analysis and some amazing statistics throughout the debate, and it makes for very educational reading. Because of the format, the former TSA administrator is compelled to respond. Quoting: 'He wants us to trust that a 400-ml bottle of liquid is dangerous, but transferring it to four 100-ml bottles magically makes it safe. He wants us to trust that the butter knives given to first-class passengers are nevertheless too dangerous to be taken through a security checkpoint. He wants us to trust that there's a reason to confiscate a cupcake (Las Vegas), a 3-inch plastic toy gun (London Gatwick), a purse with an embroidered gun on it (Norfolk, VA), a T-shirt with a picture of a gun on it (London Heathrow) and a plastic lightsaber that's really a flashlight with a long cone on top (Dallas/Fort Worth).""
(from http://www.economist.com/debate/days/view/823)
Adam Barnes
March 30, 2012
Adam Barnes
Our debate has now ended and those supporting the motion—that changes made to airport security since 9/11 have done more harm than good—have won handsomely. ...
Voters have roundly declared that the frustrations, the delays, the loss of liberty and the increase in fear that characterize their interactions with airport-security procedures vastly outweigh the good these procedures achieve. For some, indeed, the benefits are essentially non-existent: any sensible terrorist can find a work-around or choose a different point of attack, as Bruce Schneier explains. And so the widely expressed hope is that changes made to security in the (near) future will make the whole regime less reactive, more rational, more flexible and more intelligence-driven. The results of this debate suggest that these changes should be made with some urgency: passengers are angry.
Thermite makes a wonderful toothpaste...
Actually, by itself it's a powder mix. It's convenient to add a liquid binder to make a paste for easy application but it can also be pressed with any of several other binders into any number of solid forms. Plaques, for instance, to be awarded at a conference. Carry on 20 kg of award plaques and Security might ask to see them but they won't blink at you carrying them on. The rest is obvious to any sophomore engineering student.
And TSA knows about these [1], but since there's no practical way to screen for them they just hope that the Bad Guys are too stupid to bother with a sure-fire way to remove planes from the sky.
[1] And many, many others. Ask a sophomore engineering class to come up with methods and you can have hundreds. Fortunately, Bad Guys are never geeks.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
China, which has a far superior train system, has airport like security at its stations.
For some reason, though, I've found the Chinese security even at airports to be much more reasonable and even helpful compared to the NA variety, e.g.
guard: What's in your pocket?
Me: My hat.
guard (double take): But what's THAT?
Me: A banana.
guard: (laughs and waves me through)
Mind you, it's funnier in Mandarin.
No congresscritter or international equivalent wants to be Michael Dukakis and have her or his arse handed to them in the next election when a single Willie Horton (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Horton) makes it onto a plane and does something Bad.
It's politically far safer to support any level of nonsense security theater and be able to say "I supported every effort to prevent this tragedy" after the inevitable next Bad Thing than stand up and actively support even the sanest reductions in security theater because the inevitable next Bad Thing will still happen and your political enemies will have no problem turning it into your fault.
For the non-Americans, Michael Dukakis was a governor of Massachusetts who stuck his neck out and supported a fairly common-sense program for giving prisoners coming up to the end of their sentence short periods of furlough as part of efforts to support reintegration into society. Willie Horton was a prisoner who absconded while on furlough and later raped someone. When Dukakis ran for President in 1988, Republicans ran attack ads against Dukakis featuring Horton and his crimes as a consequence of Dukakis' 'soft on crime' approach.