Former TSA Administrator Speaks

phantomfive writes "Former TSA head Kip Hawley talks about how the agency is broken and how it can be fixed: 'The crux of the problem, as I learned in my years at the helm, is our wrongheaded approach to risk. In attempting to eliminate all risk from flying, we have made air travel an unending nightmare for U.S. passengers and visitors from overseas, while at the same time creating a security system that is brittle where it needs to be supple. ... the TSA's mission is to prevent a catastrophic attack on the transportation system, not to ensure that every single passenger can avoid harm while traveling. Much of the friction in the system today results from rules that are direct responses to how we were attacked on 9/11. But it's simply no longer the case that killing a few people on board a plane could lead to a hijacking. ...The public wants the airport experience to be predictable, hassle-free and airtight and for it to keep us 100% safe. But 100% safety is unattainable. Embracing a bit of risk could reduce the hassle of today's airport experience while making us safer at the same time."

Comments

Kip Hawley is an idiot. n/t

[LanMan04]

10 char lameness filter

Big crowds are targets

[betterunixthanunix]

Let the experience of other countries (where terrorist attacks are unfortunately common) be a lesson here: big crowds are targets. The TSA's security checkpoints at airports, especially busy airports, create big crowds, and those crowds are not behind any sort of security. A terrorist who wanted to kill a big crowd of Americans could walk in to a major airport just before a holiday and kill hundreds of people without ever dealing with security.

The fact that it has not happened yet is an indication that airport security measures are not what is keeping terrorist at bay.

Re:Big crowds are targets

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

Dude, you should probably get that sarcasm detector looked at.

Former ______ head says we fucked up

[feedayeen]

Gee, this is new, how many times have we seen officials make statements about this regarding any of the current 'War on ______' policies? Hey, how about you fix the damn thing before you had 'Former' amended onto your title.

Re:Former ______ head says we fucked up

[Nerdfest]

When these people are in their former positions their job is to ensure that budget money keeps coming in, not to actually solve the problems the organizations were created to solve.

Re:Former ______ head says we fucked up

[quasius]

Have you considered that trying to change things and becoming a "Former X" might be related?

Re:Former ______ head says we fucked up

[betterunixthanunix]

The TSA was not created to solve problems, it was created to convince people that problems are being solved. Now that the TSA cannot go away, it has taken on the role of funneling tax dollars into corporations with connections in the government.

Re:Former ______ head says we fucked up

[iPaul]

It's not the individual so much as the process. If it were the fault of the individual, then we'd see some cases where the policies got fixed and other cases where the policies don't get fixed. Unfortunately, we see a lot more 'stay the course' simply because we don't have the kind of political environment that accepts new thinking or even modest amounts of 'risk' taking. That's the shame of the whole situation. We want people to bring forward solutions but it can't be solution 'X' because that's unpopular with voters, or solution 'Y' because the other party will crucify us, or solution 'K' because the company that makes the scanners has plants in key congressional districts, etc. So we're going to continue with the current, sub-optimal, likely counter-productive strategy. Make a change to the screening process and a terrorist attack happens, the first thing they'll rake you over the coals for is the change in the screening procedure and how that allowed the attack to happen. In part its the fault of the agency, in part it's the fault of congress, in part its the fault of a hyperactive media that focuses on trivialities and jumps to conclusions. Like you, the whole situation make me sick.

Re:Former ______ head says we fucked up

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it is the fault of the apathetic voter who won't get up and get these bought and paid for politicians out of office. Unfortunately, we get what we deserve. We aren't willing to change it, so we get what we get.

Re:Former ______ head says we fucked up

[ColdWetDog]

Here's the bottom line:

Congress and The Bureaucracy.

Happens every time in the US. See, for example, problems with Medicare, the FAA, NASA, FDA, the Forest Service and likely every other agency in the Beltway.

You have politicians with financial oversight, limited intelligence, very limited concentration and the powerful need to get reelected. You have bureaucracies who have really are examples of the undead. You can't kill them, no matter how hard you try. They grow and reproduce no matter how much you try to control it. The only way to grapple with the problem is to cut off their food supply. Since they are symbiotically attached to Congress, whose job it is to control the food supply - that option isn't available unless you're Ron Paul (and batshit insane about pretty much everything else).

The big mistake was creating the DHS in the first place. That was a clusterfuck of the very first order. Once you've created monsters like that there is no turning back. Godzilla is going to trample the countryside.

Nuke it from orbit, it's the only way to be sure.

Spot on, except for TSA mission

[SuperKendall]

The thing is the TSA should NOT be the ones preventing a "catastrophic attack on the transportation system". That should be the CIA, even the military!!

The TSA should, at best, be simply a light wall to keep things reasonable as far as who goes on a plane. That is it. Thus if you think about it, the TSA really has NO proper role. Not at the level they are at anyway - security would be better managed by airport managed security.

But you say, what about the centralized no-fly list? Well what about it? Who cares who flies? That list has done WAY more harm to innocent people than it has ever helped. Even if we let someone who truly is a terrorist on, it doesn't matter. Either they fly somewhere, or the try to hijack the plane and get mauled by passengers, or possibly they get something by regional security and blow up a plane. Oh well; we lived under that system just fine for decades.

Re:Spot on, except for TSA mission

[Anonymous Coward]

The way I understand it, TSA is basically an immunity shield for airports, so if something goes wrong, TSA is liable, and not the airport and their security.

Re:Spot on, except for TSA mission

[iPaul]

So, the TSA was formed, in part, because after 9/11 we found out that many of the airports relied on contractors that were borderline. Little to no training. Enormous turnover. Effectively no ability to arrest or detain people. Subject to pressure from the airlines, etc. So someone had, what was probably a good idea, hire people as full time, highly trained screeners that could server or coordinate with law enforcement. Sure, it might cost a little more in the short run, but less than if people viewed airlines as unsafe and refused to fly. Much like the movie "The Fly" that idea morphed into the mess that we have now. With congressmen saying that "agent" should not be used to refer to a TSA worker because that demeans other law enforcement agents. But let's say, for sake of argument, that the Obama administration tries to do something about it. "He's soft on terror" or "He's making us less safe," or "He's helping the terrorists". Likewise, if Romney wins and his administration tries to do something: "He's in the pocket of the airlines," or "He's making us less safe because it's costing the airlines money." Those are both ridiculous claims, but they will be made.

Re:In case you're all clueless...

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

This guy is not an idiot. Stupidity can be forgiven.

Kip Hawley is a TOOL.

Re:Hijacking is still possible.

[Anonymous Coward]

successfully hijacking an airplane today is very unlikely. Now that is has be established that being hijacked means death in a crash there is not much that can prevent a plane full of passengers scared for their life from killing the hijackers no matter how many weapons they might manage to get on board

alot more realistic solution

[nimbius]

is to accept the fact that terrorism is extremely effective even if it fails. it builds police states and makes everyday things like travel difficult at the expense of the target nation. it forces them to divert energy and resources into possibilities and not actualities.

a better solution is to stop this "war on terror" crap and pay closer attention to what it is exactly we do that leaves a group of people so determined with nothing left to lose that they will kill thousands of your innocent civillians.
should you consider Osama Bin Laden the cause of the terrorist attacks against america, here are his demands: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/nov/24/theobserver
now, while some of them are outlandish so are some promises from a politician seeking to gain or maintain an elected office. and so to have our demands on the middle eastern region been for the past 30 years. regime change, cia government overthrow, perpetually cheap oil, proxy wars, military bases at the expense of the indigenous citizens, propping up dictatorial regimes and the list goes on. But Bin Laden asked for some rather reasonable things as well that we could have done.
1. stop treating israel like some sort of king among theives. if their only justification for their city is rooted in religious text, thats fine for them. They should not have the right to force that opinion on other nations however and by virtue of their creation should at least attempt to get along with them instead of bombing the hell out of them semi-annually. the bombs, helicopters, and american artillery are what hes complaining about. our complicit enforcement of the palestinian 'warsaw ghetto' could probably be eliminated and save the tax payers a few billion dollars a year.

another quote, "You steal our wealth and oil at paltry prices because of you international influence and military threats. This theft is indeed the biggest theft ever witnessed by mankind in the history of the world." Well, yeah. The carter doctrine sort of mandates we do that. our free market policy at the hands of the plutocracy has become more reliant on war as a revenue source and as a big stick lately, and we could probably reign that in.

he complains about our sanctions against iraq, how we support countries like egypt and syria despite the fact they routinely murder their own people. the most contentious place in the middle east for alot of muslims is jerusalem, and we stuck a goddamn embassy there.
im not saying the guys a doctoral scholar here; the rest of his argument is based largely on the same religious crap our evangelicals push. Im just saying we could have done maybe 25 things in the middle east differently after the 9/11 attacks that would have negated the strip searches, pat downs, border searches, and other security theater that are killing the "land of the free."

Re:alot more realistic solution

[laughingcoyote]

their religion is the failing point. it is not compatible with the modern age and this is 100% of the problem.

You added an extraneous "their". Religion is not compatible with the modern age, and it is a huge problem.

Re:alot more realistic solution

[Scorch_Mechanic]

Extremism is not compatible with the modern age, and it is a huge problem.

Fixed that for you.

Religion and religious people are not the problem. Extremism and extremist people are. While I agree that certain sub-sections of certain religious groups could do with a few lessons in toleration, this is more a symptom of their extremism than it is their religion. Blaming the issue on people worshiping an invisible man in the sky is just as false as the extremists claiming that their invisible man in the sky told them to do it.

Re:Don't fix it, abolish it.

[houstonbofh]

I agree. Even in 2001, more people die per mile in car crashes than in air related accidents (Including all those in the towers with 0 miles) but because it is so unpleasant, more people drive instead of flying. If you do the math, you see that TSA is killing people.

Reinforced Cockpit Doors?

[dryriver]

As far as I remember, a proposal to install lockable, steel-reinforced cockpit doors in airliners was floating around well before September 11th ever happened. Because airlines didn't want to pay for these doors (they would have to be custom manufactured), and didn't want the extra weight of these doors added to their planes (profits, profits, profits), there was literally nothing preventing the 9/11 hijackers from taking over 4 different airliners on that day. Instead of making air-travel hell for everybody, why not make airliners themselves more secure, by simple measures like installing lockable, reinforced cockpit doors?

Terrorism won; we sacrificed freedom for safety

[ziggy_az]

I said it back in '01 and I'll repeat it now. By giving up our freedom in the name of security, we have allowed the terrorists to prevail. Pursue them. Hunt them down. Deal with those who have harbored them as enemies of the US. But we should never have relinquished a single liberty for the sake of security.

Benjamin Franklin said it best:
"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Franklin's Contributions to the Conference on February 17 (III) Fri, Feb 17, 1775

Re:Don't see it happening

[elewton]

This vegetarian kept talking about how bad abattoirs are and the ethics and dangers of intensive meat production, and I was like, "Dude, you don't even eat meat!"

and you can go overboard on anti-terrorism

[durdur]

Also, we can learn from other countries that being attacked by terrorists does not mean you have to institute a police state, or go off and start a couple of unnecessary wars. We've spend many times the actual cost of the 9/11 attacks trying to protect ourselves from anything like it happening again. But as TFA implies, nobody's asking if the cost exceeds the benefit. And now we have a monstrous national security apparatus and a military-industrial complex more entrenched and extensive than ever before.

The U.K. had terrorist attacks for years, including the fairly horrendous one in London in 2005. But they haven't gone crazy about it, or at least not as crazy as the U.S. has.

Here are some rough numbers

[XB-70]

This year, the TSA is requesting 8.2 Billion dollars. In the past five (5) years, the TSA has made some 1,035 arrests. Approximately 30% of those were related to clear immigration violations and had nothing to do with security. If we use today's annual budget number, multiply it by five and divide it into the remainder of the arrests, we get a figure of approximately $53,000,000. This is extremely rough math. Give or take $5,000,000 either way, we are looking at a price of around $50,000,000 per arrest. I don't know about you, but I thank that's extremely expensive. Swirl in the unbelievable cost in TIME for each passensger to screened and you have a serious net drain on the economy. The question becomes not can we have 100% security but, as Mr. Hawley states, what will be the ACCEPTABLE level of security that will be a reasonable balance between risk and cost?

Re:In case you're all clueless...

[Ucklak]

The problem isn't Kip Hawley as much as it is Janet Napolitano. She is ineffective as as the head of the DHS. She is reactionary and not a visionary nor a leader. She was horrible as a governor, she is horrible as the head of the DHS. She needs to go somewhere and put her education to use instead of riding on the coattails of others who are also no good at their job.

You can't change who you are

[l0ungeb0y]

The crux of the problem, as I learned in my years at the helm, is our wrongheaded approach

Considering the TSA is not even a decade old and is fraught with issues from top to bottom -- we'd do well to pay attention to these indicators and end the TSA. It is a failure that has served no useful purpose other than act as Security Theatre and subject law abiding Americans to indignities. Once a Company or Organization develops a mindset or culture, it is near impossible to change that. It's too late to change the TSA, and it's most likely that the TSA does not want to change.

Re:Don't fix it, abolish it.

[ColdWetDog]

In September 2001, more people in the USA died as a result of road accidents than as a result of terrorist action. Imagine what would have happened if all of the money spent on the TSA had been spent on road safety instead...

Before you get in the vehicle, you would have to present government approved ID. Once in the seat, the driver would have to blow into a breathalyzer, give a urine sample for drug analysis and have their EKG examined by a board certified cardiologist before one could start the car. If that was successful, everyone would have to put on their helmets, fireproof jump suit, boot and gloves and then strap into a four point harness.

The car wouldn't start until you went through a computer controlled checklist. All personal electronics would be stored in a locked safe that stays sealed while the car is in motion. Should you be lucky enough to get this far, the vehicle would travel no faster than 35 miles per hour (and none of this kilometers crap) and go no more than 10 miles before you would have to ask permission to go further (which can take more than 24 hours in some cases).

Careful watch you ask for, you just might get it....

Re:Kip Hawley is an idiot. n/t

[LordLimecat]

I think he deserves some kudos for this. After arguing against Schneier a few weeks ago on The Economoist about how things were peachy, it takes a lot of guts to come out and say "I was wrong, TSA policies suck, and its partly my fault and due to my leadership".

Calling him an idiot doesnt really help, whereas his admission and piece hopefully WILL. Or would you have preferred more bullheadedness and denial from Kip?

Confirmed Urban Legend: Security theatre

[Alomex]

I think this tidbit was the most important part. It's the first official confirmation that a lot of what happens in the inspection lanes is pure theatre as many had claimed before:

And despite the radically reduced risk that knives and box cutters presented in the post-9/11 world, allowing them back on board was considered too emotionally charged for the American public.