UK To Use "Risk-Profiling Software" To Screen All Airline Passengers and Cargo

dryriver writes "The BBC reports: 'The UK branch of an American company — SAS Software — has developed a hi-tech software program it believes can help detect and prevent potentially dangerous passengers and cargo entering the UK using the technique known as 'risk profiling.' So, what exactly is risk profiling and can it really reduce the risk of international terrorism? Risk profiling is a controversial topic. It means identifying a person or group of people who are more likely to act in a certain way than the rest of the population, based on an analysis of their background and past behavior — which of course requires the collection of certain data on people's background and behavior to begin with. When it comes to airline security, some believe this makes perfect sense. Others, though, say this smacks of prejudice and would inevitably lead to unacceptable racial or religious profiling — singling out someone because, say, they happen to be Muslim, or born in Yemen. The company making the Risk-Profiling Software in question, of course, strongly denies that the software would single people out using factors like race, religion or country of origin. It says that the program works by feeding in data about passengers or cargo, including the Advanced Passenger Information (API) that airlines heading to Britain are obliged to send to the UK Border Agency (UKBA) at 'wheels up' — the exact moment the aircraft lifts off from the airport of departure. Additional information could include a combination of factors, like whether the passenger paid for their ticket in cash, or if they have ever been on a watch list or have recently spent time in a country with a known security problem. The data is then analyzed to produce a schematic read-out for immigration officials that shows the risk profile for every single passenger on an incoming flight, seat by seat, high risk to low risk.'"

Comments

It Believes

[davesag]

Whereas I believe it's unlikely to work, probably expensive, and manifestly open to being gamed.

Sigh.

Re:It Believes

[ledow]

All risk-profiling does is make you *think* you're more likely to catch certain people. In fact, what it does is provide a list of constraints that those people will actively avoid triggering and, thus, stand much less chance of being caught. Do you really think any terrorist is thinking of using a liquid bomb since the liquid-size limitation rules came in force? No, they'd do something else just to avoid detection.

The *only* way, if you don't want to check everyone out manually each time, is to do entirely random security checks. Stick your guys on the frontline to catch anything "funny" but flag 1 in 10 people who go through completely at random and make it a condition of their employment that your security guys must check those people, young or old, rich or poor, first class or economy, in a wheelchair or with a false leg or completely healthy, no excuses.

All this does is catch the stupid terrorists who would be caught anyway, while giving the sensible ones a perfect opportunity to knowingly and predictably reduce their risk by huge amounts.

What risk category are you going to enter? Travelled to dodgy countries recently? A stayover for a time in a country will soon time that out so it's not relevant. Or just use a local rather than a foreigner. Age range? That's just getting into the "children / old people can't be terrorists" mentality, which is a stupid place to go. Race? Religion? Credit card history? All of the people you would catch from things like that should be caught ANYWAY by just decent security in the first place. All the rest, that you miss, will deliberately be missed by profiled screening.

At least with random screening you stand a chance of catching someone that's avoiding your profiling, and a chance of spotting new trends ("Here, John, isn't that the third guy we've stopped who's had a little vial in his bag?"), and a chance of actually scaring off terrorists / smugglers / etc. from trying in the first place.

But all this is moot while you only enforce a decade-old security policy based on a single (unsuccessful) incident, rather than thinking about what's actually likely to be dangerous and what's not.

I can't take 100ml of water in a single bottle (but I can take more of "baby milk", so long as I drink from it first - and that check is as rigorous as security watching me put it to my lips and then looking away!), but I can take several bottles that won't be inspected.

I can also take large poles in a rucksack, and various amount of improvised weapons, and hell I know someone who went through Heathrow three times while carrying CS spray (which is illegal to possess in the UK, let alone on the plane). It wouldn't be hard to fashion an instrument from perfectly ordinary hand luggage capable of levering open the cabin door and threatening the pilot (and UK cockpits are not armed and don't have armed officers onboard) if that was your intention.

If you want security, automated profiling is like shouting "friend or foe?!". Nobody with any brains is ever going to shout foe (or be flagged by your profiling) if they have hostile intent.

Want to improve security? Scrap the enormous queues at every major UK airport - by scrapping all the stupid hand luggage restrictions (obviously keep things like "explosives" on the list, though!) and other crap (grab a tray, take off your belt, your shoes, put your laptop separately in here, etc.), and with all the time you spare your security people can have a 10 second chat with each passenger as they go through the gates rather than just dumbly standing there "checking" your passport (which is basically a "computer says no" exercise) or having 4-5 of them wave you through the metal detector while they have a chat.

Let them stop anyone they like and send them to a private queue for proper pat-down (out of the main queue, away from accomplices, not backing up the frontline guys), and also have automated gates that send 1-in-10 or 1-in-50, or whatever ratio, of people that way completely at r

Re:It Believes

[Anonymous Coward]

The Neo-cons are wealthy beyond imagine, and they don't want some poor Gotham who has finally realized their being enslaved trying to take-out an over-lord.

Re:It Believes

[Joce640k]

The biggest joke of all is the underlying assumption that terrorists are helpless so long as they can't get past airport security.

If I were a terrorist I'd just detonate my bag full of explosives/ball bearings in the line for the scanner.

Or just do it in any other place where there's lots of people. Doesn't really matter where, eg.. The car park for the superbowl would be a good place for a truck bomb.

Remind me again why we're spending so much on airport security...?

Re:It Believes

[Joce640k]

Want to improve security? ...security people can have a 10 second chat with each passenger as they go through the gates.

That doesn't work because any basic anti-depression medication will stop people from having nervous reactions when lying.

Just rehearse the scenario a couple of times and pop a double-dose half an hour before you go through.

Re:It Believes

[benlad]

One could only actively avoid the risk profiling if profiling criteria are known. I would imagine profiling criteria would not be in the public domain. I can see how risk profiling could improve detection rates.

Re:It Believes

[Gaygirlie]

That doesn't work because any basic anti-depression medication will stop people from having nervous reactions when lying.

Just a minor nit-pick: that's not anti-depressants, that's anti-anxiety. Anti-depressants generally take 2-3 weeks to even start working and they do not affect nervousness. I just quit anti-depressants, so I'd say I know.

Re:It Believes

[Anonymous Coward]

If I were a terrorist I'd just detonate my bag full of explosives/ball bearings in the line for the scanner.

The unspoken intention of the airport security is that it's better to have a few hundred people killed at the security checkpoint than have someone get control of an airplane and fly it into a building. The security isn't to protect the passengers, that's just a PR campaign.

Re:It Believes

[Joce640k]

I would imagine profiling criteria would not be in the public domain.

Sure, but "normal" behavior is...all you have to do is act normal - don't pay cash for a one-way ticket, carry luggage, don't wear a big winter coat in summer, etc.

Re:It Believes

[Joce640k]

Yeah, that's what I meant...was having a "duh" moment.

Re:It Believes

[Gordonjcp]

So, by making the cockpit door out of slightly thicker plywood and fitting a bolt to it - similar to the one you are familiar with from your bathroom door - we can eliminate that threat entirely, for about 20 quid a plane. Less, really, because the DIY store will give you a discount on a large order of bathroom door bolts.

Re:It Believes

[Joce640k]

The unspoken intention of the airport security is that it's better to have a few hundred people killed at the security checkpoint than have someone get control of an airplane and fly it into a building. The security isn't to protect the passengers, that's just a PR campaign.

The new cabin doors and increased passenger awareness already achieved that. Job done.

Re:It Believes

[AmiMoJo]

Because terrorists are dumb and they do keep trying to target aircraft.

Islamic terrorists want to die in the attack so they can become martyrs and collect their 72 virgins. The problem is that if you die in the attack all the skills and knowledge you acquired die with you. It is clear that they are not thinking clearly about how to achieve their long term goals or how to wage the most effective terror campaign, they just want to die in a blaze of glory.

That is why they always go for the big targets like aircraft or major buildings. As you point out they could easily kill far more people and could live through the attack to strike again. That isn't what they do though, so the assumption that they are screwed if they can't get past airport security is largely correct.

Re:It Believes

[Anonymous Coward]

Seal the cockpit at takeoff. Problem solved.

Re:It Believes

[__aarzwb9394]

For two reasons that spring to mind:

Septmebr 2001 attacks depended on the murderers getting control of big planes, and decision makers absolutely don't want the murderers getting the chance to attack rich, powerful people's homes or places of work again.

The queues at airport also fulfil a security theatre purpose in that they do make people "feel" safer than they are being made.
Absolutely right that they could detonate the bomb while waiting at the airport, but they wouldn't be getting to pick and choose a target as they could if they had control of a plane.

Re:It Believes

[JonathanCombe]

The new cabin doors and increased passenger awareness already achieved that. Job done.

Really? In the last year I've travelled on several planes flying from UK Airports with no door between the passenger compartment and the cockpit. Indeed you can sit right behind the pilot on some flights with no barrier or partition at all. Unless you have a door on every plane flying from every airport the rules are pointless. Similarly if I can get on a plane without going though luggage scanners then so can a terrorist so putting in scanners at some airports and not all airports makes it pointless. I suspect it is done in the hope it shuts up those that always claim "something must be done" after a terrorist attack. There are also airports in the UK with no seperation to airside so even after I've checked in, I can wander back outside (and potentially pick something up). The current situation is like having 50 bolts on your front door and leaving the back door wide open.

Re:It Believes

[Dr Max]

How well it could be gamed depends on how high you turn up the sensitivity. Which is dependent on how far you are willing to push passengers (false positives) which by the look of things at the moment is quite a long way.

Re:It Believes

[Yomers]

Nope, see for example bombing in Domodedovo arrivals hall http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domodedovo_International_Airport_bombing . Now security check everybody at the airport's entrances, so there are big crowds at the there - new potential attack target.

Re:It Believes

[Joce640k]

So...the people with private jets don't mind if the plebs get blown up at the airport. They're just making sure the bomb can't take off and fly towards them.

Got it.

Re:It Believes

[jonnyj]

Credit risk profiling is part of my job and these models do indeed wok. Unfortunately, they need large sample sizes to be effective. Unless the UKBA has intercepted more than 1,000 terrorists about to jump on a plane, I'd be very sceptical indeed.

Another big concern is that these models all assume that the future is the same as the past. Feeding the model data on Islamic terrorists isn't likely to help you detect extreme right nationalist groups, for example. As conflict moves around the world, there's a risk that the model will find last year's terrorist-turned-nobel-peace-prize-winner and completely ignore the perpetrator of next year's atrocity.

Re:It Believes

[jenningsthecat]

The biggest joke of all is the underlying assumption that terrorists are helpless so long as they can't get past airport security.

To me, the "biggest joke" is that we believe we're powerless to address this problem at its source. I don't think I'm going all 'kumbaya' when I say that if nations set out with a will to stop meddling in each other's affairs for political and financial gain, a LOT of the terrorist threats would simply disappear. We wouldn't be totally safe - there'll always be crazies with an axe to grind - but we could go back to the days when travel security was a minor inconvenience and not a major hassle / personal violation.

As for the 'terrorist threats' since 9/11, how many have there been, apart from those made up by the FBI and other agencies in order to fatten their funding and broaden their power base? Does anyone here have access to credible stats on the real increase in terrorist activity in the developed world over the past decade?

Re:It Believes

[DrXym]

A simple problem. A flight is arriving from Yemen at 530am with 100 passengers, and another flight from Amsterdam with 80 passengers, and another from Glasgow with 40 passengers. None of the Glasgow passengers are from connecting flights but 6 are foreign nationals. 8 of the passengers from the Amsterdam flight came from Saudi Arabia. 1 name comes up in a watchlist as a partial match. All planes land at different gates in different terminals. You have 4 checkpoints around the terminals but only 9 available police resources. Meanwhile 4 of the Yemen passengers are on connecting flights (but not the same flights either), and are going through the connection lounge, while 3 of the Glasgow passengers appears to be travelling to a nearby airport and checking in there. Now multiply the permutations by the hundreds of flights taking off and landing and passengers coming and going and police, customs and security staff who work shifts, and vacation / sickness and the time to physically travel from one location to another and every other permutation. How do you deploy your resources?

Perhaps some software wouldn't be a bad idea at all.

The first question the software would have to answer is how does it demonstrate it's working. How do you quantify "success"? How do you establish a baseline to even measure success? And how does the software justify its decisions? And is the software inflexible or can it be made to inject a bit of randomness into the situation, or for security to override an answer for a good reason?

Lots of things which could mean the difference between an effective tool and snakeoil. So I wouldn't say it's a good idea but it's not necessarily a bad idea either.

Re:It Believes

[Anonymous Coward]

That is nonsense, if it worked that way I could sell you a program that just marks everyone a risk and the problem would be solved.
A high false positive rate will break your security system just as much as a large false negative rate.

Re:It Believes

[1u3hr]

credit risk profiling is part of my job and these models do indeed wok.

("work")

Anyway, the risk of credit default is what, a few percent? The risk of a terrorist bomber is thousands of times less. Statistics can't give much guidance. And unlike most credit defaulters, terrorists plan to avoid those looking for them.

Re:It Believes

[jenningsthecat]

If I were a terrorist I'd just detonate my bag full of explosives/ball bearings in the line for the scanner.

The unspoken intention of the airport security is that it's better to have a few hundred people killed at the security checkpoint than have someone get control of an airplane and fly it into a building.

If terrorists were as motivated, competent, and plentiful as all the security theatre seems to indicate, wouldn't they do precisely that, i.e. set bombs off at the check-in points of a half-dozen major airports? Not as much splash as flying a plane into a building, but it would still make air transport grind to a halt and cause huge economic and psychic damage.

The terrorists won on 9/11. The proof of that is seen in the pervasiveness, (and growing acceptance), of surveillance, loss of personal privacy, curtailment of personal freedoms, and an underlying siege mentality. They really don't need to fly any more planes into any more buildings.

Re:It Believes

[fustakrakich]

Vacuum seal the cockpit, to extend the shelf life of the pilots

Re:It Believes

[FooRat]

Because terrorists are dumb and they do keep trying to target aircraft. ... That is why they always go for the big targets like aircraft

False and false - a quick check of the Global Terrorism Database reveals that less than 0.2% of all terrorist attacks since 1991 were aircraft hijackings, and in fact less than 0.7% were targeted at any kind of airline-related infrastructure at all. Over 99% of terrorist attacks do not involve airlines or airports. (Anyone can download the database, and confirm these figures.)

Re:It Believes

[FooRat]

Islamic terrorists want to die in the attack so they can become martyrs and collect their 72 virgins

It is because of this that terrorists mostly prefer not to target airlines ... because airline security is so tight, they tend to end up just getting caught and rot in jail. But it's trivial to blow up e.g. a cafe in Tel Aviv for example and collect your virgins.

Re:It Believes

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

It's cover to look at who they want, like a cop pulling you over because he "transposed digits" on your license plate.

"Software made me!"

Re:It Believes

[1s44c]

Do you really think any terrorist is thinking of using a liquid bomb since the liquid-size limitation rules came in force?

I don't know about where you are but in Europe these rules don't actually prevent people bringing on enough liquid to make a decent explosion. They don't really do anything except force lot of travelers to throw away perfectly good bottles of water. There is no security in this system, just the illusion of security.

Have you actually read the rules? They were clearly written by a committee of people who know nothing about chemistry and have zero common sense.

The EU rules state you can bring one bag of max capacity 1 litre, in that you can bring as many 100ml bottles of liquid as you like. I'm guessing you could fit 600ml of any liquid you like in separate bottles, more if you spent time finding the right bottles.
Once you get past security you can mingle with other passengers, each could have brought in another 600ml of liquid to give to you. You can even buy large bottles too if you want to pour all your small bottles into a bigger one.

The whole liquid nonsense makes about as much sense as scanning for metal objects even though plastic diving knives are available and about as dangerous.

Re:It Believes

[mrsquid0]

Nope. There have been at least ten skyjackings since 2001, and at least two cases where people have successfully blown up commercial aeroplanes in flight. Even the "increased passenger awareness" has only prevented a few of the known bombing attempts.

Re:It Believes

[Anonymous Coward]

"Whereas I believe it's unlikely to work, probably expensive, and manifestly open to being gamed."

Expensive? Just a filter, the browner you are, the guiltier you become.

Re:It Believes

[1s44c]

Remind me again why we're spending so much on airport security...?

So the TSA goons have jobs and also so the dumb people believe they are more secure.

The system is transparently stupid to smart people but remember the biggest voting block is very dumb people.

Re:It Believes

[ceoyoyo]

You think they're looking for terrorists? Notice the part where they're analyzing data they get after the flight has left? They're looking for smugglers, illegal aliens and other undesirables, who are prevalent enough that stats will probably help them immensely.

Re:It Believes

[k2r]

> The first question the software would have to answer is how does it demonstrate it's working. How do you quantify "success"?

That's a solved one, google "tiger repellant rock"

Re:It Believes

[Dr Max]

Look at what you have to go through at the airport at the moment. Public satisfaction or efficiency isn't there goal, but we don't have many options. I have no idea how many false negatives would be required (i'm not writing the software, although i doubt it would mark everyone), but there is potentially a level where you catch all terrorists and whatnot while leaving a manageable amount of false positives (which we know for the government is usually quite high).

Re:It Believes

[CohibaVancouver]

Really? In the last year I've travelled on several planes flying from UK Airports with no door between the passenger compartment

Well sure, but if your goal is to fly a small commuter aircraft (like you're describing) into a building just rent / charter a Beech 1900 and be done with it. No need to highjack a plane of that size.

Re:It Believes

[1s44c]

The unspoken intention of the airport security is that it's better to have a few hundred people killed at the security checkpoint than have someone get control of an airplane and fly it into a building. The security isn't to protect the passengers, that's just a PR campaign.

Buildings can be destroyed though means other than airplanes. This obsession with subjecting airline passengers to harassment, sexual molestation, and taking away their drinks does very little for security as a whole.

Re:It Believes

[LeopardMechanic]

You say a terrorist will just change tactics based on how we are looking for them. But there are things that a terrorist can’t change – national origin for example, or are difficult to change - their name for example. And nobody is trying to reduce the risk to zerothe goal is to reduce the risk as much a practical. Putting more obstacles in the path of the bad guys does that.

Re:It Believes

[petermgreen]

Heck there is a place in the UK where a public footpath crosses a runway.

Re:It Believes

[Anonymous Coward]

If you really want to improve security, you don't give people a million and one reasons to become terrorists in the first place.

Like invading Iraq and Afghanistan.

Re:It Believes

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd just ban all the flights from Scotland. The majority of people from there have funny accents. Never trust someone with with a funny accent, and also never accept a Scottish Kiss, you'll get more than you've bargained for.

Re:It Believes

[rwise2112]

Less, really, because the DIY store will give you a discount on a large order of bathroom door bolts.

You're forgetting, of course, that the bolts have to be aviation certified, which will, no doubt, make the cost 10x at least.

Re:It Believes

[Anonymous Coward]

don't pay cash for a one-way ticket

Not sure how thismeme was ever thought to be a signature anyway; never-do-wells are unlikely to be trying to save money by not buying a return.

It's not like many of them plan to stay around and pay-off the credit card, is it?

Re:It Believes

[Psyborgue]

I have no problem with the FBI's honeypot tactics. It prevents potential terrorists from finding real sponsors and doing real harm. Were the FBI not doing what they do, these potential terrorists would be recruited and would kill people. Thus, as far as i'm concerned, a potential terrorist is as guilty as an active terrorist. Before you accuse me of supporting entrapment and some-such, ask yourself what it would take to convince you to blow up a building and kill hundreds of civilians. If you're a sane, rational, non-religious person, the answer is nothing whatsoever. If, on the other hand, religion has rotted out your brain, then you're a potential danger and must be removed from society, preferably in a body-bag. As far as i'm concerned, prison only allows the disease to spread.

Re:It Believes

[Anonymous Coward]

This depends entirely on the anti-depressant medication. My girlfriend is on anti-depressants for anxiety. They're all SSRI's. The thing is, every SSRI affects people differently, so whilst your medication may not have helped with anxiety, it might for someone else. Although agreed, they do take a while to kick in.

Re:It Believes

[AmiMoJo]

So why do they keep going after aircraft instead of just blowing up the queue of people waiting to go through security? Being a martyr means you only get one chance and in the west there are very few potential suicide bombers, so you have to aim high or your effort will be worthless. They only target cafes in Tel Aviv because there is an on-going conflict, rather than sporadic one-off hits.

Re:It Believes

[ColdWetDog]

Actually, lots of different drugs will blunt 'nervous reactions'. Antidepressants, anti anxiety drugs, opiates, marijuana, some blood pressure meds, television.

You can drug someone to the point where nothing bothers them.

Supposedly, this is used by suicide bombers as well.

Better living (or not) through chemistry!

Re:It Believes

[bickerdyke]

IMHO that's a fallacy.

Terrorists don't want to kill people. Terrorists want to spread fear. (one is a method, the other a goal)

You can ease the fear after a plane incident by increased security theater. But if security checkpoints actually CREATE vulnerabilitys (read: long lines), you can't add more security to help that kind of fear.

Re:It Believes

[tragedy]

Credit risk profiling is part of my job and these models do indeed wok

But as you say, they need large sample sizes to be effective, and they also unfairly disenfranchise a lot of people. It's disturbing enough with credit. It's even worse when you're talking about a basic right like travel.

Re:It Believes

[Anonymous Coward]

+1 truth. sad, but true. All the regulation surrounding everything that involves airplanes does, in fact, raise prices as much as or more than ten-fold.

Re:It Believes

[bickerdyke]

already posted, but that's +1 insightfull

I should report that kind of terrorist scheming somewhere.

Re:It Believes

[Alioth]

But you're not a terrorist, and the real terrorists (at least, the ones that affect aviation) are absolutely obsessed with the idea of blowing up planes in flight, and not the queue waiting to go through security. So far there's only been one attack on the terminal itself in the last 20 years that I know of, and all it really resulted in was the terrorist getting badly burned and ending up in jail. But there's been several successful attacks on aircraft.

Re:It Believes

[Joce640k]

The main road into Gibraltar goes right across the airport runway. It has a traffic light that turns red when a 'plane lands.

Just go to google maps and type "Gibraltar" to see it. You can even see people walking across.

The landings are cool, too. You come in low over the water and touch down on the end of that landing strip that sticks out into the sea...

Re:It Believes

[bickerdyke]

Yes... but this is doomed to fail as e.g. the 9-11 terrorists behaved pretty normal until that day.

It's hard to find a repeating suicide bombers...

Re:It Believes

[Joce640k]

Did I mention that getting past the TSA is easy?

Put the C4, stick of dynamite... or whatever up your ass. Job done. Take an anti-anxiety pill to calm the nerves and walk through. Let them scan you as much as they want...

Re:It Believes

[Anonymous Coward]

Teh stupid it burns!

The US will destroy itself with its out-of-control over-reaction to fantasy what-if scenarios. This is aided by corrupt politicians and and corporate welfare queens. The terrorists have to do nothing else on the US mainland. The US Terrorism Industrial Complex will ensure that a suitable number of fake terrorists (shoe bombers, underwear bombers etc) will get through the system to keep the populace in perpetual fear.

BTW I assume you are not aware that the US government is training and arming al Qaeda supporters in Syria, just as they did in Libya. There is even talk of supplying them with ground-air missiles. What could possibly go wrong

Re:It Believes

[Anonymous Coward]

The terrorists lost. Bush and his owners won. After 9/11 "we" began the expansion of surveillance IN THE OPEN, which wasn't such good PR before. That's exactly what the American voters needed and wanted, unless somebody has been gaming the system: a giant government with tiny people supporting it. Do you think the terrorists wanted a huge bloated US gov't pumping extra roids into the military to bomb the shit out of even more civilians overseas? Probably not. So "we" won.
 

Re:It Believes

[FooRat]

So why do they keep going after aircraft

They don't "keep going after aircraft" .. check the stats in my other comment next to that one. Aircraft hijacking attempts are less than 1 fifth of 1 percent of terrorist attacks. In other words over 99.8% of terrorist attacks are not targeted at aircraft, and over 99.3% are not targeted at aircraft or airports or anything airline-related. Please do yourself a favor, go to the Global Terrorism Database that I linked, download the stats, and open them yourself.

Re:It Believes

[CohibaVancouver]

This obsession with subjecting airline passengers to harassment, sexual molestation, and taking away their drinks does very little for security as a whole.

It's not about security, though. It's about making Ma and Pa Kettle feel 'safe' so a) the government looks like it's doing their job and b) people keep flying so the airlines stay in business. Certainly the airlines lose some business due to security (trips that can be done by car), but most people still fly from Des Moines to Disney World, not drive.

Re:It Believes

[CohibaVancouver]

So why do they keep going after aircraft instead of just blowing up the queue of people waiting to go through security?

As a Grandparent just said, they *don't*

They go after trains, subways, buses, synagogues, busy cafes and places like Times Square.

The 2008 Mumbai attacks are a prime example.

Re:It Believes

[CohibaVancouver]

Remind me again why we're spending so much on airport security...?

Because

a) American voters like it - It makes them feel "safe."
b) American voters don't care about spending billions running up the deficit and adding to the national debt.

Re:It Believes

[Joce640k]

If I were "absolutely obsessed" with blowing up a 'plane I'd just put the bomb up my ass and walk through the scanners...

Re:It Believes

[Gordonjcp]

Oh yeah, absolutely, and they'd need to be fitted with NACA-approved screws following a twelve-page document that details the precise make and model of screwdriver to use.

You could probably get around this issue by somehow registering your fleet in the UK as leisure aircraft and operating them on a Permit to Fly instead of a Certificate of Airworthiness, and let the passengers fly for free when they pay £200 for a coffee ;-)

Re:It Believes

[davester666]

What makes it stupid is that it will use data sent at "wheels up", as in, AFTER you've gone through security and boarded the plane.

This sounds like it's more for immigration control.

Re:It Believes

[Anonymous Coward]

No. I want to abolish it. Why are planes so special that they get this kind of "security" that nothing else gets.I don't want anything else to have this kind of security, so why should the airports. Besides there are other ways to get into an airport.

Re:It Believes

[chrismcb]

How many terrorists have been caught due to airport security?

Re:It Believes

[benlad]

It appears that you have got your assessment criteria from Beverly Hills Cop.

Re:It Believes

[zaroastra]

>The terrorists won on 9/11.
Someone won 9/11, because a lot has changed...
I guess your afirmation is true for a certain definition of terrorists, general population on the other hand, lost a lot, civil liberties being just one of them.

Re:It Believes

[mjwx]

So, by making the cockpit door out of slightly thicker plywood and fitting a bolt to it - similar to the one you are familiar with from your bathroom door - we can eliminate that threat entirely, for about 20 quid a plane. Less, really, because the DIY store will give you a discount on a large order of bathroom door bolts.

Used to work for a company that made lightweight security doors. The door was a steel mesh between two sheets of plywood. You may get through the plywood with a blunt instrument, but the steel mesh required an oxyacetylene torch. The plywood was just a veneer to provide privacy.

You could do the same with lightweight and strong material (aluminium, titanium).

Not sure how aircraft manufacturers/outfitters do it, but you can create secure doors that look like they're made from plywood.

Re:It Believes

[mjwx]

The biggest joke of all is the underlying assumption that terrorists are helpless so long as they can't get past airport security.

If I were a terrorist I'd just detonate my bag full of explosives/ball bearings in the line for the scanner.

That's not the biggest joke. The biggest joke is that most people think they are capable of that.

Why haven't the "terr'sts" detonated a bomb on a bus in Downtown Washington or LA?

The answer is quite simple, they are either unable to or unwilling to. Occams Razor leads me towards the former.

Re:It Believes

[Anonymous Coward]

Foam would be better preferably the same denisity as any fat guy, then strap it to your belly and just look as overweight as the next guy in line.

Re:It Believes

[Anonymous Coward]

The underlying assumption is that a highjacked aircraft can be used to target politicians, and hence must be stopped at all costs.

Re:It Believes

[Anonymous Coward]

If terrorists were as motivated, competent, and plentiful as all the security theatre seems to indicate ...

If I recall correctly, a couple of airports were attacked in the 1970s. It's interesting that, that terrorism didn't increase airport security and no terrorist group has returned to it since security theatre created choke points that make passengers more vulnerable.

Re:It Believes

[tehcyder]

The key to airport/airline security is to do it the Israeli way. Yes it slows things up, yes it is deliberately intimidating, but yes it works.

El Al is the most secure airline in the world.

Re:It Believes

[tehcyder]

So, by making the cockpit door out of slightly thicker plywood and fitting a bolt to it - similar to the one you are familiar with from your bathroom door - we can eliminate that threat entirely, for about 20 quid a plane. Less, really, because the DIY store will give you a discount on a large order of bathroom door bolts.

I find it hard to believe that determined terrorists couldn't get through a plywood door with a bathroom door bolt on it if they really wanted to

Re:It Believes

[tehcyder]

Hijacking a plane has always been great publicity for terrorists. You get much more and prolonged coverage than if you just set off a bomb somewhere.

Re:It Believes

[tehcyder]

If terrorists were as motivated, competent, and plentiful as all the security theatre seems to indicate ...

If I recall correctly, a couple of airports were attacked in the 1970s. It's interesting that, that terrorism didn't increase airport security and no terrorist group has returned to it since security theatre created choke points that make passengers more vulnerable.

There were those twats in Glasgow who tried to drive a car bomb into the departure lounge. And most airports definitely have anti-vehicle barriers outside them now.

Re:It Believes

[tehcyder]

As for the 'terrorist threats' since 9/11, how many have there been, apart from those made up by the FBI and other agencies in order to fatten their funding and broaden their power base? Does anyone here have access to credible stats on the real increase in terrorist activity in the developed world over the past decade?

How the fuck can this be modded insightful? Just here in the UK we had the 7/7 attacks and various thwarted attempts which have led to people being imprisoned. Never mind the Bali bombings, Mumbai shootings, etc throughout the world.

The terrorist threat may be over-exaggerated, but it is not an entirely fictitious government conspiracy.

Re:It Believes

[tehcyder]

ask yourself what it would take to convince you to blow up a building and kill hundreds of civilians. If you're a sane, rational, non-religious person, the answer is nothing whatsoever

The bombings of Hiroshima or Dresden were sane, rational and non-religiously motivated. In a war, civilians get killed, and the terrorists would say they are engaged in asymmetrical warfare.

Re:It Believes

[tehcyder]

If I were "absolutely obsessed" with blowing up a 'plane I'd just put the bomb up my ass and walk through the scanners...

I'm sure if it were that simple some terrorist would have done it by now. It's not as though they're afraid of dying.

Re:It Believes

[tehcyder]

Want to improve security? ...security people can have a 10 second chat with each passenger as they go through the gates.

That doesn't work because any basic anti-depression medication will stop people from having nervous reactions when lying.

Just rehearse the scenario a couple of times and pop a double-dose half an hour before you go through.

So you test everyone for drugs and don't let them on the plane if they're on something. Simples.

Re:It Believes

[tehcyder]

Why haven't the "terr'sts" detonated a bomb on a bus in Downtown Washington or LA?

The answer is quite simple, they are either unable to or unwilling to. Occams Razor leads me towards the former.

I don't see how they can be unable to. Terrorists in Northern Ireland manage(d) to make car bombs quite effectively, and Ireland was a lot more closely policed than the US is now. And there are bombs in the Middle East on a weekly basis.

I think it's more likely that they don't consider the rewards in terms of publicity (or whatever) outweigh the risks of getting caught, which would suggest there aren't that many active terrorists in the US if they can't afford to lose a few.

Re:It Believes

[tehcyder]

You think they're looking for terrorists? Notice the part where they're analyzing data they get after the flight has left? They're looking for smugglers, illegal aliens and other undesirables, who are prevalent enough that stats will probably help them immensely.

You're saying that as though it's a bad thing and part of some evil government conspiracy. Why wouldn't they use the data for more than one purpose? Sounds fair enough to me.

Re:It Believes

[ceoyoyo]

I think the "you're saying that as though it's a bad thing" is all on your side. Personally I think using actual data and some objectivity is an awesome idea, for identifying potential smugglers AND targeting security searches. Far better than what they're doing now. I get everything from forty minute "interviews" to handcuffed at gunpoint because I share a very common name with someone they want. Except the other guy doesn't have the same nationality, passport number, birth date... skin colour.

Re:It Believes

[Psyborgue]

Before the second half of the 20th century, total war was considered normal. It's not anymore. Even back then, the targeting of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was seen as a last resort and one that would ultimately save lives when you consider how many would have otherwise been lost, civilian and otherwise, were there an invasion. The terrorists may call it asymmetrical warfare (they do not, they call it Jihad, which we pretend has nothing to do with religion), but the reality is the civilized world long ago abandoned such tactics.

All this is missing the point, however. The point is that only religious lunatics and cult members blow themselves up, whether Shinto, Muslim, or Tamil Tiger. There are almost no exceptions at all. Even civilian bombings in the "troubles" in Northern Ireland were in part religiously motivated, or at least sustained by religion. In this modern age, you have to be religious, you have to be insane to blow up civilians and think it's a good act, or in the very least part of god's plan. Rational people do not do it and cannot be convinced to do it, especially in the context we're talking about. Therefore it's perfectly rational to weed out those susceptible to become violent before the real recruiters do. It also seeds mistrust in the community and creates an atmosphere where people are afraid to publicly or privately seek out terrorism for fear of incarceration. This is a very good thing which actually does keep us safe. Abandon it at your own risk, or rather the risk to innocent civilians.

Re:It Believes

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is my thought: You can 'improve' security/inconvenience passengers on a plane, but if the terrorists went through as passengers in the instance of 9/11, what is to say that they will use that method again? Would it not be easier for them to pose as some kind of airline employee and load something there? Depending upon the airport, yes, the passengers have strict security and yes some employees have to pass through the same checkpoints, however, airports, like any other facility can be secure or sieves, it's all about planning.

Re:It Believes

[Anonymous Coward]

I would like to kindly ask for citation on this, please. Did this happen in the USA?

Re:It Believes

[Anonymous Coward]

And you throw it in reverse quick. That was a short runway, as I recall.

Re:It Believes

[mrsquid0]

Volga-AviaExpress Flight 1303 and Siberia Airlines Flight 1047

Why is this hi-tech?

[badfish99]

Given the number of bad things that happen on airlines, the software could just assign a risk of "zero" to everything. This would be just as accurate as any other way of finding a non-existent needle in a haystack.

Re:Why is this hi-tech?

[richlv]

well, it sounds like various factors have different score assigned to them and then it just calculates the end result. reminds me of bayesian filters we all use against email spam...

Re:Why is this hi-tech?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's right. And it's well known that Bayes' Theorem doesn't work when the incidence rate is lower than the false positive rate; because terrorists make up such a minute fraction of the total airline traffic, this is more or less guaranteed to occur.

The best case scenario is that they'll wind up with a system that correctly flags most of the terrorists as being terrorists, and falsely reports a huge number of innocent travelers as being terrorists. The worst case scenario is that they'll incorrectly flag most of the terrorists as being innocent, and falsely report a huge number of innocent travelers as being terrorists.

There are lots of (more or less) valid social reasons for opposing profiling, but I have yet to see a system of profiling that avoids the base rate fallacy. If we're really lucky, nobody will be foolish enough to actually use this system.

Re:Why is this hi-tech?

[richlv]

in this case they seem to have covered themselves. they don't say ZOMGIDENTIFYTERRIRIST - they just "assign a higher risk" :)
so it seems like a fairly simple solution, sold for a high price, not providing lots of value.

surely authors could claim that there's lot's of advanced logic, feeding in data like visiting which countries creates most risk etc, but... they are doing this after the plane has departed :)
this is not against "terrorists" as much as "we wouldn't want to admit this person in this country", i guess

Re:Why is this hi-tech?

[Joce640k]

Yeah, 'cos those filters totally killed spam. It went down to zero overnight! Oh, wait...

Re:Why is this hi-tech?

[chthon]

Indeed.

But if one takes a look at Bayes' theorem and its implications, then it is necessary to take into account the possibility of false positives and negatives, i.e. saying about someone that he is a potential danger and it is not true, and letting someone true who is dangerous, but not flagged as such by the system.

I think that developing the software for this system is the least problem.

The big work is in obtaining a database about suspects and non-suspects, and then using this to flesh out the needed parameters and their probabilities to plug them into the rule of Bayes.

Re:Why is this hi-tech?

[mwvdlee]

Bayesian filters essentially learn by failure, not really something you want in this situation.

Re:Why is this hi-tech?

[Anonymous Coward]

What I want to know is, will this keep the MFing snakes off the MFing plane!

Re:Why is this hi-tech?

[tehcyder]

It's not as though they're going to use the profile as evidence to jail them or anything, it's just a way of flagging people it might be worth questioning further. So, yes, there are bound to be false positives, but it just means a few people will have ten minutes added to the time it takes to get through passport control.

Is it called HAL?

[daem0n1x]

"I'm sorry Hassan, I can't let you take that plane"

Re:Is it called HAL?

[rvw]

"I'm sorry Hassan, I can't let you take that plane"

But to make it up a little, all your personal info is uploaded to the cloud, so imagine - you are safe here, and still you can fantasize about being up in the air somehow.

the only risk

[Anonymous Coward]

are the people who invent this shit,
when you see oppressive tools you can be sure they have a UK or US flag on them

Slippery Slope

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, it would also include all google search logs, facebook posts, private e-mail, and any other private information the government deems necessary to do a risk assessment. Perhaps not right away - but that is where all this is going.

Still the same profiling bullshit

[daem0n1x]

Now seriously, ! I'm tired of seeing the same bullshit again and again, just with different icing, to justify what's flawed from the very start. This shows that people taking decisions are tied to their own irrationally feelings and not paying attention to what science tells them.

I once read a scientific paper which recommends, if I remember correctly, randomly selecting 8% of the passengers for extended verification. This procedure has the advantage of transmitting zero information to the bad guys. If you start profiling, you give them a chance to test the system.

Re:Still the same profiling bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

Reading a few comments like this... Not sure why the system can't involve selecting 8% at random as well as flagging people based off of certain criteria.

Re:Still the same profiling bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

There is absolutely nothing which says you can't use a profiling system to pay closer attention to certain groups of people while ALSO randomly pulling X% regardless of their "risk" level.
Security is best in layers, something Bruce often says which people usually ignore.

Re:Still the same profiling bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

So you don't think that the ones making this decision, are doing so because they aren't really interested securing the airports and flights?

That they might actually stand to benefit from the rare successful terrorist incident?

Because it seems to me that certain people benefitted hugely from 9/11, and might benefit again in the future.

However, actual effective airline screening would be a problem there.

Re:Still the same profiling bullshit

[daem0n1x]

When you lock your house front door do you also add a little duct tape in case the lock is picked? Because that's what you're proposing: two layers of security, one that works and another that doesn't.

Re:Still the same profiling bullshit

[benlad]

When you lock your house front door do you also add a little duct tape in case the lock is picked?

Nonsense. A closer analogy would be, locking the door and questioning people carrying lock picking equipment.

Re:Still the same profiling bullshit

[daem0n1x]

How would you know that? Burglars don't carry their lock pickers in plain sight.

Re:Still the same profiling bullshit

[tehcyder]

How would you know that? Burglars don't carry their lock pickers in plain sight.

You could profile the people you saw so that, for instance, you'd be more inclined to question the unfamiliar teenager with a hoodie and trainers carrying an empty rucksack than the 80 year old with a zimmer frame who's your next door neighbour. In fact, you could write a piece of software to assign values to various characteristics in order to whittle down the number of likely burglars!

Just a wild thought.

Re:Still the same profiling bullshit

[daem0n1x]

Go read Schneier's article.

Re:Still the same profiling bullshit

[benlad]

E.g. with a metal detector and patting them down.

Re:Still the same profiling bullshit

[daem0n1x]

How is that different from the security we've had in airports for decades?

Re:Still the same profiling bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

This is an *analogy*.

How about checking to see if they
    - have been communicating with other known burglars?
    - committed burglaries before?
    - have a bag with swag written on it?
    - recently travelled to the burglary capital of the world?
    - sold some stolen goods before?
    -
  endless list

Or do you believe nothing would help to improve your odds?

This makes it easier for terrorists

[dam.capsule.org]

They now just have to find somebody which would score as low risk and they won't have any trouble.

Re:This makes it easier for terrorists

[Hentes]

How? It's already very hard for them to find idiots who would participate in a suicide bombing. Trying to find one among non-Muslim whites may be impossible.

Re:This makes it easier for terrorists

[Anonymous Coward]

PROTIP: Actual terrorists don't land!

The actual head* of Islamic terrorism openly stated that his plan would be normal passenger planes with nuclear warheads**, which obviously would never "land" in the conventional sense. Let alone go through checkpoints.

But apparently, people love the whole story about terrorists walking through checkpoints, because that is what stopped 9/11. ...
(I'm being told I overloaded the sarcasmometer and it exploded. I'm sorry.)

___
* Yes, Bin Laden was more like the US president [or even the queen]: meaningless decoration to distract people.
** He has access to both, being the former head of Pakistani military intelligence, who built the Pakistani nukes in the first place.

Re:This makes it easier for terrorists

[Gordonjcp]

Why would they be looking for Muslim non-whites? They're not terrorists. They'd be looking for Irish people.

Re:This makes it easier for terrorists

[Hognoxious]

The Irish prefer to blow people up and survive. In fact, pre 9/11, most terrorists did. It's one of the reasons the attack was so effective.

Re:This makes it easier for terrorists

[tehcyder]

How? It's already very hard for them to find idiots who would participate in a suicide bombing. Trying to find one among non-Muslim whites may be impossible.

You don't have to have brown skin to be a Muslim, you know, and there will always be ideological sympathisers/deluded retards (depending on your point of view) who will help terrorists. You can view most terrorist causes in purely political, non-religious terms if you're so inclined. You don't even have to make all attacks suicide ones, if that's what's necessary to get some outside help. Terrorism always used to work perfectly well without having to kill yourself.

This is going to cause major problems for some

[Anonymous Coward]

This is going to cause major problems for some and not do anything at all to reduce the "threat".

There have been an insufficient number of attacks to warrant doing anything at all let alone inconveniencing a ton of people. This is coming from someone who is a white male from the United States with an upper middle class income and living in an area of extreme stability (it isn't Detroit, Mormon country, or another city/area with security issues or fringe groups).

I had a choice between flying from an airport without any security measures and flying from one with these security measures I would certainly pick the one without. I bet there would be exactly zero people flying from air ports which implemented these measures too provided all things were equal (airports of equal distance, flights of equal cost, etc).

I could have worked for one of these outfits

[pointyhat]

A couple of years ago I went for an interview for one of these companies rather naively. Their product wasn't described as profiling, surveillance or monitoring but "adaptive security". After I finally cut through all the bullshit and worked out what they were actually selling, I bailed on it (with a proverbial "fuck you stasi bastards" and loss of the job agent). However I couldn't help noticing one thing:

The management staff were utterly convinced that this was the best way to go and that the entire world's problems were going to be solved by profiling in this way. I'm not talking about it being the marketing pitch, but actually some kind of crazy psychopathic paranoia about their own mortality in the hands of terrorists. I cannot fathom how these guys actually operate with this mindset at all. It was rather shocking actually and has permanently destroyed my acceptance of capitalism. It was literally like OCP or Weyland corporation were real for a few minutes.

Someone needs to legislate this out of existence because we're fucked if society ends up at the hands of nutjobs like them.

Re:I could have worked for one of these outfits

[digitig]

Well, in practice it's completely untestable (you'd have to let a randomised selection of "high-risk" subjects into the country and see how many of them commit terrorist acts, and nobody is going to allow that), so the only remaining grounds for belief in the system are more or less religious. That doesn't make "some kind of crazy psychopathic paranoia" inevetable, but it makes it unsurprising.

Re:I could have worked for one of these outfits

[pointyhat]

Yes. I can see the religious programming now:

"Looks like Bin Laden" - HRESULT_FULL_CAVITY_SEARCH

"Has hook instead of hand" - HRESULT_FULL_CAVITY_SEARCH

"Darker than a bag of flour" - HRESULT_FULL_CAVITY_SEARCH

"Has Koran instead of Bible" - HRESULT_FULL_CAVITY_SEARCH

"Has Casio F91-W watch" - HRESULT_STRAIGHT_TO_GITMO

Re:I could have worked for one of these outfits

[Chrisq]

I bailed on it (with a proverbial "fuck you stasi bastards" ...

And ironically demonstrating that you did not believe them to be like the stasi!

Re:I could have worked for one of these outfits

[pointyhat]

Hardly. If you read about the Stasi, they were actually a self-perpetuating elite rather than state police. The moment you give anyone power, they devolve into an elite. It's an unfortunate part of human nature.

Re:I could have worked for one of these outfits

[Chrisq]

Hardly. If you read about the Stasi, they were actually a self-perpetuating elite rather than state police. The moment you give anyone power, they devolve into an elite. It's an unfortunate part of human nature.

What I meant was that if you were ever interviewed by the real stasi you would have not said "fuck you stasi bastards" to them (unless you had already lost all hope!)

Re:I could have worked for one of these outfits

[pointyhat]

Well not strictly true. I'm not sure the Western propaganda is "fit for purpose" and derives from the cold war paranoia. They did some horrible things (just like the US and UK governments for example and the whole perpetual state of war), but they were mostly quite reasonable apparently[1]. My father, an ex East German shouted much worse things than that at them in 1976 after pissing up the side of a Stasi vehicle and getting arrested. As a repeated offender, he was gently booted over the border to West Germany then to the UK and lived in relative comfort until I came along and ruined it for him! He's always bitter that they kept his television as it took him 5 years to save up for it.

[1] My comment towards the prospective employer was to rile them up about it rather than be factual.

Re:I could have worked for one of these outfits

[FooRat]

It was rather shocking actually and has permanently destroyed my acceptance of capitalism ... someone needs to legislate this out of existence because we're fucked if society ends up at the hands of nutjobs like them

A minor detail you probably failed to notice is that the primary demand for systems like this is driven by government-mandated legislation-driven compulsory security requirements. Society is already being controlled by nutjobs like them, they're called 'Congress'.

Re:I could have worked for one of these outfits

[Anonymous Coward]

My God, you are so hip and cool.

Re:I could have worked for one of these outfits

[tlhIngan]

The management staff were utterly convinced that this was the best way to go and that the entire world's problems were going to be solved by profiling in this way. I'm not talking about it being the marketing pitch, but actually some kind of crazy psychopathic paranoia about their own mortality in the hands of terrorists. I cannot fathom how these guys actually operate with this mindset at all. It was rather shocking actually and has permanently destroyed my acceptance of capitalism. It was literally like OCP or Weyland corporation were real for a few minutes.

You'll find this in all sorts of other beliefs as well. You'll find people who absolutely believe that they deserve everything they got, and that giving a penny to help someone less fortunate is not just a foreign concept, but an evil scheme to unjustly deprive them of their fortune.

There are people who truly and honestly believe that the government doesn't apply to their lives (but are not nutjobs - they are otherwise normal and have a regular job, don't have caches of weapons and survival equipment, etc. (yes, the irony is huge)).

Another one is religion - you'll find people so resolute in their beliefs that they shut you down if you even attempt to discuss the contrary. And who would otherwise appear perfectly normal and may even be a friend or coworker or neighbour who doesn't even put up huge religious displays.

Yes, you'll find people with psychopathic-like fervor in their beliefs, but are otherwise perfectly normal functioning human beings that no one would classify as a nutjob or conspiracy theorist, There's actually quite a lot of them, and really, it's hard to tell. It's not that they're being discreet about it, just that if it doesn't apply to the current situation, there's no need to preach.

Re:I could have worked for one of these outfits

[http]

You're fucked. I'm sorry, there's nothing I can do about it except keep on not being be a nutjob.

Re:I could have worked for one of these outfits

[tehcyder]

Mate, I think you're the one with crazy paranoia.

This software is just going to try to focus attention on certain passengers who will be more closely questioned. It's not being used to find people guilty and execute them on the spot. Get some perspective.

Re:I could have worked for one of these outfits

[tehcyder]

Well, in practice it's completely untestable (you'd have to let a randomised selection of "high-risk" subjects into the country and see how many of them commit terrorist acts, and nobody is going to allow that)

Or you could, you know, use the information you have already gathered on convicted terrorists and work backwards from that.

Re:I could have worked for one of these outfits

[digitig]

Well, in practice it's completely untestable (you'd have to let a randomised selection of "high-risk" subjects into the country and see how many of them commit terrorist acts, and nobody is going to allow that)

Or you could, you know, use the information you have already gathered on convicted terrorists and work backwards from that.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why superstition is still so pervasive.

Re:I could have worked for one of these outfits

[pointyhat]

You've obviously never been interrogated by customs then even if you've done nothing?

Old Wolf, new clothing

[Anonymous Coward]

seems to be exactly what they were doing, just calling it something else with the hope of deflecting the expected racist focused backlash

Another fat contract

[opus_magnum]

and zero accountability?
Sounds like a plan!

dragnet investigation = highly illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

As far as I know, every civilized country considers such behavior to be not only highly illegal, but taboo according to its constitution.

Also, they know exactly, that actual dangerous terrorists would only "land" and go to "checkpoints" in the way that the 9/11 terrorists "landed" and went through "checkpoints".

OK, apart from the even more dangerous terrorists who already were allowed to come to the UK unchecked and try to sell these systems.

Hocus-pocus Business

[aaaaaaargh!]

As someone who knows a little bit about multi-criteria decision making, risk analysis, probability theory and their friends (plausibility, possibility, fuzzy logics, etc.), I submit that these kinds of software programs are all just hocus-pocus and based on bullshitting customers.

How can I claim that without having seen the software? Simpe answer: The number of terrorist incidents is too low to establish significent correlations. The software is probably better at recognizing Pakistani cooks than at recognizing your next Breivik.

Re:Hocus-pocus Business

[stew77]

I am no expert on machine learning, but isn't this whole approach flawed to begin with because we don't have enough terrorists? To verify your algorithms, you'd need sufficiently large training, validation and test sets, and I highly doubt that there are enough terrorists to build those sets.

Re:Hocus-pocus Business

[aaarrrgggh]

If you treat the problem as "crime" rather than "terrorism," you have a much deeper pool of knowledge and events to deal with.

However you still are stuck with two problems: there is very little correlation between criminal activity and the actions of someone wanting to cause problems on a plane; and standard police work does a piss-poor job of finding sociopaths.

I am of the school of thought that something can be done to improve the intelligence and efficiency of airport security to reduce risks of "bad stuff" to a viable level, even if the risks are increasing over time.

Re:Hocus-pocus Business

[Anonymous Coward]

i think melding people to put up with endless security and constantly giving up their freedoms is 'sufficiently large training' in the eyes of the purveyors.

Re:Hocus-pocus Business

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd expand on this.

The software works by detecting outliers from normal behavior. The dataset to establish normal behavior is massive, while the dataset to establish abnormal behavior is minuscule. You'll end up with an insane rate of false positives and to tune the algorithm / model derived from the data, you'd have to tighten the criteria more and more.

However, since you're tuning on a scale between 'more false positives and less false negatives' and 'less false positives but more false negatives , the people in the bureaucracy in charge will switch into CYA mode, not wanting to be responsible for a possible failure, so you stick to your 20-40% false positive rates. In the security world, already established protocols are rarely changed because nobody wants to be the person responsible making that call.

Bottom Line: Someone is getting rich selling snake oil software that will not work and more people are subjected to statistic discrimination.

Re:Hocus-pocus Business

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup, the false positives will exceed the number of real terrorists. But that doesn't matter, the taxpayer will have been fleeced to feed another corporate parasite.

Re:Hocus-pocus Business

[swillden]

Yup, the false positives will exceed the number of real terrorists.

By at least three orders of magnitude.

If it won't use race, religion, or country

[Chrisq]

If it won't use race, religion, or country then its a bit like asking someone to run a race without using their legs. When will people accept that a woman's institute member is a lot less likely to be a terrorist than someone who has just converted to Islam

Re:If it won't use race, religion, or country

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't want to admit that stereotypes often have some truth to them. They want you to believe that a black man has no more to fear at a White Power rally than he would at a Black Panther rally, for example.

Re:If it won't use race, religion, or country

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not that so much as the problem with your theory is that while a preponderance of terrorists are muslim, a much greater preponderance of muslims aren't terrorists. It would be like looking for people born in Naples by staking out Catholic churches in California.

Re:If it won't use race, religion, or country

[Psyborgue]

I would have no problem whatsoever profiling Muslims, given the percentage of terrorist actions committed by them. The problem is you can't tell a Muslim by looking at one and the ones likely to blow shit up are not going to show it if there is any such profiling system in place. It works on El-Al because they can have such a large whitelist. If you're a Jew with an Israeli passport, you're very unlikely to self-detonate and as such get superficial one on one screening. If you're anybody else, you get a longer interview process with your smarter-than-average trained screener who has had microexpression training. You can't really do this in the west as you have no such whitelist.

Re:If it won't use race, religion, or country

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be like looking for people born in Naples by staking out Catholic churches in California.

It'd give a better hit rate than standing outside the Hindu temple in Leicester.

Re:If it won't use race, religion, or country

[AlphaWolf_HK]

Actually while the media (and Janet Napolitano) like to make terrorism look like a right wing thing that was a bomb just waiting for a match in spite of no evidence to support that, the majority of terrorism is committed by mexican drug cartels and left wing groups, such as animal liberation and earth liberation movements.

http://seeingredaz.wordpress.com/2009/04/14/janet-napolitano-right-wing-extremists-pose-national-security-threats/

(Interestingly enough, there was a rise of blogs trying to exonerate her a few months back because some nutter shot up a bunch of Sikh's, though beyond that, there's nothing of note.)

CAPPS, CAPPS-2, No-fly lists, etc.

[girlinatrainingbra]

Yep, it's also just like how "redlining" for mortgage rates or for loan applications by banks was just a shadowy-sneaky way of putting race-based triggers into a fancy "computer expert decision system" so that the statistical correlations could be blamed: we're not charging them more because they're black: we're charging them more because they fit the criteria x+y+z which we happened to pick so that they select this particular category. Look up redlining.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining
.
It's the sameway that the airlines had to use to check passenger names with CAPPS and CAPPS-2, the sequel. Look at http://www.aclu.org/national-security/problems-no-fly-list-show-problems-capps-ii-airline-profiling-system to see "Problems With No-Fly List Show Problems With CAPPS II Airline Profiling System." Effectively, it's a sequel and another instance of CAPPS again. (Had to search for phonetic matching airline and nofly to find these references).

Re:CAPPS, CAPPS-2, No-fly lists, etc.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's all bullshit. If 80% of the black population is under the poverty line and only 10% of the white population is also poor, then of course you're going to have a higher average loan rate amongst blacks than whites. The problem isn't the statistical correlation, it's the fact that there's an income disparity between races. The solution is not to give a bunch of poor people loans, it's to fix the income disparity. If 80% of blacks live in areas with a lot of vandalism and crime, and only 10% of whites live the same, then yes you'll see a higher insurance rate amongst blacks than whites. Not because the formulas are racist, but because there's a problem in society.
Or in other words, all "redlining" did was reveal problems in society, so quit blaming the methods and look to the real problem if you want to fix things.

Re:CAPPS, CAPPS-2, No-fly lists, etc.

[locofungus]

I think you're misunderstanding the problem.

A loan company might have two rates, one for higher risk people and one for lower rate people.

If 90% of black people are high risk for repaying a loan but 10% of white people are high risk for repaying a loan then it's simple for the loan company to charge black people the higher rate and white people the lower rate and their error rate will be relatively small.

But this is racial discrimination - the 10% of low risk black people are being discriminated against based on their colour and the 10% of high risk white people are being positively discriminated for as well.

Instead, the company needs to find tests that discriminate based on the risk of the person. If as a result, 10% of black people get the good rate and 10% of the white people don't then that isn't discrimination. All the tests will merely be proxies for what might happen but colour isn't allowed to be used as a proxy.

We've had a similar issue in the UK recently with insurance premiums. Motor insurance has been very heavily weighted for young drivers based on their sex - women get much lower rates.

Now, if young women tend to drive different cars to young men then the weighting the insurance company is likely to use based on type of car might, effectively, be a proxy for sex *but* a young man with an identical driving record to a young woman should be able to get the same premium for the same car.

In the UK you aren't *allowed* to *discriminate* based on colour or sex. For some things it's possible for people to "cheat" - if I only have one job then it's possible for me to discriminate but claim it's based on objective factors but when thousands of identical items are being sold, whether that is mortgages or insurance, it's pretty obvious if the discrimination is being done based on race or sex.

Tim.

Re:CAPPS, CAPPS-2, No-fly lists, etc.

[Anonymous Coward]

You pretty much said the same things as the person you're replying to.

Re:CAPPS, CAPPS-2, No-fly lists, etc.

[Hognoxious]

Now, if young women tend to drive different cars to young men then the weighting the insurance company is likely to use based on type of car might, effectively, be a proxy for sex

I suspect their models are a little bit more sophisticated than that, so I'd guess they treat the vehicle type as a separate variable, dimension, call it what you will.

with an identical driving record to a young woman should be able to get the same premium for the same car.

Past performance is no guarantee of future results, and premiums are based on the expectation of future risk. They'll remain so until such time as a mechanism arrives for calculating & charging them in arrears. I can see that happening the day after bookies allow me to bet on yesterday's race.

Re:CAPPS, CAPPS-2, No-fly lists, etc.

[benlad]

Past performance is not a guarantee of future results, but is used as an indicator. Have lots of accidents and you pay more for insurance.

Re:CAPPS, CAPPS-2, No-fly lists, etc.

[Hognoxious]

You appear to have missed the point.

It's not the only indicator [1]. Nor is it true that someone who hasn't fucked up (yet) is equally unlikely to do so as someone else who hasn't. This was the point I was replying to.

[1] This ought to be obvious, because it would be impossible to determine the premium for a new driver.

Great idea!

[anti-pop-frustration]

Additional information could include a combination of factors, like whether the passenger paid for their ticket in cash, or if they have ever been on a watch list

Great idea, that way anybody that has ever been put on a watch list can be harassed for ever! Not because a court of law determined they did anything wrong, no, but because they're on a list (or have been on one). You see, they probably did something wrong or else they wouldn't have been on that list in the first place...

Never mind the fact that this is all done in secret, with no judicial oversight, no accountability and no way to appeal those decisions and that people basically end up on those lists for exercising their political rights.

Try working as a journalist/filmmaker and reporting on the global war on terror, try actively opposing the US drone war or try supporting wikileaks (or any organization that the US has secretly decided they do not like) and see how quickly you end up on those watch lists.

Of course, you'll never know you're on one of those lists until the next time you try flying to the US, then you'll be detained and questioned (not to mention laptop seizure etc.). It happened many times to Jacob Appelbaum, a Tor developer, it happened to Imran Khan, one of the most popular politician in Pakistan and it happened repeatedly to Laura Poitras, an Oscar-and Emmy-nominated filmmaker. These people are spied on and harassed because of their political opinions, thanks to the global surveillance state we now live in.

How submissive have we become that as people living in democracies we even accept the existence of "watchlists"?

Re:Great idea!

[gl4ss]

..how does this thing even differ from a list? maybe it flags 5% of every flight as high risk.

Re:Great idea!

[Anonymous Coward]

How submissive have we become that as people living in democracies we even accept the existence of "watchlists"?

The anti-McCarthy-ists of the 1950s report being surveilled by the FBI. So did the civil rights leaders of the 1960s. So did John Lennon and other anti-vietnam war activists during the 1970s. What's changed is that big business must now say "The FBI doesn't like you, we can't treat you like a citizen."

Another UK disaster unfolds

[salparadyse]

Step 1 Fall for sales pitch from "big software outfit".

Step 2 Sack all human workers.

Step 3 Spend the following years sitting in Commons Select Committees explaining why the software couldn't possibly have foreseen the people that got in or that they would do what they subsequently did.

Step 4 Explain to indignant journalists why it is that Mr and Mrs Smith, born in the UK and resident there for 50 years, have been refused re-entry because "they fit the profile for troublemakers", whilst several dozen people, all claiming to be called Mohammed Khan, sail through unchallenged.

Wtf has capitalism got to do with it?

[Viol8]

"has permanently destroyed my acceptance of capitalism"

Since when did an economic model have any relevance on what security software a company is developing? You think the russians are just sitting around writing screensavers full of fluffy bunny rabbits?

"I bailed on it (with a proverbial "fuck you stasi bastards" "

Very mature.

Jeez, I've never read such a lot of lefty student tosh in all my life.

Re:Wtf has capitalism got to do with it?

[pointyhat]

In a capitalist society, a divide develops and society falls into those who control and those who are controlled. This software exists to enable and reinforce that divide by criminalising people.

Regarding maturity, do you find it unacceptable that someone should be principled and express that verbally? Sometimes "fuck you" is the best answer.

Re:Wtf has capitalism got to do with it?

[Hognoxious]

In a capitalist society, a divide develops and society falls into those who control and those who are controlled.

I suppose in other forms of society it's the other way round?

Regarding maturity, do you find it unacceptable that someone should be principled and express that verbally? Sometimes "fuck you" is the best answer.

If he finds it amusing that a spotty teenage dork is pretending to be a hard man on teh intorweb'z then I'm in 100% agreement with him.

Re:Wtf has capitalism got to do with it?

[Viol8]

"In a capitalist society, a divide develops and society falls into those who control and those who are controlled. "

You seem to be confusing the economic model with the social model. Do try a bit harder.

"Regarding maturity, do you find it unacceptable that someone should be principled and express that verbally? "

I find it farcical that

A) you didn't find out what the firm were involved in before you went to the interview and
B) you expressed yourself like a silly little 12 year old.

"Sometimes "fuck you" is the best answer."

Sure, if you're a kid in a school playground. Not if you're a supposed adult in a job interview. Grow up.

Re:Wtf has capitalism got to do with it?

[pointyhat]

Considering the economic model drives the social outcome, particularly where capital is pushed to controlling class, I'm pretty much on the dot. I did economics back in the distant past, so I'm not ignorant of how everything slots together.

These firms are very quiet about what they really do. The job description, company web site and agent were all pointing to something different. They were also pretty much avoiding trying to tell me what the job involved as well.

Oh the shock of the moral high ground.

How's that going to work?

[mark-t]

If a disproportionately large percentage of all people in group X (where X is, say, 'terrorist risk') have some factor Y in common, (where Y is, say, a particular race, religion, or country of origin), to the point that there appears to be a statistical correlation, but an equally small percentage of people with factor Y in common actually could be delegated to group X, then those factors will balance eachother out, and the software can reasonably exclude factor Y from consideration. However, even if the software involved can consider numerous other factors than Y, the fact that there will still be enough of Y in common among people who are put into group X will still make it appear externally as if factor Y is actually being considered, and profiling based on factor Y will nonetheless still be assumed. It's unavoidable.

Alternative: make it a game

[Anonymous Coward]

#1 each screened passenger: win a bit of money
#2 each detected actual threat: win more money
#3 each false positive: lose some money
#4 each terrorist act by someone who went through screening: lose a lot of money
#5 system must generate at least a certain rate of positives

Have different companies operate different gates and assign bonus money according to ranking.

Re:Alternative: make it a game

[Hognoxious]

You could have a different game at each gate. You could have the passengers vote, like Weakest Link.

At another a Sid James lookalike or a man with a cat on his head set people tasks - and let's face it there's time, with the queues and all. The three worst performers insult each other and one gets sent to Gitmo.

Why airplanes?

[stew77]

What is it that makes everyone think that airplanes must become flying fortresses instead of just being as secure/dangerous as the rest of our lives already is? I can visit any government building, including courts and parliaments with less security theatre than I can board a plane. Nobody does a background check on you before you can walk in front of the white house. Nobody screens your luggage when you board a train, enter a subway station or stand in line at the museum.

The idea that there is something so special about airports and airplanes that nobody must be allowed to bring a container with more than 100ml of liquid in them is ridiculous.

Oh, 9/11 you say? Reinforced cockpit doors, handguns for pilots. Done.

Re:Why airplanes?

[k2r]

> What is it that makes everyone think that airplanes must become flying fortresses instead of
> just being as secure/dangerous as the rest of our lives already is?

Because people already are frightened because of flying itself and giving away control to the pilots/team/ground staff.

I'm curious whether frequent flyers are as impressed by the security theater as casual flyers. For myself I worry more about the taxi-driver to/from the airports

Re:Why airplanes?

[stew77]

Most scary thing about air travel? The food.

*drumroll*

Re:Why airplanes?

[iamagloworm]

the point of security theatre is to give the impression that something is being done. this is important because there is a high level of dependence on air travel. if people are too afraid to use air travel because of potential threats it would mean airlines could not maintain their business model. from a government point of view, apart from having to bail out said airlines financially, there is also a business need to keep people flying so that global business may continue to expand limitlessly until the limit is hit.

Re:Why airplanes?

[Hognoxious]

What is it that makes everyone think that airplanes must become flying fortresses

I'm too bulky to fit in a turret and my peripheral vision is shit. Can I be a waist gunner?

Pointless Suggestions for modding down...

[Anonymous Coward]

1 - Why don't you go back to the time when you spent a minimal amount of money on scanning passengers looking for a needle in a haystack, and instead concentrated on intelligence and infiltration of terrorist groups so that you can concentrate your resources?

2 - Why don't you realise that 'terrorists' (and there seem to be very few of them nowadays) aren't doing it because 'they hate our freedom' but because they're pissed off with some foreign activity we've undertaken? Rethinking some of the mad and pointless wars we've been starting would cut back on the terrorist threat AND improve the government's popularity with the 75% of the voters who aren't part of the military/arms production complex...

Re:Pointless Suggestions for modding down...

[Hognoxious]

I guess Dubya wouldn't have invaded Iraq & Afghanistan if he'd known the response would have been 9-11.

Hang on a minute...

Homeopathic Risk Profiling

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed, the probability of you being a terrorist is so low that it's beyond any 'hocus pocus', it's well into homeopathy levels.

I prefer to the "Homeopathic Risk Profiling" because it has more to do with the placebo effect than actual security. Governments FEEL they've spent money on the matter, even though they've actually been sold a placebo and the money is wasted.

Is It Open Sourced?

[shawnhcorey]

If not, it's an arbitrary decision. And it leaves their government opened to be sued.

Every grown-up human

[k2r]

could bring aboard a hand-grenade, untracable, in a body-cavity, remove it on the loo and detonate it without it being damped.
This needs absolutely nothing except from a somewhat dirty imagination and lube.

The fact that this does not happen all the time tells me that there are way less people eager to blow up planes than we are made believe.

Re:Every grown-up human

[tehcyder]

could bring aboard a hand-grenade, untracable, in a body-cavity, remove it on the loo and detonate it without it being damped. This needs absolutely nothing except from a somewhat dirty imagination and lube.

The fact that this does not happen all the time tells me that there are way less people eager to blow up planes than we are made believe.

I've often wondered why whatsisname the Shoe Bomber didn't do just that, instead of fucking around mixing obvious chemicals. It's not as though he was going to survive if the thing went off either way. It seems hard to believe that a would-be suicide bomber is going to be squeamish about sticking something uncomfortable up his arse for a few hours.

Re:Every grown-up human

[k2r]

OTOH, maybe people who are into blowing up planes for religious reasons are those who would never stick something up their arse, let alone a bomb.

That whould leave us with
a) people blowing up planes for non-religious reasons
b) people with bombs not hidden in their anus

People about to blow up saudi princes on ground seem not so sqeamish though:
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18563_162-5347847.html

A lot of people no security skills are cocky

[raymorris]

I see a lot of contents from people who seem pretty sure of themselves, but clearly have no training or experience in security. Machine learning? That's nothing to do with it, humans can and do input the parameters. You think these criteria can't be effective? There are a number of characteristics which have been true of every single hijacker ever. The most obvious - it's politically to incorrect to notice that they are ALWAYS young males, every single time.

Re:A lot of people no security skills are cocky

[O('_')O_Bush]

So you've eliminated half of travelers, since young males make up the largest single demographic that fly. Until you reduce that amount by a couple orders of magnitude, you haven't done anything effective.

Re:A lot of people no security skills are cocky

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope. There have been several hijackings and attempted hijackings done by women acting either with groups or alone.

Re:A lot of people no security skills are cocky

[tehcyder]

Nope. There have been several hijackings and attempted hijackings done by women acting either with groups or alone.

Yes, and you would weight your profile accordingly. Similarly, I'm sure that some terrorists are middle-aged, white, married with children, well-educated, well-off, with no history of involvement in extremism or travel to suspicious countries.

No one is suggersting that profiling could even theoretically catch every terrorist, but that doesn't matter because all it's intended to do is narrow down the number of passengers given extra questioning.

Re:Kudo to them and the UK

[1s44c]

We shouldn't fear every time some new technology is employed to fight evil. Don't just have a knee jerk reaction to this. I know people who have worked on this project and I trust them and their work.

I know governments that have worked on much more serious projects and I don't trust them or their work.

Fight evil? Don't make me laugh. Keep contractors in jobs and bureaucrats in bribes more like.

Now we all know it picks on Arabs who pay cash all the bad guys have to do is legally change their name from Mohammed to Hank, apply for a bank card, and order the standard in-flight meal.

No profiling?

[nomad-9]

"The company making the Risk-Profiling Software in question, of course, strongly denies that the software would single people out using factors like race, religion or country of origin. It says that the program works by feeding in data about passengers..."

...which singles people out using factors like race, religion or country of origin.

They can deny it as "strongly" as they want. How else would they get anything remotely relevant without resorting to racial or religious profiling? And would that be useful anyway? Is the hypothetical future "airline terrorist" a real problem, or more of an excuse to make money by Fear entrepreneurs and peddlers?

So what's the problem?

[Anonymous Coward]

So what exactly is the problem with racial profiling? arabs, muslims, and those born in yemen, on average are much more likely to wish and to actually cause harm to the civilized nations. They have done this time and time again, are we to ignore that? If you put your hand on a hot stove and it burns you, do you next time not avoid hot stove? or do you consider that "object profiling", I mean common, just because the hot stove burned your hand once, does not mean it will again right?

Perfectly reasonable idea.

[Anonymous Coward]

As much as we dont want to admit it, certain people can be profiled to behave certain ways. No one wants to admit it because we all want to say "Hey you cant profile me just because I am a certain skin color from a certain area of a certain age, etc doesnt mean I fit into your little box. I am my own person blah blah blah" but the truth is you can profile people based on certain things with a certain measure of accuracy.

Its like people who think stereotypes are bad when infact stereotypes are born from factual reality. Its called social commentary. If your a black guy from detroit you have a good chance of being a thief or gang member, if youre a white guy from cincinnati chances are good you beat your wife, if your a true jewish person from a jewish family chances are your cheap and or very thrifty, and so on. So it stands to reason you can have a system in place with certain peramiters to profile people who would be considered higher risk than others.

When you toss in a database of people on watch lists, known to have ties to certain organisations, felony list, come from a certain portion of the world where certain activities are more common and so on then you can have a decent guideline to by. Im sure they wont stop and harass every single person to set off an alarm but it does give them a guideline to be able to pay more attention to certain people. Is it fool proof? Hell no but when you lack having a perfect tool youre better off having multiple tools to use together.

So What?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not going to comment on whether this right or wrong. Rather, why this is news at all. Risk profiling is already done by airport personnel. This is just leveraging technology to apply it systematically. Which, as noted by other posters, just creates a systematic way of defeating the process if you know the triggers.

The introduction of risk profiling software is more a case of good 'ol CYA. Next time someone makes it through who shouldn't, the boys/girls in charge can pull out a report (thanks to SAS) that proves they applied all the certified screening rules against the offender, and therefore, they are not to blame.

Self fulfilling prophetics at work.

[not_a_bot]

Having worked in law enforcement, and then in software design where one of the projects was risk analysis for fraud detection, all I can do is wobble my head in disbelief. The model will catch those people whose parameters match the model - initially because the model is a reasonable guess, but over time and the players and methods change, the model will appear more successful since those people are being targeted more often. Profile all dark, left handed persons from Denmark or Scotland, and sure enough, you will more than likely find more dark, lefthanded bad persons from those areas. Even if the models are adaptive, they will always be adaptive post hoc. Once again, it's theater, and some are going to make a lot money by promising things that can't be delivered.

Risk profiliing software and subprime disaster

[caseih]

So the same idea that led to junk bonds being rated as safe investments is not going to be applied to people?

While I grant you that every method of screening passengers involves risk profiling of some sort, boiling it down to a series of expert-system questions and algorithms (hey it's cheap and fast!) is bound to have some spectacular failures and, more importantly, many, many false-positives. Imagine if this was run at a national level against all citizens, preemptively? Why wait for them to even buy a ticket, let alone go to the airport. Today's technology allows a type of direct control over millions of people that the despots of years past could only dream of.

program logic

[Anonymous Coward]

if (($skintone matthewmcconaughey) do anal_probe;

simple code really

[Anonymous Coward]

if ( $passanger.race == Arab || $passanger.religion == Muslim || $passanger.religion == catholic ) { $screening.secondary = 1 }

Brainwashed, suicidal idiots...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, I'm not talking about muslims... I'm talking about the white cretins on here who are lambasting profiling, and trying to make out that targetting MUSLIMS and other 'swarthy types' is NOT a good idea, but instead, we should target people at RANDOM, especially old white people, white people in wheelchairs, white five year old children, etc.etc.

The TSA is one step further on the road to tyranny. It's outrageous. White people are being FORCED to give up our countries to millions of hate-filled, parasitic non-whites. Why are these people here, if whites aren't better than them? Are our countries better than theirs because of the LAND MASSES themselves, or the weather, or is there gold sticking out of the ground here? No, our countries are better and MORE DESIRABLE than their third world shitholes, because of ONE thing - WHITE PEOPLE. White people who BUILT these countries, and made them BETTER places than the third worlders made their country.

And of course, once they become the majority here, they will have turned OUR country into a third world shithole just like the ones they ran away from.

If you're white and you want to live in a 'multi cultural' society, then MOVE TO AFRICA, and stop ruining everybody else's lives, you arrogant, hate-filled control freaks. It isn't up to YOU or anybody else, to decide who I, or anybody else, has to live with, it's up to US.

Re:Brainwashed, suicidal idiots...

[Psyborgue]

The reason is simple. While profiling Muslims is a good idea in theory, it's also impossible as you can't tell a person is a Muslim just by looking at them. If we profile only the Arab variety, the terrorists will simply choose a bomber who is asian, or better yet, white and have a greater, not a lesser, chance of success precisely because of the profiling. It creates a blindspot that's easily exploited. This is the reason random searches are better, yes, even if it results in the odd old-lady or child to be searched. Old ladys and children have been used as suicide bombers. Pregnant women too. Just as the Israelis.

And just to respond to your comments on multiculturalism, i'd ask what exactly is the problem with multiculturalism as long as the cultures don't bring harmful changes to the parent society? The US is a great example of a country where multiculturalism has been a success. We have Italians and Koreans and Chinese and Russian and African and South American... All americans. They all integrate, yes, but they also keep their heritage and I see nothing wrong with that as long as heritage does not involve stoning women to death or a "prophet" who beds 9 year olds.

Re:Brainwashed, suicidal idiots...

[Anonymous Coward]

"The US is a great example of a country where multiculturalism has been a success."

You cannot be serious.

Look at the black crime rate.

Never heard of 'freedom of assocation'? That means the freedom to NOT associate with people you don't want to. Which white Americans are able to do that? They have been FORCED to associate with millions of people they don't want to.

Maybe you should look at the definition of genocide. I clearly explained - every white country on Earth has an open borders policy, clearly against the wishes of the majority of the white population.

Am I right in thinking you're under 25?

Re:Brainwashed, suicidal idiots...

[Psyborgue]

The US black culture is a native culture. It did not come from Africa. It is a result of over a century of slavery, prejudice, and an impossible situation where no matter what a person's merit was by birth, they could not succeed the same as a white counterpart. We taught the blacks they were worthless and needed to depend on their white masters and they internalized that. We made it so they could not succeed in life without either accepting a second class status in society, or rebelling and resorting to crime. It's hardly an argument that the white culture is superior when the deck is stacked like that. More like the white culture was better at being parasitic, unable to survive on it's own without a slave workforce. If you want to be frank, such a culture is not strong and, unable to survive on it's own, does not deserve to survive. It needs to be strengthened. This happens by adopting successful traits from other cultures (obviously not accepting everything, which is the mistake most who would call themselves multiculturalists make).

Strengthening of one's society by this process is not suicidal, nor is it genocidal. It's the only chance our society, and indeed our species will ever have to evolve and survive. We need positive diversity. Obviously if aspect A of culture X is poisonous in culture X, it's going to be bad for culture Y as well. On the other hand, if aspect B of culture X mitigates the damage from aspect A, it might be a good addition to culture Y. You're talking about tradition -- Wanting to hold onto the past out of some arrogant idea that your culture got it right on all counts. What about the work ethic and respect for elders in Japanese culture? The latin hospitality? The Israeli will, guile, and fortitude? Are these not positive traits? Even net unsuccessful cultures can have positive aspects. It's our job in the west to say "this is unacceptable here", or conversely, "that's a good idea. We should try that out". The hubris of "we've been doing this like this for hundreds of years and so will you!" encourages nothing but societal stagnation. It's the exact opposite of evolution. And so you know i'm well past 25.

Re:Brainwashed, suicidal idiots...

[Anonymous Coward]

we should target people at RANDOM

If you're choosing them at random that's not targeting is it?

And less of the trolling. We know you're only pretending to be a redneck - your writing is so bad it screams "I'z a nigger!"

Re:Brainwashed, suicidal idiots...

[tehcyder]

You'd probably do well to remember who were the native people of America. Hint: it wasn't white Europeans.

Big data

[bladesinger]

Risk profiling software will be a forerunner for big data applications that simply watch people.

If you don't think this will work, you are wrong. It will get increasingly better, and the point will be to track "risky" individuals not only in the airplane but in the country itself. The NSA (US) is likely working on this right now.

So instead of arguing it won't work and calling for more pat-down thugs, I would agree with a few thoughtful people here who are pointing out that it will be *abused* in the future.

Re:Kudo to them and the UK

[GreyWolf3000]

Now we all know it picks on Arabs who pay cash all the bad guys have to do is legally change their name from Mohammed to Hank, apply for a bank card, and order the standard in-flight meal.

So you assume the bad guys have a first name of Mohammed? :)

war on tourism

[Presto Vivace]

I believe that this establishes a new front in the war on tourism.

I read that as UK To Use "Rick-Rolling Software"

[Anonymous Coward]

and most people think the TSA are tough!

I suppose it's an improvement...

[AmazingRuss]

...over fucking with people randomly.

What the story doesn't say

[Anonymous Coward]

TFA says a company developed this software.

Nowhere does it say that the British Airports Authority, or anyone else, is actually proposing to use it.

So while I don't doubt there are plenty of suckers out there who may be interested and are probably signing up for demos even now, and some part of the UK govenment may well be among them, the headline is patently not supported by the article. The time to start ragging on the UK gov't is when it announces it's going to buy and/or use the stupid software - not when some random company that just happens to be located in the UK announces that it's selling it.

Choose the false positive rate. Random is all FP

[raymorris]

"many, many false positives." No. Like a spam filter, you select the false positive rate you're okay with, setting the thresholds accordingly. The corresponding true positive rate defines how good the system is. Randomly searching 5% of passengers has a 5% false positive rate. Can this system do better than random chance? Probably a little better.

Re:Kudo to them and the UK

[1s44c]

So you assume the bad guys have a first name of Mohammed? :)

I assume that they assume that the bad guys have Mohammed somewhere in their name.

Rational people

[Thomas Shaddack]

The basic problem with your premise is that fully rational, well-adjusted people are so rare their existence borders on mythology. People in general tend to be fairly easy to manipulate and to follow the group they are in (peer-rejection/accetance is a powerful force), or to seek belonging in a group if they aren't in any. In proper context, my conservative guess is that a good half of people will be vulnerable.

Re:Rational people

[Psyborgue]

You're right. We're all social animals seeking to belong to some group. I'd go a lot further than half in that respect. I'd say half admit realize it, and half are in denial. Some people join a knitting circle. Some people play an MMO. Some people post on slashdot and call themselves Nerds. Some people are democrats. Some are republicans. Some are fundamentalist protestants. Some are Jews. Some are Muslims.

Each of these groups, many of which overlap, follow different belief systems (ok, maybe not the knitting circle). Each of these belief systems bestow their followers with certain characteristics that generally make their behavior fairly predictable. I'm more likely to offend a fundamentalist protestant by kissing my partner in public than I am to offend a Democrat, for instance. This is because fundamentalist protestants often believe that the Bible is the immutable word of god and when it says homosexuality is bad, it's not figurative and god really does mean it. The same exact principle applies to every other group with a defined ideology, especially if it's considered the immutable word of god.

Now suppose this protestant is not offended or even argues homosexuality is permissible. I only have to point them to the scriptures that say very clearly it's not and voila... they are stuck in a situation where they either reject (or choose to figuratively interpret) god's word, or accept the text for what it means. Obviously this is not a great example as there are arguments to be made on the matter, but suffice it to say, if I was wanting to recruit homophobes, I would start from a religious community, not a secular one, and build from there. Imagine my trouble trying to convince a liberal, Obama-voting democrat, to hold up a "god hates fats" placard. I could feasibly do it, but it would likely require conversion to religion first. To try and convince an atheist would likely be impossible.

The same applies to Muslims. It's not very hard, especially if you look at the classical islamic interpretations of their core texts, to make a case for terrorism. They already believe the texts are the word of god (or sayings of the prophet as is the case with the Sunnah). They're already fertile ground. Those who take the religion seriously (not all Muslims by any stretch) are gasoline waiting for a match. This is why they must be monitored and those who are already leaning towards extremism need to be tested.

What i'm getting at is you don't have to be perfectly rational, which I don't think actually exists anyway (at least not how you'd define it). You simply have to be rational enough not to blow yourself up.

Lousy source

[Thomas Shaddack]

Beware of CCHR. It is a well-known anti-psychiatry arm of the Scientology "church". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_Commission_on_Human_Rights

Re:Kudo to them and the UK

[ikeman32]

We shouldn't fear every time some new technology is employed to fight evil. Don't just have a knee jerk reaction to this. I know people who have worked on this project and I trust them and their work.

I know governments that have worked on much more serious projects and I don't trust them or their work.

Fight evil? Don't make me laugh. Keep contractors in jobs and bureaucrats in bribes more like.

Now we all know it picks on Arabs who pay cash all the bad guys have to do is legally change their name from Mohammed to Hank, apply for a bank card, and order the standard in-flight meal.

The software isn't the problem, it's the assholes using the software that is the problem. With the right information inputted into the program it could be made to profile a cute fuzzy bunny as a terrorist threat.

Lemme guess...

[sc0pie]

Risk profileRisk(Person p) { return p.skinColor == "Brown" ? Risk.High : Risk.Low; }