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Schneier Has Something Good To Say About Airport Security
Bruce Schneier points out on his blog a proposal to use electronic randomizers at airport security checkpoints. Schneier writes there:
"I've seen something like this at customs in, I think, India. Every passenger walks up to a kiosk and presses a button. If the green light turns on, he walks through. If the red light turns on, his bags get searched. Presumably the customs officials can set the search percentage.
Automatic randomized screening is a good idea. It's free from bias or profiling. It can't be gamed. These both make it more secure. Note that this is just an RFI from the TSA. An actual program might be years away, and it might not be implemented well. But it's certainly a start."
In this case, the proposal is for randomizers that direct passengers to particular conveyor-belt lines for screening.
Nothing new here.
Had the same experience in mexico a dozen years ago.
Red light or green light.
But back then, there was a guy standing on a switch could just flex his knee to make additional selections if you looks particularly shady.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Yes but if it's random surely they would need a separate belt for the foreign looking people thats more random.. Right?
Issue the TSA some dice?
I propose a device for random selection, consisting of a circular round object minted by our very own Federal Government that generates binary decisions with 50% probability, I can deliver these devices to the TSA at 100 units a shipment for a small price of $340,000 per shipment. I can have them delivered to every airport in the country within 2 weeks and we can implement this program by the Fall. They require no maintenance other than a 10 year service contract that adjust their randomness factor every year.
Any VC's out there?
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
Is there evidence that profiling passengers based on appearance and behavior is not more effective than randomized screening?
Some private contractor (probably recommended by Chertoff) will deliver years late, over budget, and after a terrorist gets through, people will discover that the light always turns green.
Republicans will insist that it's the government's fault and that private contractors could have done it cheaper and better.
Democrats will insist that everyone gets anal probes.
They give you a piece of paper with a block dot on it.
You stand on a mat and it directs you to one of three different security lines, presumably to randomize the screeners incase you have one on your payroll.,
The statement "It can't be gamed" was planted in the summary so that suckers like myself would rush to the commentary to call shenanigans.
Any terrorist with a simple grasp of binomial theory could work out the number of terrorists to send through the gate necessary to achieve a 90% confidence that one of them gets through with the bomb, given only the relative probability of red vs. green.
So we must prevent binomial theory getting in the hands of terrorists.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
It can be gamed if you have enough volunteers for suicide missions. So some of them get searched and caught, woo hoo; one will get through eventually. You just have to not care about your cannon fodder (which given you're sending them to blow themselves up is pretty much a given....)
Is there evidence that profiling passengers based on appearance and behavior is not more effective than randomized screening?
I would assume profiling passengers based on behavior would work. Alas, that requires workers with some real behavioral training and too few contractors would benefit from that (so we buy $250K useless scanning machines instead).
Not sure what the is the point of randomized screening? Keeping us 10% safe? Keeping terrorists 10% concerned?
Most terrorists are white males so we should profile them. I read here on /. that nearly 99% of the people that support bombings in the US of sporting events and abortion clinics are white.
since there aren't that many actual terrorists to test the system with, there really isn't much evidence... but there is some standard wisdom.
appearance: yes, because the adversary can easily figure it out and plan around it, or at least this is the usual argument. also, any judgment call or decision branch in the line slows it down for everyone because people are stupid and stubborn.
behavior: this might be effective, but it would slow the line down significantly and/or cost a lot. the point of security theatre is that it's cheaper than actually fixing things.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
With a monolithic culture, a purely random process makes sense... Could you please direct me to that imaginary monolithic culture? I want to move there and F*ck it all up...
Imagine wasting 70 percent of your time searching grandmothers, children, and the handicapped instead of searching the more likely demographic. It's pure idiocy to think profiling is a bad thing. If you are profiling to harass then yes it is bad but if you are profiling because the profiled group is doing all of the bad things then profiling is not bad. Only an idiot can't see such an obvious truth...
A little wire underneath, or even a radio receiver. Push the button... red light!
It only "can't be gamed" if you have independent sources checking them out to make sure they're MADE not to be gamed, and that they stay that way AFTER manufacture.
This is the same fundamental problem they had with electronic voting booths. They couldn't be "gamed", either. But they were.
If hands are cold -> passenger must be nervous -> must have something to hide -> red light.
I don't really see them implementing it well, but that's another story. Small steps
What's the bet that the security guy has a button that he can press, to force a red?
Random checks generally work as a deterrent. Like randomly checking athletes for steroids. The risk of getting caught will deter them from juicing. But a suicidal terrorist isn't going to care much about getting caught. Sure, if you check 10% of the passengers that will stop nearly 10% of terrorist weapon smuggling, but I don't think anyone will find that an impressive accomplishment. You could check say, 30% or 50%, but then the process will be so time-consuming, you might as well just check everyone.
I know you are just trying to be a dick... but if a male goes into an abortion clinic then it wouldn't be inappropriate to evaluate that male. Of course, then you have to accept profiling of other demographics in other situations like... for example... blowing up airplanes... Now, you're butt is suddenly all puckered up isn't it because that's not what you really meant. You just wanted to slam white males... You weren't actually trying to add anything constructive... I guess that means you're just an asshole...
Is there evidence that profiling passengers based on appearance and behavior is not more effective than randomized screening?
According to Schneier, who makes a compelling argument, profiling based on a bad profile "can be statistically demonstrated to be no more effective than random screening", or worse (c.f. Schneier's comment in the NY Times debate: http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/04/will-profiling-make-a-difference/).
Profiles based on behavior can be effective, but are hard to get right (http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/07/profiling.html).
The chief value of random screening is that it introduces some probability of a terrorist being caught at the security checkpoint, thereby, we hope, reducing the chance of success sufficiently to make said terrorist choose another method of sowing terror than blowing up the plane.
Nothing new here.
Had the same experience in mexico a dozen years ago.
Red light or green light.
But back then, there was a guy standing on a switch could just flex his knee to make additional selections if you looks particularly shady.
We had (still have?) this in Brazil. But i think it was only in the customs area, not really for security screening.
From the summary it sounded like this would randomly choose which passengers get picked for extra screening. That makes sense and I can see why this would be helpful in ensuring that random screenings really are random.
However, the in the TSA's proposal, it sounds more like they want a device that chooses which line you go to for the normal screening. So rather than passengers (or a TSA agent) automatically balancing themselves across the lines, if several neophyte fliers end up in one line and cause a backlog, the system will continue to randomly assign people to that line even though the other checkpoints may be underutilized. Having TSA manually reroute people to one of the other lines would seem to negate any possible advantage this system would have since any terrorist that wants to game it would just have to enlist a few confederates to slow down the other lines. So this device will only serve to make checkpoints even more annoying than they are now "What do you mean I have to go to that line? There are 10 people waiting, but checkpoint three has only a single person in line!?".
What is the reasoning behind this? If it's to keep a terrorist from choosing the line that his friend works in so he can sneak his dangerous device past the x-ray, then the system is already broken since he'd have to compromise several agents to ensure that his friends are the only ones that can see the x-ray screen and if he's already compromised 2 or 3 TSA agents that are able to get themselves assigned to work at the same checkpoint, then surely those compromised TSA agents could figure out how to sneak the contraband past security and hand it to the terrorist on the other side.
Except it won't keep people from being groped. That will be the end of the TSA, once enough people have been groped, they will oppose it.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
In Mexico it's long been like that. But I think this makes Mr. Schneier a bit gullible — It is quite common to find experiences of people who are clearly "fast-tracked" into revision. Yes, I have had red lights several times, and it has some correlation with my age and looks at the time.
I don't want to misrepresent Schneier's position, but I've read articles of his in the past which basically say a profile is bad because it gives a way to avoid screening: avoid matching the profile.
Randomized screening may allow a single terrorist through, but something like 9/11 which required 19 guys means almost certainly one of them will be caught. If one is caught, you know to look for others.
Of course, the real solution is locking the cockpit doors and passengers who will kill anyone who tries to hijack an airplane.
I think he's mistaken. There are two "channels" when you pass through customs. Red channels if you have something to declare. Green channel if you have nothing to declare. If you go through the red channel, you have to declare the good you are bringing into the country. Going through the green channel isn't a free pass. You could still get your bags inspected.
Pretending that anyone from an 80-year old grandmother to a four year old presents an equal probability of trouble...
Takes a lot of acting chops to claim that's a good idea with a straight face.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If you're someone who is unlikely to be profiled (e.g. - white male) then the chances of getting randomly selected are higher than if there is no random selection so sucks for you.
I worked for T.I. when they were making LED watches in the Dallas plant. Security asked me to design a random search generator hooked to a switch on a turnstile leaving the assembly area. They could select the search frequency by means of a DIP switch.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
More importantly, I guarantee that were such a system to be used in the US, it would include an override that watching agent could trigger a red light if he saw something suspicious... if only to ensure the continued employment of said agents. And such an override would result in profiling, negating one of the major advantages of the system.
just functioning brain cells and a lack of bigotry.
My guess is that this creates a psychological game of chance that a would-be attacker might not risk; and perhaps searches are more thorough when personnel isn't having to rifle through *everyone's* stuff.
There are two things we know have strengthened security:
1) reenforced cockpit doors
2) passengers who know the deal and won't put up with any shit
We could make further *real* changes to improve security, like having highly trained and skilled air marshalls on every flight, hiring actual officers with actual skills to patrol airports instead of hiring glorified assembly line monkeys, searching bags strategically based on behavior and questioning ... but those things are just too expensive in the "wrong" way (ie.: they don't line the coffers of porno-scan manufacturers and the bureaucrats who do then favors; it would kill the job creation program for unskilled, slack-jawed mouth breathers)
just functioning brain cells and a lack of bigotry.
It's not bigotry to pay more attention by behavior profiling and using a little common sense rather than blind rule following.
Behavior analysis is free of racial implications.
Meanwhile "The Randomizer" pulls aside a four year old while letting through some sweaty guy with the shakes and an oddly bulging coat.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It might not be security theatre but it is still security circus. Anyone think a dedicated terrorist of the muslim kind would care? If the light turns red just blow up then and there.
Profiling inevitably produces more false (usually an order of magnitude more) positives than real positives, and generally produces as many false negatives as false positivves. In other words, you're a lot more likely to spend your time searching someone for no reason than catch an actual bad guy, and as likely to let a real bad guy through as not.
And that assumes the profiling is done in an objective, unbiased manner. When human decisions are made as to who gets profiled, there will be bias, whether the humans doing it realize it or not. This, at least, eliminates that.
I'll bet, though, without reading TFA, that there is no thought whatsoever of this replacing any current profile based screening, only being used in addition to everything done now.
...is that it's an anti-corruption mechanism. It's really hard to bribe the computer.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
Most 9 year olds could put this app together in 15 minutes.
I guess what takes the rest of the "years" to deploy is the endless committees..... sigh.
John Walker Lindh.
Frankly, I don't care how effective either is; just get rid of the TSA and stop harassing people, even if at random or by profiling.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Yeah, but is that better or worse than random selection? Random selection is going to produce a ton of false positives and a lot of false negatives.
In other words: if they randomly select 10% of the passengers and 1 out of 1,000 is a terrorist or drug mule, it means that 90% of all "bad guys" will get through without a problem (90% false negative rate), and it means that virtually everyone (999 out of every 1000 people) who gets searched will be innocent (99.9% false positive rate).
If people can pickout people for screening, and they do better than random, then using a random system would be worse.
BTW, I recently listened to a Scientific American podcast where they did some "lab" tests to figure out whether or not someone was carrying a contraban package. They had five people walk through a room. One of the five had a contraban package. Random selection would produce a 20% rate of success. I believe they had a "hit" ratio of 30% using ordinary college students - which is slightly higher than random. (They also did a test with college students who tested high on the "psychopath test" and they were actually 70% accurate.) My main point, though, was that people do slightly better than random.
Here's the podcast (jump to 2 minutes in): http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=psychopathys-bright-side-kevin-dutt-12-12-29
Is there evidence that profiling passengers based on appearance and behavior is not more effective than randomized screening?
Yes. MIT published a paper entitled "Carnival Booth" that demonstrated that random screening is more secure than profiling, essentially due to the latter's vulnerability to probing:
Carnival Booth: An Algorithm for Defeating the Computer-Assisted Passenger Screening System
A Lay Explanation of the MIT Research Paper [Carnival Booth]
Schneier on Security: Profiling
Proxy bombs are also difficult to screen for with profiles.
Thank you, Edward Snowden.
"Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan
Which is why the most recent terrorists-on-planes has been a white guy who tried to set fire to his shoe and a black guy who blew off his balls. Too many people watching the brown ones.
I recently listened to a Scientific American podcast where they did some "lab" tests to figure out whether or not someone was carrying a contraban package. They had five people walk through a room. One of the five had a contraban package. Random selection would produce a 20% rate of success. I believe they had a "hit" ratio of 30% using ordinary college students - which is slightly higher than random. (They also did a test with college students who tested high on the "psychopath test" and they were actually 70% accurate.) My main point, though, was that people do slightly better than random.
Here's the podcast (jump to 2 minutes in): http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=psychopathys-bright-side-kevin-dutt-12-12-29
Wrong. Now that we secure cockpit doors and passengers are willing to fight back (neither of which violate anyone's freedoms), such hijackings are simply not going to happen.
That said, even if we didn't have either of those things, I believe freedom is more important than security, so toss your "happy medium" right in the garbage.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Randomized screening may allow a single terrorist through, but something like 9/11 which required 19 guys means almost certainly one of them will be caught. If one is caught, you know to look for others.
It wouldn't have made a bit of difference, since nothing they did was illegal at the time. They were basically using a few (at the time allowed) X-Actos in their luggage and several months of training on how to fly the planes.
You assume the terrorists are all stupid enough to try to bring something *currently* illegal through screening, which will almost never be the case.
It's been suggested that profiling can be gamed by the malfeasant organization. For example, send your five potential suicide bomber on benign test runs and choose the one that never gets pulled aside as the carrier for the bomb.
Here is a paper that looks at a different angle:
Strong profiling is not mathematically optimal for discovering rare malfeasors http://www.pnas.org/content/106/6/1716.full
We show here that strong profiling (defined as screening at least in proportion to prior probability) is no more efficient than uniform random sampling of the entire population, because resources are wasted on the repeated screening of higher probability, but innocent, individuals.
it would include an override that watching agent could trigger a red light if he saw something suspicious... if only to ensure the continued employment of said agents. And such an override would result in profiling, negating one of the major advantages of the system
Wait, *how* is not allowing an agent who saw something suspicious to stop someone an *advantage*!?
"Sir, I just saw this guy typing a text message 'almost through - they'll never find it before I get on' - should I stop him?"
"No, that would be profiling. Just make sure he pushes the button."
Indeed. People continue to think that profiling works because of cognitive biases, where they wave off evidence that contradicts their prejudice and focus on on evidence that
For example, whenever they hear about a suicide women bomber, they tend to think of it as an aberration. They keep assuming that all of these attacks are men. But according to a 2011 Army Intelligence report[1], women predominate in targeted assassinations all over the Middle East. In some regions--Kurdistan, Chechnya--women even constitute the majority of suicide bombers. Elsewhere they constitute a very substantial number of suicide bombers, and are hardly a rarity. Indeed, they even hone in on the stereotypes--packing explosives to make it look like they're pregnant.
So, the logic is definitely sound--the more you profile, the more the bad guys/gals adapt counter techniques. So profiling merely exacerbates inequalities. Far better to institute a system that can't be gamed, and that doesn't prejudice a minority.
1: http://info.publicintelligence.net/USArmy-FemaleSuicideBombers.pdf
By "before" I assume you are referring to the 1960s or 70s and 'dozens' is a ridiculous exaggeration even then
Yup, and magnetometers and x-raying carry-ons pretty much put a stop to those guys, because then they couldn't bring guns on board any more. That was the level of security that was in place from the early 70s up through the 9/11 attacks. Most people seemed to consider it minimally invasive, and security lines generally moved pretty quickly unless it was the day before Thanksgiving or something.
I like how people always go back to the "passengers are willing to fight back" or other versions of the "stand your ground" vigilantism. Especially since we all know how well human bias plays out when people start brandishing fists and knees in close quarters within a metal tube.
.... it could be worse
Oh, I thought he had something good to say about airport security. He's basically suggesting how it could be better.
Damn few TSA personnel are college students. An awful lot of GEDs there.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
For instance, all airport security metal detectors, they detect metal, but are also randomized to do false positives.
I guess the only difference is that the randomization is an additional failsafe, rather than a preliminary screening.
Profiling gives criminals a way to game the system; if you don't look like the profile then you don't get tagged as a potential criminal (it also allows some unfortunate biases to come into play by the profiler). The solution, Schneier suggests, is a system that by its simple randomness, does not allow profiling or gaming.
Whether you agree with his logic or not, I strongly doubt that any such system would be allowed into common usage in US airports without an override. This negates the very advantages Schneier advocates. Whether this addition strengthens the overall system is up to debate (Schneier would argue that it does not), but the addition of a human override weakens those aspects that Schneier looks upon favorably.
Myself, I think all such methods are extreme overkill and that its far more likely that criminals interested in damaging the US with such attacks will strike at our practically undefended infrastructure, be it the huge AV fuel tanks at the airport, or any of the bridges or tunnels in a major city, or some toxic chemical depot in an urban area. Most of these are protected by little more than rusty chain-link fencing and an underpaid security guard and could cause far more harm than a simple plane crash. It's these weaknesses that terrify me far more than the presumed risk of some schmuck with a razor blade hijacking a plane. I'd rather they stop wasting money frisking passengers for penknives and spend it shoring up those vulnerabilities instead.
Or alternately, we could stop pissing off three-quarters of the world so they all don't want to blow us up. It's just whacky enough an idea to work!
fingerprint scan clean: green light
fingerprint scan suspected/profiled: red light
unreadable fingerprint (gloves/object used) red light
guy manning booth doesnt like the look of someone: red light
If someone is trying to use force to hijack a plane, I don't think it is unreasonable for people to try to stop them, especially after 9/11. I don't see your point.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
But in the real world one or more decoys would probably be used. Just plan it so that several nervous, sketchy looking muslims with long beards enter security before the lily white, clean-cut guy wearing a suit and tie and carrying a laptop and acting just like the vast majority of business travelers.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
How do we know whats behind the button? It's easy enough to claim that its simply a RNG, but it could equally be radio controlled by a guy watching one of the camera feeds. This is akin to closed source encryption software - we gotta trust that the guys who built it are truthful. Sorry Bruce, this is actually security theatre.
Enough is enough. We have to start profiling based on behaviour and background checks and allow law abiding citizens and visitors to travel relatively unmolested. If we continue not profiling then the terrorists have won. Find and prosecute the terrorists and attempted terrorists and leave people who want to visit peacefully and spend money in your countries alone.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Presumably the customs officials can set the search percentage.
When can they set the percentage?
*man speaking Arabic walks up to the device* *operator quickly sets percentage to 100%*
Since when do the bleeding hearts and politically correct need evidence. The shocking truth is that profiling WORKS. As long as the profiling along racial lines is done non-racially. There is no nice way to say this but if you only search black people because you hate black people then profiling sucks because you are giving white people a clear pass to smuggle. But if customs officials through decades of experience know that they will catch more smugglers on a flight from the Caribbean then from Iceland... that is... serious smuggling because while it might upset the bleeding hearts, an undeclared bottle of scotch has less priority then a kilo of cocaine. You might not like that but that is how things work.
Purely random selection is a step up from racism and bigotry but it is a step down from good profiling. The pity is that the bleeding hearts and PC crowd always consider good profiling to be racist. They won't be satisfied until jails are filled with completely representative population, facts and evidence be damned. 0.0001 of people are quadriplegic so we damn well need some of them in jail for running away from the police or else RACISM!
You need to hold any claim that a certain profiling action is "broken" against the light and try to detect if the claim of "broken" is due to criminals escaping the net OR because it is capturing to many criminals of a certain group.
This is hard to understand for idiots, you can tell them apart because they often spout this line "the US is a police state because it has the highest amount of incarceration in the world"... if you believe that, you can fly, go jump of a building and see.
It is beyond idiocy to accept this line as is. Because it would mean that a nation that doesn't have a justice system at all, doesn't punish any crime, is a freedom state! Weeh, everyone to Somalia! Is the US sending people to jail for commercial or racial reasons OR does it have an effective justice system that just is very good at capturing criminals and punishing them? Simply put, if I lynch someone and am let go, my countries incarceration rate would be low. But would it be justice? The Arab Emirates is very freedom loving, instead of sending to jail four rapists, they send to jail 1 victim. Got to love that freedom! 4x better then the west!
You can tell idiots apart because they think you can leave out the qualifier of the reason for the high US incarceration rate. You might still come to the same conclusion BUT now you are using reason and evidence not just emotion.
Profiling sucks if it applies to you, if you for some reason fall into a group that has been determined to have a high chance to be involved in criminal activity. But going to a purely random system only appeals to little kiddies who think the justice system is a game in which the police has to play "fair". You can tell these kids aparts because they are the ones who object to the police going in with ten men to subdue 1 person. These kiddies can't see that policing ain't about giving criminals a fair chance, it is about giving criminals NO chance.
For airport security this means that you don't attempt to dole the misery of a search out evenly but attempt to make it apply ONLY to those doing something wrong. Profiling, good profiling does this fairly well. It can be improved by removing racism BUT not by removing race from the selection.
Bruce Schneier just displays his usual ignorance of the real world with his childish suggestion. But hey, enjoy your totally random strip search while a guy setting of every red flag in the world walks free because a random number generator decided so.
Why not go all the way and remove racism from the hiring process and use dice there to. RNG for applying for a loan/mortage. Screw credit history, you will be denied because the dice rolled the wrong way regardless of what you did.
No one left behind!
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
If there's no reason for the search then how is it not protected by the 4th ammendment. Flying a plane IS NOT a suspicious activity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Terrorist_attacks_on_airports
There is a whole list and the most recent one was in Russia I believe.
But there is a problem, Dirty Harry justice. We don't mind how many people the criminal in a Dirty Harry story kills, just as long as they are blown away at the end. What hurts about 9/11 is that they got away with it. Had they been gunned down in a fight with the NYPD, they would have been considered losers.
You could taste some of that with the Russian school/theather hostage situation, lots of Russians killed but the "movie" ended with Muslims lying dead and that means case closed. Justice was served.
Go tell Hollywood if you don't agree. Humans are easily pleased.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Randomized screening may allow a single terrorist through, but something like 9/11 which required 19 guys means almost certainly one of them will be caught. If one is caught, you know to look for others.
Orthogonal point:
Except for the fact that the worst thing they had on them were boxcutters. Nowadays they'd just confiscate them and let you board anyway, they wouldn't even notice that 19 guys across 3 planes had tried to board with boxcutters.
So 50% get through with boxcutters (75% if they only screen 1 out of 4) versus 100% getting through if they can arrange to avoid fitting the profile. Either way the danger is essentially the same.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Why do such proven bigots think their ignorance and hatred are positive values. Here's a clue son. they are not.
I've read articles of his in the past which basically say a profile is bad because it gives a way to avoid screening: avoid matching the profile.
So, the Muslims would have to be... not Muslim?
Can Blacks also be not Black? Because that would help them not get stopped by the cops so much....
Profiling gives criminals a way to game the system; if you don't look like the profile then you don't get tagged as a potential criminal (it also allows some unfortunate biases to come into play by the profiler). The solution, Schneier suggests, is a system that by its simple randomness, does not allow profiling or gaming.
So... combine them. A random sample of everyone gets selected, AND the screeners can profile. The advantages of both!
One in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. Has been for a long time. You step on a mat and an arrow appears pointing left or right. Left is a bunch of regular screening lines, right is the screening area with the body scanner. I seem to get right most of the time. That said, they rarely send people into the scanner any more. Only if the metal detector or presumably intuition or other reason gives them a reason to.
The mission of TSA is to terrorize U.S.A. citizens to keep in force a state of powerlessness and fear, nothing else.
U.S.A. citizens who are not "trusted employees of the Federal Government" are enemy combatants by Presidential order.
Security? Absolutely NOT. TSA is Terror first and foremost.
Presidential orders by Bush and Obama made me their enemy because I am a born and legal citizen of the U.S.A; all legal citizens of the U.S.A.
have been criminalized by Bush and Obama for their personal gain by extortion and blackmail.
The enemies of my enemy are my Allies.
I dunno. How many elderly wheelchair bound american women have blown up domestic flights?
That isn't the weak-point, anyway. Employees with access to the plan are.
"It can't be gamed"
OK, I repeat so you can reflect on it: "It can't be gamed"
Oh, did I tell you It can't be gamed?
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
I don't know if they still do it with all the nude scanners but the old metal detectors would randomly decide if you get subjected to secondary search by flashing a different light when you go through
Guess what, there are other nations, also well-off that are not hated by some many other people. There's a reason the US is targeted and it's not your aircondition - your posting is just a perfect example of why the US is perceived to be a "problem" in large parts of the world. If it wasn't so sad, your posting would be funny.
Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
Passengers on flights coming from Willemstad into Amsterdam get checked 100%, because of the lax checks at Willemstad and the proportionally high amount of drug trafficking on this route.
Doing random checks on people not selected because they trigger certain alerts that make them suspicious makes it hard for customs/safety to get bribed and increases the chance the bad guys get caught. Once the bad guys figure out how not to stand out or bribe the guards, it's hard to catch them otherwise. This is why the random selector is better than having people do the random part of the selection. You want to check the poor African guy travelling alone to a rich country with a stop of one day in central America, because that's suspicious. But that doesn't mean that the mom and pop with a kid coming back from a 2 week holiday in Mexico can't be smuggling in a few Ks of cocaine as well. Having them press the button will make them think twice about the risk and it will probably even have a preventative effect in itself.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Your numbers are wrong (one in a thousand? Really?). That's OK, you don't know what you're doing. Still it'd be kind of stupid if you based policy on what some idiot who doesn't know what they're doing thinks.
Oh wait, the United States of America. Never mind.
Except that not looking like the profile is more difficult if you are profiled by race, passport origin, and social manner.
Sure the occasional terrorist has been white, blond, and otherwise as different from the typical profile than it comes, but the vast majority of terrorist have been of one ethnicity.
By profiling you improve your hit rate over true random sampling at the expense of letting some targets slip through.
This system has been in use on some winter sports (bob, skeleton etc) for some years now and has always seemed fair to me. Once the run is over the competitor hits a tit and gets either a red or green light to see if they have to go for testing; a damn good idea.
Todd: I hope it proves as delicious as the farmers that grew them
The secret one? The cunning one? The one from outer space with a "9" on it?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
> contraban
I can tell you really know what you're talking about.
People aren't going to fight back. Most people are not exposed to violence, and would be to afraid to do anything in a situation like that.
People aren't going to fight back.
But it already happened. Have you forgotten?
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
I said it on 9/12/2011 and I'll say it again: the most effective countermeasure against airplane hijackings is to teach Kung Fu in high school gym class.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I think the need for randomization was made obvious when the would-be-bombers changed their modus operandi.
They knew any brown-skin black hair guy would be suspect. So they introduced the white skin shoe bomber and the black skinned underwear bomber. They also used a half-American to scout locations in India for bombing - this guy was so successful in hiding that the made friends with a bunch of movie stars over there.
Then there is the recent Boston bomber who did not fit any of the patterns - young, school going jock who looked and dressed like any American.
At the airport a random screening might catch bombers who are trying to fit in.
It should not actually matter - profiling, especially based on appearance, as a "crime" prevention method violates the concepts of presumption of innocence, equal treatment under the law, and the fourth amendment. Given that our entire legal framework is supposed to be merely elaboration as to how we are going to go about establishing those (as well as a few others) cultural ideals, any "effective" method of law enforcement that violates those concepts also breaks the only legal foundation on which it stands - the constitution enshrines freedom, not safety. If we want to change that goal, we need to have that discussion as a country at the constitutional level; as it stands the kind of reasoning you propose is a slightly less exaggerated variation of a doctor stating "well, one way to cure cancer is a bullet to the head." Yeah, it'd probably work, I don't think most of us want that kind of doctor.
This system isn't unknown in industry, either. Some years ago I visited a client's factory in the UK that had such a security randomiser at each shop floor exit, the reason being that the company manufactured valuable and easily pocketable commodities. I was told that shop floor thefts were extremely rare, so the system worked well. Being a visitor I was of course escorted in and out through a separate management entrance/exit.
Profiling gives criminals a way to game the system;
Not if the agent has no way to exclude anyone from screening and can only push the button to select someone person for screening.
This only increases the odds of people getting selected. It does not decrease them. There will be more false positives (and annoyed people), but not more false negatives.
So now tell us how will criminals increase their odds of getting through this system compared to one that's purely random?
Maybe as a deterrent, but a random search is as likely to miss someone as it is to catch them. As an analogy, I think I'll only drop 50% of things on my firewall by things trying to get to restricted subnets. Should work just fine, right?
As much as people scream 'PROFILING!!", wouldn't it be better to hire competent screeners who know what suspicious behaviors, bag types, other triggers, etc to look for?
Oh, that doesn't send the money to the contracting company that gave the politician all of those campaign contributions. My bad.
This is true for any system which attempts to pick out extraordinarily rare events (unless it has a degree of accuracy higher than the rarity of the event). It is not an automatic disqualification of the effectiveness of the system.
In other words, the false positives outnumbering the real positives (and the false negatives outnumbering the false positives) is purely a result of the number of real positives being a very small fraction relative to the number of real negatives. It says nothing about the efficacy of the system. If the system can generate a ratio of false positives to real positives smaller than the ratio of real negatives to real positives, then it is effective. Maybe the improved effectiveness over random sampling is small enough so as not to be worth the cost in money or loss of rights, but it is more effective than the random sampling proposed in TFA.
Yeah, that was what I was implying - I see no way random screening *plus* occasional "profiling" could statistically *decrease* the chances vs. random screening alone...
Profiling gives criminals a way to game the system; if you don't look like the profile then you don't get tagged as a potential criminal (it also allows some unfortunate biases to come into play by the profiler). The solution, Schneier suggests, is a system that by its simple randomness, does not allow profiling or gaming.
But your previous post said that using the random screening plus the likely *added* profiling would be a negative thing - I was just saying there is no statistical way random screening + profiling would be worse than random screening alone...
Or alternately, we could stop pissing off three-quarters of the world so they all don't want to blow us up.
Honestly, it's not as bad as you think, then. While there are people in China, India, Africa, etc, who have issues with many US policies (just like many US citizens have issues with US policies!), the VAST majority have no interest in violence and also (gasp) even appreciate some aspects of American culture - and the boost our rabid consumerism provides their economies. The tiny fraction who commit terrorist acts are as happy to do it to innocent civilians in their home country as they are to do it on US airplanes.
IMO we *should* actively and forcefully oppose (and therefore piss off) anyone who has no moral qualms with blowing up a bunch of innocent people in their country or ours. That behavior is not one of a protestor, it's of a psychopath. To be honest, there are some people in the US government/military who probably qualify for that label, as well, and they should be opposed (and removed from their positions of power), too!
They use behavioral profiling, where trained professionals analyze and pick out anyone that is acting weird, and give any suspects a few questions about their destination and such.
I guess that's why 9/11 didn't happen?
Profiling inevitably produces more false (usually an order of magnitude more) positives than real positives, and generally produces as many false negatives as false positivves. In other words, you're a lot more likely to spend your time searching someone for no reason than catch an actual bad guy, and as likely to let a real bad guy through as not.
Erm no.
Racial profiling (search all the brown people) produces a lot of false positives but forensic and behavioural profiling doesn't.
Many customs and inspection services already use forensic profiling effectively to find drug and weapon smugglers. Especially in the case of diamond/money smugglers as these things are very hard for the dogs to detect unlike drugs or weapons.
The problem isn't profiling, it's the TSA not being able to use profiling properly.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
I went to the airport, got screened, metal detector was all fine.
Forgot something, so went out and back in, screened again.
Metal detector goes beep beep beep
I asked the officer which was doing the pat down how it's possible that the same detector reacts differently.
He answered that there is a random selection in the device which goes positive despite no metal being detected.