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.

Comments

Surely

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes but if it's random surely they would need a separate belt for the foreign looking people thats more random.. Right?

Pennies on The Billion Dollars

[cosm]

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?

Re:Pennies on The Billion Dollars

[Kjella]

And don't forget the advanced adaptive screening rate through combinatorial probabilistics with both parallell and serial execution methods. You can also implement multiple selection criteria at once, subselecting some passengers to even more intensive screening methods. Though for expediency I'd recommend the d20.system instead.

Re:Pennies on The Billion Dollars

[Anonymous Coward]

I propose we read a TSA einsatzgruppen's entrails then ignore the results and repeat until we're happy with the answer.

Binomial Theory

[TechyImmigrant]

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.

Re:Low tech solution

[d'baba]

Issue the TSA some dice?

Only if I can negate the search with a saving throw...