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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.
Is there evidence that profiling passengers based on appearance and behavior is not more effective than randomized screening?
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.
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.
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!