Slashdot Mirror
Major Security Vulnerabilities Uncovered At Frankfurt Airport
jones_supa writes "According to a report published in this Sunday's edition of the mass-circulation Bild am Sonntag newspaper, investigators sent by the European Commission found it surprisingly easy to smuggle banned items past security at Frankfurt Airport. It said undercover investigators posing as passengers were able to smuggle weapons or other dangerous items through security every second time they tried to do so. One of the biggest problems was improperly trained staff, who were often not able to recognize dangerous items when viewing the screens they use to look at x-ray images of baggage. The staff is sourced via a privately owned service provider. Germany's Federal Police said they introduced new measures immediately after learning of the security deficits to ensure that passenger safety was guaranteed. Fraport AG, the company that operates the Germany's biggest airport, also took the findings seriously and begun an operation to retrain a total of 2,500 workers."
Not only at Frankfurt, but in general in German Airports, I've always been surprised by the use of private security agencies to screen passengers. I have nothing about these private security providers, but just like for anything else, I recognise that their are activities well suited for them; other not so much.
I have no doubt that private security firm could do that task adequately, but I seriously doubt they could do it well and in a cost effective manner at the same time. There is a lot of pressure to reduce costs at large airports in order to further reduce fares. That's the reason why they have those private firms there at the first place. In turn, these firms offer the service at lower cost... salaries and overtime rules are definitely one reasons for these lower costs, but lower training and selection standards as well.
Someone must now stop the people from carrying toothpaste and knives on board planes because they are bomb making materials.
Hint hint: guns go through the air all day long by accident. You don't hear about these on the news because the people who accidentally got them through don't want to throw themselves in prison.
Frankfurt is where they think the Lockerbie bomb got into the baggage system. You'd think they would have learned.
I hear touching people's balls makes everyone much more secure. Or is it insecure? Oh well better do it anyway just in case.
OK, so according to that so called "newspaper" (I read TFA there yesterday) 50% of dangerous items were not recognized during security screening. But even with this terrible performance, no related incidents have been reported. In other words: This shows that there isn't a real danger that this security theater is protecting us from.
bickerdyke
Yes, they should learn from our neighbours to the north. They seem to know what they are doing.
Back in 2008 when I was still working in aviation security (Security Program Architect for an Operator, not American), I visited both LAX and Frankfurt. Whilst Frankfurt hadn't kept up with the times, LAX was absolutely horrible. I was completely stunned at the routine, and almost by design, breaches of quarantine when handling screened and unscreened baggage and don't even get me started on the traffic management at checkpoints. It was one of the most ineffectual designs and implementations I've ever seen in the civilised world.
Given the fact that security at airports is not very good and nothing really bad has happened in the last decade, what does this tell us about the real terrorist threat level in Europe?
Don't let yourself get scared by politicians who rule by using fear. Learn from the hard facts!
It doesn't have to be like this. All we need to do is make sure we keep talking.
No, it doesn't really show that there's no real danger. It shows that:
a. The danger is not enough to justify the US paranoia with airport screening.
b. The German screening procedures, imperfect as they are, are still an efficient deterrent.
Therefore, raising the spending on airport security is probably a bad investment of tax money.
Looking forward to the next Schneier's Crypto Gram - hopefully he will provide some insight on this newspiece.
You might recall that the TSA got started by taking sackloads of private company-employed rent-a-cops and making them federal employees, thus unfirable. This ensured and still ensures a nice base level of incompetence as well as arrogance, and costs you more tax dollars than the private situation did. You also get less oversight due to all the petty secrecy, down to being forbidden from knowing which rules apply to you today, and you have less recourse since they're judge and jury too. What do you think that closed-off-from-the-world pervy scanner's peeping box is for, hm?
The real problem, however, is that it's all security theatre. It doesn't do anything worthwhile. The hassle does the same thing that comfort noise does for voip and cellular phone connections. It assures you that "something is being done" without having the slightest connection as to whether something is actually being done or not.
There is, however, very real damage to some unlucky if otherwise innocent victims. This makes the whole thing a net drain on the economy and on society. Moreover, the very few things that have happened since the theatre began and that actually have improved security turn out to be among the absolute cheapest things to happen in the space. This makes value-for-money overall very poor. Spectacularly so, in fact.
So the correct lesson to draw from this is not to do what is always being done in such cases, to "beef up security. Instead what should, nay must, happen now, finally, it's long overdue, is to review what we really want out of our "security investments" and implement just that.
This would mean that quite a lot of measures can go, and quite a lot of manpower will no longer be allowed to harass travelers, and quite a lot of amazing pervy scanning equipment will turn out to have no further purpose except maybe as a gimmick in kinky clubs. It'd mean the end of numerous databases and that we no longer need those chips in our passports, and a host of "data-sharing" peepery that really didn't bought us anything would have to be stopped too. Which all in turn means that it'll never happen before the current world order collapses under its own obesity. But that is what the correct course of action would mean.
Fuck.
I fly out of FRA almost weekly & have been really enjoying how quick, easy, & efficient getting through security there is (especially as compared to US or UK). Oh well... bring on the needlessly long lines, taking off shoes, & porno scanners.
It said undercover investigators posing as passengers were able to smuggle weapons or other dangerous items through security every second time they tried to do so.
Real terrorists wouldn't get a second try. ;)
After all, the personnel only ever sees handguns in the luggage when the security inspectors do a test.
This is not America where every second grandma has a gun in their purse that they can forget to take out.
Security? Used to ride 10-speeds down in the luggage tunnels. Hadn't quite opened yet.
Private companies are always looking for maximum profit at expense of security. Something to be expected.
They don't care about dangerous items as long stream of money is coming.
In both cases, the authorities intercepted terrorist suspects long before they ever got to the airport; which is the way it should be done. And that's assuming they were an actual threat and not just some wannabees.
And as far as ISIS is concerned, they are a local phenomena in the Middle East that are fighting for political control of the area. I have seen no credible evidence that they are a threat outside of that area to Western people.
"HAS begun", I think you mean...
Look, security ain't that great, the people pushing security on us must be assholes.
and I'd bet after an incident the same people would be saying...
Wow, that security was awful, what a bunch of dumbasses.
The hijackers flew out of Boston for a reason: Boston airport security was some of the worst in the US. *Even after the attack*, I flew through Logan airport 3 times in a row with a 6" blade throwing dagger in my backpack. (It's a costume knife, no edge, I kept forgetting I had it in my bag.) It was *always* caught on the return trip. Logan got more effective for a while, with National Guard manning the stations and supervising, but they've never been as effective as, say, the airport in Boise Idaho. They're handling too many passengers on far too small a budget for staff, and the competent staff all get the hell out as fast as they can update their resumes. So the remainder is all newbies and managers who've hit their "Peter Principle" level of incompetence.
It's not that the individual workers are not trying to to do their jobs and keep people safe, by the way, I've had friends work there to pay the bills when their spouse couldn't work, and they did their best. But the work practices are erratic, there aren't enough security gates to handle the traffic if they did a *good* job, and the theatrical introduction of bulky and line slowing "full body scanners" created its own sets of procedural and maintenance havoc that made the congestion even *worse*, exacerbating the situation. And it sucked the money right out of training and physical modifications to the existing system. The workers on the ground are also politically unable to change *anything* because it all goes through a dozen layers of useless management, between the local workers and their company and Logan's political nightmare of bureaucracy and the TSA and the FAA and my grandmother's poodle "Fluffy" having to hold policy review meetings with all the management who do not actually work in the building doing "reviews" and "assessment" and "workflow charts".
If the US gets hit again by an airplane based attack, I predict it's going to be through Logan. They're once again one of the worst secured US airports, and to deliberately add insult to injury.
Whether anyone can be trained to be observant effectively, it seems a quality you either have or do not have, and most certainly the "caliber" of those hired is fairly low (I mean who wants that job?) so training would be even more difficult.
I would guess we will be hearing about this again if someone does their due diligence and follows up on this.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
That's easy to fix: just make the passengers go through security twice!
LOL
Didn't know that tabloids also do reports.
Seriously? A report by Bild makes it to slashdot? World is not what it used to be.
I tried to find a list of items that were not detected. Where they handgranades or nailclippers? A second lighter or a landmine?
Just because they are on the list does not mean they are actually dangerous.
So without the list of what past and what not, it is meaningless.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
I have flown to and from or changed planes in 26 airports. Frankfurt Airport (Rhein-Main-Flughafen, FRA) was the second-worst next to the armpit of airports, which is Kona International (KOA) in Hawai'i. Flying from Los Angeles (LAX) to Budapest (BUD) my wife and I had to change planes in FRA. With 12 security stations, only four were open. It took us over 30 minutes in line to reach a security station. Some passengers booked on our plane to BUD missed the flight because they were still stuck in line at security. No, they did not arrive at the FRA airport late; they too were merely changing planes. If you already passed through security at a prior airport, you remain within the security "shell" when changing planes in a well-designed airport and are not subject to another security check.
See my "Avoid Kona and Frankfurt Airports" at http://www.rossde.com/editoria....
Some years back (but well after 9/11) when departing from Hanover airport I watched a female fellow-passenger pass through security wearing a pair of hair pins the size and appearance of sharpened chop sticks. Nobody seemed to notice.
Guaranteed, huh?