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TSA Paid $1.4 Million For Randomizer App That Chooses Left Or Right (geek.com)
An anonymous reader writes: For those of you who have traveled through U.S. airports in recent years, you may have noticed the Transport Security Administration (TSA) use a Randomizer app to randomly search travelers in the Pre-Check lane. The app randomly chooses whether travelers go left or right in the Pre-Check lane so they can't predict which lane each person is assigned to and can't figure out how to avoid the random checks. Developer Kevin Burke submitted a Freedom of Information Act request asking for details about the app. The documents he received reveals the TSA purchased the Randomizer iPad app for $336,413.59. That's $336,413.59 for an app, which is incredibly simple to make as most programming languages of choice have a randomizing function available to use. What may be even more intriguing is that the contract for the TSA Randomizer app was won by IBM. The total amount paid for the project is actually $1.4 million, but the cost is not broken down in Burke's documents. It's possible IBM supplied all the iPads and training in addition to the app itself.
That's really stretching things. If you use something as simple as microseconds on a clock as the seed for your "random" number generation, there's "pretty much" no way you can exploit that short of hacking the device itself. It's not like people are going to stand there with a stopwatch and tell the TSA guy "OK....press the button...Now!"
ZOMG $1.4M for an app that randomizes a single bit!!! (*)
* Note that it may have actually been $1.4M for hardware, training, and app.
Seriously, how fucking asinine are these clickbait articles getting? If you can decisively say that they charged $300k+ or $1.4M+ for an app that simple, do so. Otherwise you're just full of shit.
Are you selling it to the federal government? [YES]
Is a random number generator used in the product? [YES]
Is the product intended for a security application? [YES]
Requirement: The Random Number Generator be CAVS certified to SP800-90A and the module within which is operates be FIPS140-2 certified.
That's $100,000 before you've got out of bed, to meet the government procurement requirements.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
It's possible IBM supplied all the iPads and training in addition to the app itself.
I know it is fun and easy to criticize the TSA, and I am in favor of replacing them entirely with any of a dozen different possibilities. That said, there is a big difference between developing an app and supplying hardware and doing testing and training. I could build the app but I have no idea what the cost would be to test it sufficiently to meet government standards, then train the staff to use them, then equip the staff with hardware to use it. The cost of the app could literally be $0 and still top $1 million after the testing, training and equipment costs.
Someone else pointed out this is typical clickbait. It's got a shocking headline but then scant details on what actually caused the scenario. If they'd instead said "TSA has IBM develop an app that IBM contributed for free in exchange for exclusive rights to train staff for $10/hr each on how to handle customer service. Additionally, IBM will supply sufficient devices to have a minimum of two for each airport line at 5% profit per device" then the headline wouldn't generate nearly so much interest and the criticisms would be much better founded.
I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out that the bureaucracy that guides the TSA spent far more than is reasonable. I just didn't see enough details in TFA to assume that is actually the case. Does *anyone* have a breakdown on what kind of training, what kind of testing, what kind of devices were purchased?