Entries Tagged "air travel"
Page 29 of 46
"Where Should Airport Security Begin?"
In this essay, Clark Ervin argues that airport security should begin at the front door to the airport:
Like many people, I spend a lot of time in airport terminals, and I often think that they must be an awfully appealing target to terrorists. The largest airports have huge terminals teeming with thousands of passengers on any given day. They serve as conspicuous symbols of American consumerism, with McDonald’s restaurants, Starbucks coffee shops and Disney toy stores. While airport screeners do only a so-so job of checking for guns, knives and bombs at checkpoints, there’s no checking for weapons before checkpoints. So if the intention isn’t to carry out an attack once on board a plane, but instead to carry out an attack on the airport itself by killing people inside it, there’s nothing to stop a terrorist from doing so.
[…]
To prevent smaller attacks—and larger ones that could be catastrophic—what if we moved the screening checkpoints from the interior of airports to the entrance? The sooner we screen passengers’ and visitors’ persons and baggage (both checked and carry-on) for guns, knives and explosives, the sooner we can detect those weapons and prevent them from being used to sow destruction.
This is a silly argument, one that any regular reader of this blog should be able to counter. If you’re worried about explosions on the ground, any place you put security checkpoints is arbitrary. The point of airport security is to prevent terrorism on the airplanes, because airplane terrorism is a more serious problem than conventional bombs blowing up in crowded buildings. (Four reasons. First, airlines are often national symbols. Second, airplanes often fly to dangerous countries. Third, for whatever reason, airplanes are a preferred terrorist target. And fourth, the particular failure mode of airplanes means that even a small bomb can kill everyone on board. That same bomb in an airport means that a few people die and many more get injured.) And most airport security measures aren’t effective.
His bias betrays itself primary through this quote:
Like many people, I spend a lot of time in airport terminals, and I often think that they must be an awfully appealing target to terrorists.
If he spent a lot of time in shopping malls, he would probably think they must be awfully appealing targets as well. They also “serve as conspicuous symbols of American consumerism, with McDonald’s restaurants, Starbucks coffee shops and Disney toy stores.” He sounds like he’s just scared.
Face it, there are far too many targets. Stop trying to defend against the tactic, and instead try to defend against terrorism. Airport security is the last line of defense, and not a very good one at that. Real security happens long before anyone gets to an airport, a shopping mall, or wherever.
Defeating the Shoe Scanning Machine at Heathrow Airport
For a while now, Heathrow Airport has had a unique setup for scanning shoes. Instead of taking your shoes off during the normal screening process, as you do in U.S. airports, you go through the metal detector with your shoes on. Then, later, there is a special shoe scanning X-ray machine. You take your shoes off, send them through the machine, and put them on at the other end.
It’s definitely faster, but it’s an easy system to defeat. The vulnerability is that no one verifies that the shoes you walked through the metal detector with are the same shoes you put on the scanning machine.
Here’s how the attack works. Assume that you have two pairs of shoes: a clean pair that passes all levels of screening, and a dangerous pair that doesn’t. (Ignore for a moment the ridiculousness of screening shoes in the first place, and assume that an X-ray machine can detect the dangerous pair.) Put the dangerous shoes on your feet and the clean shoes in your carry-on bag. Walk through the metal detector. Then, at the shoe X-ray machine, take the dangerous shoes off and put them in your bag, and take the clean shoes out of your bag and place them on the X-ray machine. You’ve now managed to get through security without having your shoes screened.
This works because the two security systems are decoupled. And the shoe screening machine is so crowded and chaotic, and so poorly manned, that no one notices the switch.
U.S. airports force people to put their shoes through the X-ray machine and walk through the metal detector shoeless, ensuring that all shoes get screened. That might be slower, but it works.
EDITED TO ADD (12/14): Heathrow Terminal 3, that is. The system wasn’t in place in Terminal 4, and I don’t know about Terminals 1 and 2.
Even More "War on the Unexpected"
We’re losing the “War on the Unexpected.”
A blind calypso musician and his band removed from an airplane:
The passenger told the pilot of the Sardinia-Stansted flight that he was concerned about the behaviour of Michael Toussaint and four other members of the Caribbean Steel International Orchestra, a court heard. He claimed to be a psychology lecturer from London University and said he had noticed the group in “high spirits” in the terminal building, but that they had sat separately and quietly on board. He also believed Toussaint, who was wearing dark glasses, could have been feigning blindness, the court was told.
A Jewish man removed from a train:
The incident took place on a train that left Chicago early in the morning – when Jewish men are obligated to put on tefillin (phylacteries). The passenger began strapping the head-tefillin to his forehead and passengers unfamiliar with the custom rushed to the conductor and told him there was a man on board who was fastening a box to his head with wires dangling from it.”
The conductor approached the passenger but the latter refused to answer him as he was in the middle of the prayer, heightening the conductor’s suspicions.
Meanwhile, the passengers grew even more frantic when they noticed that the passenger sitting next to the Jewish man had a Middle-Eastern appearance and wore a turban.
EDITED TO ADD (12/6): Bomb squad in Sarasota, Florida called in to detonate a typewriter.
EDITED TO ADD (2/8/08): The calypso band won damages in court:
A judge ruled that the airline had not acted reasonably and had failed in its duty of care to the passengers, particularly Toussaint, who was entitled to special care because of his disability.
He also found the company had issued a “false and misleading” statement to the BBC, which blamed the incident on the Italian security authorities.
Another Airport Security Test Failure
I don’t know why anyone is surprised that investigators were able to smuggle things through airport security. Anyone who flies regularly could have told you that.
Good Essay on the No-Joke Zone at Airports
Joe Bennett in New Zealand:
An officer frisks me with hands like questing butterflies. Up my legs they flutter, then over my buttocks, my back, my chest and along my arms, but not, I notice, over my crotch. So there’s the answer. When my anger at being pointlessly searched in airports finally reaches such incandescence that I feel compelled to act, I’ll tape a bomblet behind my scrotum with the detonator clenched between my cheeks. It will kill no one except myself and I won’t make a pretty corpse, but I will make damn sure I take out a particular notice. You know the one I mean. It’s the only notice in human history to forbid, on pain of imprisonment, the making of jokes. I am not allowed to crack a joke about bombs.
Jokes are essential to mental well-being. But all authorities hate them because jokes pierce to the truth. Jokes see through bogus seriousness and say, “oh come off it”. The instinct to make jokes is a natural reaction to overweening authority.
The authorities have an obvious response. Airport security, they will say, is no laughing matter. Do I want planes to be blown up?
House of Lords on the Liquid Ban
From the UK:
“We continuously monitor the effectiveness of, in particular, the liquid security measures…”
How, one might ask? But hold on:
“The fact that there has not been a serious incident involving liquid explosives indicates, I would have thought, that the measures that we have put in place so far have been very effective.”
Ah, that’s how. On which basis the measures against asteroid strike, alien invasion and unexplained nationwide floods of deadly boiling custard have also been remarkably effective.
New TSA Report
A classified 2006 TSA report on airport security has been leaked to USA Today. (Other papers are covering the story, but their articles seem to be all derived from the original USA Today article.)
There’s good news:
This year, the TSA for the first time began running covert tests every day at every checkpoint at every airport. That began partly in response to the classified TSA report showing that screeners at San Francisco International Airport were tested several times a day and found about 80% of the fake bombs.
Constant testing makes screeners “more suspicious as well as more capable of recognizing (bomb) components,” the report said. The report does not explain the high failure rates but said O’Hare’s checkpoints were too congested and too wide for supervisors to monitor screeners.
At San Francisco, “everybody realizes they are under scrutiny, being watched and tested constantly,” said Gerald Berry, president of Covenant Aviation Security, which hires and manages the San Francisco screeners. San Francisco is one of eight airports, most of them small, where screeners work for a private company instead of the TSA. The idea for constant testing came from Ed Gomez, TSA security director at San Francisco, Berry said. The tests often involve an undercover person putting a bag with a fake bomb on an X-ray machine belt, he said.
Repeated testing is good, for a whole bunch of reasons.
There’s bad news:
Howe said the increased difficulty explains why screeners at Los Angeles and Chicago O’Hare airports failed to find more than 60% of fake explosives that TSA agents tried to get through checkpoints last year.
The failure rates—about 75% at Los Angeles and 60% at O’Hare—are higher than some tests of screeners a few years ago and equivalent to other previous tests.
Sure, the tests are harder. But those are miserable numbers.
And there’s unexplainable news:
At San Diego International Airport, tests are run by passengers whom local TSA managers ask to carry a fake bomb, said screener Cris Soulia, an official in a screeners union.
Someone please tell me this doesn’t actually happen. “Hi Mr. Passenger. I’m a TSA manager. You know I’m not lying to you because of this official-looking laminated badge I have. We need you to help us test airport security. Here’s a ‘fake’ bomb that we’d like you to carry through security in your luggage. Another TSA manager will, um, meet you at your destination. Give the fake bomb to him when you land. And, by the way, what’s your mother’s maiden name?”
How in the world is this a good idea? And how hard is it to dress real TSA managers up like vacationers?
EDITED TO ADD (10/24): Here’s a story of someone being asked to carry an item through airport security at Dulles Airport.
EDITED TO ADD (10/26): TSA claims that this doesn’t happen:
TSA officials do not ask random passengers to carry fake bombs through checkpoints for testing at San Diego International Airport, or any other airport.
[…]
TSA Traveler Alert: If approached by anyone claiming to be a TSA employee asking you to take something through the checkpoint, please contact a uniformed TSA employee at the checkpoint or a law enforcement officer immediately.
Is there anyone else who has had this happen to them?
Shoe Scanners at the Orlando Airport
I flew through Orlando today, and saw an automatic shoe-scanner in the lane for Clear passengers.
Poking around on the TSA website, I found this undated page. It seems they didn’t pass the TSA tests, and will be discontinued:
The shoe scanning feature on the machine presented for testing on August 20 does not meet minimum detection standards. While significant improvements were made, (in fact a new machine was submitted) the shoe scanner still does not meet standards to ensure detection of explosives.
GE’s been apprised of these results and TSA and GE have agreed to continue working together. TSA and its partners at the laboratory stand ready to further test the GE shoe scanner feature upon completion of additional detection capability enhancements to meet the agreed upon security requirements.
The machine currently in use in Orlando does not meet minimum detection standards and several additional security measures are required by TSA to mitigate the shortfalls of the shoe scanner feature. Accordingly, the prototype shoe scanner used in Orlando will be discontinued, effective October 10. It had been hoped that an acceptable scanner would be available, but given that the lab prototype does not meet all standards, TSA will not authorize the shoe scanner feature for security purposes in any of the airports where it is currently deployed and awaiting use. The GE Kiosks may be used to read biometric cards associated with the Registered Traveler program but will not provide a security benefit.
Mesa Airlines Destroys Evidence
How not to delete evidence. First, do something bad. Then, try to delete the data files that prove it. Finally, blame it on adult content.
Hawaiian alleged Murnane—who was placed on a 90-leave by Mesa’s board last week—deleted hundreds of pages of computer records that would have shown that Mesa misappropriated the Hawaiian information.
But Mesa says any deletion was not intentional and they have copies of the deleted files.
“He (Murnane) was cruising on adult Web sites,” said Mesa attorney Max Blecher in a court hearing yesterday. Murnane was just trying to delete the porn sites, he said.
EDITED TO ADD (11/6): In the aftermath, the CFO got fired and Mesa got hit with an $80 million judgment. Ouch.
Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.