Entries Tagged "homeland security"

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The Dilemma of Counterterrorism Policy

Any institution delegated with the task of preventing terrorism has a dilemma: they can either do their best to prevent terrorism, or they can do their best to make sure they’re not blamed for any terrorist attacks. I’ve talked about this dilemma for a while now, and it’s nice to see some research results that demonstrate its effects.

A. Peter McGraw, Alexander Todorov, and Howard Kunreuther, “A Policy Maker’s Dilemma: Preventing Terrorism or Preventing Blame,” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 115 (May 2011): 25-34.

Abstract: Although anti-terrorism policy should be based on a normative treatment of risk that incorporates likelihoods of attack, policy makers’ anti-terror decisions may be influenced by the blame they expect from failing to prevent attacks. We show that people’s anti-terror budget priorities before a perceived attack and blame judgments after a perceived attack are associated with the attack’s severity and how upsetting it is but largely independent of its likelihood. We also show that anti-terror budget priorities are influenced by directly highlighting the likelihood of the attack, but because of outcome biases, highlighting the attack’s prior likelihood has no influence on judgments of blame, severity, or emotion after an attack is perceived to have occurred. Thus, because of accountability effects, we propose policy makers face a dilemma: prevent terrorism using normative methods that incorporate the likelihood of attack or prevent blame by preventing terrorist attacks the public find most blameworthy.

Think about this with respect to the TSA. Are they doing their best to mitigate terrorism, or are they doing their best to ensure that if there’s a terrorist attack the public doesn’t blame the TSA for missing it?

Posted on August 19, 2011 at 8:55 AM • View Comments

Counterfeit Pilot IDs and Uniforms Will Now Be Sufficient to Bypass Airport Security

This seems like a really bad idea:

…the Transportation Security Administration began a program Tuesday allowing pilots to skirt the security-screening process. The TSA has deployed approximately 500 body scanners to airports nationwide in a bid to prevent terrorists from boarding domestic flights, but pilots don’t have to go through the controversial nude body scanners or other forms of screening. They don’t have to be patted down or go through metal detectors. Their carry-on bags are not searched.

I agree that it doesn’t make sense to screen pilots, that they’re at the controls of the plane and can crash it if they want to. But the TSA isn’t in a position to screen pilots; all they can decide to do is to not screen people who are in pilot uniforms with pilot IDs. And it’s far safer to just screen everybody than to trust that TSA agents will be able figure out who is a real pilot and who is someone just pretending to be a pilot.

I wrote about this in 2006.

Posted on August 12, 2011 at 6:59 AM • View Comments

Man Flies with Someone Else's Ticket and No Legal ID

Last week, I got a bunch of press calls about Olajide Oluwaseun Noibi, who flew from New York to Los Angeles using an expired ticket in someone else’s name and a university ID. They all wanted to know what this says about airport security.

It says that airport security isn’t perfect, and that people make mistakes. But it’s not something that anyone should worry about. It’s not like Noibi figured out a new hole in the airport security system, one that he was able to exploit repeatedly. He got lucky. He got real lucky. It’s not something a terrorist can build a plot around.

I’m even less concerned because I’ve never thought the photo ID check had any value. Noibi was screened, just like any other passenger. Even the TSA blog makes this point:

In this case, TSA did not properly authenticate the passenger’s documentation. That said, it’s important to note that this individual received the same thorough physical screening as other passengers, including being screened by advanced imaging technology (body scanner).

Seems like the TSA is regularly downplaying the value of the photo ID check. This is from a Q&A about Secure Flight, their new system to match passengers with watch lists:

Q: This particular “layer” isn’t terribly effective. If this “layer” of security can be circumvented by anyone with a printer and a word processor, this doesn’t seem to be a terribly useful “layer” … especially looking at the amount of money being expended on this particular “layer”. It might be that this money could be more effectively spent on other “layers”.

A: TSA uses layers of security to ensure the security of the traveling public and the Nation’s transportation system. Secure Flight’s watchlist name matching constitutes only one security layer of the many in place to protect aviation. Others include intelligence gathering and analysis, airport checkpoints, random canine team searches at airports, federal air marshals, federal flight deck officers and more security measures both visible and invisible to the public.

Each one of these layers alone is capable of stopping a terrorist attack. In combination their security value is multiplied, creating a much stronger, formidable system. A terrorist who has to overcome multiple security layers in order to carry out an attack is more likely to be pre-empted, deterred, or to fail during the attempt.

Yes, the answer says that they need to spend millions to ensure that terrorists with a viable plot also need a computer, but you can tell that their heart wasn’t in the answer. “Checkpoints! Dogs! Air marshals! Ignore the stupid photo ID requirement.”

Noibi is an embarrassment for the TSA and for the airline Virgin America, who are both supposed to catch this kind of thing. But I’m not worried about the security risk, and neither is the TSA.

Posted on July 6, 2011 at 5:53 AM • View Comments

RAND Corporation on Trusted Traveler

New paper: “Assessing the Security Benefits of a Trusted Traveler Program in the Presence of Attempted Attacker Exploitation and Compromise“:

Current aviation security procedures screen all passengers uniformly. Varying the amount of screening individuals receive based on an assessment of their relative risk has the potential to reduce the security burdens on some travelers, while improving security overall. This paper examines the security costs and benefits of a trusted traveler program, in which individuals who have been identified as posting less risk than others are allowed to pass through security with reduced security screening. This allows security resources to be shifted from travelers who have been identified as low risk, to the remaining unknown-risk population. However, fears that terrorists may exploit trusted traveler programs have dissuaded adoption of such programs. This analysis estimates the security performance of a trusted traveler program in the presence of attacker attempts to compromise it. It finds that, although these attempts would reduce the maximum potential security benefits of a program, they would not eliminate those benefits in all circumstances.

Posted on June 20, 2011 at 7:01 AM • View Comments

Yet Another Way to Evade TSA's Full-Body Scanners

Last night, at the Third EPIC Champion of Freedom Awards Dinner, we gave an award to Susie Castillo, whose blog post and video of her treatment in the hands of the TSA has inspired thousands to complain about the agency and their treatment of travellers.

Sitting with her at dinner, I learned yet another way to evade the TSA’s full body scanners: carry a small pet. She regularly travels with her small dog, and has found that she is always directed away from the full-body scanners and through the magnetometers. I suspect that the difficulty of keeping the dog still is why TSA makes that determination. (The carrier, of course, goes through the x-ray machine.)

I’m not sure what the TSA is going to do now that I’ve publicized this unpublished exception. Those of you who travel with small pets: please let me know what happens.

(For those of you who are appalled that I could give the terrorists ideas on how to evade the full-body scanners, there are already so many ways that one more can’t hurt.)

Posted on June 14, 2011 at 7:54 AM • View Comments

New Airport Scanning Technology

Interesting:

Iscon’s patented, thermo-conductive technology combines infrared (IR) and heat transfer, for high-resolution imaging without using any radiation. The core of this is state of the art imaging which detects and processes a break in the established thermal balance between the clothes and a hidden object. The IR camera detects the heat radiating from even a tiny object, producing a dark/light shape. It is irrelevant how long an object is concealed under clothing as a new temperature imprint is created every time it is scanned. Using IR, the rays don’t penetrate beyond the clothing so there are no privacy issues.

EDITED TO ADD (6/14): Another article.

I know no details.

Posted on June 10, 2011 at 6:14 AM • View Comments

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Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.