Entries Tagged "searches"

Page 15 of 15

Altimeter Watches Now a Terrorism Threat

This story is so idiotic that I have trouble believing it’s true. According to MSNBC:

An advisory issued Monday by the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI urges the Transportation Security Administration to have airport screeners keep an eye out for wristwatches containing cigarette lighters or altimeters.

The notice says “recent intelligence suggests al-Qaida has expressed interest in obtaining wristwatches with a hidden butane-lighter function and Casio watches with an altimeter function. Casio watches have been extensively used by al-Qaida and associated organizations as timers for improvised explosive devices. The Casio brand is likely chosen due to its worldwide availability and inexpensive price.”

Clocks and watches definitely make good device timers for remotely triggered bombs. In this scenario, the person carrying the watch is an innocent. (Otherwise he wouldn’t need a remote triggering device; he could set the bomb off himself.) This implies that the bomb is stuffed inside the functional watch. But if you assume a bomb as small as the non-functioning space in a wristwatch can blow up an airplane, you’ve got problems far bigger than one particular brand of wristwatch. This story simply makes no sense.

And, like most of the random “alerts” from the DHS, it’s not based on any real facts:

The advisory notes that there is no specific information indicating any terrorist plans to use the devices, but it urges screeners to watch for them.

I wish the DHS were half as good at keeping people safe as they are at scaring people. (I’ve written more about that here.)

Posted on January 5, 2005 at 12:34 PM • View Comments

How Not to Test Airport Security

If this were fiction, no one would believe it. From MSNBC:

Four days after police at Charles de Gaulle Airport slipped some plastic explosives into a random passenger’s bag as part of an exercise for sniffer dogs, it is still missing—and authorities are stumped and embarrassed.

It’s perfectly reasonable to plant an explosive-filled suitcase in an airport in order to test security. It is not okay to plant it in someone’s bag without his knowledge and permission. (The explosive residue could remain on the suitcase long after the test, and might be picked up by one of those trace mass spectrometers that detects the chemical residue associated with bombs.) But if you are going to plant plastic explosives in the suitcase of some innocent passenger, shouldn’t you at least write down which suitcase it was?

Posted on December 20, 2004 at 9:13 AM • View Comments

Airline Security and the TSA

Recently I received this e-mail from an anonymous Transportation Security Association employee—those are the guys that screen you at airports—about something I wrote about airline security:

I was going through my email archives and found a link to a story. Apparently you enjoy attacking TSA, and relish in stories where others will do it for you. I work for TSA, and understand that a lot of what they do is little more than “window dressing” (your words). However, very few can argue that they are a lot more effective than the rent-a-cop agencies that were supposed to be securing the airports pre-9/11.

Specifically to the story, it has all the overtones of Urban Legend: overly emotional, details about the event but only giving names of self and “pet,” overly verbose, etc. Bottom line, that the TSA screener and supervisor told our storyteller that the fish was “in no way… allowed to pass through security” is in direct violation of publicly accessible TSA policy. Fish may be unusual, but they’re certainly not forbidden.

I’m disappointed, Bruce. Usually you’re well researched. Your articles and books are very well documented and cross-referenced. However, when it comes to attacking TSA, you seem to take some stories at face value without verifying the facts and TSA policies. I’m also disappointed that you would popularize a story that implicitly tells people to hide their “prohibited items” from security. I have personally witnessed people get arrested for thinking they were clever in hiding something they shouldn’t be carrying anyway.

For those who don’t want to follow the story, it’s about a college student who was told by TSA employees that she could not take her fish on the airplane for security reasons. She then smuggled the fish aboard by hiding it in her carry-on luggage. Final score: fish 1, TSA 0.

To the points in the letter:

  1. You may be right that the story is an urban legend. But it did appear in a respectable newspaper, and I hope the newspaper did at least some fact-checking. I may have been overly optimistic.

  2. You are certainly right that pets are allowed on board airplanes. But just because something is official TSA policy doesn’t mean it’s necessarily followed in the field. There have been many instances of TSA employees inventing rules. It doesn’t surprise me in the least that one of them refused to allow a fish on an airplane.

  3. I am happy to popularize a story that implicitly tells people to hide prohibited items from airline security. I’m even happy to explicitly tell people to hide prohibited items from airline security. A friend of mine recently figured out how to reliably sneak her needlepoint scissors through security—they’re the foldable kind, and she slips them against a loose leaf binder—and I am pleased to publicize that. Hell, I’ve even explained how to fly on someone else’s airline ticket and make your own knife on board an airplane [Beyond Fear, page 85].

  4. I think airline passenger screening is inane. It’s invasive, expensive, time-consuming, and doesn’t make us safer. I think that civil disobedience is a perfectly reasonable reaction.

  5. Honestly, you won’t get arrested if you simply play dumb when caught. Unless, that is, you’re smuggling an actual gun or bomb aboard an aircraft, in which case you probably deserve to get arrested.

Posted on December 6, 2004 at 9:15 AM • View Comments

Foiling Metal Detectors

High school kids are sneaking cell phones past metal detectors.

From the New York Post:

Savvy students are figuring out all kinds of ways to get their cell phones past metal-detectors and school-security staff at city high schools, where the devices are banned.

Kids at Martin Luther King Jr. HS on the Upper West Side put the phones behind a belt buckle—and blame the buckle for the beeping metal-detector.

Some girls hide the phones where security guards won’t look—in their bras or between their legs.

Note that they’re not fooling the metal detectors; they’re fooling the people staffing the metal detectors.

Posted on October 27, 2004 at 1:44 PM • View Comments

World Series Security

The World Series is no stranger to security. Fans try to sneak into the ballpark without tickets, or with counterfeit tickets. Often foods and alcohol are prohibited from being brought into the ballpark, to enforce the monopoly of the high-priced concessions. Violence is always a risk: both small fights and larger-scale riots that result from fans from both teams being in such close proximity—like the one that almost happened during the sixth game of the AL series.

Today, the new risk is terrorism. Security at the Olympics cost $1.5 billion. $50 million each was spent at the Democratic and Republican conventions. There has been no public statement about the security bill for the World Series, but it’s reasonable to assume it will be impressive.

In our fervor to defend ourselves, it’s important that we spend our money wisely. Much of what people think of as security against terrorism doesn’t actually make us safer. Even in a world of high-tech security, the most important solution is the guy watching to keep beer bottles from being thrown onto the field.

Generally, security measures that defend specific targets are wasteful, because they can be avoided simply by switching targets. If we completely defend the World Series from attack, and the terrorists bomb a crowded shopping mall instead, little has been gained.

Even so, some high-profile locations, like national monuments and symbolic buildings, and some high-profile events, like political conventions and championship sporting events, warrant additional security. What additional measures make sense?

ID checks don’t make sense. Everyone has an ID. Even the 9/11 terrorists had IDs. What we want is to somehow check intention; is the person going to do something bad? But we can’t do that, so we check IDs instead. It’s a complete waste of time and money, and does absolutely nothing to make us safer.

Automatic face recognition systems don’t work. Computers that automatically pick terrorists out of crowds are a great movie plot device, but doesn’t work in the real world. We don’t have a comprehensive photographic database of known terrorists. Even worse, the face recognition technology is so faulty that it often can’t make the matches even when we do have decent photographs. We tried it at the 2001 Super Bowl; it was a failure.

Airport-like attendee screening doesn’t work. The terrorists who took over the Russian school sneaked their weapons in long before their attack. And screening fans is only a small part of the solution. There are simply too many people, vehicles, and supplies moving in and out of a ballpark regularly. This kind of security failed at the Olympics, as reporters proved again and again that they could sneak all sorts of things into the stadiums undetected.

What does work is people: smart security officials watching the crowds. It’s called “behavior recognition,�? and it requires trained personnel looking for suspicious behavior. Does someone look out of place? Is he nervous, and not watching the game? Is he not cheering, hissing, booing, and waving like a sports fan would?

This is what good policemen do all the time. It’s what Israeli airport security does. It works because instead of relying on checkpoints that can be bypassed, it relies on the human ability to notice something that just doesn’t feel right. It’s intuition, and it’s far more effective than computerized security solutions.

Will this result in perfect security? Of course not. No security measures are guaranteed; all we can do is reduce the odds. And the best way to do that is to pay attention. A few hundred plainclothes policemen, walking around the stadium and watching for anything suspicious, will provide more security against terrorism than almost anything else we can reasonably do.

And the best thing about policemen is that they’re adaptable. They can deal with terrorist threats, and they can deal with more common security issues, too.

Most of the threats at the World Series have nothing to do with terrorism; unruly or violent fans are a much more common problem. And more likely than a complex 9/11-like plot is a lone terrorist with a gun, a bomb, or something that will cause panic. But luckily, the security measures ballparks have already put in place to protect against the former also help protect against the latter.

Originally published by UPI.

Posted on October 25, 2004 at 6:31 PM • View Comments

News

Great moments in security screening

The U.S. government’s cybersecurity chief resigned with a day’s notice. I can understand his frustration; the position had no power and could only suggest, plead, and cheerlead.
Computerworld
Washington Post
FCW.com
CNet

North Korea had over 500 trained cyberwarriors, according to the South Korean Defense Ministry. Maybe this is true, and maybe it’s just propaganda—from either the North or the South. Although certainly any smart military will train people in the art of attacking enemy computer networks.
channelnewsasia.com

Posted on October 18, 2004 at 9:23 PM • View Comments

Aerial Surveillance to Detect Building Code Violations

The Baltimore housing department has a new tool to find homeowners who have been building rooftop decks without a permit: aerial mapping. Baltimore bought aerial photographs of the entire city and used software to correlate the images with databases of address information and permit records. Inspectors have just begun knocking on doors of residents who built decks without permission.

On the face of it, this is nothing new. Police always have been able to inspect buildings for permit violations. The difference is they would do it manually, and that limited its use. It simply wasn’t feasible for the police to automatically document every building code violation in any city. What’s different isn’t the police tactic but the efficiency of the process.

Technology is fundamentally changing the nature of surveillance. Years ago, surveillance involved trench-coated detectives following people down streets. It was laborious and expensive, and was only used when there was reasonable suspicion of a crime. Modern surveillance is the police officer sitting at a computer with a satellite image of an entire neighborhood. It’s the same, but it’s completely different. It’s wholesale surveillance.

And it disrupts the balance between the powers of the police and the rights of the people.

Wholesale surveillance is fast becoming the norm. Security cameras are everywhere, even in places satellites can’t see. Automatic toll road devices track cars at tunnels and bridges. We can all be tracked by our cell phones. Our purchases are tracked by banks and credit card companies, our telephone calls by phone companies, our Internet surfing habits by Web site operators.

Like the satellite images, the electronic footprints we leave everywhere can be automatically correlated with databases. The data can be stored forever, allowing police to conduct surveillance backward in time.

The effects of wholesale surveillance on privacy and civil liberties is profound, but unfortunately, the debate often gets mischaracterized as a question about how much privacy we need to give up in order to be secure. This is wrong. It’s obvious that we are all safer when the police can use all possible crimefighting techniques. The Fourth Amendment already allows police to perform even the most intrusive searches of your home and person.

What we need are mechanisms to prevent abuse and hold the police accountable and assurances that the new techniques don’t place an unreasonable burden on the innocent. In many cases, the Fourth Amendment already provides for this in its requirement of a warrant.

The warrant process requires that a “neutral and detached magistrate” review the basis for the search and take responsibility for the outcome. The key is independent judicial oversight; the warrant process is itself a security measure that protects us from abuse and makes us more secure.

This works for some searches, but not for most wholesale surveillance. The courts already have ruled that the police cannot use thermal imaging to see through the walls of your home without a warrant, but that it’s OK for them to fly overhead and peer over your fences without a warrant. They need a warrant before opening your paper mail or listening in on your phone calls.

Wholesale surveillance calls for something else: lessening of criminal penalties. The reason criminal punishments are severe is to create a deterrent because it is hard to catch wrongdoers. As they become easier to catch, a realignment is necessary. When the police can automate the detection of a wrongdoing, perhaps there should no longer be any criminal penalty attached. For example, red-light cameras and speed-trap cameras issue citations without any “points” assessed against drivers.

Another obvious protection is notice. Baltimore should send mail to every homeowner announcing the use of aerial photography to document building code violations, urging individuals to come into compliance.

Wholesale surveillance is not simply a more efficient way for the police to do what they’ve always done. It’s a new police power, one made possible with today’s technology and one that will be made easier with tomorrow’s. And with any new police power, we as a society need to take an active role in establishing rules governing its use. To do otherwise is to cede ever more authority to the police.

This article was originally published in the 4 October 2004 edition of the Baltimore Sun.

Posted on October 4, 2004 at 7:18 PM • View Comments

Aerial Surveillance to Detect Building Code Violations

The Baltimore housing department has a new tool to find homeowners who have been building rooftop decks without a permit: aerial mapping. Baltimore bought aerial photographs of the entire city and used software to correlate the images with databases of address information and permit records. Inspectors have just begun knocking on doors of residents who built decks without permission.

On the face of it, this is nothing new. Police always have been able to inspect buildings for permit violations. The difference is they would do it manually, and that limited its use. It simply wasn’t feasible for the police to automatically document every building code violation in any city. What’s different isn’t the police tactic but the efficiency of the process.

Technology is fundamentally changing the nature of surveillance. Years ago, surveillance involved trench-coated detectives following people down streets. It was laborious and expensive, and was only used when there was reasonable suspicion of a crime. Modern surveillance is the police officer sitting at a computer with a satellite image of an entire neighborhood. It’s the same, but it’s completely different. It’s wholesale surveillance.

And it disrupts the balance between the powers of the police and the rights of the people.

Wholesale surveillance is fast becoming the norm. Security cameras are everywhere, even in places satellites can’t see. Automatic toll road devices track cars at tunnels and bridges. We can all be tracked by our cell phones. Our purchases are tracked by banks and credit card companies, our telephone calls by phone companies, our Internet surfing habits by Web site operators.

Like the satellite images, the electronic footprints we leave everywhere can be automatically correlated with databases. The data can be stored forever, allowing police to conduct surveillance backward in time.

The effects of wholesale surveillance on privacy and civil liberties is profound, but unfortunately, the debate often gets mischaracterized as a question about how much privacy we need to give up in order to be secure. This is wrong. It’s obvious that we are all safer when the police can use all possible crimefighting techniques. The Fourth Amendment already allows police to perform even the most intrusive searches of your home and person.

What we need are mechanisms to prevent abuse and hold the police accountable and assurances that the new techniques don’t place an unreasonable burden on the innocent. In many cases, the Fourth Amendment already provides for this in its requirement of a warrant.

The warrant process requires that a “neutral and detached magistrate” review the basis for the search and take responsibility for the outcome. The key is independent judicial oversight; the warrant process is itself a security measure that protects us from abuse and makes us more secure.

This works for some searches, but not for most wholesale surveillance. The courts already have ruled that the police cannot use thermal imaging to see through the walls of your home without a warrant, but that it’s OK for them to fly overhead and peer over your fences without a warrant. They need a warrant before opening your paper mail or listening in on your phone calls.

Wholesale surveillance calls for something else: lessening of criminal penalties. The reason criminal punishments are severe is to create a deterrent because it is hard to catch wrongdoers. As they become easier to catch, a realignment is necessary. When the police can automate the detection of a wrongdoing, perhaps there should no longer be any criminal penalty attached. For example, red-light cameras and speed-trap cameras issue citations without any “points” assessed against drivers.

Another obvious protection is notice. Baltimore should send mail to every homeowner announcing the use of aerial photography to document building code violations, urging individuals to come into compliance.

Wholesale surveillance is not simply a more efficient way for the police to do what they’ve always done. It’s a new police power, one made possible with today’s technology and one that will be made easier with tomorrow’s. And with any new police power, we as a society need to take an active role in establishing rules governing its use. To do otherwise is to cede ever more authority to the police.

This article was originally published in the 4 October 2004 edition of the Baltimore Sun.

Posted on October 4, 2004 at 7:18 PM • View Comments

License Plate "Guns" and Privacy

New Haven police have a new law enforcement tool: a license-plate scanner. Similar to a radar gun, it reads the license plates of moving or parked cars and links with remote police databases, immediately providing information about the car and owner. Right now the police check if there are any taxes owed on the car, if the car or license plate is stolen, and if the car is unregistered or uninsured. A car that comes up positive is towed.

On the face of it, this is nothing new. The police have always been able to run a license plate. The difference is they would do it manually, and that limited its use. It simply wasn’t feasible for the police to run the plates of every car in a parking garage, or every car that passed through an intersection. What’s different isn’t the police tactic, but the efficiency of the process.

Technology is fundamentally changing the nature of surveillance. Years ago, surveillance meant trench-coated detectives following people down streets. It was laborious and expensive, and was only used when there was reasonable suspicion of a crime. Modern surveillance is the policeman with a license-plate scanner, or even a remote license-plate scanner mounted on a traffic light and a policeman sitting at a computer in the station. It’s the same, but it’s completely different. It’s wholesale surveillance.

And it disrupts the balance between the powers of the police and the rights of the people.

Wholesale surveillance is fast becoming the norm. New York’s E-Z Pass tracks cars at tunnels and bridges with tolls. We can all be tracked by our cell phones. Our purchases are tracked by banks and credit card companies, our telephone calls by phone companies, our Internet surfing habits by Web site operators. Security cameras are everywhere. If they wanted, the police could take the database of vehicles outfitted with the OnStar tracking system, and immediately locate all of those New Haven cars.

Like the license-plate scanners, the electronic footprints we leave everywhere can be automatically correlated with databases. The data can be stored forever, allowing police to conduct surveillance backwards in time.

The effects of wholesale surveillance on privacy and civil liberties is profound; but unfortunately, the debate often gets mischaracterized as a question about how much privacy we need to give up in order to be secure. This is wrong. It’s obvious that we are all safer when the police can use all techniques at their disposal. What we need are corresponding mechanisms to prevent abuse, and that don’t place an unreasonable burden on the innocent.

Throughout our nation’s history, we have maintained a balance between the necessary interests of police and the civil rights of the people. The license plate itself is such a balance. Imagine the debate from the early 1900s: The police proposed affixing a plaque to every car with the car owner’s name, so they could better track cars used in crimes. Civil libertarians objected because that would reduce the privacy of every car owner. So a compromise was reached: a random string of letter and numbers that the police could use to determine the car owner. By deliberately designing a more cumbersome system, the needs of law enforcement and the public’s right to privacy were balanced.

The search warrant process, as prescribed in the Fourth Amendment, is another balancing method. So is the minimization requirement for telephone eavesdropping: the police must stop listening to a phone line if the suspect under investigation is not talking.

For license-plate scanners, one obvious protection is to require the police to erase data collected on innocent car owners immediately, and not save it. The police have no legitimate need to collect data on everyone’s driving habits. Another is to allow car owners access to the information about them used in these automated searches, and to allow them to challenge inaccuracies.

We need to go further. Criminal penalties are severe in order to create a deterrent, because it is hard to catch wrongdoers. As they become easier to catch, a realignment is necessary. When the police can automate the detection of a wrongdoing, perhaps there should no longer be any criminal penalty attached. For example, both red light cameras and speed-trap cameras all issue citations without any “points” assessed against the driver.

Wholesale surveillance is not simply a more efficient way for the police to do what they’ve always done. It’s a new police power, one made possible with today’s technology and one that will be made easier with tomorrow’s. And with any new police power, we as a society need to take an active role in establishing rules governing its use. To do otherwise is to cede ever more authority to the police.

This essay was originally published in the New Haven Register.

Posted on October 4, 2004 at 7:05 PM • View Comments

License Plate "Guns" and Privacy

New Haven police have a new law enforcement tool: a license-plate scanner. Similar to a radar gun, it reads the license plates of moving or parked cars and links with remote police databases, immediately providing information about the car and owner. Right now the police check if there are any taxes owed on the car, if the car or license plate is stolen, and if the car is unregistered or uninsured. A car that comes up positive is towed.

On the face of it, this is nothing new. The police have always been able to run a license plate. The difference is they would do it manually, and that limited its use. It simply wasn’t feasible for the police to run the plates of every car in a parking garage, or every car that passed through an intersection. What’s different isn’t the police tactic, but the efficiency of the process.

Technology is fundamentally changing the nature of surveillance. Years ago, surveillance meant trench-coated detectives following people down streets. It was laborious and expensive, and was only used when there was reasonable suspicion of a crime. Modern surveillance is the policeman with a license-plate scanner, or even a remote license-plate scanner mounted on a traffic light and a policeman sitting at a computer in the station. It’s the same, but it’s completely different. It’s wholesale surveillance.

And it disrupts the balance between the powers of the police and the rights of the people.

Wholesale surveillance is fast becoming the norm. New York’s E-Z Pass tracks cars at tunnels and bridges with tolls. We can all be tracked by our cell phones. Our purchases are tracked by banks and credit card companies, our telephone calls by phone companies, our Internet surfing habits by Web site operators. Security cameras are everywhere. If they wanted, the police could take the database of vehicles outfitted with the OnStar tracking system, and immediately locate all of those New Haven cars.

Like the license-plate scanners, the electronic footprints we leave everywhere can be automatically correlated with databases. The data can be stored forever, allowing police to conduct surveillance backwards in time.

The effects of wholesale surveillance on privacy and civil liberties is profound; but unfortunately, the debate often gets mischaracterized as a question about how much privacy we need to give up in order to be secure. This is wrong. It’s obvious that we are all safer when the police can use all techniques at their disposal. What we need are corresponding mechanisms to prevent abuse, and that don’t place an unreasonable burden on the innocent.

Throughout our nation’s history, we have maintained a balance between the necessary interests of police and the civil rights of the people. The license plate itself is such a balance. Imagine the debate from the early 1900s: The police proposed affixing a plaque to every car with the car owner’s name, so they could better track cars used in crimes. Civil libertarians objected because that would reduce the privacy of every car owner. So a compromise was reached: a random string of letter and numbers that the police could use to determine the car owner. By deliberately designing a more cumbersome system, the needs of law enforcement and the public’s right to privacy were balanced.

The search warrant process, as prescribed in the Fourth Amendment, is another balancing method. So is the minimization requirement for telephone eavesdropping: the police must stop listening to a phone line if the suspect under investigation is not talking.

For license-plate scanners, one obvious protection is to require the police to erase data collected on innocent car owners immediately, and not save it. The police have no legitimate need to collect data on everyone’s driving habits. Another is to allow car owners access to the information about them used in these automated searches, and to allow them to challenge inaccuracies.

We need to go further. Criminal penalties are severe in order to create a deterrent, because it is hard to catch wrongdoers. As they become easier to catch, a realignment is necessary. When the police can automate the detection of a wrongdoing, perhaps there should no longer be any criminal penalty attached. For example, both red light cameras and speed-trap cameras all issue citations without any “points” assessed against the driver.

Wholesale surveillance is not simply a more efficient way for the police to do what they’ve always done. It’s a new police power, one made possible with today’s technology and one that will be made easier with tomorrow’s. And with any new police power, we as a society need to take an active role in establishing rules governing its use. To do otherwise is to cede ever more authority to the police.

This essay was originally published in the New Haven Register.

Posted on October 4, 2004 at 7:05 PM • View Comments

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Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.