Entries Tagged "security theater"

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Risks of Cell Phones on Airplanes

Everyone—except those who like peace and quiet—thinks it’s a good idea to allow cell phone calls on airplanes, and are working out the technical details. But the U.S. government is worried that terrorists might make telephone calls from airplanes.

If the mobile phone ban were lifted, law enforcement authorities worry an attacker could use the device to coordinate with accomplices on the ground, on another flight or seated elsewhere on the same plane.

If mobile phone calls are to be allowed during flights, the law enforcement agencies urged that users be required to register their location on a plane before placing a call and that officials have fast access to call identification data.

“There is a short window of opportunity in which action can be taken to thwart a suicidal terrorist hijacking or remedy other crisis situations on board an aircraft,” the agencies said.

This is beyond idiotic. Again and again, we hear the argument that a particular technology can be used for bad things, so we have to ban or control it. The problem is that when we ban or control a technology, we also deny ourselves some of the good things it can be used for. Security is always a trade-off. Almost all technologies can be used for both good and evil; in Beyond Fear, I call them “dual use” technologies. Most of the time, the good uses far outweigh the evil uses, and we’re much better off as a society embracing the good uses and dealing with the evil uses some other way.

We don’t ban cars because bank robbers can use them to get away faster. We don’t ban cell phones because drug dealers use them to arrange sales. We don’t ban money because kidnappers use it. And finally, we don’t ban cryptography because the bad guys it to keep their communications secret. In all of these cases, the benefit to society of having the technology is much greater than the benefit to society of controlling, crippling, or banning the technology.

And, of course, security countermeasures that force the attackers to make a minor modification in their tactics aren’t very good trade-offs. Banning cell phones on airplanes only makes sense if the terrorists are planning to use cell phones on airplanes, and will give up and not bother with their attack because they can’t. If their plan doesn’t involve air-to-ground communications, or if it doesn’t involve air travel at all, then the security measure is a waste. And even worse, we denied ourselves all the good uses of the technology in the process.

Security officials are also worried that personal phone use could increase the risk that remotely-controlled bomb will be used to down an airliner. But they acknowledged simple radio-controlled explosive devices have been used in the past on planes and the first line of defence was security checks at airports.

Still, they said that “the departments believe that the new possibilities generated by airborne passenger connectivity must be recognized.”

That last sentence got it right. New possibilities, both good and bad.

Posted on June 8, 2005 at 2:40 PM • View Comments

Billions Wasted on Anti-Terrorism Security

Recently there have been a bunch of news articles about how lousy counterterrorism security is in the United States, how billions of dollars have been wasted on security since 9/11, and how much of what was purchased doesn’t work as advertised.

The first is from the May 8 New York Times (available at the website for pay, but there are copies here and here):

After spending more than $4.5 billion on screening devices to monitor the nation’s ports, borders, airports, mail and air, the federal government is moving to replace or alter much of the antiterrorism equipment, concluding that it is ineffective, unreliable or too expensive to operate.

Many of the monitoring tools—intended to detect guns, explosives, and nuclear and biological weapons—were bought during the blitz in security spending after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

In its effort to create a virtual shield around America, the Department of Homeland Security now plans to spend billions of dollars more. Although some changes are being made because of technology that has emerged in the last couple of years, many of them are planned because devices currently in use have done little to improve the nation’s security, according to a review of agency documents and interviews with federal officials and outside experts.

From another part of the article:

Among the problems:

  • Radiation monitors at ports and borders that cannot differentiate between radiation emitted by a nuclear bomb and naturally occurring radiation from everyday material like cat litter or ceramic tile.
  • Air-monitoring equipment in major cities that is only marginally effective because not enough detectors were deployed and were sometimes not properly calibrated or installed. They also do not produce results for up to 36 hours—long after a biological attack would potentially infect thousands of people.
  • Passenger-screening equipment at airports that auditors have found is no more likely than before federal screeners took over to detect whether someone is trying to carry a weapon or a bomb aboard a plane.
  • Postal Service machines that test only a small percentage of mail and look for anthrax but no other biological agents.

The Washington Post had a series of articles. The first lists some more problems:

  • The contract to hire airport passenger screeners grew to $741 million from $104 million in less than a year. The screeners are failing to detect weapons at roughly the same rate as shortly after the attacks.
  • The contract for airport bomb-detection machines ballooned to at least $1.2 billion from $508 million over 18 months. The machines have been hampered by high false-alarm rates.
  • A contract for a computer network called US-VISIT to screen foreign visitors could cost taxpayers $10 billion. It relies on outdated technology that puts the project at risk.
  • Radiation-detection machines worth a total of a half-billion dollars deployed to screen trucks and cargo containers at ports and borders have trouble distinguishing between highly enriched uranium and common household products. The problem has prompted costly plans to replace the machines.

The second is about border security.

And more recently, a New York Times article on how lousy port security is.

There are a lot of morals here: the problems of believing companies that have something to sell you, the difficulty of making technological security solutions work, the problems with making major security changes quickly, the mismanagement that comes from any large bureaucracy like the DHS, and the wastefulness of defending potential terrorist targets instead of broadly trying to deal with terrorism.

Posted on June 3, 2005 at 8:17 AM • View Comments

The Emergence of a Global Infrastructure for Mass Registration and Surveillance

The International Campaign Against Mass Surveillance has issued a report (dated April 2005): “The Emergence of a Global Infrastructure for Mass Registration and Surveillance.” It’s a chilling assessment of the current international trends towards global surveillance. Most of it you will have seen before, although it’s good to have everything in one place. I am particularly pleased that the report explicitly states that these measures do not make us any safer, but only create the illusion of security.

The global surveillance initiatives that governments have embarked upon do not make us more secure. They create only the illusion of security.

Sifting through an ocean of information with a net of bias and faulty logic, they yield outrageous numbers of false positives ­ and false negatives. The dragnet approach might make the public feel that something is being done, but the dragnet is easily circumvented by determined terrorists who are either not known to authorities, or who use identity theft to evade them.

For the statistically large number of people that will be wrongly identified or wrongly assessed as a risk under the system, the consequences can be dire.

At the same time, the democratic institutions and protections, which would be the safeguards of individuals’ personal security, are being weakened. And national sovereignty and the ability of national governments to protect citizens against the actions of other states (when they are willing) are being compromised as security functions become more and more deeply integrated.

The global surveillance dragnet diverts crucial resources and efforts away from the kind of investments that would make people safer. What is required is good information about specific threats, not crude racial profiling and useless information on the nearly 100 percent of the population that poses no threat whatsoever.

Posted on April 29, 2005 at 8:54 AM • View Comments

Banning Matches and Lighters on Airplanes

According to the Washington Post:

When Congress voted last year to prohibit passengers from bringing lighters and matches aboard commercial airplanes, it sounded like a reasonable idea for improving airline security.

But as airports and government leaders began discussing how to create flame-free airport terminals, the task became more complicated. Would newsstands and other small airport stores located beyond the security checkpoint have to stop selling lighters? Would airports have to ban smoking and close smoking lounges? How would security screeners detect matches in passengers’ pockets or carry-on bags when they don’t contain metal to set off the magnetometers? And what about arriving international travelers, who might have matches and lighters with them as they walk through the terminal?

It’s the silly security season out there. Given all of the things to spend money on to improve security, how this got to the top of anyone’s list is beyond me.

Posted on March 4, 2005 at 3:00 PM • View Comments

Sneaking Items Aboard Aircraft

A Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice faces a fine—although no criminal charges at the moment—for trying to sneak a knife aboard an aircraft.

Saylor, 58, and his wife entered a security checkpoint Feb. 4 on a trip to Philadelphia when screeners found a small Swiss Army-style knife attached to his key chain.

A police report said he was told the item could not be carried onto a plane and that he needed to place the knife into checked luggage or make other arrangements.

When Saylor returned a short time later to be screened a second time, an X-ray machine detected a knife inside his carry-on luggage, police said.

There are two points worth making here. One: ridiculous rules have a way of turning people into criminals. And two: this is an example of a security failure, not a security success.

Security systems fail in one of two ways. They can fail to stop the bad guy, and they can mistakenly stop the good guy. The TSA likes to measure its success by looking at the forbidden items they have prevented from being carried onto aircraft, but that’s wrong. Every time the TSA takes a pocketknife from an innocent person, that’s a security failure. It’s a false alarm. The system has prevented access where no prevention was required. This, coupled with the widespread belief that the bad guys will find a way around the system, demonstrates what a colossal waste of money it is.

Posted on February 28, 2005 at 8:00 AM • View Comments

TSA's Secure Flight

As I wrote previously, I am participating in a working group to study the security and privacy of Secure Flight, the U.S. government’s program to match airline passengers with a terrorist watch list. In the end, I signed the NDA allowing me access to SSI (Sensitive Security Information) documents, but managed to avoid filling out the paperwork for a SECRET security clearance.

Last week the group had its second meeting.

So far, I have four general conclusions. One, assuming that we need to implement a program of matching airline passengers with names on terrorism watch lists, Secure Flight is a major improvement—in almost every way—over what is currently in place. (And by this I mean the matching program, not any potential uses of commercial or other third-party data.)

Two, the security system surrounding Secure Flight is riddled with security holes. There are security problems with false IDs, ID verification, the ability to fly on someone else’s ticket, airline procedures, etc.

Three, the urge to use this system for other things will be irresistible. It’s just too easy to say: “As long as you’ve got this system that watches out for terrorists, how about also looking for this list of drug dealers…and by the way, we’ve got the Super Bowl to worry about too.” Once Secure Flight gets built, all it’ll take is a new law and we’ll have a nationwide security checkpoint system.

And four, a program of matching airline passengers with names on terrorism watch lists is not making us appreciably safer, and is a lousy way to spend our security dollars.

Unfortunately, Congress has mandated that Secure Flight be implemented, so it is unlikely that the program will be killed. And analyzing the effectiveness of the program in general, potential mission creep, and whether the general idea is a worthwhile one, is beyond the scope of our little group. In other words, my first conclusion is basically all that they’re interested in hearing.

But that means I can write about everything else.

To speak to my fourth conclusion: Imagine for a minute that Secure Flight is perfect. That is, we can ensure that no one can fly under a false identity, that the watch lists have perfect identity information, and that Secure Flight can perfectly determine if a passenger is on the watch list: no false positives and no false negatives. Even if we could do all that, Secure Flight wouldn’t be worth it.

Secure Flight is a passive system. It waits for the bad guys to buy an airplane ticket and try to board. If the bad guys don’t fly, it’s a waste of money. If the bad guys try to blow up shopping malls instead of airplanes, it’s a waste of money.

If I had some millions of dollars to spend on terrorism security, and I had a watch list of potential terrorists, I would spend that money investigating those people. I would try to determine whether or not they were a terrorism threat before they got to the airport, or even if they had no intention of visiting an airport. I would try to prevent their plot regardless of whether it involved airplanes. I would clear the innocent people, and I would go after the guilty. I wouldn’t build a complex computerized infrastructure and wait until one of them happened to wander into an airport. It just doesn’t make security sense.

That’s my usual metric when I think about a terrorism security measure: Would it be more effective than taking that money and funding intelligence, investigation, or emergency response—things that protect us regardless of what the terrorists are planning next. Money spent on security measures that only work against a particular terrorist tactic, forgetting that terrorists are adaptable, is largely wasted.

Posted on January 31, 2005 at 9:26 AM • View Comments

Burglars and "Feeling Secure"

From Confessions of a Master Jewel Thief by Bill Mason (Villard, 2003):

Nothing works more in a thief’s favor than people feeling secure. That’s why places that are heavily alarmed and guarded can sometimes be the easiest targets. The single most important factor in security—more than locks, alarms, sensors, or armed guards—is attitude. A building protected by nothing more than a cheap combination lock but inhabited by people who are alert and risk-aware is much safer than one with the world’s most sophisticated alarm system whose tenants assume they’re living in an impregnable fortress.

The author, a burglar, found that luxury condos were an excellent target. Although they had much more security technology than other buildings, they were vulnerable because no one believed a thief could get through the lobby.

Posted on December 17, 2004 at 9:21 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

Amtrak "Security"

Amtrak will now randomly check IDs:

Amtrak conductors have begun random checks of passengers’ IDs as a precaution against terrorist attacks.

This works because, somehow, terrorists don’t have IDs.

I’ve written about this kind of thing before. It’s the kind of program that makes us no safer, and wastes everyone’s time and Amtrak’s money.

Posted on November 19, 2004 at 10:03 AM • View Comments

A Sensible Elected Official

The new mayor of Madison, Alabama, has a surprisingly sensible attitude about security.

From the Huntsville Times:

City Hall security. Kirkindall, Atallo and Lacy agree the city may have gone a little overboard in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks by eliminating 20 to 25 prime parking spaces near the building. Starting today, people will be allowed to park there again.

Atallo says the City Hall visitors log—another recent addition—also annoys people and doesn’t do anything to make Madison safer. To prove it, he’s been signing the names of famous terrorists – “O.B. Laden,” “Carlos T. Jackal” – in the book.

No one’s caught it.

As of today, the log is out.

I have no idea if he’s a Republican or a Democrat, but I wish there were more people like him in government.

Posted on October 26, 2004 at 11:36 AM • View Comments

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Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.