TSA Follies
Sunday, December 26, 2010 at 2:36PM Q: How do you smuggle a knife past the TSA onto an airplane?
A: Disguise it as a handgun.
Here’s the latest from our alert, skilled operatives at the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA). Farid Saif, a Texas businessman, forgot that he had a loaded 40 caliber Glock semiautomatic pistol in the pocket of his computer bag. It went through security at Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, including an x-ray machine, unnoticed. When he got to his destination he realized what had happened and notified the TSA. According to the linked article in The Consumerist, the TSA agents involved were given “retraining.”
So here’s what a Glock 23 looks like:
;)
It looks much the same in an x-ray, being made of metal. I’d say that these TSA agents need retraining in resume writing and job hunting, as in “Don’t let the security door hit you in the ass on the way out.” Or, to give them the benefit of the doubt, the TSA should figure out how many hours somebody can stare into an x-ray machine before their eyes cross and a handgun can slide by them.
The same article notes a 70% failure rate when the TSA tested itself by sending fake bomb parts, knives and firearms through the system. At some airports the failure rate was 100%.
In other airport security news, a pilot is in trouble for publicizing video footage of an ongoing security failure at San Francisco International Airport. While elsewhere people were getting the full scope and grope, SFIO employees were entering the secure area through an unmanned doorway with a single card swipe. Apparently this weak spot has been in place for a decade. The pilot got an unfriendly visit from air marshals and local sheriffs’ deputies after going public. That’s what we call the “whistleblower thank-you.”
Let us face facts: the present hassle and humiliation you endure as an appetizer to air travel amounts to little more than theater. Other countries do not make you take off your shoes or put your shampoo and such in little bottles. The backscatter radiation pornoscope is an American innovation. And yet those Europeans, hell, even the Israelis manage to avoid inflight mayhem as well as we do, or better.
The fundamental problem of airport security, real airport security, is that it takes time. Getting from the road leading to Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv to your seat in the plane takes hours. The Israelis use trained interviewers who patiently and persistently question each passenger. The checkpoints start outside the airport with a vehicle search and repeat at the entrance to the terminal and multiple points leading up to the final gate. The cost and delay of real security procedures would collapse our system. The necessary slowdown of traffic volume might very well bankrupt a number of marginal air carriers.
A number of observers of the air security fiasco have recommended a more front-loaded approach. This would involve more emphasis on intelligence work and identifying possible problem passengers at the time that they buy a ticket.
By analogy, we all benefit from email filters that identify clusters of characteristics that increase the probability that a message is spam. The filters use keywords, link characteristics, IP origin, and other factors to separate legitimate messages from ads for fake Rolexes and “enlargement.” The filters are designed to learn and change as the spammers try different approaches. The aforementioned Israeli security agents tease out details of a passenger’s story and look for elements that raise alarm bells. Some security firms are developing self-service kiosks that start asking such questions of passengers as they check in and then direct a passenger into a more stringent process if it seems necessary.
What we need is a process that starts with a real, vetted, continuously updated and purged do-not-fly list. The present list, which included the late Senator Ted Kennedy and countless other random citizens, is a Kafkaesque joke and needs to be scrapped. Then we need to start asking questions at the time of ticket purchase and track the responses and behavior of potential passengers as they go through their approach to the gate. By the time they reach the actual security line, each passenger should have a probability assigned to them that determines whether they are subjected to a higher level of scrutiny. The process of determining this probability should be constantly updated as new information comes in. Spam filters update on an hourly basis as they collect data, so why not passenger filters?
As I have written about previously, security is ultimately about motivation. Terrorism is a politically motivated crime that requires a political solution. In the meantime, airport security could take a lesson from internet security.
airports, security theater, spam filters in Uncategorized
Reader Comments (4)
Don't dare be caught with an illicit bottle of shampoo or a container of hummus though!
Hummus!? That's Middle Eastern in origin. a-HA!
Just exactly how does one 'forget' that he has a loaded 40 cal. Glock pistol in his bag? It's something like, Now where in hell did I put that M-60??
My sister reports that people in Texas carry concealed handguns the way people elsewhere carry mobile phones. Still, carrying one into an airport is a slight oversight.
Also, consider that the guy's name is Farid Saif. We can imagine what he looks like. At least we know that they weren't using racial profiling.