Tim Lee

Oops

Mike Masnick has some depressing news:

Within the security community, there’s been a lot of talk about “security theater” when it comes to the airline business. In the last few years, plenty of new security measures have been put in place–but just because we can see or deal with new security measures (dump your liquids, everyone!), does it actually make us any safer. While there’s been a ton of attention paid in the last week to a security researcher who showed just how easy it was for anyone to create their own boarding pass to get past the security check point, a much scarier story is sent in by Damon, who points out for all of the security changes, new technologies and new processes it doesn’t do a damn bit of good if the TSA screeners let people with weapons through the checkpoint. That’s exactly what happened at Newark airport, where a “secret shopper” (or should that be “secret bomber”?) test found that 20 out of 22 weapons got through the security clearing process. Now aren’t you glad that you have to remove your shoes and can’t bring a bottle of water on board any more? If we’re serious about air travel security, then it’s about time that we actually focused on security–not play-acting to make people think that something’s been done.

Let me repeat that: 20 out of 22 weapons got through. That’s more than 90 percent failure.

The fundamental problem here is that the TSA has no particular incentive to make air travel safer. They have to act like they’re responding to terrorist threats, but as long as they appear to be “doing something,” it doesn’t matter if any of their “security measures” actually accomplish anything. And, not surprisingly, it appears that to a first approximation, they don’t.

November 2, 2006 | Comments |

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    Scince Friday had a podcast with the former head of security at Ben Gurion Airport (and if there's anyone who should know about security it would be him) He put relatively little hope in technology alone, but put most of his effort in having highly trained, motivated, intelligent screeners who could do behaviorial profiling.

    Their were several interesting cases he discussed, but most particularly he stressed not to use ethnic profiling--the terrorsts often didn't fit the expected mold.

    He made the point that X-Ray devices had never detected a single weapon or bomb that a terrorist had been trying to smuggle on board. Never.
 

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