In his post below, my co-blogger Jonathan Adler derides airline security measures as political theater. Echoing frustrations of many frequent flyers, he writes:
Airport security is already more show than substance. It’s an exercise of political theater that is supposed to make travelers feel more secure. I am unconvinced it even does that very well anymore, and from what I’ve heard thus far, the new measures are only going to make things worse.
I can’t gauge how effective airport security measures are, but I think there’s a concept driving them beyond “political theater.” The model seems to be that the bad guys will want to do the same thing over and over again if we let them, and that our best security response is to force them to switch tactics to something unproven and less likely to work. As a result, we tend to ban the things that were used in the most recent attack to make it harder to try that method again the next time.
Consider a few examples The 9/11 hijackers were thought to have used boxcutters and knives to subdue passengers and to take over flights. In response, U.S. security officials banned boxcutters, knives, and similar objects. Richard Reid, the December 2001 “shoe bomber,” tried to blow up a plane using explosives in his shoes, which generally can’t be detected by scanners because they are too low to the ground. In response, U.S. security officials required the removal of shoes when going through scanners. The 2006 transatlantic airplane plot was going to use large quantities of liquid explosives brought in carry on and assembled midflight to blow up 10 planes. In response, U.S. security officials banned large quantities of liquids. And following the most recent example of the Christmas attack, in which the terrorist apparently assembled the bomb in the bathroom and then tried to detonate it on his lap under a blanket as the flight was coming in for a landing in the U.S., the new limitations imposed by security officials are placing limitations on moving around and what is in your lap on the last leg of incoming U.S. international flights.
Emotions run high when it comes to commenting on air travel security restrictions. They are among the few examples of U.S. government responses to the war on terror that have a clear impact on the convenience of regular people. (UPDATE: Especially regular people in the sense of regular business travelers, such as those likely to read our blog.) Still, it’s not so obvious to me that these restrictions are bad ideas or just “security theater.” Experience suggests that the terrorists associated with Al Qaeda like to try the same thing again: They come back to tried methods and tried targets. Remember that the World Trade Center was first attacked in 1993; the 2001 attack was a second attempt. If that’s right, then it would make at least some sense to try to force Al Qaeda to change tactics. The idea would be that when they try something, make it harder to try that same method again. Make the bad guys change their strategy every time to something new.
To be clear, I can’t gauge how effective our security measures really are. I think it’s interesting that the post-9/11 airline attacks have all (I think) involved flights originating outside the United States, but I’m not sure I know enough to say why that is. And I realize there is no way to comment on these issues without a certain portion of VC readers and commenters thinking you are a total idiot, a hack, a rube, a Nazi, etc., no matter what you say. Still, I wanted to suggest that there may be a strategy going on here that goes beyond just “security theater.” It may or may not be working, but there does seem to be a method to the madness in the response of U.S. security officials.
Soronel Haetir says:
I could agree with you if the deliberate security probes mimicking actual bombs were caught on a regular basis. However when we learn that 11 of 12 fake bombs got past security it makes me think that the rest is far more show than go.
December 27, 2009, 1:28 pmnewrouter says:
how about banning air, train and auto travel? that will make the jihadis put their thinking caps on
December 27, 2009, 1:29 pmjfb2252 says:
There are some ~700 million US passenger flights per year. The measures taken since 9/11 cost each at least one hour and will soon force all into virtual strip searches (mm wave imaging). 700 million hours equals about 79,900 years. If the average passenger has 50 years of life remaining, you’ve “killed” 1600 of them. If you prefer to look at total lifespan, you’ve destroyed 1000 of them. It would therefore be beneficial to the US population as a whole to eliminate all the post-9/11 security measures except the locked, reinforced cockpits and explosive sniffing devices – if there are fewer than four planes lost per year as a direct result of the loosening of “security”.
[OK Chimes In: Do you really think the security measures taken since 9/11 add "at least one hour" to get through for each flight? The delay varies depending on the airport and the time of day, but I usually get through security in somewhere around 15 minutes -- only slightly longer than pre-9/11. ]
December 27, 2009, 1:34 pmgeorge weiss says:
indeed. the security doesn’t have to catch failed attempts in order to be useful…if it deters the attempts in the first place its doing something.
like orin says though-we dont know if its true.
we do know that even if it has no real effect that a) theater is perhaps an independent and adequate basis for doing it and b) there would be tremendous political backlash if the same method of terror is successfully repeated after a fail and no action was taken to address that particular method after the first attempt and c) there are also costs of these measures in the way of minor inconveniences..that sure as hell don’t outweigh these benefits to politicos nor people who are (rightly or wrongly-as Orin points out)…reassured by all this nor the possible actual safety increase
December 27, 2009, 1:36 pmKi'hoalu Kid says:
As long as we’re talking about effectiveness, let me share a recent story. My wife’s father died several years ago, and while cleaning out the house, we found his collection of pocket knives. Remembering that he always said everyone should have a pocket knife at all times, she put one in her purse (and promptly forgot all about it). My wife rarely flies, but a couple of months ago we flew between two major west coast cities for a brief vacation. On the RETURN flight, TSA noticed a pocket knife in her purse and sent her to secondary screening. We immediately realized that she had gone through screening on the outbound flight with the knife, but TSA didn’t catch it. The other day, she discovered ANOTHER knife in her purse that had been there all along. TSA missed it on BOTH flights. I’ve also inadvertently gone through screening several times in the last few years with a carry on that included a wine opener with a blade. So I don’t know about “theater,” but I do know TSA isn’t very effective at what it’s supposed to do.
December 27, 2009, 1:40 pmSara says:
And part of the incentive has to be that 9-11 was so easily preventable. We got sucker punched because we didn’t even bother to do simple things like harden cockpit doors.
December 27, 2009, 1:41 pmGeoff says:
Orin,
I think the flaw in your reasoning arises from the fact that the new measures aren’t really all that effective at preventing the problems they were put in place to counteract. For example, the 2006 “liquids” plot sparked widespread commentary from experts that noted that the effectiveness of the plot was highly debatable, and many suggested that the quantity of liquids required was impractical even without the 3 oz. limit. Similarly, a ban on movement or holding items in one’s lap for the final 60 minutes of a flight suggests not that terrorists will give up and go home, but that they’ll just attempt to detonate their explosives earlier in the flight.
As newrouter notes sarcastically, there is a decided ratchet effect in these travel restrictions. Terrorists have an unlimited amount of time to determine new ways to blow up airplanes; imposing new restrictions every time they do so suggests that we will restrict airline travel to the point where it will be an impractical method of transportation. The implication is that there is a point where the risk of preventing unlikely incidents simply doesn’t outweigh the imposition to fliers.
As a business traveler who flies several times a week for his job, I can tell you that flight is not an enjoyable experience now… and getting less so by the day.
[OK Chimes In: I tried to be clear in the post that I am distinguishing between the goals of the rules changes and the implementation. I am commenting on the former, and admitting I can't really assess the latter.]
December 27, 2009, 1:43 pmorca says:
150,000 people die every single day.
About half of them could be saved for what the U.S. spends on airline security.
So, I’d say yes to the political theater question.
[OK Chimes In: I suppose the ultimate version of this is that everyone will die eventually, so all security measures are just political theater?]
December 27, 2009, 1:46 pmBABH says:
Frequent fliers might gripe less if the airport rent-a-cops were courteous and friendly. Israeli security and Swiss security would be good models for policy-makers to look to. It is possible to be at the same time thorough, efficient and pleasant. American airport security is failing on all three measures.
December 27, 2009, 1:47 pmPhineas says:
You’re right that this is a and probably the concept behind these measures. But a closer examination of the history of these attempts demonstrates just how much this concept relies on a failure to appreciate the nature of al Qaeda or the nature of these attempts.
If it were the case that we were in a constant struggle with al Qaeda over attempts to bomb planes, it would make sense to adopt security measures that force al Qaeda to change tactics every time. But Reid probably wasn’t closely connected to al Qaeda. Abdulmutallab probably never contacted anyone actually in al Qaeda. The liquid bomb plot was fantastical and probably didn’t derive meaningfully from any al Qaeda plot. If there’s any real plot behind these attempts, it’s more like: al Qaeda’s been sending incompetent but eager suicide-bombers in order to wreak havoc on our air travel security system by making flying so burdensome that no one will want to fly. “Let’s get them to scan for Tang! Let’s make them sit quietly for their entire travel time! Let’s make them take off their shoes!”
I mean, let’s be sensible about this. Al Qaeda is a network of drug and arms dealers whose stated goals are essentially regional in nature. Al Qaeda can not, and probably does not really want to, destroy the U.S. Al Qaeda attacks directed at U.S.-based targets seem to be more about displays of power and ability (in order to inspire recruits with their eschatological narrative) than any kind of strategic military interest. And so the question to ask about al Qaeda and these attempted bombings is, “How will these attempts prove that al Qaeda is a vital and powerful organization?” The answer is that they don’t prove anything of the sort. They make al Qaeda look weak and incompetent. Al Qaeda is probably more focused on, say, holding territory in Afghanistan or undermining the Pakistan government. Which it’s doing quite well at the moment.
No; these are disparate, kind of crazy attempts by a number of people who don’t like the U.S. and have recognized the talismanic significance, in our culture, of claiming a connection to al Qaeda. They’re trying to bomb planes because that’s been the dominant representation of terrorism for decades. How do you stop them? Well, how do you stop gun-related crime? Do you ban guns? Do you require gun owners to go through extensive security screening and gun training? It’s the same kind of issue here. How do you stop crime? Well, you can’t really. It’s like plugging the holes of a sieve individually.
That’s why we call it “security theater.” When you portray a bunch of criminal acts by incompetent crazy people as part of a global conspiracy against the United States by a monolithic repeat player capable of learning and changing tactics, then the security measures look like they make sense. But you’re essentially fighting a fictional demon. Worse, you’re legitimizing that demon, so that other crazy people are inspired to do the same sorts of things.
I’m not sure how you fix the problem institutionally. We’ve already eliminated a lot of the easy ways would-be crazy bombers can destroy airplanes — we scan luggage, we don’t let non-flyers past security, we don’t let people enter and leave the plane at will. I like Barnett’s notion (is it?) that we all kind of have to be part of an unorganized militia in a time of asymmetric war. Well, don’t call it that. Call it an asymmetric struggle against criminals who want to attempt mass murder. If enough of them end up just burning their legs on planes, maybe then they’ll turn their attention to something else. Needlepoint, maybe.
December 27, 2009, 1:56 pmPeteP says:
Orin – “I can’t gauge how effective our security measures really are”
Well, let’s see.
A muslim terrorist suicide bomber managed to get himself on a plane over Detroit with 287 people, and a bomb featuring 80 grams of PETN high explosive ( more than the ‘shoe bomber’ had’ ).
The only reason he failed to bring that plane down is that his chemical triggering device malfunctioned, and went ‘poof-poof-flame-smoke’, instead of ‘Bang !’.
How ‘effective’ would you say our efforts were ?
[OK Chimes In: I find it hard to know. Presumably, the primary point of the rules is to deter the easier methods of blowing up planes. That is, the goal is to force Al Qaeda to have to use methods that are less likely to succeed. They might require assembling in flight, might be more likely to malfunction. Given that, I don't know whether the rules are effective: Do we know what Al Qaeda would have done if the rules were not in place? I don't know, but I would be interested to know if you do.]
December 27, 2009, 1:59 pmChris Travers says:
Consider something for a moment:
Inconsistent security is a problem. It allows terrorists a choice of entry points into the air travel infrastructure, and suggests a lack of professionalism at the top of the organization.
(It could also suggest a sense of panic that there is no good way to prevent a copycat attack, but that is beside the point at this point. In security-related work, panic is a very bad thing.)
Most of my experience is in IT security, but nearly all the concepts are directly borrowed from physical security.
The ideal security has the following components:
1) It is as unobtrusive to the end user as possible
2) It is entirely effective against its threat target
3) It works regardless of whether the specific measures are public.
No security is perfect, however, so compromises have to be made. In security work, though it is critical that such changes are done carefully and competently. In most cases, successful attacks take time to plan and execute. This means one DOES have some time to appropriately assess the situation and consider optimal changes. This means that the proper response should be:
“We are assessing the situation and will announce new regulations within a week.”
Anything that comes out immediately after an incident is usually ill-thought-out and more show than substance.
Another thing that desperately needs to be done is that more open discussion of airport security practices needs to take place. This needs to include the people on the ground, interested members of the public, and so forth. Experience shows that more openness usually creates better attention to detail in implementation and it gives an important edge to the good guys. Yet under the USAPATRIOT act, I would not want to test whether lists of possible attacks against airports and airlines which security is not designed to prevent would be subject to felony prosecution perhaps including a 15-year prison sentence. As it is right now, the only folks who are trying to figure out how to get around security are criminals. That needs to change.
(Yes, I know plenty of ways terrorists could cause extreme financial damage to our country by exploiting airport security, but I am concerned that publishing them, even if the goal is to get the problems fixed, could be seen as a prosecutable crime.)
Finally, the way security is implemented in our airports is not very optimal. The system is brittle and some airports (such as JFK) have serious physical problems which are not really possible to mitigate without imposing draconian restrictions on travelers.
In my professional opinion:
1) Airport security is implemented in fundamentally flawed ways and most airports are not built with threat mitigation in mind. In particular, they are not designed to deal gracefully with security breaches or fake threats.
2) Some of the evolving measures are good ones (x-raying shirts and shoes for example). Others are problematic from a security perspective.
3) Random security measures are worse than useless. If the security measure is a net benefit and publically acceptable, it should be in place universally. They are worse than useless because they paper over real problems and tend to suggest that the people calling the shots do NOT have confidence in the measures.
Careful review, post-incident, is required to put together proper security measures. This really looks like (from my perspective as someone who offers parallel services in other environments) like flailing arms in panic.
December 27, 2009, 2:01 pmSoronel Haetir says:
My experience with security personnel is that their attitude depends very much on airport culture.. I have to go through a pat-down every time I go through security due to being in a wheelchair.
Two of the airports I go through regularly are SeaTac and Juneau, Alaska. The folks at SeaTac are for the most part courteous and professional and get me through with a minimum of fuss (some even recognize me), while I generally try to avoid leaving the secured area at Juneau due to the attitude displayed by the security personnel.
I suspect these attitudes have rubbed off from whoever is in charge of these facilities but have no proof for that proposition.
December 27, 2009, 2:02 pmjfb2252 says:
Prof. Kerr,
I am simply taking airline instructions literally. Ten years ago they said to be at the airport one hour in advance of flight time. Now they say two hours. Irrespective of how long the actual “security process” takes one is activity-restricted for longer periods. I count that as wasted.
Using your quarter hour, the public would still be ahead with one plane lost per year. Of course it’s difficult to sell statistical thinking on such topics.
J
[OK Chimes in: Thanks J. Just to be clear, airport recommendations of when to arrive do not mean that this is how long it will take. The are just recommendations, and you're not bound by them. Also, my understanding is that most airlines still say one hour for domestic flights if you're not checking any luggage.
Finally, I think it's worth noting your assumption that time waiting at the airport is equivalent to time being dead. This is not necessarily so. If you bring a computer, or a book, or perhaps a cell phone, you can use that time better than you could use it if you were dead. For example, you can use a cell phone at the airport to call your mom: you cannot do this if you are dead. (I should add that I am assuming that death permits no use of time, although I realize different people of different faiths might use other assumptions.) ]
December 27, 2009, 2:03 pmDan D says:
Professor Kerr, what jfb2252 was referring to as costing at least one hour may have been arrival times at the airport. Travelers have been instructed that they must appear and check in for their flights much in advance of the scheduled departure, compared to prior practice. It indeed adds a minimum of one hour of non-productive time for each airport ground arrival in advance of a departing flight.
Not every such traveler uses modern electronic toys such as smart phones, laptops, netbooks, or Kindle type readers in order to make that wasted time somewhat more productive.
December 27, 2009, 2:06 pmAlan Gunn says:
The Israelis, whose airport security has proven to work better than ours, look for people, rather than (or, better, in addition to) things. That requires various forms of profiling, and so would annoy the ACLU, but it seems to work. While I have no inside information, I’d guess that the guy on the Delta flight wouldn’t have gotten onto El Al.
December 27, 2009, 2:08 pmJon says:
Orin:
One of the key criticisms was this: “Passengers — not the TSA — apprehended this guy, so by all means lets keep pesky passengers in their seats.”
I think this is dead-on. It just makes no sense to discourage passengers from acting by adopting a blanket “security rule” against movement. Its outrageously irresponsible.
December 27, 2009, 2:15 pmHans says:
It didn’t used to be political theater, but it is now.
The TSA is much worse at detecting fake bombs than the private security firms it replaced, in performance tests, as USA Today and other newspapers have reported.
The private security firms usually caught fake bombs; the TSA usually misses them.
The TSA is also much worse at catching explosives and detecting security threats than the private firms that still operate.
The Obama Administration is also taking steps to make the situation even worse, by making the TSA even more bureaucratic and hidebound.
The TSA is now banned not only from engaging in RACIAL profiling — which is an understandable ban — but also profiling based on all sorts of NON-suspect characteristics, that are completely constitutional to profile based on, and completely permissible under the Supreme Court’s Garrett and Feeney decisions.
December 27, 2009, 2:16 pmChris Travers says:
Phineas:
We need the general public to be educated about basic security concepts too so they will see past a lot of the flailing arms of panicking politicians. Important concepts that folks need to understand are:
1) Acceptable risk.
2) Defence in depth. (Anyone who understands this properly should understand why surprise security measures are stupid.)
3) Basics of incident response.
4) Failsafe
5) Graceful failure
I left out perimeter control just because I think mst people have a basic grasp of the concept.
In general, our politicians fail miserably on the first three and our airport fail miserably on the last two.
December 27, 2009, 2:17 pmSara says:
Jon, That is an absurd criticism. If you jump out of your seat to subdue the bad guy. No one is going to prevent you.
December 27, 2009, 2:17 pmTim says:
I carried a knife on 3 flights in the same day in 2003. I didn’t even realize it until I got off the third plane and reached in my pocket to get my keys. Ever since that day, I’ve been convinced that airline security was a joke.
December 27, 2009, 2:21 pmPeteP says:
Orin –
“[OK Chimes In: I find it hard to know. Presumably, the primary point of the rules is to deter the easier methods of blowing up planes."
None of us can really 'know'. But the point of the rules is to prevent ALL planes from blowing up. It may be an unobtainable goal, but it is the only rational goal. Preventing 'most' of them from blowing up is not rational.
" That is, the goal is to force Al Qaeda to have to use methods that are less likely to succeed."
Yes, that is part of the effort.
" They might require assembling in flight, might be more likely to malfunction. Given that, I don’t know whether the rules are effective: Do we know what Al Qaeda would have done if the rules were not in place? I don’t know, but I would be interested to know if you do.]”
As above. I suspect the body count would be horrendous. However, that does not define ‘the goal’ or ‘primary point’, which has to be ’100 % prevention’, not ’99 %’.
This ain’t horseshoes, and ‘close’ don’t count.
[OK Chimes in: PeteP, I disagree. While you say 100% perfect security is the only "rational" goal, I think it is actually the only irrational goal: It is the only goal we know is impossible. The goal is make it harder to carry off attacks to stop them while not bringing international air travel to a halt: There is a natural cost/benefit trade-off to be made. To be clear, I'm not saying our current trade-offs are correct. I just think that you can't avoid a trade-off, or dismiss the concept of a trade-off as simply "irrational."]
December 27, 2009, 2:26 pmSara says:
Hans, The USA Today article you cite (over and over) says the study showed that randomly tested screeners, who were tested more often, were better at screening. That’s not surprising.
December 27, 2009, 2:29 pmChris Travers says:
IIRC, Israelis use forms of profiling designed to look for nervous, agitated, etc. passengers. I have no problem at all with profiling people based on apparent state of mind.
December 27, 2009, 2:31 pmwws says:
Whenever we get serious about security, we’ll implement the kind of systems that El-Al has. As long as we’re only interested in political theatre and CYA’ing, then we’ll continue to do what we’re doing.
December 27, 2009, 2:35 pmChris Travers says:
Still, if you don’t have a definition of acceptable risk, the only approach is to stop airplanes entirely, or to ensure that while passengers must fly naked and handcuffed to chairs, luggage will be shipped to the airport by train and truck.
The simple fact is that many legitimate travelling items, (a pocket full of change and a pair of socks, for example) can be turned into surprisingly deadly weapons. You can’t have absolute confidence in your ability to assume that other types of controls will perfectly detect bombs or other explosives either.
Acceptable risk is usually defined on the basis of balancing the risk of an abuse occurring against the cost and disruption of countermeasures.
December 27, 2009, 2:38 pmChris Travers says:
I mildly disagree about the goal.
The goal is to make it harder to carry off attacks in order to increase the chance that more exotic attacks can be disrupted before they are put into action.
This is the reason behind the amount of liquids allowed. If you require that several terrorists cooperate to circumvent the limit, you increase the chance of detecting the plot and arresting those responsible.
December 27, 2009, 2:40 pmKirk Lazarus says:
The claim that airport scanners cannot detect objects in shoes is, from experience, false. I have always removed my shoes for the simple reason that the steel shanks would set off the metal detectors.
December 27, 2009, 2:44 pmSara says:
This does not sound right when you already have planes in the air and thousands flying over the next week, coupled with the known risk of multiple attacks.
December 27, 2009, 2:45 pmcommon_sense says:
Prof Kerr,
I don’t think your 9-11 example works. Although AQ went back to the same target, they used a different method. Any security measures we used to prevent a truck bomb would have had no effect on the airliners. If this MO continues, then AQ (assuming that this was an AQ attack, of which I’m not convinced) may well attack a flight coming into Detroit again, but they will use a method that has no relation to the failed attack and so any new security measures will do no good. I’m not sure this is an accurate statement of either the theory or the reality–I think AQ, like any organization, takes lessons learned from every attack and responds to those lessons in unique ways.
[OK Chimes in: I was assuming that Al Qaeda's widely recognized practices of repeating the same tactics over and over again was not a controversial point.]
December 27, 2009, 2:51 pmChris Travers says:
Just to be clear, I spend a surprising amount of time talking with security experts (not just IT security experts but physical security expert as well). I have friends who have worked a number of security management jobs including for major hydroelectric dams and the fact is that IT security begins with physical security.
There is a tremendous difference between how a trained security professional (in any area) looks at a security problem and how a layman does. Some of the security measures implemented over the last few years are good ones. For example, I think the requirement to x-ray shoes is a good one, and the limits on liquids follow a reasonable strategy.
However, at the same time, the current strategy of surprise security measures smells of amateurism. If you want a security system to predictably catch terrorists, it needs to work predictably.
December 27, 2009, 2:53 pmChris Travers says:
Which provides less risk:
1) The right security measure implemented a week or two after a failed attack or
December 27, 2009, 2:54 pm2) The wrong security measure implemented immediately after the attack left in place instead of the right one for several years?
Chris Travers says:
What kinds of scanners? What are you trying to detect? What are the scanners designed to detect?
I would also say that in many cases, I have seen times go DOWN.
December 27, 2009, 2:56 pmEvilDave says:
I assume the point of this isn’t to catch terrorists but to blunt criticism that each airport does things differently. It is turning a bug into a feature.
December 27, 2009, 3:03 pmThe point is political spin doctoring not security.
PeteP says:
Orin – “While you say 100% perfect security is the only “rational” goal, I think it is actually the only irrational goal:”
Tell me this – how many cases is it your ‘goal’ to lose in your legal career ? If your answer is ‘my goal is to never lose a case’, do you think it’s likely ? Or is your personal goal ‘win most of my cases, that’s OK ‘ ? Which client do you present that answer too, along with your invoice ?
[OK Chimes In: PeteP, yesterday I deleted one of your comments in which you responded to a commenter who disagreed with you by calling him an "idiot." Given that recent experience, I'm not sure I will be able to convince you. But here's my best shot. I think you are missing a basic distinction between choices among various competing goals versus absolute choices. When regulating airline safety, there are competing goals: any regulation implies both a cost and a benefit. Where there are costs and benefits, you need to consider both: The goal is to optimize the cost/benefit balance.
You ask me what I do when representing a client, and whether my goal is to win all the time or lose some of the time. That question doesn't make any sense because it assumes a situation in which there are only benefits and no costs. The better question is from the perspective of a client who sees both the costs and the benefits. Imagine you have been injured in the amount of $10,000, and you want to hire a lawyer to sue the person who injured you. The first person is a mediocre lawyer who says he'll take your case for a flat fee of $5,000, and the second is a fantastic lawyer who says he'll take your case for a flat fee of $100,000. You have a better chance of wining with the fantastic lawyer. And yet would you hire the fantastic lawyer? Maybe you personally would, but I suspect most people wouldn't: They would see the goal as optimizing their revenue, not winning the case at all costs. Thus they would make a rational choice to take steps that lessen the chance they will win their case -- not because they want to lose their case, but because the costs of increasing their chances of winning are just too high.]
December 27, 2009, 3:05 pmjfb2252 says:
This does not sound right when you already have planes in the air and thousands flying over the next week, coupled with the known risk of multiple attacks.
“This does not SOUND right” is much of the problem. The fast TSA response was political, not a result of thoughtful analysis.
Chris Travers five points in his 2:17pm post are clearer than anything I’ve contributed here. I wish to add that “failsafe” can’t apply to airplanes – the mass required to allow flight doesn’t allow enough safety margin. It can apply to airports, as he wrote.
December 27, 2009, 3:07 pmLTEC says:
Does everyone agree that “hardened cockpit doors” are a good idea? I’m not so sure. If they remained shut during the entire flight they might be. But if they open from time to time, this allows the enemy to gain access, and then to secure the cockpit against the citizen militia.
December 27, 2009, 3:13 pmSara says:
Which provides less risk:
1) The right security measure implemented a week or two after a failed attack or
2) The wrong security measure implemented immediately after the attack left in place instead of the right one for several years?
But those are not the only choices. How about security measures (even ad hoc) that address the immediate threat of multiple similar attacks and review in a week. Your proscription seems brittle on another front, in that it seems to prevent on the scene, or in the system, un-uniform, responses.
December 27, 2009, 3:20 pmbubba2 says:
The difference is the x-ray scanners can detect and identify a number of organic chemicals — i.e. explosive. This is also why lighters were banned in 2005 — because the new x-ray machines pick up the fuel and would cause a hit and a lot of false-positives that would lead to false-positive fatigue by the ops.
December 27, 2009, 3:25 pmSammy Finkelman says:
The odds were probably at least around 805 that that’s exactly what would happen (the bomb would be mostly a dud – that or it would have exploded when being assembled) and the odds were further well over 50% that it would not cause the plane the crash. Blowing a hole in the fuselage might kill one or two people but unless it was in the right location would probably not down the plane. It is better for us for this to be attempted near an airport – the only reason al Qaeda in Yemen instructed the bomber to do it at the end was sthat they wanted the plane to go down in the United States. But that fact enhanced the survivability.
so what does the TSA do? They decide, as always, to prevent JUSt the lasst attack. It doesn’t matter whether it makes sense in general, it only matters if it would have frustrated that particular attack.
The whole thing makes no sense – but is there anybody with enough courage and common sense to tear up most of the security precautions and just leave in place the ones that matter? Is theer anyone with the couurage to eliminate most of the names on the watch list and the no fly list and just leave enough so the list might as might be watched?
It seems like everyione is afraid to take anyone off the list but they are not afraid to avoid adding names.
I don’t think Al Qaeda is yet at the point of trying to gte the United States to impose such security measures as would harm air travel, but they might get the idea after a while.
December 27, 2009, 3:27 pmAleks311 says:
Re: It just makes no sense to discourage passengers from acting by adopting a blanket “security rule” against movement.
Last I flew (in July) there is no such rule. To be sure during takeoff and landing passengers are required to remain seated (and seatbelted) but that’s a general safety precaution that’s always been in effect as landing and takeoff are the riskiest times in flight, and crash-risk aside, they may also be occasion for abrupt movement of the aircraft which can cause falls or worse for someone on their feet (even the staff remains seated and belted during initial takeoff and terminal landing).
December 27, 2009, 3:28 pmEvilDave says:
Well there a few problems to properly hardened cockpit doors. Most of the problem comes from the way the airplanes a built, and fixing them would require extensive rebuilds.
A problem I can accept given older planes, but I am far less willing to accept it given newer planes (both newly designed and newly ordered/built).
To be properly hardened the cockpit needs:
1) A means of entry from the exterior of the plane (i.e. a second tarmac tunnel door). This will mean losing ~2 rows of passenger seats.
2) A solid wall between the cockpit and the rest of the plane such that it is physically impossible for either the pilots or anyone else to move between the two sections of the plane.
3) A toilet for the pilots as they can no longer use the passenger toilet.
4) One-way only communications (pilot-to-crew/passengers, not the other way). There should be no way for a terrorist to communicate with the pilots (e.g., use hostages to get the pilot to do something). Ideally the solid wall between pilots and crew would be soundproofed.
There should be a single “emergency” buzzer or light that the crew may be able to turn on (but not off) to indicate that something (they’d unable to communicate what) has happened and the plane needs to land ASAP.
As I said, it would be expensive and difficult to add this to your 20 year old DC-10, but something like this should be added to the 787 and any newly built airplanes (i.e. a 747 ordered to be built last month)
December 27, 2009, 3:28 pmjfb2252 says:
It is my understanding, from reading the pilot’s blog
December 27, 2009, 3:31 pmhttp://dir.salon.com/topics/p_smith/
that intercom discussion between cockpit and cabin staff is required before the cockpit door is opened. I think it likely that code words are agreed upon among the the staff before each flight to indicate duress on the cabin side. This should mitigate LTEC’s concern.
LTEC says:
I don’t know what “surprise security measures” means, but it seems to me that some amount of randomness and unpredictability is a good thing.
At this point, I’d like to speak a bit about how we should deal with other people’s comments. Every comment is necessarily brief, and I think it important to try to think about, and give the benefit of the doubt to, every comment we respond to. For example, consider the above comment. There are obviously senses in which randomness in security can be a bad thing. For example, we can’t suddenly randomly choose to ban something — such as steel-tipped shoes — without telling people, since this adds an absurd amount of inconvenience to travelers. This would be a foolish and unfair criticism of my comment. Also, predictable randomness is obviously useless: for example, randomly but permanently assigning different rules to different airports. But are all uses of randomness bad? Is it bad to somewhat randomly order questions in an interrogation? If we regard it as too much of an imposition to test all passengers in all of 10 specific ways, is it necessarily a bad idea to randomly (and independently) apply 5 of them to each passenger? Are the El-Al procedures that everyone praises as so effective completely predictable? I’ve read otherwise.
December 27, 2009, 3:33 pmStewart Baker says:
I tend to agree with Orin on this. “Security theater” is another way of saying “security measures I find inconvenient and that aren’t perfect.” Since nothing is perfect, “security theater” is really just an epithet.
That said, I’ve got a long post on Abdulmutallab, “Six Uncomfortable Answers,” suggesting that we’re running out of ways to provide security through mass inconvenience:
“We’ve got answers to some of my questions from yesterday. And they aren’t very comforting. All in all, they remind me of the saying that the small scandals in Washington are what’s illegal, but the real scandal is what’s legal. So, there were ways in which our air security system didn’t work as intended, and those are a small failure, but the real failure is the way our air security system is intended to work.”
http://www.skatingonstilts.com/skating-on-stilts/2009/12/security-fails.html
December 27, 2009, 3:54 pmChris Travers says:
I disagree with this btw. I think that two-way communication is a good thing and that too much concern about terrorists would if implemented that way, cause more deaths from air transport accidents that are routinely avoided.
Consider the following situation:
An Airbus A300 takes off. Cabin altimiter is registering dangerously high. To compensate pilots close air vents and increase compression.
Soon after this lavatory fire alarms start going off. The pilot/crew intercoms become unreliable and the plane makes an emergency landing.
Now, what should the pilot do before deciding whether to order an evacuation? Given that it is the lavatory fire alarms going off, he should ask the crew if there are signs of smoke in the cabin.
Getting this wrong can be fatal either way as two problems could be the case which require very different reactions.
If it is a fire, you need to evacuate. These can gut a plane relatively quickly.
Yet these specific symptoms, especially when combined with low cabin altimeter readings in an A300 can indicate overpressurization, in which case an evacuation acutely risk the lives of the cabin crew. There have actually been a couple of deaths already due to this mistake (the A300 cabin altimeter doesn’t have a mechanical stop, so on overpressurization, the altimeter will roll around and show a dangerously LOW reading). In this case, you have to slowly depressurize the plane.
In this case, the cabin crew have critical information vital to the preservation of human life.
A better approach is just to insist on policies where the first duty of a pilot during a hijacking is to get the plane on the ground as fast as possible.
There is another problem with separate entrance/exits in international flights: you end up also needing separate crew rest modules for the flight deck crew.
December 27, 2009, 3:57 pmNowMDJD says:
I’ll add that health emergencies on airplanes are more common than terrorist attacks. The possibility of two-way communication makes it possible for the pilots to calibrate their response with the nature and degree of the health emergency. I.e., the response to the circumstance of a passenger in immediate danger of death might be different than the response to a passenger in less desperate straits. One might require immediate landing– the other might allow for a safer and more leisurely approach to a different airport. Furthermore, knowledge of the nature of the emergency allows the folks on the ground to respond appropriately.
December 27, 2009, 4:29 pmJerry M says:
I saw a video of what would have happened if the Shoe Bomber’s shoe had exploded as originally planned. The plane completely blew apart in micro-seconds.
This Detroit bozo appears to have been in the wrong location to ignite the fuel in the wings, never mind his incompetence in setting off the bomb. A real dhimmi.
Also, gotta agree with prior posters – if he wanted to bring down the plane, don’t do it on the approach. Do it in the bathroom over the ocean when it can’t recover. This whole thing was incompetently planned.
OTOH, one plus is these screw-ups do keep the AQ’s on the defensive. They’re working pretty hard to find flaws in our defenses. Just when they think they’ve got an edge, they screw up. So we can change our defensive systems to adapt.
Unless, of course, they choose low-tech Mumbai-style attacks. Then it becomes a matter of response time for security forces and who’s already at the site with guns who are willing to respond. (Tom Clancy posited this very attack scenario in one of his novels. He did likewise in another novel on a 9/11-style scenario).
December 27, 2009, 4:33 pmChris Travers says:
Who is “they?”
I don’t see any reason to think this guy was AQ.
An incompetently planned attack like this DOES provide us vital information about what sort of attacks are possible. I suspect AQ is as pissed off by him as we are ;-)
December 27, 2009, 4:39 pmshu says:
My view of airport security was largely shaped by an incident I witnessed at Atlanta Hartsfield about a year or so before 9/11.
My wife was working at the airport and I often went to meet her when she got off work. As were were leaving one evening three airline security staff came running past us. Rounding the corner to one of the lesser used (single metal detector) exits we saw why. The only two security screeners on duty were rolling around on the floor fighting each other. The security gate was unmanned. For how long? Your guess is as good as mine. But, ho hum, having broken up the fight the supervisors apparently went on their merry way.
December 27, 2009, 4:40 pmChris Travers says:
Sara:
The question uniformity of response and implementation of security measures are separate questions.
One should have security measures which support local responses. And these should be universally deployed. Unfortunately we don’t have this.
One obvious security measure that should be in place is the ability to shut down inter-terminal foot traffic and force everyone to go through security when moving between gates and/or terminals. (Per-gate would be tough to do with most airport designs. Per terminal controls would not be so bad.)
The point is to ALLOW a local response, not to throw random measures at threats.
For example, such would also be helpful in other cases. Imagine if someone runs through a “sterile zone” exit the wrong way. Have the security person push a button and instead of delaying every flight, you can limit the effect to one terminal because now the transits between terminals are shut down so folks have to leave the perimeter and go back in.
We do NOT have any reasonable containment strategies in most airport. This is something you are correct that we need.
December 27, 2009, 4:44 pmBruce Hayden says:
I think that you can tell that it is theater when they ban the type of behavior that foiled this attempt, plus several others, i.e. passengers responding to the threat. It almost feels like the logic used against concealed carry.
Why be locked into your seat for an hour before landing with little to do? What is that supposed to accomplish? And why landing? Why not take off too? After all, the planes are fully fueled at that time, and liable to make much bigger bangs if they hit anything (as we found on 9/11).
A friend suggested shortly after 9/11 that the best solution would be to give the first rows behind the cockpit to males under maybe 60 who have gone through extra screening, such as for Registered Travelers. Then, if someone tried to break into the cockpit, these guys could beat the stuffings out of the perps.
Finally, talking about theater, I flew regularly in and out of SLC (maybe 3 round trips a month) right before and after 9/11/01. In order to make everyone feel more secure, they stationed National Guard around the airport carrying their M16s.
The first question was what threat were the National Guard there to protect against? It couldn’t be a bunch of Mormons trying to get to Zion, since they were already there. And hijacking a jet from the ground was problematic, esp. with armed fighter jets within minutes of their location (when they weren’t already overhead).
Secondly, what good were they? They mostly didn’t have radios, and worse, didn’t have magazines in their rifles. There is a chance that they had ammo somewhere on their persons, but if they did, it was never apparent where. More likely, they didn’t. And I didn’t see any bayonets either.
December 27, 2009, 5:04 pmJoseph Slater says:
TSA folks, like all folks, are human and make mistakes (as do the machines they work with). And we should be trying to do better.
But gosh, in all the “airline security is a bad joke” comments, no mention of the fact that eight years and almost four months after 9/11, there have been no successful terrorist attacks on/using U.S. planes? Has A.Q. (and A.Q. wannabes) given up trying? Or maybe somebody is doing something right on our side?
December 27, 2009, 5:08 pmChris Travers says:
One other point about temporary measures:
Temporary measures, properly done, are uniform and with proper disclosure to travelers as to their impacts on them. Unfortunately in this case the fact that they aren’t uniform means that either the measures are laughably ineffective (like the other rules) or that they are generally not tolerable to travellers.
For example, a temporary ban on carry-on liquids after the liquid bomb plot made sense. It would have been better if it was better disclosed and duty-free cases better handled, but the security measure itself made sense.
Local changes from standard security measures do not make sense. They introduce weak links and hence offer no security at all. Worse, they can actually REDUCE security.
December 27, 2009, 5:12 pmBruce Hayden says:
I have always found this a bit bizarre. Given what is spent on TSA and customizing airports for their security, the logical thing would seem to be to be able to close off concourses. If someone runs the wrong way through the security exit, then just have security hit a button that closes doors to that concourse and freeze takeoffs and landings there until the problem is resolved. Instead, I regularly see lone TSA personnel, with a radio, and nothing else, controlling the exits, and no armed cops withing sight. And, they inevitably mostly face the concourses, instead of the outside. Late night, they can be there all alone.
December 27, 2009, 5:12 pmpc says:
“I wish that, just once, some terrorist would try something that you can only foil by upgrading the passengers to first class and giving them free drinks.” — Bruce Schneier, December 26, 2009
December 27, 2009, 5:19 pmChris Travers says:
To provide comparative numbers (not sure on how complete this list is):
In the years 1989 through 2000, there were at least ten terrorist attacks on foreign aircraft, and at least one attack on a US aircraft (FedEx 705, attempted hijacking by a member of crew overpowered by other crew members).
Not sure how to categorize Egypt Air 990 so it is excluded from the list (apparent suicide by first officer trying to crash plane, but no terrorist motive known).
Attacks on US pain Between PanAm 101 and 9/11 there were no successful terrorist attacks on US planes that I have been able to find. After 9/11 there seem to be more attempts but still no more successes.
So it seems that the data sample is too small to say whether new security measures are working or not.
December 27, 2009, 5:44 pmpc says:
Considering the problem a bit more I can think of one solution that is foolproof: find out what seat the terrorist sat in and eliminate that seat from all future flights.
December 27, 2009, 5:53 pmDann says:
What? Increased security measures, reminds me of a movie from the 70s…
“But Delta’s already on probation.”
December 27, 2009, 5:53 pm“They are? Well, as of this moment, they’re on DOUBLE SECRET PROBATION!”
Joseph Slater says:
PC, ruling it in the late afternoon. . . .
December 27, 2009, 5:59 pmpc says:
Final note, Nate Silver ran the numbers:
December 27, 2009, 6:01 pmSoronel Haetir says:
At least on the Alaska Air routes I tend to fly the cockpit door is closed for some time before the main cabin door and is not opened until after the main cabin door has opened at the destination. There have been times that extra paperwork has needed to be delivered after the main cabin door is shut and in those cases you can see someone riding the stair machine, presumably to the cockpit window.
Perhaps it has been relaxed some with code words as mentioned above, but I thought such was standard practice now, that the door is in fact not opened during flight.
December 27, 2009, 6:17 pmPeteP says:
Orin = “And yet would you hire the fantastic lawyer?’
If you think it’s a valid argument to compare a court case consisting of some financial damages with 300 people doing a nose dive in a flaming aircraft, and then you consider the cost effectiveness ratios in the cases, I’m pretty sure I won’t be able to convince YOU of anything.
I do notice you evaded my question : “How many cases is it your GOAL to lose in your career ?’. Not ‘How many is a good batting average ?’.
December 27, 2009, 6:19 pm11-B.2O/B4 says:
Hey! I’ve got a self serving suggestion! Just let veterans fly at reduced rates, certain MOS’s free (MP, Infantry, etc.). This augments your air marshals with trained personnel at minimum cost, delights yours truly and is 100% guaranteed to scare the bejeesus out of Al Quaeda planning committees. They would have delightful scenarios like this one dancing in their heads:
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/163084/elderly_carnival_cruise_guest_kills.html
December 27, 2009, 6:20 pmChris Travers says:
PC:
This is why one has to put this in perspective:
The number of serious safety incidents excluding terrorist incidents defined as:
1) Involving serious injury or loss of life due to being in or in contact with an airplane or
2) Severe damage to hull of airplane
have stabilized at approximately one incident per two million scheduled departures (worldwide, not including general aviation). This does not include Russian/Soviet-manufactured planes due to lack of safety data there.
Assume that half of those involve loss of life (which is approximately correct) and maybe half of those are truly catastrophic, any flight you are on is twice as likely to have a catastrophic mishap (crash into a mountain, fall into the ocean due to pitot covers accidently left off and wasps having nested in them, run out of fuel in the middle of nowhere, crash into the ocean due to maintenance leaving static ports taped shut, crash due to icing issues, have a engine compressor disk explode, have an engine fall off causing lack of control to half of the hydrolics, etc) than be subject of a terrorist attack.
December 27, 2009, 6:23 pmChris Travers says:
Next up, I suppose we will hear of plans to federally track all sales of smoke detectors in order to prevent terrorists from assembling a dirty bomb.
December 27, 2009, 6:35 pmA. Zarkov says:
From Schneier on Security:
December 26, 2009
Separating Explosives from the Detonator
Chechen terrorists did it in 2004. I said this in an interview with then TSA head Kip Hawley in 2007:
I don’t want to even think about how much C4 I can strap to my legs and walk through your magnetometers.
And what sort of magical thinking is behind the rumored TSA rule about keeping passengers seated during the last hour of flight? Do we really think the terrorist won’t think of blowing up their improvised explosive devices during the first hour of flight?
December 27, 2009, 6:39 pmVisitor Again says:
Orin’s speculation that “there may be a strategy going on here that goes beyond just ‘security theater’” and that “there does seem to be a method to the madness in the response of U.S. security officials” requires assumption of a level of competence that may be entirely unwarranted.
Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano has said, in the wake of the Christmas Day’s events, that “the system worked.” Yet, although this would-be terrorist’s own father alerted U.S.A. authorities of concerns about his son’s connections six months ago, he still wound up on a passenger plane landing in the U.S.A. Apparently he was on lists of people with suspected terrorist ties, and had been for a couple of years, but he was not on the no-fly list. That strikes me as an alarming failure to communicate/coordinate information of the type that preceded the events of September 11, 2001. In view of thIS failure, ther claim that the system worked is in its own right evidence of incompetence, that something is amiss.
See this interesting report on the above and on the would-be terrorist’s background in The Independent, the English newspaper.
December 27, 2009, 6:43 pmArthurKirkland says:
“The system worked”???
I understand the desire to reassure customers, support the travel industry, emphasize the positive, etc., and I am familiar with the issues associated with long-form, unscripted interviews on live television, but I hope the Secretary would acknowledge that saying “the system worked” was a mistake.
December 27, 2009, 6:51 pmChris Travers says:
A. Zarkov:
I like Schneier’s points. Also Schneier is a security professional and one who should be listened to in these areas (certainly he is better qualified than a law professor on this topic). One thing I would add though is that the most dangerous time that a bomb of this sort could be detonated would be during cruise phase. The reason here is that a small hole in the fuselage, depending on where it is, can result in explosive decompression which can, in some cases, bring down the airplane. The idea of the last hour of flight being special is absolute nonesense.
This should be touted as a success not of the system but of vigilance of passengers. However I am not sure that security succeeded. It seems to me that the liquid detonator was inadequately tested.
I would say I have been thinking about how on earth one could possibly detect this sort of device outside of backscatter (see-through-clothes) imaging which customers would rightly object to. To tell you the truth, I can’t think of any immediate fixes. So I suppose the government is going for publicity because no substantive measures can be put in place immediately.
Some new X-ray scanners are remarkably good at picking up certain kinds of chemicals. The ones the USDA uses to screen goods on entry are quite amazing. However one thing one has to think about is what sorts of liquid detonators one might be looking for and whether they have substitutes. I don’t know whether the current generation of scanners could be quickly changed to look for such chemicals but that is the direction I think one would have to go.
The thing about it is, the measures known offer no substantive security and are at best slight of hand by the government (and at worse, arms flailing in panic). This isn’t the case with every new security policy. But it seems to be the case here.
December 27, 2009, 7:01 pmsteve s says:
As noted above by others, security guys have been getting on planes with forged boarding passes and contraband for the last few years. The TSA has admitted that they will only catch the stupid terrorists.
If we tried to develop a market oriented approach to this what would it look like? Assume the airlines are held liable for passenger deaths due to terrorist acts. Given their rarity, I suspect we might not see them do anything different. Or, how about replacing attendants with ex-military/police. Heaven knows we spend enough time waiting for take-offs. There should be plenty of time to search everyone on the plane.
Steve
December 27, 2009, 7:15 pmPeteP says:
Chris – “This is why one has to put this in perspective:”
By your logic, seeing as the odds of a given individual being on a given plane or in a given building when a terrorist causes them to try to occupy the same point in the space / time continuum at 600 + MPH are infinitesimal, we shoul not bother trying to protect against that, etiher ? After all, it’s not a cost-effective endeavor …
December 27, 2009, 7:19 pmSara says:
If its true that within 60-90 minutes of the incident that all 4000+ flight crews taking off and landing in the US and all screening crews were informed and new procedures put in place (as the Secretary said), than that seems like a good thing (although quicker would always be better).
I can think of advantages to having everyone in their seat: 1) you know where everyone is and the crew has greater freedom of action; 2) other passengers reacting to an incident, don’t have to worry about the toddler running up the aisle or the elderly gentleman standing in the way; 3) there is less confusion; and 4) better sight lines.
December 27, 2009, 7:26 pmChris Travers says:
PeteP:
There are a couple questions and my answers:
1) What is the real risk of a terrorist attack? I would suggest that if we abandoned all current measures the risk of terrorist attacks would go up substantially. Consequently reasonable measures should not be abandoned. I would note I think the ban on liquids and scanning shoes are generally reasonable. The exceptions are designed to present a manageable sample of liquids which can be subject to additional tests.
2) What level of risk is acceptable compared to the level of intrusion? If, as a result of this failure, we strip search and body cavity search every passenger, we would certainly stop any copy cat attacks. Worth it? I doubt it.
The thing is: we spend a disproportionate amount of effort and money on security compared to other threats. Our lives would be much safer if we put the money we spent on war in Iraq over phoney security issues (and lies about ties to 9/11) there to work improving safety on American roadways. Even in September of 2001, car crashes killed more folks on US soil than terrorists did by a substantial margin, and the numbers were not unreasonably high for that month.
Worse still, folks like you demand a perfect security record. This leads folks like Napolitano to engage in measures that will reduce airport security in order to keep folks happy.
I will tell you from years of experience dealing with IT security problems is that although sometimes temporary measures are necessary, those MUST be thought through properly and uniformly implemented. Aside from true emergencies, one is ALWAYS better off acting slowly and deliberately than rashly and quickly.
My POV is:
1) We don’t know if we are safer or not since before 9/11 because we have inadequate data samples.
2) Some of the post-9/11 measures have been good.
3) This set of measures is designed solely to assure travelers and not designed to have substantive impact.
4) This specific type of threat has no acceptable temporary measure to prevent a replay. The only effective measures really SHOULD result in 4th Amendment challenges (universal strip searches and backscatter equivalents) and would be rejected by travellers.
5) The public would do better to worry about car crashes than terrorist attacks as these constitute a much greater risk to personal safety.
Do you disagree with any of this?
December 27, 2009, 7:35 pmMark Field says:
I don’t agree. To me, “security theater” refers to things which (a) inconvenience lots of people; and (b) aren’t very likely to deter a successful terrorist attack.
A great deal of air travel “security” regulation falls into this category IMO, including the latest silliness of having to sit in your seat for the last hour.
Air travel used to be pleasant. Now I avoid it whenever possible.
December 27, 2009, 7:36 pmpc says:
Which is why I require all of the people that use my network to use a one time pad every time they log in. If you need to log into my network, let me just fire up my Geiger counter and create a new key…
December 27, 2009, 7:36 pmChris Travers says:
That doesn’t address the main objection though which is that cruise phase of the flight is where the bomb would be most effectively detonated. As near as I can tell this might be tied to the approximate time that the plane was over US airspace. This then imposes great burden on passengers (not able to use restrooms, sleep with blankets, etc) with no real benefit to security.
But what does that say about a London to Las Vegas flight? I doubt there is any available fight plan where an hour would be a magic number. Given the number of attempts to attack airliners to have strong connections to the UK, I would think such a flight plan would be the reference for such a policy.
To get the benefits, one would have to require people to stay in their seats with no personal items on their laps for the ENTIRE flight.
December 27, 2009, 7:46 pmSara says:
If the MO is that detonation occurs on landing in the US, where it can be seen, then that seems like a reasonable place to start, especially in the hours after the initial incident.
December 27, 2009, 7:53 pmChris Travers says:
Sara:
Your point would hold some weight if the rest of the response was carefully thought through. I am not convinced it was. In fact, what I see in the press reports suggests that there is an admission that no measures acceptable to travellers would be effective at stopping replay attacks.
Security folks keeping them on their toes by being unpredictable is about like lawyers pounding on the table. It means you have neither theory nor facts on your side.
Further, the measure as considered seems to be of extremely limited effectiveness. Combined with other elements of the response, I have to call into question the competence and/or motives of the people making the decisions.
To tell you the truth, this is the FIRST time I have made such an allegation about a new security rule at airports. I am even willing to back past security rules changes. But this one is different because it breaks fundamental rules about how you go about securing things.
As for the MO as a consideration, if you tell the passengers ahead of time, it just means the terrorists can detonate the bombs ahead of time where they would be more effective anyway. If you spring it as a surprise “sorry, we now are told due to secret new regulations you cannot use the restroom for the remainder of the flight” you put the passengers at a great deal of risk of traumatic bladder ruptures in the event of a hard landing. Given that hard landings are an order of magnitude more common than terrorist attacks…..
December 27, 2009, 8:13 pmGene Hoffman says:
Schnier is an old friend and I’ve spent a good part of my career thinking about, implementing and executing on security.
First some background. Airport security pre-911 was simply firearms screening – no more and no less. There was some thought about trying to at least deter a Lockerbie style attack – some lines were outfitted with explosive swab testing – but the goal was to stop the hijack to cuba at handgun point.
Post 9/11, added to the list were detonators and to some extent box cutters/knives/tools. Of course the actually effective changes were reinforced cockpit doors w/ a different set of access rules and the broad based change that regardless of what any government agency said, the flying public now assumes a hijack is an immediate threat to life and limb.
After Richard Reid, TSA did not increase explosive screening much, but did decide to scan your shoes… It’s not clear to me that RDX/C4 (or PETN) is really all that different in perceived density in the modern scanners than lithium ion but I digress.
After the Europe attacks lead to a ban on volume of some liquids. How TSA knows you actually have contact lens solution in the unlimited amount of that you can bring on is where the theater comments often come from.
Now we return to an attack where the attacker carried PETN and probably 3 ounces or less of a supposed trigger.
The second PETN attack makes it look a lot like theater.
The fundamental issue is that if the operative is willing to die, we really can’t stop him. We can try to limit the amount of explosives he can get aboard and we can act like we can stop firearms or blades (but TSA’s failure rate on all three is extremely high when tested.)
Instead we probably need to swab everyone and each carry on for explosive residue with tags for flight number and passenger so passengers can move on through and be flagged down if a positive turns up. However, the machines are slow and I expect the false positive rate is high.
Otherwise, we return to the real security – the flight crew and the passengers. Simply annoying people further or performing the virtual strip searches that the new backscatter machines perform is theater.
As a final thought – if weapons can’t be kept out of prisons where strip searching is routine, how do we think we’re going to keep weapons off planes?
-Gene
December 27, 2009, 8:13 pmSara says:
Chris – I can’t imagine an emergency or threat situation, where passengers would be better off running around but maybe that’s just because I’ve been told to return to my seat too many times.
December 27, 2009, 8:18 pmThe Big Lebowski says:
Address the fact that the guy was witnessed being escorted on the plane in Amsterdam without a passport and obviously without going through the regular security procedures:
While Mutallab was poorly dressed, his friend was dressed in an expensive suit, Haskell said. He says the suited man asked ticket agents whether Mutallab could board without a passport. “The guy said, ‘He’s from Sudan and we do this all the time.’”
http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2009/12/flight_253_passenger_says_at_l.html
December 27, 2009, 8:39 pmSoronel HaetirPete P, says:
PeteP,
At some point the cost of greater security becomes greater than the harm prevented. Whether that cost is monetary, inconvience or something else doesn’t really matter.
If we reached a point where baggage actually did go by truck or train to meet arriving passengers I would say that point has been far exceeded. Every incremental increase in actual security is likely to be a magnitude more expensive than the prior increment. There simply is no such thing as perfectly secure *and* useful. At some point you just have to go “that’s enough”.
December 27, 2009, 8:57 pmChris Travers says:
Also I would note that confining people to seats for an hour or more is likely to increase risks of serious health complications such as blood clots.
I predict it will cost lives. Security indeed. Protecting us so we can end up dead.
December 27, 2009, 9:05 pmChris Travers says:
Sara:
You miss the point.
Either you tell passengers ahead of time that restrooms will be off limits and you encourage folks (terrorists or otherwise) to change plans accordingly, or you put ordinary passengers at risk for a number of serious health consequences.
No security is gained in the first case, and the second case kills more people than it saves.
December 27, 2009, 9:09 pmJonathan H. Adler says:
Orin (and Stewart) –
A few quick points.
First, I’ve had more than one government official (including some of Stewart’s former colleagues) tell me that many security measures were designed, in part, to reassure travelers so people would continue to fly. I think this is also a fair way to interpret Secretary Napolitano’s glowing discussions of her Department’s performance on the various news shows today. The aim is to reassure, as much as (if not more than) to reduce the threat.
Second, I think it is fair to label as “security theater” those measures that that we know are unlikely to be particularly effective, especially when there are alternative measures that could be adopted. So, for instance, we continue to make a big deal about searching for weapons, like small knives, which could no longer be used to take a plane down — in Cleveland we have a big display of things supposedly confiscated at our security checkpoint. Yet, as Stewart notes, we are still lagging in efforts to identify those travelers likely pose the greatest risks.
I think it’s totally reasonable to try and prevent AQ or whomever from repeating things they’ve tried before, but we should be serious about it, focusing on what’s relevant and adopting measures that are reasonably cost-effective.
Who cares when the guy went up to go the bathroom? The key part of the plan is that he had explosives in his pants. This is as silly as the old rule requiring enhanced screening for one-way tickets. To take another example, assuming it makes sense to limit liquids, we should be serious about it — and we weren’t at first. When limits on liquids were first imposed, there were numerous exceptions (saline, baby bottles, etc.) that rendered the rule virtually meaningless, particularly since exempt containers were not checked in any way. We wanted it to look like we were limiting liquids, without actually doing it. During this time period I traveled with baby bottles at least a half-dozen times without even having to remove them from the diaper bag. This has changed, and such liquids are now checked, but it’s a recent development — a sign that we’re actually a bit more serious about liquids, but the same story can be told many times over.
In sum, I think it’s fair to characterize much of airport security as “theater” in that it is designed to look like we take airport security more seriously than we actually do.
JHA
December 27, 2009, 9:15 pmChris Travers says:
They can’t. If I wanted to, I could carry on perfectly legitimate items that could double as lethal weapons. A fair bit of pocket change and a pair of heavy, sturdy socks will do, as would a couple bars of soap and a long-sleeve shirt. I suppose we could ban bars of soap on airplanes, but what of the can of soda I purchase after going through security? That would work too.
On the liquids bit, I know many times these are taken out and tested chemically. I have had baby food tested when I carried it as well. I don’t know how common contact lens solution screening is though.
Otherwise I generally agree with your points.
I would further add that the emphasis on making security “unpredictable” should raise red flags in the mind of EVERY security professional reading those comments.
December 27, 2009, 9:17 pmPeteP says:
Chris – “1) What is the real risk of a terrorist attack? I would suggest that if we abandoned all current measures the risk of terrorist attacks would go up substantially. Consequently reasonable measures should not be abandoned. I would note I think the ban on liquids and scanning shoes are generally reasonable. The exceptions are designed to present a manageable sample of liquids which can be subject to additional tests.”
Agreed.
“2) What level of risk is acceptable compared to the level of intrusion? If, as a result of this failure, we strip search and body cavity search every passenger, we would certainly stop any copy cat attacks. Worth it? I doubt it.”
Logistically possible ? No. Any rational prevention techniques must be based in things that are doable in reality.
AS re : other beneficial uses of resources – yes, there is an infinite list of such. However, I don’t think that is a relevant way of looking at the issue.
“Worse still, folks like you demand a perfect security record.” -when was the last time you heard of a car accident, one single event, causing 300 casualties ?
“Aside from true emergencies, one is ALWAYS better off acting slowly and deliberately than rashly and quickly.” As re IT, my area, this is often true, but not always. For instance, I’ve found ( using the port scanner / network mapper tool I wrote for myself – very handy when stepping into a new contract position ), that some LAN’s are so grossly misconfigured that immediate massive action is required. I could give examples, but they are OT from the thread.
“1) We don’t know if we are safer or not since before 9/11 because we have inadequate data samples.” – and we never will know, because one half of the equation ( for good or ill ) will never occur.
“2) Some of the post-9/11 measures have been good” – we hope so. However, as above, we don’t really ‘know’. We will never have a baseline of ‘post-9/11, non-modified’ to compare against.
“4) This specific type of threat has no acceptable temporary measure to prevent a replay. The only effective measures really SHOULD result in 4th Amendment challenges (universal strip searches and backscatter equivalents) and would be rejected by travellers.”
Again, actions must be based in reality. For instance – we NEED to ‘profile’, Israeli style, at airports. It is proven effective, non-intrusive, and financially doable.
“5) The public would do better to worry about car crashes than terrorist attacks as these constitute a much greater risk to personal safety.” There are a wide variety of risks and dangeers in this world. To take you view of , basically, ‘don’t worry about the terrorists’ leads not to car crashes or salmonella outbreaks, but to a different loss of quality of life, not to mention the encroachment of muslim fundamentalism ( just look at the UK ).
Look at the effect of bus bombings in Jerusalem not so many years ago – your logic holds ( I guess ) that there were other daily dangers also, but look at what it did to quality of life there.
Things like the proposed ‘make everyone keep their hands in their laps and stare straight ahead for an hour before landing’ are utter nonsense, and likely to have as much benefit as ‘gun control’ laws ( obeyed only by the lawful innocents ).
December 27, 2009, 10:29 pmMichelle Raand says:
Talking about spreading infections, one thing that bugs me in the plane is the people who cough and sneeze without restraint. Most times they do that without consideration for the people sitting next to them and pass on their germs to us. I’ve wished for some form of protection from the microbes they are spewing out. I could wear a face mask but it is so uncomfortable and moreover it scares away everyone. So I came up with a product idea and patented it. I want to know how many others like me will find this product useful and so created a survey. Just fill it up and give me your valuable feedback. Thanks!
December 27, 2009, 11:07 pmhttp://www.surveymonkey.com/s/air-travel
Leo Marvin says:
I thought this has been settled doctrine ever since modulating phaser frequencies worked against the Borg.
Anyway, to change the subject a bit, the lack of love for airport security reminds me of reactions to TARP and to lawyers (when we’re telling clients what they shouldn’t do). The goal of each is to avoid disaster, but for however long life may go on disaster free, there’s never a moment we say, “thank God for TSA/TARP/my lawyer, because today’s the day he/she/it saved us from the next 9-11/Great Depression/target letter.” There’s no dopamine surge or endorphine high. The costs, on the other hand, are palpable and unpleasant, and the unpleasantness is compounded by our inability ever to be sure we skirted a disaster. So I wonder if we aren’t prone to an irrationally bad attitude about these things. Which isn’t to say airport security, TARP or the last advice I gave are necessarily worth anything, just that we should inform our assessments of them with the understanding that we may have a bias to correct for.
December 28, 2009, 12:32 amjukeboxgrad says:
kerr quoting adler:
Yes, it’s theater, but that comment is describing only the surface of the drama. Commenter Mike got to the heart of the matter in the very first thread, in one of the very first comments:
Consider these two perspectives:
A) The threat isn’t that great (viewed either at a personal level or at a national level). And to the extent that there’s a threat, there isn’t really a whole lot we can do about it (aside from certain basic precautions that are obvious and reasonable).
B) There’s a great threat, but it’s being greatly reduced by the great measures being taken by our great government.
In a sense, the ultimate purpose of TSA is not to protect us. The ultimate purpose of TSA is to encourage us to reject a rational belief (A) and replace it with an irrational belief (B). Therefore it makes perfect sense that TSA is ubiquitous and intrusive. This reminds us that the threat is (allegedly) great. The barefoot person is encouraged to think this: ‘surely the threat must be great, because otherwise I would not have been asked to take off my shoes.’ So yes, part of the drama is “political theater that is supposed to make travelers feel more secure,” but another aspect of the drama is about reminding us to be afraid. In this regard terrorists and the government share a common interest.
December 28, 2009, 2:49 amSara says:
I note that the temporary measures are posted, above by Barnett, so people can stop debating phantoms and go full throttle at the thing.
Chris- Are you a Doctor, now?
December 28, 2009, 8:01 amguy in the veal calf office says:
I think Professor Kerr misses the point when he says 9/11 succeeded because box cutters & knives were permitted– they weren’t, that’s wrong.
The 9/11 attack succeeded in part because the government instructed everyone to obey the hostage takers and remain compliant. On one flight, in total defiance of government regulation, the passengers overwhelmed the hostage takers and saved lives at the White House or other destination. Passengers violated the rule again in subduing Reid and again on Christmas. Homeland Security responds by reasserting the rule.
Rodney Balko is right– passengers should be encouraged to be aware and act, the TSA is mostly political kabuki.
December 28, 2009, 1:38 pmChris Travers says:
Sara: No I am not a physician. My dad is and I have spent a lot of time talking with him about appropriate health issues regarding air travel in part because I tend to fly internationally at least every other year and most of these are trips that take me half-way around the world (Seattle-Jakarta).
The advice is to get up at least once every hour, to drink plenty of fluids, etc.
He has told me about some of his patients who were hospitalized with heart attacks related to thrombosis from air travel.
I have also looked into statistics for major airline accidents. These are at least 8-10 times more common than terrorist attacks, but comparatively few result in massive casualties. Ignoring health risks for people in accidents because you are more afraid of (far less common) terrorist attacks is worse than silly.
It’s worth considering.
One more question: Have you ever travelled with kids? I do regularly (travelled with my older son at ages of 2 months, 1 year, 2 years, and 5 years). How do you think a no-bathroom-use rule will affect them?
In particular, how do you think the cabin crew should respond if a 5-year-old really needs to use the rest room and you still have 55 min. until expected landing? Allow the rule to be broken? Say “pee in the barf bag?” etc?
However, I have some questions for the lawyer types here:
1) I have been told by professional pilots that all FAA and TSA regulations regarding in-flight operations may be ignored at times that they pose a risk to health and safety. Airlines also have an affirmative duty to provide for the health and safety of their passengers. This is especially true of US arline corporations. If an airline enforces this rule strictly wouldn’t that lead to the possibility of legal liability of health problems develop as a result?
2) If a 5-year-old cannot hold it any more, and is told he/she cannot use the restroom, who is legally responsible for cleanup costs after the impending pants-wetting or soiling episode? Is it different if it is an adult who cannot hold it anymore and pees his/her pants?
December 28, 2009, 2:46 pmKirk Parker says:
Sara,
Who would have any problem with that, if the measures were actually effective? The issue here is measures whose main purpose is, in the view of some at least, “the need to appear to be doing something”.
EvilDave,
Your pseudonym here is apt, as I was able to think of several very significant flaws with your inaccessible-cockpit design as I was reading them, and I have no real experience in either aeronautical design or aircraft operation.
Jerry M,
You either misunderstood what was being shown, or else the video was a crock.
Joseph Slater,
The question isn’t whether “somebody is doing something right on our side”. (Unquestionably there are some who are.) Rather, it’s whether TSA is part of the somebody-doing-something-right or not.
December 28, 2009, 4:48 pm