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Schneier Talks to the Head of TSA
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Mon Jul 30, 2007 11:46 AM
from the go-to-the-source dept.
from the go-to-the-source dept.
Bruce Schneier recently had the chance to sit down with Kip Hawley, head of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), and discuss some of the frustrations travelers experience head-on. "In April, Kip Hawley, the head of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), invited me to Washington for a meeting. Despite some serious trepidation, I accepted. And it was a good meeting. Most of it was off the record, but he asked me how the TSA could overcome its negative image. I told him to be more transparent, and stop ducking the hard questions. He said that he wanted to do that. He did enjoy writing a guest blog post for Aviation Daily, but having a blog himself didn't work within the bureaucracy."
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enharmonix writes "Courtesy of Bruce Schneier, it's nice to hear something good about data mining for a change: predicting and stopping crime. For example, police in Redmond, VA, 'started overlaying crime reports with other data, such as weather, traffic, sports events and paydays for large employers. The data was analyzed three times a day and something interesting emerged: Robberies spiked on paydays near cheque cashing storefronts in specific neighbourhoods. Other clusters also became apparent, and pretty soon police were deploying resources in advance and predicting where crime was most likely to occur.'"
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Ask him... (Score:5, Funny)
I'd ask myself, but I'd rather stay off that list, and since no one can say how you get on, this post might put me on that list, but I wouldn't know it until I couldn't fly next week.
P.S. Ask him if he admires Kafka and is trying to emulate his writings...
Re:Ask him... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not an idiot, but still evil (Score:5, Insightful)
Seems to me that makes it a whole lot worse.
Not the TSA, it's the airlines I have issues with! (Score:5, Interesting)
I have flown quite a bit this past year and visited airports across the country (for pleasure, never for business) and have never once had a run in with the TSA. My issues are solely with the airlines and their "customer service".
Last night was a prime example. Flying from SAV to ATL and on to MSP. My flight out of SAV was delayed from 19:42 to 22:15 and then in ATL we were originally delayed out until 01:20 then moved back to 22:10 (which I would have missed the connection) and then back to 00:10 (which was actually 00:30). We arrived at MSP 45 minutes late (which isn't that bad overall).
The flight from ATL to MSP has a TERRIBLE track record according to Flight Stats [flightstats.com] (0.9 out of 5 stars).
Then with Northwest's pilots calling in sick and them dropping ~9% of their flights for the weekend (170 to 200 flights) is just a joke.
The TSA hasn't exactly been friendly or courteous but at least they are doing their job. The airlines, OTOH, aren't doing anything except making a big hole and getting bailed out by the taxpayers while paying their CEO's millions.
Re:Doing their job? (Score:5, Interesting)
They're not first-class seats per se, but you can already do this on United and a number of other carriers. For more see:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=44 2986 [flyertalk.com]
Re:Doing their job? (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course being High dollar union employees, Most of the workers get a large salary plus lots of benefits and all. Then for each route, they divide the amount of passengers up into weight that the plane can carry and then figure this into the the amount of passengers the plane can hold. First class might cost more because it takes the space of more seats up (potential passengers). They might subsidize the coach fairs but it is more likely that if your taking the space of two passengers, you ticket will cost relatively the same plus the added benefits like more personnel and luxury items being stored, profit and all that.
This is one of the reasons why if you book your flight several months in advance, your tickets are cheaper then last minute flights. they attempt to make up the short comings at the last minute. You can also look a this as why they over book flights sometimes too. The want to make sure that with all the last minute cancellations and all, that all the seats are sold.
When I got my pilots license, they taught us to calculated the cost of the flight on the total weight of the plane as it would fly along with a fraction of the required maintenance. It boiled down to a unit we could multiply against the cost of fuel and accurately cover our expenses. Of course I can only fly single engine small aircraft for private use but the principle is the same.
Re:Doing their job? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Doing their job? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not the TSA, it's the airlines I have issues wi (Score:5, Interesting)
On my last few trips to the USA I have been pulled over by the TSA on about a third of the flights (several internal flights on each trip), and by customs once. Since they were not pulling over one third of the people in the line, I presume something about me had me flagged as a potential terrorist. Every single time, the operatives have been polite and efficient.
Last but one time it was not at all surprised to be flagged, since I had only noticed that there was a screw up with my booking when I went to collect my ticked and I was, in fact, booked on the flight exactly one month earlier (fortunately the airline just charged me a token 'don't be a numpty again' fee and let me on). Even I can see this is quite suspicious behaviour (although the fact my connecting flight was booked on the correct day would have been evidence of incompetence, rather than malice, on my part). The guy who checked my hand luggage was very friendly, and since I wasn't in a hurry (and the airport wasn't busy at that time) we chatted for a bit after he had decided that I probably wasn't a terrorist. I was a bit worried about being searched then, since my laptop had one broken hinge and being opened carelessly would have probably snapped the other one and pulled the screen off, but they let me open it and after I pointed to the damage were very careful with it. They wouldn't let me have another go in the machine that blew a puff of air at you from all directions to find explosive residue though.
The next time I think the security personnel were more interested in seeing what the Nokia 770 I was carrying could do. It took about five seconds to assure them it wasn't a bomb, and then another five minutes of demonstrating the various features and discussing with them and whether they should buy one. I felt like I was trapped in a parallel universe where 'does it run Linux' was a more important question than 'is it a bomb.' While that might be true on Slashdot, it probably shouldn't be to security people.
I haven't been in an airport where I couldn't see at least a couple of ways of bypassing the security[1], but I've also never been inconvenienced by it. At Narita, I arrived at the check-in desk as they were packing up and my flight was due to start boarding. They rushed me through the pilots-only lane in security and got me from the airport entrance to the boarding area in ten minutes (it would be the furthest terminal away from the entrance when I was running late...). It's a shame airports aren't always this efficient.
[1] Interestingly, some of the security is expressly designed this way, as a honeypot. They make a few ways of bypassing it obvious and then have a secondary check which picks up the people who do.
Re:Not the TSA, it's the airlines I have issues wi (Score:5, Interesting)
United flight from Hong Kong to Chicago. There's two of these a day. The day before our flight, both flights had been overbooked and everyone showed up. So they had to pay people effectively $1200 each to stay an extra day in HK. The day we were flying everyone showed as well as the people who had been left over from the previous day. They paid 56 people $1400 to wait around in the hopes of getting the second flight that day. One of them had been bumped twice the previous day and had no reason to hurry home so he had gotten a total of $5000 in order to delay his flight a day or so. Keep in mind the plane tickets themselves were $1200 each when we purchased them.
The weird part is that once we were on the plane and they had already paid 56 people who were at the gate to not get on the plane, they had to ask another 10 to get off because of weight restrictions. So the airline paid out $92000 on that flight alone because they overbooked it. This is why the airlines are going bankrupt, because their predictive models of who is going to no-show isn't working anymore. I have several relatives who always build an extra 2-3 days into their travel schedules so they can volunteer to be bumped. As a result they usually end up essentially getting upgraded to business or economy plus AND getting to fly for free.
Define Bureaucracy (Score:5, Insightful)
Hey buddy, if you want to be more transparent, hold less of your meeting 'off the record'.
Ha! (Score:5, Insightful)
Since this 3oz liquid horse shit has been going on, Hawley has been saying it's based on "scientific findings" like a broken record. But he has yet to show these "scientific findings".
So what would the justification be for prohibiting lip gloss, nasal spray, etc? There was none, other than for our own convenience and the sake of a simple explanation.
There you have it folks, Hawley freely admits that he's stupid and lazy.
Oh, I'll report if I get on the "No-fly" list for this. Because, obviously, I'm a "threat" for pointing out Government stupidity.
Bureaucracy is a force multiplier for idiocy. (Score:5, Insightful)
I can partially sympathize with him. The TATP plot wouldn't have worked, but there are probably other things that could be smuggled onboard and used to bring down a plane. By limiting quantities and the sizes of things that could be used as mixing/pressure vessels, some risk may have been mitigated.
> Hawley has been saying it's based on "scientific findings" like a broken record. But he has yet to show these "scientific findings".
And I can even go so far as to say I agree with him on his lack of specifics. There's no need to censor recipes, but there's no need to publicize them. Better to let the bad guys Google it themselves, wind up with something copied out of a 60s-era cookbook, and Darwinize themselves out of the gene pool without hurting anybody.
> Oh, I'll report if I get on the "No-fly" list for this. Because, obviously, I'm a "threat" for pointing out Government stupidity.
And therein is the root cause: bureaucracy. Kip Hawley may not be an idiot [kiphawleyisanidiot.com], but he's a bureaucrat. It doesn't matter how smart you are if the system you're working with is fundamentally flawed. That applies from Kip all the way down to the goon who barks at you for failing to remove your shoes soon enough, or the goon who barks at you even louder for removing your shoes before you were ordered to.
Since the typical TSA Goon is too poorly-educated to understand chemistry, and the typical civilian is too poorly-educated to understand either chemistry or risk, that neither audience needs to know.
There's the first idiocy: A bureaucracy is happy to tell you "what" (three ounce containers, one Freedom Baggie) to do, but never "why". The TSA goon enforces the policy with mindless efficiency; he is trained to be mindless. His civilian subjects see the policy as wholly arbitrary unfounded in reason or logic, because no reason or logic has ever been supplied, and treat him as the goon he is -- and he likewise learns to regard the cilivian subjects as idiots, because they're too stupid to follow a rule as simple as "3 oz containers in a 1-liter baggie".
And here's the second level of idiocy: Since nobody has a "need to know" the reason, nobody's allowed to know, and it's not too big a step before you get is afraid to know and is afraid to even think.
Some guy ahead of me was raising a fuss about the 3/1/1 rule, and I would have loved to have explained to him the reasoning behind the rule. Of course, I didn't. If I'd said "Dude, it's about limiting the size of reaction/pressure vessels and the amount of reagents that can be smuggled in without having more than a certain number of people buying airline tickets within a certain timeframe, just chill out and toss the toothpaste", I'd probably still be in some black hole somewhere.
It's this second level of idiocy that's the real problem: the notion that, in a bureaucracy, anyone who does think through the reasoning behind a policy, must be a threat.
More than however many years since (a plot that's mentioned in TFA that I no longer want to type on a web form), more than 5 years since 9/11, two years since the bogus liquid plot, and only now, on an obscure web forum, does the bureaucracy actually come out and admit why the rules are what they are.
The original policy isn't a great idea, but it isn't exactly a dumb idea either. But it's taught arbitrarily to the goons, it's enforced arbitrarily against the goons' victims, and ends up with all three sides (Policymaker, Goon, and Civilian alike) regarding each other with nothing but contempt and suspicion. To the point that I (like
Dignity (Score:5, Insightful)
Treat passengers with dignity. That, in my opinion, is the most important part. It does not cost very much — hardly anything at all.
For example, if you force people to remove their shoes (and I always refused to do that, when it was still optional — until a year or so ago), do keep the floor sparkling clean in the area — and make sure, TSA employees are bare-feet too as a reassurance. Thousands of people cross those spots daily — it is not only undignifying, but also unsanitary to be walking there without footware.
For crying out loud — a Ukrainian airport provides travelers boarding a JFK-bound flight with disposable footwear. Can JFK not do the same?
When I made myself a pair out of paper-towels, the TSA-thugs at JFK (both the drone and his supervisor) insisted, I take them off too...
Of course, my calling them names (as I just did) only further alienates them and contributes to the problems, which Mr. Hawley is trying to solve...
Get a cluebat/some common sense (Score:5, Insightful)
I told him to be more transparent, and stop ducking the hard questions. He said that he wanted to do that.
Maybe he does (bwahaha, you don't get to a federal government position that high up by being "transparent", Bruce) - but if you think the Bush administration was controlling with scientists and public health officials (see recent stuff from surgeon general), I bet his control of "security" people is even worse.
Most of it was off the record, but he asked me how the TSA could overcome its negative image.
First off, why didn't Bruce say, "I'll only come if everything is on the record?" As it stands, this is basically a PR puff piece for nerds.
Second, to actually answer the question:
I'm too disgusted to keep thinking about this. Overall? Don't do something unless/until you can do it competently.
Having been a TSA screener... (Score:5, Insightful)
Fire all the dumbasses that think they are either "federal agents" or otherwise "law enforcement."
They need to focus on customer service and let one or two guys at any given checkpoint be "the bad cop" in that the primary mission and focus for screeners would been to assist passengers in compliance with regulations rather than "getting the cattle through the meat processing plant" mentality that we have now.
yes -- attitude is job 1 (Score:5, Insightful)
This attitude problem isn't unique to TSA. It happens frequently to low-status people who are given more authority than they know how to handle. It happens to cops and to computer systems administrators who forget that they are ONLY working for the benefit of the people they are mistreating.
If TSA wants to fix it's image, they should look around to law-enforcement and other public-facing agencies and find ones who have been effective training their front-line employees to be both firm and courteous, both vigilant and respectful.
Bill Maher had it right (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Negative image (Score:5, Insightful)
But there is no effective screening method for that, so we'll pretend that little problem doesn't exist.
Re:Negative image (Score:5, Interesting)
But there is no effective screening method for that, so we'll pretend that little problem doesn't exist.
Ever departed from the Tel Aviv airport? That, my friend, is security. Sure, they have all of the neat whizzy gizmos that TSA has (better, probably, but it's been a while since I've been through TLV), but the crux of what they do is to interrogate the passengers. Not kidding. They stop and intensely question each and every passenger and assess their motives for being there. I was on a professional trip as part of a scientific delegation, and had to not just produce documents to that effect, but demonstrate that my name was in the conference program, and give part of my talk (naturally, since the agents aren't in my particular profession, I doubt they cared about what I was saying nearly as much as how I was saying it, and whether it appeared I was demonstrating fluency in some topic). There's about 10-20 minutes of this, and it's intense. They're trying to trip you up, to find someone who has something to hide. Like motives for having had surgery to implant C4 in their abdomen, as the parent post suggests.
The part that makes this mechanism tolerable, this mechanism which provides far better security than any purely technological solution, is that they have sufficient bandwidth to process many people despite imposing a 10-20 minute delay on each. There are banks and banks of agents, not just 2 or 3 inspection booths as in the US.
Re:Negative image (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Negative image (Score:5, Insightful)
The hope is that methods can be developed that limit the amount of damage that a person can do. Bombs on planes are pretty scary because in one instant, a person can feasibly bring down the whole plane and everyone on board dies. That same guy can stab someone in the neck with a pen, and it certainly sucks for that person, but it'd only be a matter of minutes before other passengers have subdued the attacker, and he's no longer a threat.
The terrorists on 9/11 apparently hijacked the plane with box cutters. That only worked because the passengers figured that the hijackers were going to follow the standard hijacking script of landing the plane somewhere and making demands to release the hostages. If the passengers had in any way thought it probable that the hijackers were going to purposely crash the planes into buildings, they would've resisted. They'd have had nothing to lose, seeing as the other alternative was certain death. And five guys with box cutters aren't likely to survive too long against 150 passengers fighting for their lives. There's not likely to be another attack like 9/11 where a plane gets hijacked and flown into a building. The standard response from the passengers would be different now. It'd still suck if someone jabbed a pencil into your stomach on a plane, but that sort of thing isn't really any more likely to happen on a plane than anywhere else. The attacker wouldn't gain anything by being on an airplane, they'd just make their escape much less likely.
Re:thanks for saving me the trouble (Score:5, Insightful)
Because they're engaging in some security theater in order to justify the existence of their own jobs, and the bureaucracies that support those jobs.
If they thought the liquids were really hazardous (as in, 'might be a bomb') then they'd need to put it in some sort of special disposal container. That they don't makes it clear that they know they're just taking people's shampoo.
It's all for effect. The idea is to make the shee--I mean, taxpayers--feel like they're getting something for their dollars.
Re:This proves the terrorists have won. (Score:5, Insightful)
Who are the real terrorists at this point?
Re:Honestly... (Score:5, Insightful)
And never question how one is necessary to prevent the other. Because if they didn't take that Boy Scout's 2 inch pocket knife, you would have certainly been stabbed to death before your plane was used in another 9/11!
the 3 oz thing... well it doesn't have to be a bomb.. I imagine a 3 oz container of some sort of chemical or biological substance could do some serious damage.
Yeah, or what looked like simple saline solution could pop out of the bottle and turn into a fucking dragon and eat everyone on board the plane! I mean, we are dealing with your paranoid imagination here so why not go whole-hog?
one thing I will admit however the shoe things sucks... it's needed but it could be done a little more polite as brought up by "mi" earlier it would be great if they'd just give you disposable shoes so you're not standing their bare foot or
I don't give a crap about the sanitation, though the possibility of picking up athlete's foot from somebody else's sweaty socks is probably the greatest danger to me in air travel these days. It's the humiliation of having to take off my shoes and shuffle like a convict through the line.
But here's a hint about how "needed" this little bit of security theater is: The same amount of explosives will fit in the sole of a shoe as will fit in the crotch of underwear. So when you took your shoes off to be screened, thus making you feel safe, did they also grope your crotch? And do you want them to start groping your crotch? Maybe shoving a finger up your ass; the human colon could fit as much C4 as the sole of a shoe. Do you want them to start doing that? If not, then you are admittedly sacrificing safety for the "convenience" of personal dignity. And furthermore, this means that the current inconvenience of having to take off your shoes is not making you safe.
Your bargain is a false one. You've let yourself be inconvenienced for nothing more than the paltry illusion of safety, and like most illusions it only works if the viewer believes and doesn't question.