Bruce Schenier does his usual pragmatic evisceration of the conventional wisdom, this time on airport security. Screening bags is a job, he says, that humans do poorly and computers do well. But screening bags is security too late.
4 thoughts on “Why Airport Security Is Porous”
Comments are closed.
Since 99% of terrorists today are Islamic fanatics I would not be politically correct. I would single out Middle Easterners for physically invasive methods. Everyone else just go through X-ray.
We don’t even need specifically racial or national discrimination, we just need to allow common sense to intrude in the process–by not explicitly excluding nationality etc. from the calculation. In some overseas airports I have seen, they have individuals who look you in the eye and question you before you board–and I mean more than the ticket taker asking “has anyone asked you to carry on their luggage” stuff. Train people to detect threats by whatever means they can, there is doctrine for this (Israeli security could educate us quite a bit, I expect). This will naturally result in a young man getting more attention than, for example, a 7 year old girl or a 70 year old grandma. I would not call that age or gender discrimination, just common sense. We shouldn’t exclude any information from the calculation, and we should have trained individuals asking questions and looking people in the eye as they answer.
PCRH — I think Schneier would agree with you on that point. One of the drums he’s always banging is the idea that a well-trained individual given free reign to exercise his or her judgment is going to be a lot more effective than an automaton with a long list of rules, no matter how carefully crafted.
I agree with you pcrh, applied with the reality of where the threats originate from. Since the overwhelming evidence about those inclined toward such destruction have them originating from the Middle East, it is common sense to emphasize their race and nationality. It makes no sense singling out a Boston mother with Italian ancestry. Political correctness (21st century sensitivity) has inhibited our ability to narrow the focus, which exasperates the problem. This would be a huge filter allowing limited resources to direct efforts as effective as possible.