Gyroscopic Investing

http://www.economist.com/news/internati ... al-no-more

It could be that both security measures are so effective that they have completely deterred would-be terrorists from trying these methods again. Or it could be that they are essentially a performance to reassure passengers. Most experts incline towards the latter view. Philip Baum, a security consultant and editor of Aviation Security International, calls it “security theatre as opposed to security reality”.

America’s Transportation Security Administration (TSA), an agency of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), has a budget of more than $7 billion a year; it also has access to the most advanced scanning technologies money can buy. Critics say it has not foiled a single terrorist plot or caught a single terrorist in the past decade.

Bruce Schneier, the chief technology officer of Resilient Systems, a security firm, points out that whereas the TSA catches plenty of guns and knives inadvertently packed by passengers, it is less good at spotting more determined attempts to get bad stuff onto aircraft. In June its acting head was “reassigned” after a so-called “red team” appointed by the inspector-general of DHS succeeded in getting fake bombs and weapons through the screening process in 67 out of 70 tests carried out in airports across America.

Why such a dismal record? “My guess is that it’s a combination of things,” reckons Mr Schneier. “Security screening is an incredibly boring job, and almost all alerts are false alarms. It’s very hard for people to remain vigilant in this sort of situation, and sloppiness is inevitable.” Mr Schneier also points to technology failures. Screening technologies are poor at detecting PETN, an ingredient of the explosive Semtex, carried by the underpants bomber. A disassembled weapon has an excellent chance of getting through airport security. Mr Schneier reckons that the only worthwhile security changes that happened after the 2001 terrorist attacks were the introduction of locked, blast-proof cockpit doors (the al-Qaeda terrorists used knives to take over the planes) and the willingness of passengers to intervene if they see somebody behaving oddly.
[...]
The main reason why airport security is so bad, says Mr Baum, is that it tries to find things instead of focusing on the people who might carry them. Issy Boim, a former Shin Bet officer who worked closely with Israel’s airline, El Al, argues that whereas the Americans are looking for weapons, the Israelis “are looking primarily for the terror suspect”. Mr Baum is a strong advocate of what is known as “profiling”— building a picture of both passengers and airline staff. He rejects the idea that this has to be based on crude stereotyping (being suspicious of all young Muslim men, for example). It should be based on behaviour both prior to flying—for example, when, how and where a ticket was purchased—and at the airport itself.

El Al employs people who have been trained in psychological observation techniques to interview every passenger before he or she is cleared to go through physical screening. Anyone who arouses their suspicion is subjected to a further grilling and may well not fly. El Al is thought to use some profiling techniques that would be politically unacceptable in Europe or America. Hebrew-speaking Israelis can expect to get off more lightly than Arabs and single white women, for example. But as Mr Baum points out, customs and immigration officers at airports in the West commonly use profiling, “and it works”.

But the most important thing of all might be to keep a sense of proportion. Many people travel on buses and trains, go to sporting events and attend open-air concerts. All are potential targets for terrorists, yet they receive not even a fraction of the attention that air travel gets.

dualstow wrote: Good point. There is certainly much more to protect.

Maybe TSA should be done away with and airport security should be privatized. Or partly privatized?

WiseOne wrote: Totally agree with this author's take.  Asking a group of underpaid people to search a haystack to find a needle that will only be there 0.0001% of the time is completely hopeless.  Meanwhile, just think of the number of Swiss Army knives that have been sacrificed for no good purpose.

I like the direction they're going with TSA Precheck.  In a sense, that's a form of profiling too.  It would be great if they could accomplish the same thing without requiring an extensive background check.

Pointedstick wrote: The TSA is what happens with you give low-achieving, low-intelligence people unquestionable authority en masse. It isn't pretty.

(Greg) Ehh I don't think TSA Precheck is still that good. I went through the PHL TSA Precheck line yesterday and got flagged in my backpack a bottle of water. Stupid mistake on my part but I asked them if I could dump out the water so that I could keep the bottle. They said I would have to go out of security and go back through again to do that. I asked them if I could just drink it. They said I couldn't.

... I don't like the TSA. They're mean (also they took my peanut butter on multiple occasions. I have learned to not travel with that now).

Libertarian666 wrote:

dualstow wrote: Good point. There is certainly much more to protect.

Maybe TSA should be done away with and airport security should be privatized. Or partly privatized?

Yes, it should be privatized. The airlines have the most to lose by a terrorist attack, so they should be the ones in charge.

dualstow wrote:

(Greg) Ehh I don't think TSA Precheck is still that good. I went through the PHL TSA Precheck line yesterday and got flagged in my backpack a bottle of water. Stupid mistake on my part but I asked them if I could dump out the water so that I could keep the bottle. They said I would have to go out of security and go back through again to do that. I asked them if I could just drink it. They said I couldn't.

... I don't like the TSA. They're mean (also they took my peanut butter on multiple occasions. I have learned to not travel with that now).

I can't tell if that's more of a TSA thing or a Philly thing. I find the TSA workers in Philly to be especially rude. In Key West, they're so nice you'd think you were in Canada.
In Philly once, I found an ID someone had dropped on the floor while I was going alongside the X-ray conveyor belt. I called out the name a few times and no one answered, so I put it on the belt, thinking it was the logical thing to do. A TSA lady appeared and yelled at me. "Help a person out! Don't be like that!" My face reddened.
Then, a very steroidal white dude screamed at me when I tried to take things off the tray even though I wasn't holding anyone up. "TAKE THE WHOLE THING WITH YOU!" He barked it twice after which I said, "You know what? I think I'm going to take the whole thing with me."

Pointedstick wrote: The TSA is what happens with you give low-achieving, low-intelligence people unquestionable authority en masse. It isn't pretty.

dualstow wrote: I can't tell if that's more of a TSA thing or a Philly thing. I find the TSA workers in Philly to be especially rude. In Key West, they're so nice you'd think you were in Canada.

MediumTex wrote: I try to treat TSA people like muggers.

I am cooperative, respectful, and I try not to make eye contact.

WiseOne wrote: Asking a group of underpaid people to search a haystack to find a needle that will only be there 0.0001% of the time is completely hopeless. 

Pointedstick wrote: I also like the complimentary government massage. It strikes me as so easy to get a weapon through: just stick it in your ass. It's not a cavity search, and if you get the pat-down, you don't go through the metal detector or the strip search machine. Just one example of a new vulnerability that the TSA has created.

Libertarian666 wrote:

Pointedstick wrote: I also like the complimentary government massage. It strikes me as so easy to get a weapon through: just stick it in your ass. It's not a cavity search, and if you get the pat-down, you don't go through the metal detector or the strip search machine. Just one example of a new vulnerability that the TSA has created.

Or this, if you are so equipped:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nati ... /71899282/

Pointedstick wrote: The TSA is what happens with you give low-achieving, low-intelligence people unquestionable authority en masse. It isn't pretty.

MachineGhost wrote: Yes, a friend of a friend of mine is a TSA agent and is an obese, sex obsessed, alcoholic.  Vapid superficiality on every level.

MachineGhost wrote:

Pointedstick wrote: The TSA is what happens with you give low-achieving, low-intelligence people unquestionable authority en masse. It isn't pretty.

Yes, a friend of a friend of mine is a TSA agent and is an obese, sex obsessed, alcoholic, loser.  Vapid superficiality on every level.  Literally.  He's proud of his TSA uniform, job and actually thinks hes doing diddley squat in terms of securing America while wailing that others just don't understand.