

Time to Close the Security Theater - gatsby
http://blogs.forbes.com/artcarden/2011/06/30/time-to-close-the-security-theater/

======
bruce511
The power to end the TSA lies with the public. The responsibility to end the
TSA lies with the public. The public need to make enough fuss, so the media
reports the fuss, so that more public become aware of the issue.

The key points to identify;

a) The TSA does not make flying safe. The FAA makes flying safe. The TSA
allegedly keeps bombs off planes but going by their press releases they've
never actually done this. It's always some kid with a pen-knife.

b) For years Customs have been attempting the opposite goal, detecting stuff
coming off planes. They have a good success rate, but clearly plenty of stuff
gets through. Is there any evidence that the TSA has a better success rate?

c) It's not hard to get forbidden items onto a plane. It just isn't. All the
TSA does is make it harder to do it via the main entrance hall. Given the
amount of merchandise, and number of people who work on the "other side" of
the security barrier, does anyone think it's hard? For example it's easy to
take liquids on a plane, just buy them in the departure hall. [edit - It's
also not hard to get a job as a TSA agent. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?]

d) Given that the TSA doesn't make us any _safer_, it's hard to find a reason
for it to exist. But large govt. departments do not go softly into the night.

It takes sustained, broad-based pressure to make this sufficiently important
for politicians to get involved. Until that happens _nothing_ will change. No,
I lie, until that happens the TSA will spend more money, and intrude on our
lives more, but won't actually provide any benefit.

~~~
white_devil
_The power to end the TSA lies with the public. The responsibility to end the
TSA lies with the public. The public need to make enough fuss, so the media
reports the fuss, so that more public become aware of the issue._

Really? Just like the power and responsibility to prevent Greece from imposing
further utterly useless austerity measures on its citizens lies with the Greek
public? The _riot police_ would beg to differ.

If the public _anywhere_ was actually properly informed and _asked_ to make a
decision on _any_ of the insanity going on all around the world, then yes, you
could make that claim. But as long as we have no say in anything, you're just
spewing out seemingly righteous but empty rhetoric.

~~~
bh42222
_Just like the power and responsibility to prevent Greece from imposing
further utterly useless austerity measures on its citizens lies with the Greek
public? The riot police would beg to differ._

Oh come on, Greece is not North Korea.

Do you really think the Greek government could push anything through if more
then two thirds of the population was violently against it?

Yes, the clashes with police look spectacular but what percentage of the
electorate is out on the streets?

~~~
white_devil
_Oh come on, Greece is not North Korea._

There's a difference in their respective levels of totalitarianism, yes. But
Greece, just like any other country, can turn it up a notch when "necessary".

------
billybob
Terrorism is about creating terror. It's about magnifying, in your enemy's
mind, what is actually a small threat.

If you have an entire military, you don't use terrorism; you kill your enemies
en masse. If you're a small band of nutjobs, you scrape together the resources
for a few small hits. You hope that fear will do the rest of the job of
crippling your enemy.

The way to defeat terrorism is to _not be terrified_. To call them on their
bluff. "You are a tiny band of nutjobs. You can't kill us all. You can't even
kill .00001% of us. You are less of a problem than peanut allergies. If you
set off a bomb once in a while, we'll have you hunted down, and the rest of us
will continue with life as usual."

~~~
hugh3
_"You are a tiny band of nutjobs. You can't kill us all. You can't even kill
.00001% of us."_

If we're talking about the US population, then 0.0001% is thirty people. They
can probably manage that.

 _However_ , on your broader point, nouveau-Islamist terrorism differs from
more traditional varieties (the IRA et cetera) in that its practitioners are
markedly less rational. For them, terrorism isn't a tool which they're
applying calmly in the hope of achieving a political goal. Most of them seem
to just want to kill infidels, because the existence of people who aren't
Muslim makes them angry.

So I don't think the refuse-to-be-terrorized strategy actually works. They
don't particularly care whether you're scared of 'em, as long as you die.

(They're not very rational or very nice.)

~~~
waqf
No. This is very likely true of the schmucks who blow themselves up, but those
people aren't so much Al-Qaeda as they are victims of Al-Qaeda.

Did you ever notice how UBL never participated in any suicide attacks? Not
saying he wasn't crazy, of course, but he was crazy like a dictator. Like,
say, Hitler, he was shrewd in pursuit of his bizarre ideological objectives.
You can't look at him and say Al-Qaeda had no political strategy.

------
elmomalmo
We suffer from the same security hysteria here in the UK, albeit somewhat less
hysterical.

There was an article on HN a while back about how 'israelification' of US
airports would have a positive effect on actual security and a negligible
affect on passenger experience. As a layman, it made a lot of sense to me.

[http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/744199---
israelifi...](http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/744199---
israelification-high-security-little-bother)

------
waqf
It recently occurred to me that we can see what "appropriate" security
measures would be by looking, even within the US, at what security is in place
at sites that are _not_ targets of mass hysteria.

For example, subways are generally known to be good terrorist targets. What's
the security level on subways? In Boston and NY, it's a bunch of signs saying
"if you see something, say something" and "we reserve the right in principle
to search your bags (penalty for refusal: leaving the subway)".

Intercity trains are sometimes suggested to be terrorist targets (I'm not sure
whether they are). What's the security level on Amtrak? Well, I've seen K9
teams at Penn station. I've noticed that K9 teams are a damn sight less
intrusive than airport security (and K9 dogs are a damn sight cuter than
X-rays).

~~~
hugh3
Except terrorists aren't any more rational than the general public are (hey,
some would argue even less so), and it's the terrorists who keep on trying to
target the planes, not the subways, at least in the United States. If there
were a series of successful high-casualty subway attacks you'd see insane
security on the subway (and let's really hope that doesn't happen).

Besides, you just can't kill that many people on the subway. A single bomb on
a 747 can kill 400 people... and with a single gun you could kill thousands.
(A knife probably isn't good enough any more since folks will fight back, but
with an assault rifle you can _probably_ kill anyone who tries.)

~~~
waqf
It seems to me that to make your argument valid you have to be implicitly
claiming the following: we're so confident that no fragment of the current
Islamist terrorism movement will target subways that we don't need to put in
place the security measures that would be necessary if we thought they might;
and yet we are so clueless as to when, where and how they plan to attack
airplanes that we have to strip-search every 95-year-old/5-year-old/this
week's TSA victim stereotype across the entire system.

------
espeed
Security theater, political theater, Broadway -- it's all theater.

Chomsky and Edward Herman go over this in detail in "Manufacturing Consent"
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent:_The_Poli...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent:_The_Political_Economy_of_the_Mass_Media)).

When the public starts to see it for what it is, it will lose its effect, and
the playwrights will have to find a new tactic.

~~~
Vivtek
Which is great - except that the public will never, ever see it for what it
is. Or rather, said insight on the part of the public will be treated with the
same respect as any other conspiracy theory. (Oil companies colluding to raise
the price of oil! Ha! That would _never_ happen in our free-market system!)

~~~
espeed
Evidently, but it crossed over into the theater of the absurd years ago. I
would be curious to hear from those who don't see it, what is your
perspective?

------
Joakal
Reddit has a community around it called Operation Grab ass:
<http://www.reddit.com/r/OperationGrabAss/>

------
MichaelGlass
I'm amazed this post was so popular. A populist point "let's shut down the
TSA" is supported by a series of really poorly thought out and subjectively
supported arguments.

Mind you, I agree that the TSA introduces unprecedented invasions of personal
privacy. And I agree that it should be shut down on those grounds. But making
the point that TSA kills because it incentivizes driving is silly.

What else is stupid? Privatized Airports. Besides security and fleet
maintenance concerns, this sounds like a recipe for monopolistic airport
practices, ie, come to Hartsfield Jackson, an airport paid for with tax-payer
dollars. I'm not saying that public airports are run like well oiled machines,
but I'd rather roll back one stupid administration than throw the baby out
with the bathwater.

------
meow
The supporters argue that all these measures are required to preserve "our way
of life". The hard truth is that, it is already lost - unless constantly
living in fear counts.

------
hugh3
What are folks actually suggesting here? That we go back to the more relaxed
pre-9/11 days where you'd go through a metal detector and get your carry-on
X-rayed, but it wasn't that big a deal? Or that we actually abolish airport
security entirely?

The former seems pretty sensible to me, the latter seems a bit crazy.

I guess the other problem is this: there's no doubt a bunch of Al Qaeda-ish
folks sitting around right now plotting how to kill people. A big sudden
announcement that "guess what? you won't have to take your shoes off any more"
might just give 'em the idea.

~~~
ovi256
I think you completely missed the point. The TSA is, at best, plugging a few
holes in a sieve. Any non-retarded terrorist could setup attacks. Un-plugging
those few holes by reforming the TSA would free resources badly needed
elsewhere and not change actual risks a iota.

~~~
hugh3
Y'see, this is where the argument turns into hyperbole. Airport security does,
in fact, make it much harder to carry out an attack on a plane.

Maybe you can sneak a blade through, but you're not getting on board with a
gun. Maybe you can stick forty grams of plastic explosive up your butt, but
you're not getting on board with a bag full of TNT. The 9/11 hijackers used
shitty weapons because it was all they could get on board -- they changed the
rules, and now they're stuck with even shittier weapons. The shoe bomb was a
crappy bomb, and the underpants bomb was even crappier.

Now, if your point is that a terrorist would have to be stupid to even try to
attack an aeroplane when so many other opportunities for killing folks
exist... then you'd be right. But that's _exactly_ the kind of stupid that
terrorists seem to be... they keep on going for the aircraft rather than the
crowded music festival. And hey, if they want to keep going for our best-
defended rather than our softest targets then I'm not gonna try and talk 'em
out of it.

Perhaps the TSA is really a desperate cry of "Oh please don't throw me in that
briar patch!"

------
siculars
I'm all for what the Author is getting at here. My one nit to pick is the
following:

"Some might object that private firms will have incentives to cut corners on
safety. It is a legitimate concern, but competitive mechanisms tend to weed
this out."

What does that mean? We need to have a security incident before one private
firm is replaced by another? Flying is the kind of business where you need to
be spot on every single time or people will surely die. TSA is obviously not
the way but neither is simply saying that market forces and capitalism will
solve the problem.

~~~
jbellis
Very next sentence: "It is important to remember too that just because
competitive markets might not provide the best of all conceivable worlds
doesn’t mean that government intervention can."

------
mildweed
The show must go on

------
bluedanieru
_Better yet, it needs to be replaced with a competitive market for air travel
in which the airports, the airways, and the airliners are in private hands.

Some might object that private firms will have incentives to cut corners on
safety. It is a legitimate concern, but competitive mechanisms tend to weed
this out._

Ugh, how are they going to 'weed this out' exactly? Seems to me competitive
pressures would lead private firms to do exactly what the TSA is doing i.e.
give the appearance of being serious about security. And do it cheaply.
Christ, all these high-profile hacks against big corporations recently and
this guy really expects anyone to believe that competition will 'tend to'
force businesses to take security seriously? The author hasn't given this a
lot of thought, I strongly suspect.

The TSA is awful. But the idea that competition and the free market is a
panacea for all problems financial and social is too often used as a crutch by
bureaucrats and politicians who don't want to do their god damn jobs, and as a
cudgel by idiot pundits on the payroll of big business, as we see here.

Just fix the TSA.

Edit: and it appears Forbes stores your passwords as plaintext. Really shining
example of the free market and competition magically solving all our problems,
fellas.

~~~
bdunbar
_Seems to me competitive pressures would lead private firms to do exactly what
the TSA is doing i.e. give the appearance of being serious about security._

In the marketplace competitive pressure leads to better service, not worse.

LASIK has gone from a novelty for the rich to a treatment everyone can afford,
for example. Possibly counter examples exist, but I can't think of any
offhand. Perhaps after I've had my morning coffee.

The reason I would prefer a private company over government is that you have a
choice with a private firm: don't like AA's service, think their security guys
are fools? Fly with Southwest. Write a letter to AA. Become a shareholder and
annoy the board with your opinions.

So do something like this: require private security firms to meet standards X,
Y, Z. Enforcement by government inspection. Bust a standard, loose your
business license.

This works in other areas - workplace safety, food inspection.

Am I missing something?

~~~
khafra
Your friends can tell you how well their LASIK worked, and how much it cost,
as soon as their eyes heal. This allows market forces to do what they do
pretty well.

Anti-terrorist security measures have neither of these advantages. It's very
difficult to find out how much they cost; especially if you include indirect
costs to travelers. It's also very difficult to determine how effective they
are since, to a first approximation, terrorists attacks don't happen even with
lowered security.

~~~
bdunbar
_It's also very difficult to determine how effective they are since, to a
first approximation, terrorists attacks don't happen even with lowered
security._

This is also a problem with TSA. And we can calculate - roughly - the cost of
TSA in delays, wages, missed flights.

A good argument just popped into my brain: we used to run security at airports
with either local cops or private companies. This worked, pretty well, except
for 9/11.

But everyone was taken by surprise, then.

~~~
thesteamboat
We've made effective changes since then -- they just haven't been at
screening. Passenger awareness that they should resist and reinforcing cockpit
doors have greatly increased security. The TSA? Not so much. See
[http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/11/the-
thin...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/11/the-things-he-
carried/7057/)

------
maeon3
The problem with airport security in America is that they search for
"Dangerous Items", not "Dangerous People". A dangerous person is allowed on an
American flight if he/she doesn't have any dangerous items with him. In my
opinion, a motivated group of guys could take a plane hostage with nothing but
car keys, ju jitsu and some creative thinking.

I'm not saying searching for the dangerous person is superior to searching for
the dangerous item. But I think TSA needs to be reminded that weapons don't
kill people, its the people that do the killing.

Safe person + Dangerous Items = Safe. Dangerous Person + Safe items = Unsafe.

~~~
bruce511
Actually, they only search for dangerous items coming through one door. Do you
think every person, product or vehicle that enters an airport goes through the
same scrutiny as the passengers?

It's like having a bank, where the front door is policed by an army, but the
backdoor is wide open for employees, and every window in the place is open
every day.

Given the amount of theft from airport bags, and hence stolen goods _leaving_
the airport, do you think it's any harder to bring illicit stuff in?

~~~
demallien
Well, just to play devil's advocate, I don't get patted down leaving the
airport, so I'm not terribly sure that your point about baggage theft is
relevant...

------
asmithmd1
The reason the TSA is not reigned in is that only the little people are
subject to search. If you fly on a private jet you and your luggage are
whisked right to your plane with no inspection whatsoever.

~~~
iwwr
Pilots and air crew have to go through the TSA theater as well. The only
immune people are the high-profile politicians.

~~~
chopsueyar
Error.

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/articles/A17073-2004Aug...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/articles/A17073-2004Aug19.html)

~~~
iwwr
By 'immune' I mean with an ability for recourse. That benefit is not reserved
to mere mortals.

------
wtvanhest
Without TSA we would have lowered the bar on airplane hijackings and opened
the door to lower level threats that could easily bring down a pressurized
cabin at 35K feet:

Idiots with firearms or other dangerous items on planes. Simple criminals
looking for media attention. Robberies like D. B. Cooper.

We just need better technology for TSA to make it faster and less invasive. It
will happen. In the mean time, relax and enjoy the fact that you can get from
SFO to NYC in less than 6 hours instead of 7 days by car.

