
A Sensible Fix For TSA Security Lines - smacktoward
http://www.askthepilot.com/tsa-summer-meltdown/
======
darawk
The sensible fix for long TSA lines is to eliminate the TSA and stop engaging
in this silly security theater. It is demonstrably the case that the TSA
security procedures are so porous that they can't stop regular people from
_accidentally_ bringing weapons on board that they forgot about. The idea that
they have prevented any terrorist attacks is ludicrous, yet they have imposed
an enormous cost on air travel.

Eliminate the TSA and replace them with nothing. Cockpit doors are now
reinforced, so the worst thing someone could do is blow up a plane, and if all
you want to do is blow up a hundred people or so, you don't need to be on a
plane to do it.

~~~
rhino369
>so the worst thing someone could do is blow up a plane, and if all you want
to do is blow up a hundred people or so, you don't need to be on a plane to do
it.

There is a reason we had security on airplanes before 9/11\. We aren't willing
to accept this risk.

Plus airplanes are a carnage and terror multiplier. A bomb that could take
down a plane would do less damage on the ground. And people are irrationally
fearful of flying. One 737 blown up every 3 months would still make flying
less risky than driving, but it would send the airline industry into a
tailspin and TSA would come back stronger than ever.

~~~
dionidium
So, I was definitely once one of those people arguing for lax airline security
on the basis that fear of terrorism is irrational and resources would be
better spent on _actual_ , mundane, every-day threats (like automobile
safety).

But I think you're actually right about this; my original argument ignored
human psychology to an extent that makes it nonsensical. _Actual_ threats are
important, but so are _perceived_ threats. It's not entirely irrational to
protect against the things we fear the most, even if those aren't actually the
most likely things to kill us.

This also comes up a lot in arguments about city living. I know a lot of
people for whom urban living is frightening to an extent that is not
supportable by crime statistics. But so what? If they were to move to the
city, they'd be constantly afraid. _That matters._ Rational or not, their
perception greatly impacts their quality of life. And if you want those people
to move back from the suburbs, then you need to address their concerns.

There is a _reason_ , after all, that airplanes are such an attractive target
for those who'd like to cause _terror_.

~~~
darawk
This represents a pretty fundamental reasoning error, I think that a lot of
people make - and your argument about city living is the perfect manifestation
of it.

While some people do stop living in cities out of fear, obviously most people
do not, because otherwise they would not be cities. You could argue that the
government needs to come in in a very heavy-handed way and say in order to
assuage the fear of the minority, we must pat down everyone that lives in the
city hourly and check for weapons. But we don't do that, because it is
irrational and unnecessary, and people will take the amount of risk that they
feel is comfortable. We trust people to figure that out for themselves.

With airplanes, before the doors were reinforced, the planes could be used as
a weapon against people who weren't even flying. That represents an
externality. That is a place for the government to come in and say "this is
too dangerous to _others_ who cannot protect themselves against this weapon by
voting with their wallet". The people who are on the plane, however, can
choose to pay a premium to fly on an airline with more stringent security
procedures. If people care enough, they will do that. If they don't, they
won't, and they should be allowed to make that determination for themselves.

If I don't see terrorism on my flights as a risk, I shouldn't have to
socialize those who do. And alternatively, if I _do_ see terrorism as a risk,
I damn sure want better security procedures than what the TSA has on offer,
and if there were a private market for better secured planes, I don't doubt
for a second that it would be substantially safer than what the TSA is able to
provide.

~~~
dionidium
Great comment. One thing in regard to this (that's getting off topic, so
ignore if you're not interested):

 _" You could argue that the government needs to come in in a very heavy-
handed way and say in order to assuage the fear of the minority, we must pat
down everyone that lives in the city hourly and check for weapons. But we
don't do that, because it is irrational and unnecessary, and people will take
the amount of risk that they feel is comfortable. We trust people to figure
that out for themselves."_

The reality in most large metros in the U.S. is that the core city competes
with its suburbs for resources, the largest of which is people. The region I
live in has 2.8 million people, only 300k of which live in the (widely-
abandoned) anchor city that gives the region its name. Yes, people are
figuring it out for themselves, to the benefit of some interests and the
detriment of others. "Let the people figure it out" isn't very useful advice
to the losers in that battle.

------
mayneack
> I’d advocate that certain travelers, at TSA spotters’ discretion, be exempt
> from screening altogether. Personnel could be trained to choose certain
> passengers deemed lowest-threat, pull them out of line and allow them to
> pass.

Bruce Schneier's proposal is essentially do 0 profiling and do entirely random
enhanced screening to minimize the potential for exploiting profiling.

[https://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-trouble-with-
profili...](https://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-trouble-with-profiling)

[https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2012/05/to_profile_...](https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2012/05/to_profile_or_not_to.html)

~~~
Terr_
Bonus: Probably much cheaper to do.

Concern: Real randomness gives you streaks, which may cause unanticipated
clogs and delays in the process. On the other hand, an "smoothed" system means
attackers would try to slip in right after a "random" check occurs for an
innocent.

~~~
eric_h
> Real randomness gives you streaks

True, but you could just tweak the odds down a bit once a streak hits a
certain number if you've demonstrably slowed the line down (and turn them back
up once the clog has been cleared).

~~~
Terr_
True, but attackers could time their approach to occur in the safe-period
after a major clog.

The devil's really in the details, particularly around how queues/buffers for
travelers are handled and the basis used for doing the randomness. For
example, randomly choosing check/don't-check per passenger is different than
randomly choosing a passenger from the line whenever a searcher is free.

~~~
eric_h
I'm not suggesting to turn the odds to zero, though. Simply lowering the odds
until the clog is cleared would not appreciably improve an attackers chances
of getting through. You could still get streaks at the lower odds, thus making
the clog worse. Nevertheless, I think the average wait times would be vastly
improved from what they are currently.

------
Nav_Panel
> Take a percentage of screeners now working at airport checkpoints and re-
> train them to work away from public view

When I was in London, I met a woman whose job was basically to hang around at
Heathrow Airport and make note of "suspicious-looking individuals". She would
make small talk and ask them if they needed help or directions.

She also told me they catch a surprising number of North Korean spies.

~~~
farnsworth
That's interesting, how does she go from making small talk with a Korean
person to determining that they're a spy?

~~~
wolf550e
Any person who was allowed by North Korean government to leave the country
expecting them to come back are a spy.

------
1024core
The things that the TSA forbids can, in many cases, be picked up after the
security check in various shops/restaurants in the airport. I used to make it
a point to walk around, identifying things lying around in the open (like
silverware in restaurants) that was forbidden just a few feet earlier. But it
just became too frustrating.

~~~
Tenhundfeld
Do you remember more examples? I'm curious, because I did something similar
years ago and didn't really find much that would have been stopped – other
than liquids, which don't count for obvious reasons.

I don't eat in airport restaurants that often, and when I do, it's just a
public one, not an exclusive lounge. But I haven't seen a sharp metal knife in
the airport for since 2001. I've seen plastic knives and rounded metal butter
knives, but those should also be allowed through security.

~~~
zo1
Glass bottles? Heck, you could probably make some sort of explosive from the
items you could buy in the shopping area post-security.

In my part of the world, their idea of "security" for the glass bottles you
can buy at the airport shops is to seal them in a "security" bag made
of...clear plastic. The only thing that clear-plastic (zip-locked even) bag
would stop is spillage.

~~~
chillacy
There was an article awhile back about this:
[http://terminalcornucopia.com/](http://terminalcornucopia.com/)

------
tlb
And we should set our expectations much higher. It should be possible for TSA
throughput to be as good as Starbucks. They both have trained people do a
complex operation involving special-purpose machines, and the revenue per
customer is similar (Starbucks around $4, TSA gets $5.60 per passenger-leg),
and the queue is rarely more than a few minutes at Starbucks.

If you look at the incentive structures, the results aren't surprising though:

Starbucks: longer lines => people go elsewhere => less revenue (daily)

TSA: longer lines => traveler complaints => more funding (yearly)

~~~
skykooler
I'm not sure about where you are, but the Starbucks's I've been to go through
lines a lot slower than TSA checkpoints - the lines are just much shorter
because fewer people are going there than through a big airport.

~~~
tlb
Yes, Starbucks parallelizes, as should the TSA. It doesn't matter whether it's
in one building or many.

------
athenot
Along these lines, I wonder if anyone has pointed out why the TSA is storing
whay they view as "potentially explosive and life-threatening liquids" in the
middle of a high-traffic area?

Also, if all those bottles of liquid are worth being confiscated because they
contain harmful chemicals, they are also to be disposed of by personel in
hazmat with proper EPA considerations, namely audit, analysis and
documentation. It would be fun to see a lawsuit along those lines.

~~~
mikeash
It's a bit of a paradox. The purpose of screening isn't really to confiscate
dangerous materials, but to prevent people from ever bringing it. If you have
a ban on liquids, then an attacker isn't going to bother bringing a liquid
bomb. All liquids you encounter will be benign. Yet that doesn't mean that the
ban is useless: if someone wants to bring a liquid bomb, then if you remove
the liquid ban they will bring it.

I think the liquid ban is pretty silly, but that's because the whole idea of a
liquid bomb seems to be unworkable, and there are better ways to handle this
stuff. The fact that confiscated liquids are handled so casually is not
actually an argument against the ban.

~~~
minionslave
I think the whole ban, gave the terrorists the bright idea of bringing liquid
bombs in the first place.

~~~
tdeck
The ban was put in place as a result of a real terrorist plot uncovered in
2006:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_transatlantic_aircraft_pl...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_transatlantic_aircraft_plot?wprov=sfla1)

------
ryguytilidie
"— I’d advocate that certain travelers, at TSA spotters’ discretion, be exempt
from screening altogether. Personnel could be trained to choose certain
passengers deemed lowest-threat, pull them out of line and allow them to
pass."

I really can't imagine this going well at all. Isn't this basically telling
your employees that they should discriminate based on some nebulous thing?

~~~
dghf
If the criteria they use become known, you're also creating a loophole for
terrorists to target.

I can't remember the name of it, but some years back there a was a film (or
possibly a TV drama) about a Chechen-American jihadi -- pale-skinned, blue-
eyed and red-haired.

------
unprepare
I think most people agree here that the TSA should be ended altogether and we
should return to metal detectors if anything.

How do the american people make this a reality? What steps can be taken to
motivate our political leaders to support such a change?

As of right now, it seems like political suicide for anyone to politically
support such a thing, as they would surely be painted as a terrorist
sympathizer or some such.

~~~
joesmo
This is about as possible as ending the war on drugs was in the 80's. Just
because something is reasonable and makes sense doesn't mean it is possible to
implement politically. In fact, I'd say an inverse relationship exists between
common sense and what's implementable politically in the US. You simply face
too much fear and stupidity.

~~~
rayiner
I think "fear and stupidity" is overly simplistic. People overestimate how
worthwhile it is to address low-probability, high-consequence threats.
Everyone. I know plenty of rational people that rail about terrorism being a
low-probability event who would freak out if they saw a pregnant woman have a
glass of wine. Or saw a kid playing unattended at a playground. Or someone
feeding a kid formula. Or GMOs. Or whatever--almost all of the highly educated
people I know have one or more things that they believe to be risky that is
not supportable based on hard evidence. It's universal.

Right now the wife and I are in the market for a new toddler-hauler. I want to
buy two-years used, and ideally American, but I cannot get over the fact that
only a handful of recent models, none American, get a "good" rating in the new
IIHS small-offset crash tests. I know that a Ford made in 2015 is perfectly
safe, but I'm going to spend a bunch more money on a new 2016 Honda because
I'm irrational.

~~~
joesmo
If you didn't have irrational fear, the TSA would not have its current powers.
If you didn't have so much stupidity, the TSA might manage more than a 5%
success rate. Yes, there are other elements like hate which also come into
play here, but there certainly is no element of rational thought that goes
into these types of laws. Yes, people have their biases and individual quirks,
but it's certainly possibly to come up with and implement a system that
doesn't simply pander to people's fears and plays on their stupidity. There's
just no interest in such a system from either the people who are in control or
the scared masses who are afraid of terrorism or other scaremongering tactics
practiced by the former set of people.

------
Smushman
Security Theatre was Job #1 behind the invention of the TSA.

A close second job was building a behemoth Government Agency to funnel money,
direct contracts (to supporters), and lastly supply jobs for those people who
were probably otherwise more difficult to employ.

Now I don't know about you, but I would call that a win-win situation.

------
cperciva
The fastest way to fix TSA security lines would be to have a few suicide
bombers blow themselves up while standing in line. The lineups would disappear
overnight if that happened.

... not that I'm suggesting this as a solution; rather, it illustrates the
lack of security created by the current system.

------
ja30278
Even simpler: Completely separate the cockpit from the passenger cabin.

Without the possibility to use the hijacked plane to take hostages to a
friendly destination, or to use the plane as a missle, it's no more attractive
as a target than any other public space.

~~~
ceejayoz
This is already essentially in place, as
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanwings_Flight_9525](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanwings_Flight_9525)
demonstrated in an unfortunate manner.

------
ChrisBland
Does anyone remember the TSA backscatter machines? (Blue ones) they rolled out
and then promptly removed a few years later? Those cost the tsa north of 300m,
wasted government pork spending as those are now all mothballed as it turns
out they ARE bad for you, despite what the TSA said at the time. So when the
TSA speaks, all I hear is pork, lies and federal union fear mongering to
increase OT + pay at the expense of the taxpayer...all because....terrorism
</gasp>

------
makecheck
Given an establishment, the _method_ of change is as important as the change
itself. It’s not enough to have a good idea, you need a way to make it happen.
Arguments about the inefficiency, cost or ineffectiveness of the current TSA
will not matter in the least unless the people in charge can actually be
swayed by such arguments.

Right now, the TSA is kept alive by a large group of people who benefit from
beefy government contracts. These powerful people are quite capable of
trotting out one bogeyman after another to challenge any TSA rollback
proposal. They will twist the opinion of everyone that _matters_ until one of
two things happens: either nothing, or a new program that requires handing
even more money to their select businesses. They are clearly not interested in
actually making things better.

People love to focus on one thing, the presidency, while ignoring the fact
that there are many positions of power in the world. It matters what kind of
people we have in _all_ of those positions. You can’t dismantle something like
the TSA until enough people are in enough positions of power to make it
happen.

------
swanson
Are some of the long lines caused by people carrying on more luggage than in
the past (due to airline fees for checked bags + perception that checked bags
are mishandled, lost, or slow down your travel time)?

I wonder if flipping the economics (fee for carry-on, checked bags are free)
might help without any changes to the actual security procedures.

~~~
ghaff
That claim is made but, speaking anecdotally as someone who has been traveling
for a long time, I don't think so.

Families going on vacation usually have checked luggage anyway (because they
have a lot more stuff than they could possibly carry on) while business
travelers, who would typically expense any fees, hate to check luggage because
of the extra time.

>perception that checked bags are mishandled, lost, or slow down your travel
time

All accurate perceptions, especially the latter two. I'd add that having
luggage checked also makes it much harder to do re-routings or flight changes
when there are problems.

[EDIT: I'd also add that many (most?) business travelers already have fee
waivers on checked luggage for various reasons, but they still rarely check
luggage.]

What I do wish able-bodied travelers would dispense with is roll-aboards which
IMO are responsible for a lot of overhead space issues.

------
mywittyname
Put air marshals on every flight to deal with any situation aboard the plane.
That leaves only one vector of attack, which is explosives. We have lots of
ways to detect IEDs that are quick and reasonably cheap.

This leaves open the possibility of people carrying drugs or something aboard
planes. But that's not really a threat to passengers.

------
mgolawala
The problem has a lot to do with acceptable risk. Not of the passengers.. I
mean of the politicians. As a politician, if anyone argued for lowered
screening at airports, we all know what would happen when eventually a
hijacking or airplane bombing occurred. That politicians career would
essentially be over. It would not have mattered if the hijackers or bombers
could have gotten through anyway.

------
Plough_Jogger
It appears that we have reached a tipping point on this issue:
[https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=tsa%20precheck](https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=tsa%20precheck)

------
WalterBright
Ironically, the screening was originally done by the airport/airlines. Then
came the calls to "federalize" it, and the TSA was the result.

------
LeoPanthera
What an awful clickbait title.

------
Xorlev
In Las Vegas this weekend, coming back we did not have to remove our shoes or
laptops, just toss metal items in our bags and walk through the metal
detector.

I was through security in less than a minute.

I suppose a bunch of hungover people aren't a convincing security threat.

------
ZeroGravitas
I realise this sounds crazy, but Bin Laden was apparently worried about
climate change, and his acts have probably acted as a brake on the growth of
air travel. Coincidence? Probably.

~~~
oceanswave
Contrails also have a net cooling effect on climate:
[https://www.researchgate.net/publication/11218772_Climatolog...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/11218772_Climatology_Contrails_reduce_daily_temperature_range)
such that global dimming counteracts the effects of global warming. Less
planes, less contrails accelerated global warming.

~~~
et2o
Micro vs. macro effects, I think. CO2 from the planes doesn't dissipate
rapidly.

