#air security

Watch: New Anti-Drone Gun To Impose Order In The Sky

In recent years, drones have come a long way from being a rare pastime amateur playing thing to its ubiquity now. Drones are being used everywhere, from people taking their own selfies, through commercial photography all the way to aiding in search and rescue missions. Because of said ubiquity,

The escalating dumbness of US airport security is headed toward the sublime. The are amplifying the search approach that we know doesn't work, and which causes the longest delays:

Joe Sharkey, Tougher Airport Screening Prompts Calls for Day of Protest

On Nov. 1, screeners began using a far more invasive form of procedure for all pat-downs — in which women’s breasts and all passengers’ genital areas are patted firmly. Since that change happened to coincide with the accelerated introduction of the body scanning machines, many fliers began expressing their dismay on blogs, fanning anti-T.S.A. reactions.

A traveler named John Tyner, for example, posted a detailed account of being detained at the San Diego airport when he tried to leave after declining a body scan. Mr. Tyner recorded the encounter, in which person who appeared to be a T.S.A. screener insisted that he undergo a “groin check.” That account, and that indelicate term, quickly went viral.

I’m getting a lot of questions about the new security regime, including some pointed ones from women. Do the imagers, for example, detect sanitary napkins? Yes. Does that then necessitate a pat-down? The T.S.A. couldn’t say. Screeners, the T.S.A. has said, are expected to exercise some discretion.

Contrast the US approach with Israel's security, where multiple levels of careful watching of everyone approaching and then entering the airport is focused on the right thing: behavior.

Cathal Kelly, The 'Israelification' of airports: High security, little bother

Despite facing dozens of potential threats each day, the security set-up at Israel's largest hub, Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion Airport, has not been breached since 2002, when a passenger mistakenly carried a handgun onto a flight. How do they manage that?

"The first thing you do is to look at who is coming into your airport," said Sela.

The first layer of actual security that greets travellers at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion International Airport is a roadside check. All drivers are stopped and asked two questions: How are you? Where are you coming from?

"Two benign questions. The questions aren't important. The way people act when they answer them is," Sela said.

Officers are looking for nervousness or other signs of "distress" — behavioural profiling. Sela rejects the argument that profiling is discriminatory.

"The word 'profiling' is a political invention by people who don't want to do security," he said. "To us, it doesn't matter if he's black, white, young or old. It's just his behaviour. So what kind of privacy am I really stepping on when I'm doing this?"

Once you've parked your car or gotten off your bus, you pass through the second and third security perimeters.

Armed guards outside the terminal are trained to observe passengers as they move toward the doors, again looking for odd behaviour. At Ben Gurion's half-dozen entrances, another layer of security are watching. At this point, some travellers will be randomly taken aside, and their person and their luggage run through a magnometer.

"This is to see that you don't have heavy metals on you or something that looks suspicious," said Sela.

You are now in the terminal. As you approach your airline check-in desk, a trained interviewer takes your passport and ticket. They ask a series of questions: Who packed your luggage? Has it left your side?

"The whole time, they are looking into your eyes — which is very embarrassing. But this is one of the ways they figure out if you are suspicious or not. It takes 20, 25 seconds," said Sela.

Lines are staggered. People are not allowed to bunch up into inviting targets for a bomber who has gotten this far.

At the check-in desk, your luggage is scanned immediately in a purpose-built area. Sela plays devil's advocate — what if you have escaped the attention of the first four layers of security, and now try to pass a bag with a bomb in it?

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A screener at Ben-Gurion has a pair of better options.

First, the screening area is surrounded by contoured, blast-proof glass that can contain the detonation of up to 100 kilos of plastic explosive. Only the few dozen people within the screening area need be removed, and only to a point a few metres away.

Second, all the screening areas contain 'bomb boxes'. If a screener spots a suspect bag, he/she is trained to pick it up and place it in the box, which is blast proof. A bomb squad arrives shortly and wheels the box away for further investigation.

[...]

Five security layers down: you now finally arrive at the only one which Ben-Gurion Airport shares with Pearson — the body and hand-luggage check.

"But here it is done completely, absolutely 180 degrees differently than it is done in North America," Sela said.

"First, it's fast — there's almost no line. That's because they're not looking for liquids, they're not looking at your shoes. They're not looking for everything they look for in North America. They just look at you," said Sela. "Even today with the heightened security in North America, they will check your items to death. But they will never look at you, at how you behave. They will never look into your eyes ... and that's how you figure out the bad guys from the good guys."

That's the process — six layers, four hard, two soft. The goal at Ben-Gurion is to move fliers from the parking lot to the airport lounge in a maximum of 25 minutes.

Bruce Schneier is not the first to suggest that the security mania at airports is not 'real' but a form of show, but he's one of the most credible security analysts, today. Our security systems don't accomplish what they are theoretically supposed to do, and at huge expense: it's theater, intended to cause an emotional response of feeling safe, without actually doing much:

It's not security theater we need, it's direct appeals to our feelings. The best way to help people feel secure is by acting secure around them. Instead of reacting to terrorism with fear, we -- and our leaders -- need to react with indomitability, the kind of strength shown by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill during World War II.

By not overreacting, by not responding to movie-plot threats, and by not becoming defensive, we demonstrate the resilience of our society, in our laws, our culture, our freedoms. There is a difference between indomitability and arrogant "bring 'em on" rhetoric. There's a difference between accepting the inherent risk that comes with a free and open society, and hyping the threats.

We should treat terrorists like common criminals and give them all the benefits of true and open justice -- not merely because it demonstrates our indomitability, but because it makes us all safer.

Once a society starts circumventing its own laws, the risks to its future stability are much greater than terrorism.

Despite fearful rhetoric to the contrary, terrorism is not a transcendent threat. A terrorist attack cannot possibly destroy a country's way of life; it's only our reaction to that attack that can do that kind of damage. The more we undermine our own laws, the more we convert our buildings into fortresses, the more we reduce the freedoms and liberties at the foundation of our societies, the more we're doing the terrorists' job for them.

Today, we can project indomitability by rolling back all the fear-based post-9/11 security measures. Our leaders have lost credibility; getting it back requires a decrease in hyperbole. Ditch the invasive mass surveillance systems and new police state-like powers. Return airport security to pre-9/11 levels. Remove swagger from our foreign policies. Show the world that our legal system is up to the challenge of terrorism. Stop telling people to report all suspicious activity; it does little but make us suspicious of each other, increasing both fear and helplessness.

- Bruce Schneier, Is aviation security mostly for show?

Spy Agencies Failed to Collate Clues on Terror

What is clear, however, is that the center’s officials concluded that the information they had about Mr. Abdulmutallab was not worrisome enough to do anything more than add his name to the biggest — and least scrutinized — of four intelligence databases. This list includes 550,000 names, and essentially serves as holding area for cases that need more research.

The government chose not to add Mr. Abdulmutallab’s name to a much smaller, more refined watch list that would have required that he be pulled over and patted down before boarding a plane, or blocked entirely from flying to the United States.

On Christmas Eve, Mr. Abdulmutallab flew from Lagos, Nigeria, to Amsterdam.

Had all the clues been assembled, he would by then have been on the no-fly list, which would have barred him from taking his next flight, to the United States.

Even if he had not been placed on that list, American authorities had one final chance to intercede. Before a plane can take off for the United States, details on every passenger are forwarded electronically to the Department of Homeland Security. There is also an electronic summary of each passenger’s airline reservation — which in Mr. Abdulmutallab’s case would most likely have included the fact that his ticket had been bought with cash and that he had not checked any bags.

The Homeland Security Department, with this information, can request that a passenger like Mr. Abdulmutallab get extra scrutiny by airport officials before the plane takes off. But no action was taken, as department officials said they had no reason to believe he presented a threat.

So Mr. Abdulmutallab, after passing through a metal detector that missed his hidden bomb materials, walked onto the Northwest flight, bound for Detroit.

Looks like Abdulmutallab is an object lesson where every opportunity was fumbled.

If we are spending billions and billions of hours of traveler's time are invested in the current approach to airport security, it is obvious that this investment is insufficent to catch every Abdulmutallab in the world.

We have to ask whether doubling the investments already being made -- more security precautions, more integration of intelligence, more waiting in even longer and stronger security checks -- would guarantee safety?

If not, then what is the answer?

More Proof The 9/11 Bad Guys Are Still Winning

Instead of dealing with real security issues, aviation is being protected by a Charmin-thin charade of passenger screening, with insufficient reliance on thinking like a terrorist.

Taking blankets away from passengers an hour out of Motown ain't going to do diddly to fix the issues that let a suspected terrorist with a bomb on board a flight at Amsterdam. It ain't going to anything to get to the real problems. But it's great eyewash that the public and the media swallow like goldfish at a drunken fraternity party. We've got over eight years of successful tail-chasing.

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The TSA? It's now a huge bureaucracy that can't maintain security of its own sensitive manuals.

And now, since Amsterdam had a security problem, we're going to increase the pointy-object patrol.

Boyd's thesis is that Abdulmutallab probably did not carry his explosive device through a security scan, and that increased security should be directed at the porous boundaries of international airports. The idea is that his 'bomb' was smuggled in through other means, and he received in on the other side of security.

Just think of all the food, books, clothes, airplane parts, gasoline, and other materials that have to be brought in everyday. Shouldn't the increase in security be focused there?

How about this idea: why are we making airports into giant malls? Do we have to have 178 stores selling t-shirts, books, language tapes, and luggage there? Yes, we need food services, but couldn't we move the other stores out? I know that the folks that run the airports want the revenue, and last minute gift buying for junior after a business trip is a convenience, but let's face it, it decreases possibilities for airport security enormously.