Another reason is that it’s much easier for the TSA to screen checked bags than carry-ons, and airlines keep discouraging people from checking bags.
Why is it easier to screen checked bags? 90% of the time I fly, no one opens my checked bag (at least, there's no TSA card inside, and the TSA indicator on my lock doesn't show it was opened), so if they check it at all, they must use some kind of scanner -- can't they use that same scanner for carry-on bags?
If screening for banned items makes it too hard to screen carry-on bags, then maybe they could trim down the list of banned items to a more manageable level.
Definitely. If you watch the baggage screeners, they spent a lot of time inching the belt forwards and backwards to get a better look at something. While they're doing this, every other bag is just sitting there trapped in the queue.
On the other hand, a lot of the checked baggage handling is very automated and can probably get a good view into most pieces without fiddling around.
The machine does not have to be in the place where the concourse meets the terminal, so maybe the machine can be bigger, maybe giving efficiency gains.
No passengers are involved like they are at carry on screening, so also this might yield efficiencies, as you don't have to keep a bag and passenger near each other.
As you suggest there are fewer banned items in checked bags, so less bag opening needed.
I am in no way an expert on the subject, but a bulk of the TSA/Flyer friction seems to come from bad customer service. The TSA basically only needs to work hard enough to not get fired. They have a 95% failure rate when it comes to their 'primary' job [1]. Recently, Delta airlines designed and built, in only 2 months, a new style of TSA screening points that moves 30% faster [2].
It would be interesting to give them some competition. Imagine if the department was split into the TSA and the TSB. Give them equal funding and presence in the airport. Flyers pay a screening fee and pick A or B, and then are screened by that agency. I bet they would shape up overnight.
"Bad service" is the surface problem. Quoting from the article:
> The House of Representatives voted to cut TSA funding in 2011. Sequestration cut TSA funding in 2013.
> In 2014, Congress passed a TSA fare increase, and used the overwhelming majority of that not to fund the TSA, but to pay down the national debt. When the TSA fare went up in 2014 (as did the prices of tickets it was attached to), Congressional funding cuts to the TSA meant the TSA cut 3,500 screener positions. And in 2015, the House voted to increase TSA funding, but cut TSA employee pay.
Pay poorly, and you'll get poor service.
As for your proposal, who will pay for the extra overhead of two teams? Will small airports need twice the staff?
By 2011, there had already been a lot of pushback against the TSA, so I'm sure part of the rationale for the cuts was to force TSA to stop growing out of control like it had been. A leaner budget could force the TSA to become leaner, which in a rational world would mean it would have to become more efficient to do its job. Of course this is government, so the TSA just did its job less.
The flip side, redirecting increases in TSA fares away from the TSA and towards the general budget, is also typical government behavior: can't raise taxes, so raise "fees" instead and use the proceeds like a tax.
It works all the time, you just have to realize that the goal isn't better results, the goal is getting elected by convincing people that government doesn't work.
It is so frustrating. Even if people believe in small government, the problem to tackle would be to cut government spending, not taxes. :(
When you boil down a conversation though the result is usually people want lower taxes for themselves and the idea of a small government is usually just a smokescreen.
You say "typical government behavior". Please note that the problems you point out are limited to the US. At least, it's not been my experience when at airports in Europe.
Perhaps you think they are "typical" because you've been on the receiving end of decades of propaganda to convince you the government is incompetent, there's nothing you can do about it, and the only solution is the "free market"?
To start with, why can't the government raise taxes?
You're making huge assumptions about me and my political beliefs. Incorrect assumptions.
The US federal government is bad about this, but they're not the only ones that do it: effective tax rates here are just as high as in many European countries, but most of the taxes aren't called 'tax'. There are fees and tolls and surcharges on many living expenses, and more that get hidden in higher prices for many products. That's why I said that adding a TSA fee to airline tickets, but not using the money for the TSA, is typical behavior.
I wish the taxation system was honest and transparent. I wish the money was used competently and efficiently. But the political system here is screwed up I don't think those are achievable goals. And unfortunatly it's led to having an incompent fascist as a leading presidential candidate.
I didn't mean that the government can't raise taxes the way you're assuming I meant. I was describing typical government behavior, where lawmakers have to decide how to describe the act of collecting more money. Calling it "raising taxes" makes it harder for them to get re-elected, so they call it "collecting a fee" instead.
> Recently, Delta airlines designed and built, in only 2 months, a new style of TSA screening points that moves 30% faster [2].
Note that such security layouts are pretty much standard issue for any new installation in Europe, and have been for coming on for a decade now. (Also, in Europe, my experience is the belts are typically longer so you always have had multiple people loading trays at once, which I rarely see in the US.)
Exactly. Presumably the TSA has been aware of this new system for a decade and it took an airline, concerned over customer satisfaction, to pay to get the ball rolling.
The bottleneck is the X-Ray itself though. When I fly the trays are always backed up waiting for their turn through the machine. Allowing more people to load trays doesn't help much.
I think the TSA's primary job is that of a common door lock. Door locks aren't designed to stop everyone, they are designed to dissuade amateur and opportunistic thieves. The old TSA did a fairly good job of dissuading your average nutter from trying to hijack aircraft.
What we are asking the TSA to do is stop people who are trained and sponsored by states or quasi state actors. Instead of asking the TSA to stop these people we need to go after their handlers, even if they are members of our own clandestine agencies.
> I think the TSA's primary job is that of a common door lock. Door locks aren't designed to stop everyone, they are designed to dissuade amateur and opportunistic thieves. The old TSA did a fairly good job of dissuading your average nutter from trying to hijack aircraft.
Pre-TSA non-federal security screening (heck, even pre-1990 gulf crisis security screening of the type adopted in, IIRC, something like the late 1970s in response to the hijackings of the 1960s and 1970s) did that pretty well.
I dislike waiting in line (obviously), but I really hate that the wait times are wildly unpredictable. Sometimes it's five minutes, sometimes it's an hour, and the only way to be sure is to arrive at the airport far ahead of time.
This has always struck me as weird since they know almost exactly how many people will be passing through a checkpoint at any given time: the vast majority of tickets are bought >1 week in advance and I'm pretty sure airlines share passenger data with the TSA already. Given this, they should be able to adjust the staffing accordingly to make the wait times incredibly predictable--at least when I fly, all of the lines are rarely open.
Heck, you could even make things slightly better by texting passengers a "security forecast" the night before: "Screening lines are expected to be {short,typical,long} tomorrow. Please arrive {1 hr, 90 min, 2+hr} before your flight.
You misunderstood him. He meant 'low wait time', 'medium wait time', 'high wait time'. Everyone would still be going through the same screening process as usual.
The problem is that there is not all that much money in reporting wait times. Right now the wait times are impacting passenger's experience to the point that I think the airlines might foot the bill to cover a Blip like system and fold it into their apps.
"Given this, they should be able to adjust the staffing accordingly...".
That right there is the hardest problem to solve. People are fickle, especially ones who work as security guards (or TSA agents, very similar duties). It's a low paying job that is boring as fuck. It's very difficult to find people willing to sit in a chair or stand in uniform for 8-12 hours a day. Not only that, but there is no incentive to do good work as a security guard; you might get lucky and get promoted to supervisor? Maybe? There aren't a lot of positions in security beyond the uniform.
So they can't just "adjust the staffing". Where are these staff going to come from, thin air? If a staff member already worked 40 hours this week, I can't ask him to do another shift, lest I pay overtime and blow the budget. If two of my employees call in sick, I can't just call up my night shift employees to fill the shift, otherwise they won't be able to work the night shift. And I need to give my staff stable hours - I can't ask someone to work a night shift, then 2 days later, work the morning shift, then the afternoon, etc. And to top it all off, I need to give my employees their work schedule a week in advance (at least) so they can plan their lives around it.
The main issue with your proposal is that security and customer satisfaction are in opposition with each other. The team that would win would be the less secure team.
ie. Take it to the extreme -- one agency would just say "here walk on through", as that would be the easiest.
Unless you suggest that they still have to follow all the silly rules, but then you haven't really gained much except efficiency at following useless rules.
They should've also noticed that you always have to get to Ben Gurion at least 3 hours before the flight because of security. I'm not complaining, but it's probably not what americans would want in a future TSA.
What's the underlying difference which causes a typical European security check to be swift (I don't remember spending more than 5 minutes on a security control for ages) and the TSA one to be awfully long?
In China they fool you into thinking it's going to go quick by being low-tech with relatively spartan cordoning, and just a nondescript agent at a metal table. Then suddenly and unceremoniously they dump all your shit out everywhere and wave you through while moving onto the next person, leaving you to spend 10 minutes repacking everything. (Maybe this is only for foreigners though).
> Ultimately, the TSA’s airport screening exists as the second-to-last line of defense for a threat that is astoundingly rare.
It didn't used to be that rare before the FAA required screening measures to be implemented: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/30/world/middleeast/airline-h... ("By the mid-1970s, at least 150 planes had been 'skyjacked' in the United States alone.") The first U.S. hijacking was in 1961,[1] so we're talking roughly 10 per year in the U.S. before modern aviation security.
It would be fair to point out that most of the decrease happened due to pre-TSA screening measures. But it would also be fair to point out that it's hard to separate how much of the delays post-TSA are due to the TSA itself and how much are due to the massive increase in US passengers and concomitant overloading of airport capacity.
The article doesn't mention that Israeli screeners are highly trained. There's a term of art in law enforcement, "hinky", which denotes the red flag that LEO's develop with experience. To fly in Israel, one stops in a bombproof room and is merely questioned by professionals, who will pull you aside if you are hinky.
The underwear bomber's father was worried that he was violent and crazy. He CONTACTED THE US STATE DEPT about his son, out of concern. His son the bomber traveled internationally to the US, without any suitcases. He was as hinky as you could hope to find.
Our relatively untrained TSA is nearly useless; at best it is security theater. I would be heavily against the underwear bomber sneaking by professionals successfully.
Also, I don't see how airplanes are not such a rich target any more. Killing a lot of people without access to the cockpit is challenging (they are sealed in the US now). A McDonald's employee could fare much better with a slow poison I suppose.
Credit where due: a great deal of this post is gleaned from Bruce Schneier writings.
Thanks for bringing up these points. I think these are common misconceptions among educated people. Mentioning them shows that you exercise a good amount of critical thinking.
1. Israeli security. While passengers wait in security lines, Israeli security officers ask questions to each individual about their journey. However, these checks only occur at Israeli airports. Board El Al from Amsterdam, and you'll find the same checks as other airlines to non-Israeli destinations. Another point: the "hinky" factor. Ethnic and religious profiling is practiced regularly and overtly in Israel [1]; U.S. law protects travelers from this method of profiling. I do agree that we should increase the amount of specialist investigators available to perform interviews while passengers are in line. I don't agree that Israel is a relevant model for the U.S., which is full of small airports and is less politically centralized. I compare this to the one major airport in Israel (yes there are 5 int'l airports but Ben Gurion in Tel Aviv gets the lion's share of flights).
2. TSA's uselessness. TSA is an effective deterrent. It increases the risk of getting caught to a nonzero factor. The amount of airplane hijackings has reduced to zero in the United States since the creation of the TSA. Hijackings in other countries' airspace still occurs. Is TSA doing a horrible job? Objectively yes. Is it useless? No.
3. Airplanes as enticing targets. Airplane crashes target middle and upper class people who politicians care about. The Malaysian Airlines crashes dominated airwaves for weeks. Airplane crashes are sensational and can spur politicians into a course of action (overreaction) favorable to terrorists' agendas. A McDonald's poisoning is difficult to attribute to malice. ISIL might have claimed responsibility for the Chipotle e. coli outbreak, but would that have been credible?
4. Schneier. Mr. Schneier is a brilliant cryptographer who does not have credible expertise outside that realm. His blog is popular and he is vocal about computer security. However, several outstanding security professionals (Thomas Ptacek, on this site) have noted that many of his statements and predictions regarding computer security are plain wrong, and belie a lack of understanding of software vulnerability analysis. That said, his opinion of the TSA and Israeli security is as valid as any other layperson social commentator; he just doesn't have any expertise in the domain.
Compared to what existed before? The evidence on that is...scant.
> It increases the risk of getting caught to a nonzero factor.
The risk was nonzero before.
> The amount of airplane hijackings has reduced to zero in the United States since the creation of the TSA.
There were no passenger aircraft hijackings in the US for about 18 years prior to 9/11/2001. So, its really not all that convincing that the TSA has done anything better than what went before by keeping the number to 0 in the less than 15 since it was established.
> Is it useless? No.
Compared to no security, its not useless. But is it meaningful better than what it replaced (which was not "no security")?
> It increases the risk of getting caught to a nonzero factor.
The risk of getting caught with box cutters at that time was actually zero.
> There were no passenger aircraft hijackings in the US for about 18 years prior to 9/11/2001. So, its really not all that convincing that the TSA has done anything better than what went before by keeping the number to 0 in the less than 15 since it was established.
It's interesting that you had to qualify it with "passenger aircraft hijackings" to avoid mentioning the 1994 hijacking from Memphis. Also, as mentioned elsewhere in this thread, airport security improved at many airports in the 1990s. TSA was implemented with the intention to standardize this. The public was incensed (rightly or wrongly) at the failure of the airport security to stop the 9/11 hijackers.
> Compared to no security, its not useless. But is it meaningful better than what it replaced (which was not "no security")?
Did I dispute this? Please don't attempt to inject meaning in my position that isn't there.
The last passenger aircraft hijacking one on that list before 9/11 was in 1987 (there are others in that period with US, along with other, flags on that webpage, because the plane was either flown to the US or was a plane of a US carrier -- I actually missed the 1987 one in the earlier report, which makes it only 14 years before 9/11 without an attack.)
> It's interesting that you had to qualify it with "passenger aircraft hijackings" to avoid mentioning the 1994 hijacking from Memphis.
Given that the main focus of discussion has generally been on the TSA security implementation and its application to passenger flights, I think that its an appropriate limitation. But even if you add that one in, the rate is still so low that the confidence that there is an reduction in the rate of hijackings since the TSA was introduced attributable to anything other than chance (much less one attributable specifically to the TSA) is not particularly high.
> The risk of getting caught with box cutters at that time was actually zero.
The reports from the planes were that the hijackers had a variety of weapons, which included box cutters, but also firearms.
> Also, as mentioned elsewhere in this thread, airport security improved at many airports in the 1990s.
The federal government set standards for a long time before that, and the federal standards were enhanced in response to the 1990 gulf crisis, true.
> TSA was implemented with the intention to standardize this.
No, it wasn't. It was implemented specifically to negate future liability from the airlines for security failures, because the airlines (many of which were reportedly near bankruptcy) felt that with the need to provide coverage for potential liability for future security failures made evident by the 9/11 events (for which they also sought specific, after the fact immunity from Congress) they would no longer be able to operate profitably.
I took El Al out of JFK in 2001 (before 9/11) and they had their own separate security stuff in addition to the airport's. I got questioned pretty thoroughly.
> The amount of airplane hijackings has reduced to zero in the United States since the creation of the TSA
I would disagree. The TSA has actually let two terrorists on planes, namely, the 'shoe bomber' [1] and the 'underwear bomber' [2]. Both got on the plane and actually triggered their respective devices, so aside from their actual security purpose failing their deterrent effect did not work either.
Thanks for the great feedback. All I have to say in response is to point out that the TSA budget is $7.55 billion for 2015. I imagine you'd agree that a cost/benefit analysis over this figure would yield disappointing results, especially if you include the productivity losses imposed at airports.
The TSA does not block terrorists. It blocks idiots. Some terrorists are idiots, but it has also blocked idiots that were not terrorists. Of course, not all terrorists are idiots, and not all threats are terrorists. Which begs the question, who asked for this?
The most glaring idiotic point I never see raised about the TSA, other than being an abject failure, is that whatever idiot thought up the TSA didn't even attempt to think like a terrorist.
Look since it's inception to stop terrorists getting on board planes with water bottles and nail clippers, and box cutters... if I am a terrorist.. you just made my job 1000 times easier. I don't even need to get on a plane. You just corralled dozens of people into a single slow moving line.
Why wouldn't I just strap symtex to my self and ball bearings, go through the security line and as soon as I am the next person to go through the scanners blow myself up. Taking out the TSA agents, the scanners, the security personnel at the checkpoint, the 20 or thirty people standing behind me and those in front putting their shoes on. I mean you just made my job a cake walk. No one who passed legislation creating the worthless TSA even tried to think about how much easier this would make terrorism. Seriously, didn't. even. try. to. think.
The TSA was created to stop people from flying planes into buildings. Whatever damage you think you'd do with a bomb at an airport is not much next to what you could do with a plane in the sky.
Additionally, you've just blown up an airport without ever receiving full access to the country. It's easy to attack a country's borders, but that's not where the heart is.
I was talking about someone inside the US with a departure ticket outside the US. It is also easy to attack it inside. Timothy McVey, Oklahoma city.
The TSA does not magically improve if you are leaving the country.
I have no love for the TSA, but it seems ridiculous to believe that threats outside the US are somehow not relevant just because threats inside the US exist.
I think you're failing to understand the enormous psychological and commercial impact to airplane hijackings and forced crashes. The recent Brussels security line attack had a high impact. However, it didn't approach the levels of the 9/11 attacks. The fact you're making this comment and not mentioning the extremely relevant Brussels attack shows how much impact it had on you. How many others have already forgotten about it?
It is convenient to try to "unit test" portions of reality but they really must be taken into the greater context. Terrorists aren't going for a strict body count; they're going for maximum political and social impact.
Last two times I've flown, the TSA Pre line was longer than the regular Premier line.
Also, it's frustrating to see not more people calling out Pre for what it is: a pay-to-play scheme which I'm very much opposed to. Not to mention the outstanding record of the government keeping such data secure to date.
>we created the TSA, tasked it with a massive task, and hobbled it with ..., weak funding, ...
This is a terrible congress, but I'm tired of hearing this nonsense. It's not true. This is simply mismanagement, blame shifting, and parroting of spin. TSA has an increased budget but has voluntarily eliminated screeners. They recognize it and call it a win.
The budget is north of $7.3 B and has increased year over year. Despite this, TSA has eliminated thousands of positions. These numbers are all publicly available and verifiable[1][2][3].
In FY 2016, TSA budget increased almost $49 million to a totally of $7.3 billion. Despite this increase, TSA eliminated 2,860 positions from it workforce. Likewise, the 2017 budget (which is not finalized, of course) has increased upwards of $70 million. They simply can't spend the money fast enough.
TSA sees no problem with this. In fact, they think they're doing a great job. On the elimination of 1,666 screeners, they laud themselves, "[Risk-based security] methods have proven more efficient in moving people through the checkpoint than regular screening lanes and require fewer resources than a traditional screening lane. This reduction reflects TSA’s goal to continue transitioning to a smaller, more skilled, professional workforce..." [2-p.62]
>which is based on profiling that’s a combination of behavioral and racial (the latter of which is rightfully officially prohibited by the TSA, though allegations of racial profiling against it continue)
TSA being crap aside, I don't see what's wrong with racial profiling.
If a predominant number of actual culprits will be of a certain ethnicity or broader culture (e.g. because the organizations they belong too predominantly operate in certain countries or with certain religious groups), you should definitely that to the things you check for as a statistically significant correlation.
That's a totally different thing from being racist -- which is assuming a certain demographic are inferior humans.
Im against it because its insanely stupid, not because its racist.
Lets take Islamic Terrorists as an example, they have a very wide pool of people to choose from, many of whom do not fit any stereotype you could come up with.
As soon as its known that security targets specific profiles, it becomes trivial to bypass security.
Since it's like one in a million people that are terrorists you're basically harassing entire groups of people on the premise that you'll luck out and find the one among them that's determined to cause harm.
This is so staggeringly unlikely to happen. The TSA is more likely to find a winning Powerball ticket in someone's luggage.
>Lets take Islamic Terrorists as an example, they have a very wide pool of people to choose from, many of whom do not fit any stereotype you could come up with. As soon as its known that security targets specific profiles, it becomes trivial to bypass security.
If the "specific profile" is their ethnicity, then it doesn't become "trivial" at all.
It puts them through a huge new cost -- having to recruit and convince to send on missions more people of other nationalities. And while those do exist, they are far rarer than fundamentalist native Syrians or Iraqis for example.
I think the problem with racial profiling is a Bayesian one. Even if P(terrorist|brown looking person) is slightly higher than P(terrorist|white looking person) (which I'm not even convinced is true), P(terrorist) is so insanely low that the result is singling out and victimizing (by the shame of being pulled aside, the intimidation of being aggressively searched, the violation of being treated like a criminal because your ethnic group looks similar to another one, etc.) mostly innocent people based on the arbitrary judgement of what a terrorist should look like. It would cause enormous disruption and social harm, and not really move the needle on successfully thwarted plots.
As you are likely an engineer, do you want to be singled out every time you fly? Do you want all HN readers to be singled out, because most of us are likely engineers?
Why, or why not?
Then there's the sheer problem of defining "terrorism." Are attacks on abortion centers, including murders, due to 'Christian terrorism'? If so, when do we target Christians? Is the Charleston church shooting an example of 'white terrorism', and do we need to start profiling all white people?
If rich people are more likely to do white collar crime, do you start profiling them?
Or do you only profile the least powerful people, spend lots of money on huge numbers of false positives and further induce resentment, with essentially no chance of benefit?
>As you are likely an engineer, do you want to be singled out every time you fly? Do you want all HN readers to be singled out, because most of us are likely engineers?
If that's an actual statistical factor (and not bad engineering), then it should absolutely weigh in their "single out" criteria, whatever anyone likes it or not.
It is the supporters of racial profiling who need to show that it is an "actual statistical factor", and that it's significant enough to spend time, money, political capital, and social will, to use.
To start with, it needs to be more effective than singling out "males" (who really are "a predominant number of actual culprits") and "engineers".
You say you "don't see what's wrong with racial profiling", but you don't even know if it's effective? Do you want to waste money on useless policies?
>It is the supporters of racial profiling who need to show that it is an "actual statistical factor", and that it's significant enough to spend time, money, political capital, and social will, to use.
The first is beyond dispute -- if anything is almost a tautology. If one combats terrorists from Syria, Iraq and other arab countries, they should by definition add a weight to such ethnicities in their profiling for potential actors of such acts. It's not Alaskans or Norwegians who predominantly (if at all) enroll in ISIS.
>To start with, it needs to be more effective than singling out "males" (who really are "a predominant number of actual culprits") and "engineers".
Actually, no it hasn't. Since "males" and "engineers" will be additional weights. Who even said it has to be a single deciding factor?
>* You say you "don't see what's wrong with racial profiling", but you don't even know if it's effective? Do you want to waste money on useless policies?*
Who said that I don't even know if it's effective? It's very effective where it's applied e.g in Israel etc.
If you start by saying that "ISIS = terrorism" then there's no predictive knowledge in knowing someone's ethnicity, because your definition is inherently geographically biased, and ethnicity is correlated to geography.
As you say, it's a tautology, but you think that's meaningful, when it's actually a decision made by fiat. And wouldn't nationality be more predictive than ethnicity?
Are those who attack abortion centers and abortion doctors terrorists? If so, is "Christianity" another factor? If not, why not?
Is the Charleston church shooting an example of terrorism? If so, is "being white" another factor?
When the US-backed Contras used murder, rape, and torture against the civilian population, was that terrorism? And if so, what were the key predictive factors we could use to help identify terrorists and terrorist supporters?
Who gets to choose what is terrorism, who gets to choose the factors that go into the predictive model, and does that choice have a built-in bias which makes the model useless for screening purposes?
And again, why is it the least powerful who are often designated the most suspicious?
>If you start by saying that "ISIS = terrorism" then there's no predictive knowledge in knowing someone's ethnicity, because your definition is inherently geographically biased, and ethnicity is correlated to geography.
I fail to see how it doesn't have "predictive knowledge" under those assertions.
The fact that my "definition is inherently geographically biased" and "ethnicity is correlated to geography" implies exactly the opposite -- that it's an obvious correlation.(The predictive power obviously coming from using that knowledge for excluding, or putting a less weight, to other ethnicities).
>And wouldn't nationality be more predictive than ethnicity?
Not necessarily. Some western ex-pat working in such a country, even if he got the nationality, would be less likely to share the same affiliations, backstory, religion and culture with those turning out to be terrorists. And inversely, culprits in Europe for example often have gotten the European nationality (or even have been born there in the first place), but most still share such (non-European) ethnicities.
>Are those who attack abortion centers and abortion doctors terrorists? If so, is "Christianity" another factor? If not, why not?
They could be said to be terrorists too. I didn't suggest anything about them though -- I said racial profiling is OK at airports and for catching the other kinds of terrorists (and for which such programs as TSA started anyway), not for each and every kind of loony. Airports are not abortion clinics, so they won't attract as many Christian zealots.
>When the US-backed Contras used murder, rape, and torture against the civilian population, was that terrorism?
Yes, but obviously not the kind that the US government tries to prevent now -- so outside the scope of this discussion.
If people from certain rural areas tended to be Contras and one wanted to guess them out in such a scenario as with TSA, then racial profiling would be totally applicable there too.
Sorry, you're right. I meant that you are using ethnicity as a proxy for geographic location. For something as broad as "Arab", it's not predictive - just like "Christian" is not predictive for figuring out who might kill an abortion doctor, or "Japanese ancestry" is not predictive for who will sabotage US military installations on the territory of Hawaii. (Hint: none of them; and the US has apologized for the internment camps.)
It's predictive in the way that saying African Americans tend to get worse grades in school. The primary correlation is with poverty - African Americans tend to be poorer than average - not ethnicity.
So, even if you think ethnicity is important, how do you know that other characteristics aren't even more important? Look at the VAM for schools to see how difficult it is to be predictive even when you have lots of data points.
> "Not necessarily"
That's approaching a movie plot scenario. Either you have evidence or you don't. Hand-waving counter-examples is not evidence.
> "I said racial profiling is OK at airports and for catching the other kinds of terrorists (and for which such programs as TSA started anyway)"
Racial profiling is illegal in the US. Therefore you have no US evidence that it would be effective. How would you even measure effectiveness ? Fewer hijackings every year? Fewer bombings?
For that matter, why do you keep picking race as the key predictive feature? Why aren't you arguing for sex screening? Look at all the male terrorists. Why aren't you proposing that women should automatically be allowed to use the TSA Pre-Check lanes, so the TSA can put more resources on searching the men? Once that's done, then argue for screening by race, which we know is less effective.
> "They could be said to be terrorists too. I didn't suggest anything about them though"
I know you didn't. That's because you're picking the lazy solution for the easy problem that doesn't really exist.
Think of it this way. There are 10M people of ethnic group X in a country. Of them are 10 who plan to carry out a terrorist action.
If we put racial screening in place, we can catch 2 of them. On the other hand, there's a 1-in-a-million chance that the added frustration, humiliation, and resentment will cause someone to snap, and decide to carry out a terrorist action.
Congratulations, you now have 10 new terrorists to replace the 2 you caught.
Yes, this is also approaching a movie plot scenario. But since that's all you really have to back your views, then that's what I'll use too.
>It's predictive in the way that saying African Americans tend to get worse grades in school. The primary correlation is with poverty - African Americans tend to be poorer than average - not ethnicity. So, even if you think ethnicity is important, how do you know that other characteristics aren't even more important?
I wouldn't say that it's a primary/secondary correlation scenario with terrorism too. It's more a case of terrorism being a specific historical outlet for both domestic and international political grudges and issues that those people (in the middle east and the arab world) have had, and a common thread to those is ethnicity/religion.
So it's not like we're studying some abstract phenomenon and making blind guesses and accusations: we know the history of the area, and of such groups there, we know their composition, and ideology etc -- and in what we know religion and ethnicity plays a very large factor. They are neither many Icelanders nor many Catholics in those organizations (there might be a few "converts" -- but still insignificant). So, it's more a case of applying what we know as weight factors. So, if we know that "of known terrorists 90% are from X ethnicity area, and 10% from various others", then we should certainly take that into account as weights. And sure, you'll have false positives any way -- nobody suggests this would be the be all end all method of finding a terrorist, just a weighted factor.
>That's approaching a movie plot scenario. Either you have evidence or you don't. Hand-waving counter-examples is not evidence.
The counterexample comes from what we know historically about such cases. There's a thing called life experience, following the news and historical information, understanding how people behave in general etc -- and using that to tell what's more likely. Not everything has to come from some exhaustive official statistical study and "evidence" (and some things are also dead obvious to even need such a thing).
>For that matter, why do you keep picking race as the key predictive feature?
Because that's the very topic under discussion in this subthread.
>Why aren't you arguing for sex screening?
Who said I'm not? I've already said that multiple factors should be used and weighted.
>Why aren't you proposing that women should automatically be allowed to use the TSA Pre-Check lanes, so the TSA can put more resources on searching the men?
I'm not proposing it because this is something I've never implied I believe should be done -- and thus just a bizarro thing made up to make my arguments look stupid (as if this exaggerated suggestion directly stems from what I previously said).
I've used the term "weight" several times in this sub-thread. Did I ever give the impression that any of these weights (like "being an arab" or "being a woman") should be 1? Or that any weight should be 0 for that matter?
So, yeah, if they want to check for suspects I'd proposed they factor in "being male" among other things -- not to imply they shouldn't check women at all, but that they should check them less intensively, unless they have other red flags too.
The very notion of "profiling" means you use all available info about likely attributes -- not as a certainties, but as hints. In cases where ethnicity has historically tended to be skewed towards certain X or Y groups, that should totally be a factor too. Like age, sex, personal income, nationality, occupation, and several of other things.
>If we put racial screening in place, we can catch 2 of them. On the other hand, there's a 1-in-a-million chance that the added frustration, humiliation, and resentment will cause someone to snap, and decide to carry out a terrorist action. Congratulations, you now have 10 new terrorists to replace the 2 you caught.
I again want to highlight how you use the generic term "terrorism" as short-hand for a specific type of terrorism, specifically 'those people (in the middle east and the arab world) have had, and a common thread to those is ethnicity/religion.'
You haven't defined how to identify "those people". What ethnicity is common to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab and Ziad Jarrah?
So you must mean religion.
Do you put Muhammad Ali and other Black Muslims from the US in the same category as "these people"? Do you distinguish "salafi/fundamentalists" from other Muslims? Some Muslims say that Ahmadiyya Islam isn't a Muslim faith. Should they be included?
How easy do you think it would be for someone to hide their religious beliefs in order to bypass your screen?
Nor have you identified the false positive rate. How many terrorists do you think there are, and how people many fit the screening category?
If you define "terrorist" to exclude anything caused by a non-Muslim (anti-abortion murderers, anti-black murderers, Irish/Basque/whatever separatist) then that's like shooting bullets at a barn then putting the target around what you hit - there are no non-Muslim terrorists because you defined it that way.
Now, I'm not saying you personally have to do this. I'm pointing out why profiling won't work. Because a quick run of the numbers shows that you will be overwhelmed by false positives.
> Did I ever give the impression that any of these weights
You gave the very strong impression that "ethnicity/religion" is on the top of the list. I've since pointed out two characteristics which are even more accurate, and you keep arguing that "ethnicity/religion" should be high on the list.
Going back to your original question, which is "I don't see what's wrong with racial profiling." My answer again is that even setting aside the morality, the economics don't work out. What's wrong is you waste money for no gain and added frustration.
> The very notion of "profiling" means you use all available info about likely attributes
Here's where I know you have little experience with data mining. Every attribute you consider adds a new dimension to your search space. But there aren't that many terrorists, we have very little data in how to train the model, and most of that data is very noisy.
Even in cases where we have lots of data, like schools, attempts to use models like VAM have produced what is at best confusing information, and at worst - and more often - is camouflage used to force certain political beliefs without real justification.
How are you so sure that screening based on ethnicity/religion will make one whit of difference? How do you measure its effectiveness? When you say "from all publicly known cases" - how many cases do you think there are? 100? 1,000? How much statistical certainty do you think we can get from that?
> That's (the "frustration of a TSA check" or similar minor event) is not historically (from all known cases) what such people have in their background.
It's illegal for the TSA to profile, so there is no such "similar minor event" to use as a reference. Which cases were you thinking of when you said "all known cases"?
What I mean are the more general examples of profiling, which have lead to anger, protests, riots, and killings. The Black Panther Party would not have started had black Americans not been routinely profiled.
Or if you prefer, we use profiling to target our cruise missiles and drone attacks. Some of those kill wedding parties, babies, and other civilians. This makes some people angry enough to want to attack the US. But of course, this isn't a "minor event" like TSA screening. It's still an example of how profiling can induce new extremism.
And again, how do you tell if a race/ ethnicity/ reli...
>I again want to highlight how you use the generic term "terrorism" as short-hand for a specific type of terrorism, specifically 'those people (in the middle east and the arab world) have had, and a common thread to those is ethnicity/religion.'
That's because this is what the "war on terror" predominantly targets and 9/11 the reason the whole modern TSA scheme was created for.
>You haven't defined how to identify "those people". What ethnicity is common to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab and Ziad Jarrah?
Again, I don't understand the sudden naiveness.
Why when one says "ethinicity" should be a factor, would anybody think that he means one and only ethinicity?
Obviously it's a set of ethnicities, each with its own weight.
Profiling is based on making a prediction heuristic with the data you have.
If that data shows ethinicities X,Y,Z are predominantly involved in such attempts, you should include them in their profile.
That (racial profiling) is not different than any other profiling factor.
If profilers searching for a serial killer with a specific MO look predominantly at "males 20-50" that's not very different too. And males 20-50 are an even more broad category than ethnicity X,Y,Z (I'm saying this for people worried about "false positives" in racial profiling. Those are par for the course with ANY type of profiling, and besides the point).
Also, noone is saying that profiling should be THE method of determining if one is what they look for. Incoming information, surveillance, following, interviews, checks etc will obviouslu also be used.
>So you must mean religion.
No, I mean ethinicity. But religion is an equally important factor. For example even an atheist with ethnicity X might want to avenge country Y if their countries have grudges. And conversely, someone with the same religion, but from a country that doesn't have any hostillity towards country Y, wouldn't be as likely to attack it.
E.g. an Mongolian muslim compared to some Libyan muslim.
>Do you put Muhammad Ali and other Black Muslims from the US in the same category as "these people"? Do you distinguish "salafi/fundamentalists" from other Muslims?
Isn't the answer obvious? All those are factors that should be weighted in, too.
>How easy do you think it would be for someone to hide their religious beliefs in order to bypass your screen?
Even if it was easy (which would include living a "double life" for several years, being able to now have visible ties with said beliefs etc -- which some can just not do at all retrospectively),
it would just mean that they particularly wouldn't be affected by said weight. Lots of others still would.
>If you define "terrorist" to exclude anything caused by a non-Muslim (anti-abortion murderers, anti-black murderers, Irish/Basque/whatever separatist) then that's like shooting bullets at a barn then putting the target around what you hit - there are no non-Muslim terrorists because you defined it that way.
I restricted the discussion to this, because it was a thread about racial profiling / TSA.
Obviously the TSA is not involved much in looking for anti-abortion murderers or anti-black murderers. Nor I think they face (or should care) for Irish/Basque's seperatists.
Ad obviously not every organization should care for all of those cases (e.g. Indian border control should not be much concerned with discovering Irish seperatists).
That said, if one wanted to check for Irish seperatists, then ethnicity (being Irish) and religion (being, say, Catholic) should be good starting heuristics.
>Now, I'm not saying you personally have to do this. I'm pointing out why profiling won't work. Because a quick run of the numbers shows that you will be overwhelmed by false positives.
> "What, what would those characterists be that you've pointed out? I missed them."
National origin, gender, and profession. I believe I've mentioned them a few times.
> "I'd say with profiling you spend LESS money"
Which is why I pointed out that since nearly all terrorists we know about are men, your logic is that women should get less scrutiny in TSA lines then men.
My logic is that if you are right, then gender-based screening is the easiest to implement, with the strongest correlation. So that's how you should start, because it gives you the biggest gains for very little cost.
> "Illegal doesn't mean much with regards to the actual practice."
I don't deny that. Just like you don't deny there are cases where screening was used to enforce racism and xenophobia.
But now you've lowered the bar. Now you say that people screen "even subconsiously, but usually consciously too". I agree with that.
What are your historical precedents for showing that those cases of illegal screening are more effective than not screening?
And you still haven't mentioned how you might evaluate if screening on the basis of ethnicity, religion, or other protected category is effective.
The TSA is bad because its visible arms are all cost (government money, passenger time, etc.) and no benefit.
The TSA airport checkers are the worst. If you simply removed the checkers and let the airlines go back to handling security, things would be just fine.
Hijacking and other forms of on plane malfeasance are a solved problem not because of TSA but because passengers won't sit still for it anymore. Of course, reinforced cockpit doors now make hijacking by insiders much easier because the passengers can't fight back through it. Oops.
The problem is that the most effective security measures don't come with multi-billion dollar project budgets. Matching luggage to passengers to prevent non-suicide attacks. Cell phone waiting lots so someone circling an airport is now suspicious behavior. All of these things are relatively cheap but very effective--thus nobody cares because there is no money in it.
i'm a bit sad because whenever i talk to someone who went in and out the US they claim to not have had issues with the tsa. it may well be a clustered problem that mostly doesnt appear but since people are sheep i guess they just go with the hassle, don't care and then say "nah, no problems.".
my proposal: don't change a damn thing about the tsa. but introduce a tsa-free line with simple metal detectors. no molesting, no cancer-inducing machinery.
Where "we" is a group of politicians who want to be re-elected. If longer lines don't hurt them politically, then they aren't going to worry too much about fixing things to make it faster.
There is a premise here that the wait is an issue, but I'm not so sure a long and bothersome security line is a bad thing from the perspective of our political leaders. I suspect (with complete seriousness) that if airport security wasn't a bother, people wouldn't feel safe.
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[ 2.3 ms ] story [ 130 ms ] threadAnother reason is that it’s much easier for the TSA to screen checked bags than carry-ons, and airlines keep discouraging people from checking bags.
Why is it easier to screen checked bags? 90% of the time I fly, no one opens my checked bag (at least, there's no TSA card inside, and the TSA indicator on my lock doesn't show it was opened), so if they check it at all, they must use some kind of scanner -- can't they use that same scanner for carry-on bags?
If screening for banned items makes it too hard to screen carry-on bags, then maybe they could trim down the list of banned items to a more manageable level.
I'm not sure.
On the other hand, a lot of the checked baggage handling is very automated and can probably get a good view into most pieces without fiddling around.
No passengers are involved like they are at carry on screening, so also this might yield efficiencies, as you don't have to keep a bag and passenger near each other.
As you suggest there are fewer banned items in checked bags, so less bag opening needed.
It would be interesting to give them some competition. Imagine if the department was split into the TSA and the TSB. Give them equal funding and presence in the airport. Flyers pay a screening fee and pick A or B, and then are screened by that agency. I bet they would shape up overnight.
[1] http://www.latimes.com/opinion/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-tsa-a...
[2] http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/06/11/481694459/...
> The House of Representatives voted to cut TSA funding in 2011. Sequestration cut TSA funding in 2013.
> In 2014, Congress passed a TSA fare increase, and used the overwhelming majority of that not to fund the TSA, but to pay down the national debt. When the TSA fare went up in 2014 (as did the prices of tickets it was attached to), Congressional funding cuts to the TSA meant the TSA cut 3,500 screener positions. And in 2015, the House voted to increase TSA funding, but cut TSA employee pay.
Pay poorly, and you'll get poor service.
As for your proposal, who will pay for the extra overhead of two teams? Will small airports need twice the staff?
The flip side, redirecting increases in TSA fares away from the TSA and towards the general budget, is also typical government behavior: can't raise taxes, so raise "fees" instead and use the proceeds like a tax.
I wonder why people believe that cutting budgets will somehow lead to better results. It never happens.
Poor results are easier to stomach when they're cheap. See: any cheap product ever.
When you boil down a conversation though the result is usually people want lower taxes for themselves and the idea of a small government is usually just a smokescreen.
Perhaps you think they are "typical" because you've been on the receiving end of decades of propaganda to convince you the government is incompetent, there's nothing you can do about it, and the only solution is the "free market"?
To start with, why can't the government raise taxes?
The US federal government is bad about this, but they're not the only ones that do it: effective tax rates here are just as high as in many European countries, but most of the taxes aren't called 'tax'. There are fees and tolls and surcharges on many living expenses, and more that get hidden in higher prices for many products. That's why I said that adding a TSA fee to airline tickets, but not using the money for the TSA, is typical behavior.
I wish the taxation system was honest and transparent. I wish the money was used competently and efficiently. But the political system here is screwed up I don't think those are achievable goals. And unfortunatly it's led to having an incompent fascist as a leading presidential candidate.
Note that such security layouts are pretty much standard issue for any new installation in Europe, and have been for coming on for a decade now. (Also, in Europe, my experience is the belts are typically longer so you always have had multiple people loading trays at once, which I rarely see in the US.)
What we are asking the TSA to do is stop people who are trained and sponsored by states or quasi state actors. Instead of asking the TSA to stop these people we need to go after their handlers, even if they are members of our own clandestine agencies.
Pre-TSA non-federal security screening (heck, even pre-1990 gulf crisis security screening of the type adopted in, IIRC, something like the late 1970s in response to the hijackings of the 1960s and 1970s) did that pretty well.
This has always struck me as weird since they know almost exactly how many people will be passing through a checkpoint at any given time: the vast majority of tickets are bought >1 week in advance and I'm pretty sure airlines share passenger data with the TSA already. Given this, they should be able to adjust the staffing accordingly to make the wait times incredibly predictable--at least when I fly, all of the lines are rarely open.
Heck, you could even make things slightly better by texting passengers a "security forecast" the night before: "Screening lines are expected to be {short,typical,long} tomorrow. Please arrive {1 hr, 90 min, 2+hr} before your flight.
A "security forecast" would completely defeat the purpose of the security line in the first place. Who would "attack" if it's a high security day?
Some airports have wait time systems: http://www.atlanta-airport.com/Passenger/waittimes/
The TSA has a mobile ready site with wait times for some airports: https://apps.tsa.dhs.gov/mytsa/status_home.aspx
Some private companies are in the market. Not sure where the data comes from: http://www.whatsbusy.com/airport
I like Blip, who has an implemented an elegant solution in JFK: https://techcrunch.com/2015/08/24/this-technology-monitors-o...
The problem is that there is not all that much money in reporting wait times. Right now the wait times are impacting passenger's experience to the point that I think the airlines might foot the bill to cover a Blip like system and fold it into their apps.
That right there is the hardest problem to solve. People are fickle, especially ones who work as security guards (or TSA agents, very similar duties). It's a low paying job that is boring as fuck. It's very difficult to find people willing to sit in a chair or stand in uniform for 8-12 hours a day. Not only that, but there is no incentive to do good work as a security guard; you might get lucky and get promoted to supervisor? Maybe? There aren't a lot of positions in security beyond the uniform.
So they can't just "adjust the staffing". Where are these staff going to come from, thin air? If a staff member already worked 40 hours this week, I can't ask him to do another shift, lest I pay overtime and blow the budget. If two of my employees call in sick, I can't just call up my night shift employees to fill the shift, otherwise they won't be able to work the night shift. And I need to give my staff stable hours - I can't ask someone to work a night shift, then 2 days later, work the morning shift, then the afternoon, etc. And to top it all off, I need to give my employees their work schedule a week in advance (at least) so they can plan their lives around it.
TL;DR, staffing is hard
ie. Take it to the extreme -- one agency would just say "here walk on through", as that would be the easiest.
Unless you suggest that they still have to follow all the silly rules, but then you haven't really gained much except efficiency at following useless rules.
It didn't used to be that rare before the FAA required screening measures to be implemented: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/30/world/middleeast/airline-h... ("By the mid-1970s, at least 150 planes had been 'skyjacked' in the United States alone.") The first U.S. hijacking was in 1961,[1] so we're talking roughly 10 per year in the U.S. before modern aviation security.
It would be fair to point out that most of the decrease happened due to pre-TSA screening measures. But it would also be fair to point out that it's hard to separate how much of the delays post-TSA are due to the TSA itself and how much are due to the massive increase in US passengers and concomitant overloading of airport capacity.
[1] http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/06/20/when-hijack...
The underwear bomber's father was worried that he was violent and crazy. He CONTACTED THE US STATE DEPT about his son, out of concern. His son the bomber traveled internationally to the US, without any suitcases. He was as hinky as you could hope to find.
Our relatively untrained TSA is nearly useless; at best it is security theater. I would be heavily against the underwear bomber sneaking by professionals successfully.
Also, I don't see how airplanes are not such a rich target any more. Killing a lot of people without access to the cockpit is challenging (they are sealed in the US now). A McDonald's employee could fare much better with a slow poison I suppose.
Credit where due: a great deal of this post is gleaned from Bruce Schneier writings.
In the US, such profiling is illegal.
1. Israeli security. While passengers wait in security lines, Israeli security officers ask questions to each individual about their journey. However, these checks only occur at Israeli airports. Board El Al from Amsterdam, and you'll find the same checks as other airlines to non-Israeli destinations. Another point: the "hinky" factor. Ethnic and religious profiling is practiced regularly and overtly in Israel [1]; U.S. law protects travelers from this method of profiling. I do agree that we should increase the amount of specialist investigators available to perform interviews while passengers are in line. I don't agree that Israel is a relevant model for the U.S., which is full of small airports and is less politically centralized. I compare this to the one major airport in Israel (yes there are 5 int'l airports but Ben Gurion in Tel Aviv gets the lion's share of flights).
2. TSA's uselessness. TSA is an effective deterrent. It increases the risk of getting caught to a nonzero factor. The amount of airplane hijackings has reduced to zero in the United States since the creation of the TSA. Hijackings in other countries' airspace still occurs. Is TSA doing a horrible job? Objectively yes. Is it useless? No.
3. Airplanes as enticing targets. Airplane crashes target middle and upper class people who politicians care about. The Malaysian Airlines crashes dominated airwaves for weeks. Airplane crashes are sensational and can spur politicians into a course of action (overreaction) favorable to terrorists' agendas. A McDonald's poisoning is difficult to attribute to malice. ISIL might have claimed responsibility for the Chipotle e. coli outbreak, but would that have been credible?
4. Schneier. Mr. Schneier is a brilliant cryptographer who does not have credible expertise outside that realm. His blog is popular and he is vocal about computer security. However, several outstanding security professionals (Thomas Ptacek, on this site) have noted that many of his statements and predictions regarding computer security are plain wrong, and belie a lack of understanding of software vulnerability analysis. That said, his opinion of the TSA and Israeli security is as valid as any other layperson social commentator; he just doesn't have any expertise in the domain.
[1] http://www.haaretz.com/in-israel-racial-profiling-doesn-t-wa...
Compared to what existed before? The evidence on that is...scant.
> It increases the risk of getting caught to a nonzero factor.
The risk was nonzero before.
> The amount of airplane hijackings has reduced to zero in the United States since the creation of the TSA.
There were no passenger aircraft hijackings in the US for about 18 years prior to 9/11/2001. So, its really not all that convincing that the TSA has done anything better than what went before by keeping the number to 0 in the less than 15 since it was established.
> Is it useless? No.
Compared to no security, its not useless. But is it meaningful better than what it replaced (which was not "no security")?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_hijackings look at the number in the U.S. before TSA. Look at the number after.
> It increases the risk of getting caught to a nonzero factor.
The risk of getting caught with box cutters at that time was actually zero.
> There were no passenger aircraft hijackings in the US for about 18 years prior to 9/11/2001. So, its really not all that convincing that the TSA has done anything better than what went before by keeping the number to 0 in the less than 15 since it was established.
It's interesting that you had to qualify it with "passenger aircraft hijackings" to avoid mentioning the 1994 hijacking from Memphis. Also, as mentioned elsewhere in this thread, airport security improved at many airports in the 1990s. TSA was implemented with the intention to standardize this. The public was incensed (rightly or wrongly) at the failure of the airport security to stop the 9/11 hijackers.
> Compared to no security, its not useless. But is it meaningful better than what it replaced (which was not "no security")?
Did I dispute this? Please don't attempt to inject meaning in my position that isn't there.
The last passenger aircraft hijacking one on that list before 9/11 was in 1987 (there are others in that period with US, along with other, flags on that webpage, because the plane was either flown to the US or was a plane of a US carrier -- I actually missed the 1987 one in the earlier report, which makes it only 14 years before 9/11 without an attack.)
> It's interesting that you had to qualify it with "passenger aircraft hijackings" to avoid mentioning the 1994 hijacking from Memphis.
Given that the main focus of discussion has generally been on the TSA security implementation and its application to passenger flights, I think that its an appropriate limitation. But even if you add that one in, the rate is still so low that the confidence that there is an reduction in the rate of hijackings since the TSA was introduced attributable to anything other than chance (much less one attributable specifically to the TSA) is not particularly high.
> The risk of getting caught with box cutters at that time was actually zero.
The reports from the planes were that the hijackers had a variety of weapons, which included box cutters, but also firearms.
> Also, as mentioned elsewhere in this thread, airport security improved at many airports in the 1990s.
The federal government set standards for a long time before that, and the federal standards were enhanced in response to the 1990 gulf crisis, true.
> TSA was implemented with the intention to standardize this.
No, it wasn't. It was implemented specifically to negate future liability from the airlines for security failures, because the airlines (many of which were reportedly near bankruptcy) felt that with the need to provide coverage for potential liability for future security failures made evident by the 9/11 events (for which they also sought specific, after the fact immunity from Congress) they would no longer be able to operate profitably.
I would disagree. The TSA has actually let two terrorists on planes, namely, the 'shoe bomber' [1] and the 'underwear bomber' [2]. Both got on the plane and actually triggered their respective devices, so aside from their actual security purpose failing their deterrent effect did not work either.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_failed_shoe_bomb_attempt [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Airlines_Flight_253
Look since it's inception to stop terrorists getting on board planes with water bottles and nail clippers, and box cutters... if I am a terrorist.. you just made my job 1000 times easier. I don't even need to get on a plane. You just corralled dozens of people into a single slow moving line. Why wouldn't I just strap symtex to my self and ball bearings, go through the security line and as soon as I am the next person to go through the scanners blow myself up. Taking out the TSA agents, the scanners, the security personnel at the checkpoint, the 20 or thirty people standing behind me and those in front putting their shoes on. I mean you just made my job a cake walk. No one who passed legislation creating the worthless TSA even tried to think about how much easier this would make terrorism. Seriously, didn't. even. try. to. think.
Additionally, you've just blown up an airport without ever receiving full access to the country. It's easy to attack a country's borders, but that's not where the heart is.
It is convenient to try to "unit test" portions of reality but they really must be taken into the greater context. Terrorists aren't going for a strict body count; they're going for maximum political and social impact.
Also, it's frustrating to see not more people calling out Pre for what it is: a pay-to-play scheme which I'm very much opposed to. Not to mention the outstanding record of the government keeping such data secure to date.
>we created the TSA, tasked it with a massive task, and hobbled it with ..., weak funding, ...
This is a terrible congress, but I'm tired of hearing this nonsense. It's not true. This is simply mismanagement, blame shifting, and parroting of spin. TSA has an increased budget but has voluntarily eliminated screeners. They recognize it and call it a win.
The budget is north of $7.3 B and has increased year over year. Despite this, TSA has eliminated thousands of positions. These numbers are all publicly available and verifiable[1][2][3].
In FY 2016, TSA budget increased almost $49 million to a totally of $7.3 billion. Despite this increase, TSA eliminated 2,860 positions from it workforce. Likewise, the 2017 budget (which is not finalized, of course) has increased upwards of $70 million. They simply can't spend the money fast enough.
TSA sees no problem with this. In fact, they think they're doing a great job. On the elimination of 1,666 screeners, they laud themselves, "[Risk-based security] methods have proven more efficient in moving people through the checkpoint than regular screening lanes and require fewer resources than a traditional screening lane. This reduction reflects TSA’s goal to continue transitioning to a smaller, more skilled, professional workforce..." [2-p.62]
1. https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/FY15BIB...
2. https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/FY_2016...
3. https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/FY2017B...
TSA being crap aside, I don't see what's wrong with racial profiling.
If a predominant number of actual culprits will be of a certain ethnicity or broader culture (e.g. because the organizations they belong too predominantly operate in certain countries or with certain religious groups), you should definitely that to the things you check for as a statistically significant correlation.
That's a totally different thing from being racist -- which is assuming a certain demographic are inferior humans.
Lets take Islamic Terrorists as an example, they have a very wide pool of people to choose from, many of whom do not fit any stereotype you could come up with.
As soon as its known that security targets specific profiles, it becomes trivial to bypass security.
This is so staggeringly unlikely to happen. The TSA is more likely to find a winning Powerball ticket in someone's luggage.
If the "specific profile" is their ethnicity, then it doesn't become "trivial" at all.
It puts them through a huge new cost -- having to recruit and convince to send on missions more people of other nationalities. And while those do exist, they are far rarer than fundamentalist native Syrians or Iraqis for example.
Pick out the "true" syrians. Ethnicity is not a good predictor of appearance.
"Engineering Terror" (2010) - http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/12/magazine/12FOB-IdeaLab-t.h...
"There’s a Good Reason Why So Many Terrorists Are Engineers" (2013) - http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/07/11/theres-a-good-reason-why...
As you are likely an engineer, do you want to be singled out every time you fly? Do you want all HN readers to be singled out, because most of us are likely engineers?
Why, or why not?
Then there's the sheer problem of defining "terrorism." Are attacks on abortion centers, including murders, due to 'Christian terrorism'? If so, when do we target Christians? Is the Charleston church shooting an example of 'white terrorism', and do we need to start profiling all white people?
If rich people are more likely to do white collar crime, do you start profiling them?
Or do you only profile the least powerful people, spend lots of money on huge numbers of false positives and further induce resentment, with essentially no chance of benefit?
If that's an actual statistical factor (and not bad engineering), then it should absolutely weigh in their "single out" criteria, whatever anyone likes it or not.
To start with, it needs to be more effective than singling out "males" (who really are "a predominant number of actual culprits") and "engineers".
You say you "don't see what's wrong with racial profiling", but you don't even know if it's effective? Do you want to waste money on useless policies?
The first is beyond dispute -- if anything is almost a tautology. If one combats terrorists from Syria, Iraq and other arab countries, they should by definition add a weight to such ethnicities in their profiling for potential actors of such acts. It's not Alaskans or Norwegians who predominantly (if at all) enroll in ISIS.
>To start with, it needs to be more effective than singling out "males" (who really are "a predominant number of actual culprits") and "engineers".
Actually, no it hasn't. Since "males" and "engineers" will be additional weights. Who even said it has to be a single deciding factor?
>* You say you "don't see what's wrong with racial profiling", but you don't even know if it's effective? Do you want to waste money on useless policies?*
Who said that I don't even know if it's effective? It's very effective where it's applied e.g in Israel etc.
If you start by saying that "ISIS = terrorism" then there's no predictive knowledge in knowing someone's ethnicity, because your definition is inherently geographically biased, and ethnicity is correlated to geography.
As you say, it's a tautology, but you think that's meaningful, when it's actually a decision made by fiat. And wouldn't nationality be more predictive than ethnicity?
Are those who attack abortion centers and abortion doctors terrorists? If so, is "Christianity" another factor? If not, why not?
Is the Charleston church shooting an example of terrorism? If so, is "being white" another factor?
When the US-backed Contras used murder, rape, and torture against the civilian population, was that terrorism? And if so, what were the key predictive factors we could use to help identify terrorists and terrorist supporters?
Who gets to choose what is terrorism, who gets to choose the factors that go into the predictive model, and does that choice have a built-in bias which makes the model useless for screening purposes?
And again, why is it the least powerful who are often designated the most suspicious?
I fail to see how it doesn't have "predictive knowledge" under those assertions.
The fact that my "definition is inherently geographically biased" and "ethnicity is correlated to geography" implies exactly the opposite -- that it's an obvious correlation.(The predictive power obviously coming from using that knowledge for excluding, or putting a less weight, to other ethnicities).
>And wouldn't nationality be more predictive than ethnicity?
Not necessarily. Some western ex-pat working in such a country, even if he got the nationality, would be less likely to share the same affiliations, backstory, religion and culture with those turning out to be terrorists. And inversely, culprits in Europe for example often have gotten the European nationality (or even have been born there in the first place), but most still share such (non-European) ethnicities.
>Are those who attack abortion centers and abortion doctors terrorists? If so, is "Christianity" another factor? If not, why not?
They could be said to be terrorists too. I didn't suggest anything about them though -- I said racial profiling is OK at airports and for catching the other kinds of terrorists (and for which such programs as TSA started anyway), not for each and every kind of loony. Airports are not abortion clinics, so they won't attract as many Christian zealots.
>When the US-backed Contras used murder, rape, and torture against the civilian population, was that terrorism?
Yes, but obviously not the kind that the US government tries to prevent now -- so outside the scope of this discussion.
If people from certain rural areas tended to be Contras and one wanted to guess them out in such a scenario as with TSA, then racial profiling would be totally applicable there too.
It's predictive in the way that saying African Americans tend to get worse grades in school. The primary correlation is with poverty - African Americans tend to be poorer than average - not ethnicity.
So, even if you think ethnicity is important, how do you know that other characteristics aren't even more important? Look at the VAM for schools to see how difficult it is to be predictive even when you have lots of data points.
> "Not necessarily"
That's approaching a movie plot scenario. Either you have evidence or you don't. Hand-waving counter-examples is not evidence.
> "I said racial profiling is OK at airports and for catching the other kinds of terrorists (and for which such programs as TSA started anyway)"
Racial profiling is illegal in the US. Therefore you have no US evidence that it would be effective. How would you even measure effectiveness ? Fewer hijackings every year? Fewer bombings?
For that matter, why do you keep picking race as the key predictive feature? Why aren't you arguing for sex screening? Look at all the male terrorists. Why aren't you proposing that women should automatically be allowed to use the TSA Pre-Check lanes, so the TSA can put more resources on searching the men? Once that's done, then argue for screening by race, which we know is less effective.
> "They could be said to be terrorists too. I didn't suggest anything about them though"
I know you didn't. That's because you're picking the lazy solution for the easy problem that doesn't really exist.
Think of it this way. There are 10M people of ethnic group X in a country. Of them are 10 who plan to carry out a terrorist action.
If we put racial screening in place, we can catch 2 of them. On the other hand, there's a 1-in-a-million chance that the added frustration, humiliation, and resentment will cause someone to snap, and decide to carry out a terrorist action.
Congratulations, you now have 10 new terrorists to replace the 2 you caught.
Yes, this is also approaching a movie plot scenario. But since that's all you really have to back your views, then that's what I'll use too.
I wouldn't say that it's a primary/secondary correlation scenario with terrorism too. It's more a case of terrorism being a specific historical outlet for both domestic and international political grudges and issues that those people (in the middle east and the arab world) have had, and a common thread to those is ethnicity/religion.
So it's not like we're studying some abstract phenomenon and making blind guesses and accusations: we know the history of the area, and of such groups there, we know their composition, and ideology etc -- and in what we know religion and ethnicity plays a very large factor. They are neither many Icelanders nor many Catholics in those organizations (there might be a few "converts" -- but still insignificant). So, it's more a case of applying what we know as weight factors. So, if we know that "of known terrorists 90% are from X ethnicity area, and 10% from various others", then we should certainly take that into account as weights. And sure, you'll have false positives any way -- nobody suggests this would be the be all end all method of finding a terrorist, just a weighted factor.
>That's approaching a movie plot scenario. Either you have evidence or you don't. Hand-waving counter-examples is not evidence.
The counterexample comes from what we know historically about such cases. There's a thing called life experience, following the news and historical information, understanding how people behave in general etc -- and using that to tell what's more likely. Not everything has to come from some exhaustive official statistical study and "evidence" (and some things are also dead obvious to even need such a thing).
>For that matter, why do you keep picking race as the key predictive feature?
Because that's the very topic under discussion in this subthread.
>Why aren't you arguing for sex screening?
Who said I'm not? I've already said that multiple factors should be used and weighted.
>Why aren't you proposing that women should automatically be allowed to use the TSA Pre-Check lanes, so the TSA can put more resources on searching the men?
I'm not proposing it because this is something I've never implied I believe should be done -- and thus just a bizarro thing made up to make my arguments look stupid (as if this exaggerated suggestion directly stems from what I previously said).
I've used the term "weight" several times in this sub-thread. Did I ever give the impression that any of these weights (like "being an arab" or "being a woman") should be 1? Or that any weight should be 0 for that matter?
So, yeah, if they want to check for suspects I'd proposed they factor in "being male" among other things -- not to imply they shouldn't check women at all, but that they should check them less intensively, unless they have other red flags too.
The very notion of "profiling" means you use all available info about likely attributes -- not as a certainties, but as hints. In cases where ethnicity has historically tended to be skewed towards certain X or Y groups, that should totally be a factor too. Like age, sex, personal income, nationality, occupation, and several of other things.
>If we put racial screening in place, we can catch 2 of them. On the other hand, there's a 1-in-a-million chance that the added frustration, humiliation, and resentment will cause someone to snap, and decide to carry out a terrorist action. Congratulations, you now have 10 new terrorists to replace the 2 you caught.
Who ...
You haven't defined how to identify "those people". What ethnicity is common to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab and Ziad Jarrah?
So you must mean religion.
Do you put Muhammad Ali and other Black Muslims from the US in the same category as "these people"? Do you distinguish "salafi/fundamentalists" from other Muslims? Some Muslims say that Ahmadiyya Islam isn't a Muslim faith. Should they be included?
How easy do you think it would be for someone to hide their religious beliefs in order to bypass your screen?
Nor have you identified the false positive rate. How many terrorists do you think there are, and how people many fit the screening category?
If you define "terrorist" to exclude anything caused by a non-Muslim (anti-abortion murderers, anti-black murderers, Irish/Basque/whatever separatist) then that's like shooting bullets at a barn then putting the target around what you hit - there are no non-Muslim terrorists because you defined it that way.
Now, I'm not saying you personally have to do this. I'm pointing out why profiling won't work. Because a quick run of the numbers shows that you will be overwhelmed by false positives.
> Did I ever give the impression that any of these weights
You gave the very strong impression that "ethnicity/religion" is on the top of the list. I've since pointed out two characteristics which are even more accurate, and you keep arguing that "ethnicity/religion" should be high on the list.
Going back to your original question, which is "I don't see what's wrong with racial profiling." My answer again is that even setting aside the morality, the economics don't work out. What's wrong is you waste money for no gain and added frustration.
> The very notion of "profiling" means you use all available info about likely attributes
Here's where I know you have little experience with data mining. Every attribute you consider adds a new dimension to your search space. But there aren't that many terrorists, we have very little data in how to train the model, and most of that data is very noisy.
Even in cases where we have lots of data, like schools, attempts to use models like VAM have produced what is at best confusing information, and at worst - and more often - is camouflage used to force certain political beliefs without real justification.
How are you so sure that screening based on ethnicity/religion will make one whit of difference? How do you measure its effectiveness? When you say "from all publicly known cases" - how many cases do you think there are? 100? 1,000? How much statistical certainty do you think we can get from that?
> That's (the "frustration of a TSA check" or similar minor event) is not historically (from all known cases) what such people have in their background.
It's illegal for the TSA to profile, so there is no such "similar minor event" to use as a reference. Which cases were you thinking of when you said "all known cases"?
What I mean are the more general examples of profiling, which have lead to anger, protests, riots, and killings. The Black Panther Party would not have started had black Americans not been routinely profiled.
Or if you prefer, we use profiling to target our cruise missiles and drone attacks. Some of those kill wedding parties, babies, and other civilians. This makes some people angry enough to want to attack the US. But of course, this isn't a "minor event" like TSA screening. It's still an example of how profiling can induce new extremism.
And again, how do you tell if a race/ ethnicity/ reli...
That's because this is what the "war on terror" predominantly targets and 9/11 the reason the whole modern TSA scheme was created for.
>You haven't defined how to identify "those people". What ethnicity is common to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab and Ziad Jarrah?
Again, I don't understand the sudden naiveness.
Why when one says "ethinicity" should be a factor, would anybody think that he means one and only ethinicity?
Obviously it's a set of ethnicities, each with its own weight.
Profiling is based on making a prediction heuristic with the data you have.
If that data shows ethinicities X,Y,Z are predominantly involved in such attempts, you should include them in their profile.
That (racial profiling) is not different than any other profiling factor.
If profilers searching for a serial killer with a specific MO look predominantly at "males 20-50" that's not very different too. And males 20-50 are an even more broad category than ethnicity X,Y,Z (I'm saying this for people worried about "false positives" in racial profiling. Those are par for the course with ANY type of profiling, and besides the point).
Also, noone is saying that profiling should be THE method of determining if one is what they look for. Incoming information, surveillance, following, interviews, checks etc will obviouslu also be used.
>So you must mean religion.
No, I mean ethinicity. But religion is an equally important factor. For example even an atheist with ethnicity X might want to avenge country Y if their countries have grudges. And conversely, someone with the same religion, but from a country that doesn't have any hostillity towards country Y, wouldn't be as likely to attack it. E.g. an Mongolian muslim compared to some Libyan muslim.
>Do you put Muhammad Ali and other Black Muslims from the US in the same category as "these people"? Do you distinguish "salafi/fundamentalists" from other Muslims?
Isn't the answer obvious? All those are factors that should be weighted in, too.
>How easy do you think it would be for someone to hide their religious beliefs in order to bypass your screen?
Even if it was easy (which would include living a "double life" for several years, being able to now have visible ties with said beliefs etc -- which some can just not do at all retrospectively), it would just mean that they particularly wouldn't be affected by said weight. Lots of others still would.
>If you define "terrorist" to exclude anything caused by a non-Muslim (anti-abortion murderers, anti-black murderers, Irish/Basque/whatever separatist) then that's like shooting bullets at a barn then putting the target around what you hit - there are no non-Muslim terrorists because you defined it that way.
I restricted the discussion to this, because it was a thread about racial profiling / TSA.
Obviously the TSA is not involved much in looking for anti-abortion murderers or anti-black murderers. Nor I think they face (or should care) for Irish/Basque's seperatists.
Ad obviously not every organization should care for all of those cases (e.g. Indian border control should not be much concerned with discovering Irish seperatists).
That said, if one wanted to check for Irish seperatists, then ethnicity (being Irish) and religion (being, say, Catholic) should be good starting heuristics.
>Now, I'm not saying you personally have to do this. I'm pointing out why profiling won't work. Because a quick run of the numbers shows that you will be overwhelmed by false positives.
False positives are inherent in ...
National origin, gender, and profession. I believe I've mentioned them a few times.
> "I'd say with profiling you spend LESS money"
Which is why I pointed out that since nearly all terrorists we know about are men, your logic is that women should get less scrutiny in TSA lines then men.
My logic is that if you are right, then gender-based screening is the easiest to implement, with the strongest correlation. So that's how you should start, because it gives you the biggest gains for very little cost.
> "Illegal doesn't mean much with regards to the actual practice."
I don't deny that. Just like you don't deny there are cases where screening was used to enforce racism and xenophobia.
But now you've lowered the bar. Now you say that people screen "even subconsiously, but usually consciously too". I agree with that.
What are your historical precedents for showing that those cases of illegal screening are more effective than not screening?
And you still haven't mentioned how you might evaluate if screening on the basis of ethnicity, religion, or other protected category is effective.
The TSA airport checkers are the worst. If you simply removed the checkers and let the airlines go back to handling security, things would be just fine.
Hijacking and other forms of on plane malfeasance are a solved problem not because of TSA but because passengers won't sit still for it anymore. Of course, reinforced cockpit doors now make hijacking by insiders much easier because the passengers can't fight back through it. Oops.
The problem is that the most effective security measures don't come with multi-billion dollar project budgets. Matching luggage to passengers to prevent non-suicide attacks. Cell phone waiting lots so someone circling an airport is now suspicious behavior. All of these things are relatively cheap but very effective--thus nobody cares because there is no money in it.
my proposal: don't change a damn thing about the tsa. but introduce a tsa-free line with simple metal detectors. no molesting, no cancer-inducing machinery.
sheep could be free again.
There is a premise here that the wait is an issue, but I'm not so sure a long and bothersome security line is a bad thing from the perspective of our political leaders. I suspect (with complete seriousness) that if airport security wasn't a bother, people wouldn't feel safe.