Superguy

I think we need to sticky this thread, or one like it we've had in the past.

This topic comes up every now and then. Most of us have given these ad nauseum and it's rude to say "just do a search." Given that we've had an influx of people over the last little while, I think a sticky would be a good thing.

RadioGirl

I agree. I tried to avoid just saying "do a search" and in fact had to take a few minutes to find the old threads myself, as it's not obvious what search terms to use. (I did remember that N965VJ had (patiently) posted the same list multiple times, so I used that to find the other threads. )

Saitek

heres the issue:

the TSA claimes to be the line of defense against 'terrorism'

History has shown us this is clearly not the case, Americans do NOT need the Govt to protect them, we are fully capable of doing just that on our own.

So all these billions spent on security since 9/11 is nothing more than wasted money. Nothing more than a way for the Govt to further erode our rights freedoms and liberties.

FriendlySkies

+1

If it's not made by Chertoff & Rapescan, then you won't see it in a TSA checkpoint!

It's been said many times here before, OP, we need to get rid of all backscatter devices, install ATR on the millimeter wave (which are only for extreme cases, such as a patdown not clearing an alarm), ETD of pax, baggage, and no shoe ban. I don't have to take off my shoes in Europe, so why should I have to in the US?! TSA is run by a bunch of idiots.

+1

SnallaBolaget

Yikes... and I thought I was pretty good at searching forums by now. I guess I was wrong, and my apologies for that. I don't like necro'ing old threads, but those weren't even that old... sorry.

Anyway...

What seems to be the focus in most cases is what kind of technology and machines to use at the checkpoints, and while that is all good, I think it's possible (well, I know it's possible) to actually make an airport security checkpoint work well on a skeleton crew of machines, focusing more on the human side. Mmw could be used to resolve an alarm due to someone using deep concealment, for example, but nothing else.

When I was still working in airport security (long ago now, and before all the craziness) we once screened 1.500 soldiers coming from an exercise, going from military to civilian aircraft / airport with nothing but rubber gloves, wands and a carry-on x-ray machine. It didn't take all that long either, and none of them got even a knife through. More important, none of them felt agitated, invaded, pissed off, miffed or abused after their screening.

I'm not saying that's what should be done, I'm just thinking that relying too much on the machines makes the whole process alien to everyone, and the goal might be that much harder to achieve. People respond better to people than machines.

djmagnum mentioned the Israeli method... I for one agrees that it works, better than anything we're doing in the US or EU. The problem is that the method isn't transferable, due to the large number of passengers in the EU and US. It just can't be done the same way they're doing it. If it was done as a supplement to traditional methods, you'd still have to reduce the number of "selectees" to a tiny fraction of what comes through checkpoints every day. Remember that El Al security can spend hours with one passenger, if that passenger "fails" their profiling initially.

I agree with MeVoy that the no-fly lists are unconstitutional. And unfair. And... not working at all. I'm not so sure about the ID-checks - at least, you'd be sure that the people on the plane are actually those that are on the list. That makes sense to confirm in case there's an accident, etc. Yes, yes, anyone can fake an ID. Point is, not many people do - because there's no reason to. So that means I'm for ID checks, but maybe not motivated by security concerns...

There's one thing that Israel does that would work anywhere; training. I still think that well-trained humans are the best bet when it comes to airport security, but right now, it's all about machines, and security ends up working against the people, instead of with them.

-SB-

Lara21

That might be well and good if The TSA Agents are respectful and treat the passengers with dignity, but because the procedures are SSI and the passengers have no way of knowing currently what the correct procedures are when it comes to what the TSA Agents are allowed to do to them and because of the TSA being allowed to hide behind that shady policy with the secrecy rules. Some TSA Agents are using that as a powertrip to bully the passengers into submitting to whatever they tell the passenger is required for them to submit too if they want to fly today.

Let me give an example of what I mean. A teenage girl, say 13 to 15 years old, who has to travel alone for the firsttime for the required visit to the parent who doesn't have custody. Now due to the current rules in place. That teenage girl could very easily be selected for a private screening and taken to the backroom and ordered to take her clothes off. If she is the type who is easily scared and is afraid of getting into trouble. She would more than likely do everything she is told to do. Especially under the threat of do you want to fly today.

Now the TSA has this idea that because there are going to be two TSA Agents in the room during the private screening. That nothing bad is going to happen to the passenger.

It has been proven time and time again in real law enforcement situations that LEO's themselves have been known to commit illegal activity against a suspect in custody which is clearly against the Law Enforcemment Policy on how to deal with a suspect and that has happened when two or more LEO's were in the room, and they would lie and cover up for the one who commited the illegal activity. That is the reason for survelance cameras in the cars, jails and prisons to record how LEO's are treating the suspect as well as for the safety of the LEO.

According to some who post on this board. There is no survelance cameras in the areas where the TSA Agents are doing the private screening to record how the passengers are being treated during those screenings. And in the areas where there are survelance camera's alot of times the passenger is placed where they don't get seen all the time by the camera.

So it is obvious that some TSA Agents aren't going to do any better than some LEO's when it comes to breaking the rules and committing illegal activity, and the TSA's secrecy is making it easier for TSA Agents to commit that illegal activity against passengers, and the passenger has no way of really getting justice if they get abused during the screening process if it is a situation where it is two TSA Agents saying it happened this way. While the passenger is saying no it happened this way if there is no video to prove it did or didn't happen, or they are out of view of the camera alot during the screening process where the camera's are and the camera doesn't catch alot of information during the passenger being screened.

SnallaBolaget

Okay... First of all, there's a very, very strong emphasis on sex around here. That's not a good thing. There was no mention of sex or molestation in my question, but if you want to state that this is one thing you do not want in an airport security CP, then okay... Got it.

Second, why would you assume such a thing would happen, and why would it only happen to a girl, for that matter? There are a number of other scenarios that are a thousand times more likely, such as theft.

Third, if you have some kind of grudge against LEOs, then this probably isn't the place to vent your frustrations...your aunt or your neighbor is just as likely to be a child molester as any given LEO or TSO.

That said, you do make one point that is absolutely correct in every possible way. Respect (something that does go both ways, incidentally) and openness when it comes to procedures and regulations. Those are non-negotiable. Airport security should be modeled on open source. Sure there's going to be loopholes, and sure, someone will find them, but it's a lot more likely, in an open source model, that that someone will want to fix it rather than exploit it.

Trust has to be earned, and airport security has lost most of its public trust, but it can still be reclaimed.

-SB-

GUWonder

How do you know none of them got any contraband -- even a knife -- to pass the screeners undetected?

SnallaBolaget

I was a bit quick there. Of course there's a chance that someone got something through, but I build my statement on the following;

a) we found and confiscated even left-over single rounds of training ammo (mostly plastic, so the wands don't help

b) soldiers were eager to bring home "souvenirs", such as pocketknives, ammo, grenade safety pins etc, and were very inventive in finding hiding places. We still got them.

c) I had exceptionally well-trained and efficient staff (also partially trained by myself... ).

d) We received no reports from officers that we had missed anything, and they were usually very eager to point out our mistakes

-SB-

RichardKenner

Let me give my thoughts. I think the major issues are philosophical, not technical. First, the doctrine that "the checkpoint is the front line of the battle" has to go. With that sort of philosophy you inevitably get into issues where the only way to "prevent" some threat produces unacceptable privacy intrusions. We need to recognize that if a complex plot reaches the checkpoint, we aren't going to be able to do anything about it.

What this means is that we have to rely (as we actually have been) on intelligence and law enforcement to detect and disrupt complex plots and use the checkpoints to deter simple ones.

And that means risk-based analysis. Risk-based means probabilistic. It doesn't mean removing any possible risk, but dealing with high-probability risk.

People talk about the possibilities of Al Queda infiltrating TSOs or airport workers or such. As I (and others) have said before, that's not something they've shown any ability to be able to do. In order to do that, you have to be subtle, something that only a large organization (such as the KGB or CIA) can do. Even if they were able to "turn" somebody, they're not going to be able to turn the first person they approach, and that person would likely report the approach. So I think a key to this is to identify the low-risk people.

That, of course, requires gathering data, but I think it can be done with data elements that people here would not be particularly upset about. To me, it's more important to be able to identify somebody who's a low risk than a high risk because the former can be done easily while the latter is hard without impermissible profiling. Similarly, the concept of kidnapping somebody's family and forcing them to help is very likely too hard for a terrorist organization and certainly is without being detected.

So we want to identify those people who we're fairly sure aren't terrorists (though leaving in place the unlikely risks above). Airport workers (including TSOs and crew) are one category. Elite members of frequent flyers are another.

The question is then what to do at the checkpoint and I don't have any good answers for that. Metal detection is pretty useless at this point since the threats have moved from weapons to bombs. That almost argues for not doing it at all and actually allowing weapons on planes.

I'm not thrilled with any ETD technology, though. The "puffers" had maintenance problems and too many false positive and I think that's unfixable. When you're dealing with "trace" analysis, you have to make sure that the sensor is cleanable. But with that much motion going on, that's very hard. And keeping equipment involving so many moving parts that's used as much as that in working order is going to be hard.

We've discussed the problems with dogs (a major one is allergies). A friend of mine suggested pigs, because they have a better sense of smell than dogs, but don't shed, so people aren't allergic to them, but they aren't as "loyal" as dogs and are harder to train.

Given the unreliability of ETD, I don't think you want to rely just on detecting the explosive, but also components, most of which are non-metalic. I think the major problem with AIT is not the "nude image" issue or the radiation issue, both of which can be dealt with via technology, but that resolving "anomalies" requires very invasive procedures and reveals private medical information.

As to pat-downs, as I've said many times before, there's absolutely no point in doing a pat-down if you omit one or more body parts because then that becomes the place to hide something. The only way to deal with that issue is to make pat-downs much less common than they are now.

And then there's the issue that "security theater" does have value. A sizable percentage of the population is more worried about the risk of terrorism than concerned about privacy issues. That percentage has been going down, and will continue to do so, but will always remain high. And people are notoriously bad at properly estimating risk, so even a "proper" risk-based methodology may be politically impossible to achieve. And the other point to consider is that if security is changed in a way that people believe is "lighter" and something does happen, it's going to be almost impossible to make the privacy case then given political realities.

Overall, my feeling is that there should be three levels of security. One for the people I indentified above who are very unlikely to be terrorists, should be approximately the same as pre-9/11 security. Clearly, being in that level requires validating ID. But it'd be optional: if you don't have acceptable ID, you aren't considered in that group.

Unfortunately, I think you do need a "high risk" category and that it has to be list-based. Because if you don't, then the whole concept of using intelligence and law enforcement seems to break down. What do you do if somebody's doing something suspicious, but you can't prove any illegal actitity? You certainly can't arrest the person. And you may not even get sufficient grounds for a search warrant. But there's a very valid reason for being concerned enough to want to scrutinize this person more. Let's say an intelligence tip points to a certain house in Pakistan as a likely terrorist facility. It seems reasonable to me to keep track of who's visited that house. The intelligence tip isn't going to be admissible in a court (even if you could risk disclosing the source), so all can do is keep track and give those people more attention at a checkpoint. There are numerous other examples. But that, again, means ID issues, though I think the concept of "no fly" isn't useful, so refusing to show ID would simply mean being placed in the "most searched" (today's selectee) group.

Where I don't have a simple answer (and I don't think anybody does) is what levels of security are appropriate for people in the second two categories, with the middle category the hardest.

I do have a few specific suggestions. I think people should have the option of exposing a part of the body that's of concern instead of having it patted down, but I well understand the issues with that. It's very easy for the presentation of that option to be viewed as a requirement, especially in a workforce as large as the TSA. So I think the option should be mentioned only in TSA material (including airport signage), but that TSOs should be forbidden to suggest that option during a screening.

mozgytog

You're proud of yourself for finding and stealing completely harmless items like plastic bullets and grenade safety pins that are not actually attached to grenades? Ammo is useless without a gun to fire it from, and you're really worried about a bunch of people who could kill each other with boot laces having pocket knives?

You apparently see these declarations as some success to be proud of, but I see them as evidence that these searches are ridiculous, foolish, and not aimed at finding anything even remotely close to a credible threat.

SnallaBolaget

Actually, it was more said to illustrate that properly trained airport security personnel can find hidden objects and "contraband" without the use of invasive pat-downs and a lot of machinery... In the case I was talking about, we had to remove any training ammo and/or live ammo from the soldiers, and also make sure they were "in compliance" with civilian as well as military regulations... I also said it to illustrate that if one of these soldiers had been carrying "worse" items, they too would have been found.

Just to clarify - training ammo is actually "blanks" (i.e. no bullets, plastic or otherwise), but with considerably more gunpowder to facilitate the proper function of an automatic rifle even without the presence of a projectile to build up pressure (which works the reloading mechanism in an automatic rifle...). Besides, do you really think ammo is harmless without a gun to fire it with?? I hope you don't have kids or loved ones, if that's your take on ammunition...

Knives and other souvenirs were actually not "stolen", as you put it, they were put in sealed plastic bags, marked with the soldier's name, and sent via checked luggage, for distribution by their officers upon arrival in their home country. Anything else, "mozgytog"?

-SB-

Boggie Dog

While this may be considered a slam it's not really.

To train implies that the trainees are in fact trainable.

I really have questions if that is the case with some TSA employees.

They can't even teach TSA employees what a Nexus card is. How in the world can they teach and expect learning on the part of the employee if they can't even get something this simple down?

Either TSA training procedures are not up to par or the verification of learning is not up to par.

mozgytog

Actually, by focusing on innocuous items you're worsening the possibility that you find something truly dangerous, which is something that you would know if you didn't outright dismiss every actual security expert who weighs in on the subject.

You described the training ammunition as "mostly plastic", not me. Are you now changing your statement?

As far as the relative harmlessness of ammunition without a firearm, that much is true. While you could build your own firearm, you're not really going to achieve a ballistic flight out of a projectile without one. Sure you can make the powder burn by impacting the primer, but the projectile isn't anywhere near as dangerous without the barrel to channel the expansion of gasses and concentrate it into forward motion of the projectile. That's fact of physics, my friend, and a topic that I do know a lot about.

The typical mode of the TSA is to force people to abandon their property at the checkpoint, in some cases refusing to allow people to exit screening to put the item in checked baggage, secure it in their vehicle, or mail it to their home or other destination. The colloquial reference to such forced property abandonment as theft is perfectly apropos - especially since once this property is taken from its rightful owner, there is absolutely nothing preventing a TSA employee from keeping it for him or herself. Removing proeprty by force from the rightful owner for the personal gain of the taker is theft.

You didn't specify what was done with the property that you identified, and I made what I considered a reasonable inference given your description of your TSA-style search for items that are not a threat to aircraft.

Also, there is no reason to put my handle in quotation marks, as it is not a direct quotation of something that I posted, and the use of quotation marks for emphasis is incorrect grammar.

ocschwar

Here's an alternative: NOTHING.

Have you ever seen the Godfather, Part I ?

Everything these screeners catch can be smuggled in by the girl at the Dunkin Donuts in the terminal, and picked up by a passenger.

The fact is if people want to bomb a plane taking off from the US, they will bomb a plane. We can't prevent every possible plot, and the way we're going crazy about this is hammering us in other ways.

Here's just one example:

Camden NJ is laying off half of its police force.
Many other towns are also laying off officers, and that is far more of a risk to homeland security than airport screening. All this money going to catch tweezers and underwear bombs would be better spent giving to towns so they can keep their cops.