gsoltso

Why thank you!

Agreed with the testing for chemical compounds common to explosives. As I indicated before, there are many that will agree with you and Boggie Dog that the system currently in use is not well suited to use in the method that TSA has them deployed. There are others that will say this is the best equipment/tech available large scale, and still others that will say the current machines are light years better than the older ones from when TSA started up (that latter group would be right, some of the first ETD machines I worked with were horrible, the newer ones are much better).

I am certain that R & D is testing all the newest and brightest equipment, looking for better tech and such all the time. Perhaps there will be a newer tech that comes along at some point that performs better than the ones we have now, if so, I hope that they are able to "checkpoint proof" it and get it into service. I am all for better tech, that gives us the chance to find things that are a threat, but also make it easier on passengers in general.

jkhuggins

Unless, of course, the better answer is to use less technology, not more.

Technological solutions become an arms race. Terrorists come up with a technological weapon. TSA deploys technology to stop the threat. Terrorists come up with new weapons to subvert detection. TSA deploys new technology to counteract the subversion. And on and on and on it goes.

There's an old proverb: to someone with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. To TSA, there appear to be few problems that can't be solved with yet another piece of technology.

In my completely uninformed position on the sidelines, it seems like most of the "wins" in the War Against Terrorism have come due to the gathering of human intelligence, not technological achievement. It just might be the case that we could produce a much more secure environment by diverting much of the money we spend (both in machines and in people) to covert intelligence.

And I say this as someone who embraces technology for a living.

InkUnderNails

Agree, but this makes me shudder just a bit. So much of that about which we complain is the result of the implementation of the latest and greatest technology with little thought of the interpersonal human interactions or whether the technology will pass muster with the reasonable restrictions that are imposed by law on government actors.

I am really tired of the "Let's try this and fix the problems later" mode of implementation. Sadly, that is the default mode of government.

RadioGirl

+1000

Funny thing is, in Australia and other countries, airport security uses ETD that doesn't suffer from this rate of false alarms. I get randomly chosen almost every time, take no particular precautions (avoiding soaps, lotions, etc) and have NEVER alarmed nor do I know anyone who has. Sounds like the magic "someday" technology already exists.

petaluma1

Another old proverb: Build a higher wall, they'll bring a taller ladder.

And yet another: The intelligence community never saw a threat it didn't like.


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On another angle of the ETD machines, someone, somehow must bring before a court of law the legality of the "private room searches" after an ETD alarm. Others have said that this private room search goes far beyond an administrative search and is, in fact, a probable cause search. Does the TSA have authority to do a probable cause search?

petaluma1

We here in the U.S. have, by someone, been declared to be "special" and therefore, in order to protect our "specialness" TSA must employ technology that picks up on the smallest trace of anything that could possibly be used to produce an explosive.

The fact that the TSA has never found explosives connected to anyone who has ever alarmed is, of course, of no consequence.

petaluma1

Even the aforementioned Mr. Hawley admitted, while he was still TSA administrator, that the TSA won't stop the "lone nutter."

petaluma1

One person bring 6 3.4 oz. of ammonia on a plane; another person brings 6 3.4 oz of ammonia on a plane. They two are then combined while in the air - simple thing to do - no explosion but a lot of very sick people.

One person goes through a checkpoint with a16 oz. of ammonia concealed in a bottle of Sprite; 2nd person goes through behind him with 16 oz. of ammonia concealed in a bottle of Sprite. Tops on both bottles are loosened. Both bottles get thrown into the "confiscated" items barrel. Either the tops come off or the bottle start to leak. No explosion at the checkpoint but, again, lots of sick passengers and TSA screeners.

SeriouslyLost

Indeed. And yet some here, such as 747FC, seem to think that it is a goal that can and should be achieved.

SeriouslyLost

Take the above and substitute one 1.5 litre bottle of bleach and one 1.5l bottle of ammonia. Make sure the caps are really loose & dump them as you go through. They open and/or leak to the bottom of the nice, conveniently plastic barrels TSA uses. Wait twenty minutes & thanks to the A/C systems in most American airports and you now have mustard gas spreading throughout the terminal.




(Well, chlorine gas, actually, but TSA would no doubt portray it as a mustard gas attack.)

SeriouslyLost

I think I just watched a piece of performance art. But I'm not sure. Which almost certainly means I did. Oh, the humanity of it all!

WillCAD

You're being disingenuous.

While it is true that Korean Air 858 was destroyed mid-air by a bomb, it was not "brought down by liquid explsosives." The primary explosive in that device was not liquid; the liquid explosives were in a liquor bottle, placed next to the device to enhance its explosive yield. Take away the liquids from that device, and guess what - it was still a bomb, and would still have done catastrophic damage to the aircraft, probably destroying it or causing it to crash.

The device on Phillipine Air 434, on the other hand, was definitely a liquid explosive device. It was detonated beneath one of the passenger seats, killing the person in that seat - and NO ONE ELSE. It did damage to the aircraft cabin, blowing a hole through the cabin floor into the cargo hold and damaging some of the control linkages to the right aileron. It did not destroy the aircraft, did not cause the aircraft to crash, did not cause catastrophic damage to the aircraft, and did not even puncture the fuselage or cause decompression of the cabin.

The liquids ban WAS a knee-jerk reaction to the rather ludicrous 2006 liquid bomb "plot" uncovered in London. It had absolutely nothing to do with either Phillipine Air 434, (which happened in 1994, 12 years before the liquids ban), or Korean Air 858 (which happened in 1987, 19 years before the liquids ban). The liquids ban was put into place the day of the London raids - AFTER the suspects were all in custody and the plot was foiled. Sounds like a knee-jerk reaction to a non-existant threat to me.

Also - please cite some examples to back up your assertion that the liquids ban "has kept other planes and people from going down." Any examples will do. Like, even ONE.

Your personal feelings of fear and paranoia toward common and innocuous substances like water are irrelevant. Security policies, not to mention restrictions of personal liberties and violation of individual rights, must not be made merely on the basis of feelings and emotions. If you're that afraid of bottles of Deer Park and Dasani, perhaps you should seek professional assistance to overcome those fears, but it's wrong to violate the Constitution on a wholesale basis and abuse tens of millions of people just because you're afraid.

It is not a "known fact that unregulated liquids and box cutters have brought down planes." As I posted above - in neither of those instances you mentioned did liquid explosives bring down a plane.

Nor did box cutters bring down the planes on 9/11. What brought those planes down was the pilots. Not the airline pilots, of course - the terrorist pilots who took over the controls after seizing the aircraft. Yes, they used box cutters to hijack the planes, but the box cutters themselves did not bring down the planes.

Small knives aboard planes pose absolutely no threat to the aircraft itself, and since the introduction of locked, reinforced flight deck doors, hijackers can no longer threaten their way into the flight deck to seize control of the plane and intentionally fly it into the ground. Small knives are no more a threat in an airplane cabin than they are in a library or on a bus or in a restaurant.

Not only has TSA foisted us with millions of false positives, it has also demonstrated a remarkable inability to detect the things it's supposed to detect - weapons and explosives.

Citing the old Red Team 73% failure rate is becoming rather cliche, even on FT. But it is very illuminating that in 2012 a US Army soldier was able to fly from South Carolina to Texas with five pounds of unhidden, undisguised C4 in his carry-on bag, still in the original paper wrapping marked "C4 HIGH EXPLOSIVE", even AFTER the TSOs at FAY found and confiscated a live smoke grenade from the very same bag.

This means, of course, that some highly professional federal TSOs found a smoke grenade, a highly prohibited item, and either failed to search the rest of the bag for more prohibited items, or did search it but failed to notice the five pounds of explosives still in the bag.

Even the most advanced tech is useless when it's operated by morons. Or when it's not used at all.

chollie

Perhaps it's another reflection of how the rest of the world manages to 'do' security with a smaller staff, no ID checks, no barking, no hands in pants and solidly up in the crotch.

Maybe, just maybe, when screeners in other countries do the ETD tests, they actually understand what they're doing, why they're doing and the significance of 'good lab technique', ie, a few very very simple measures to avoid contamination that leads to false positives.

It's even possible (probably, I suspect) that they don't assume that a positive reading is automatically proof of guilt; they may assume that it is equally likely to have resulted from contamination.

There's no reason (other than we WILL respect their authority) that every single positive isn't immediately followed by a second swab that is tested before touching the pax or alarming bags to rule out contamination.

chollie

It never saw (or imagined) a threat that someone couldn't exploit for profit.
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It doesn't matter whether or not TSA has probable cause. Until a court case that has goes all the way to SCOTUS, TSA (like any unaccountable agency) has the 'right' to do anything it wants. And it exercises that right freely - it is the agency's prime modus operandi.

gsoltso

I understand that point of view, and in some situations, it absolutely holds true. What I would like and what I sometimes get are completely different sometimes. I would *like* a way to screen passengers that is foolproof and failure proof, that doesn't create discomfort. Sadly there is no such technology out there (and even more sadly, I don't believe there ever will be), you are always going to have people that are going to feel uncomfortable for a range of reasons, and the tech will never be 100% foolproof. I am a big fan of intelligence gathering operations as well, but that is not foolproof either and tends to be more surgical in application. Another problem with gathering intel is determining when to act on it, sometimes it boils down to a crapshoot under the best of circumstances. There may be a more suitable balance between the two in the offing, but it will be decided at much higher pay grades than mine.

I am a huge fan of "people skills" oriented classes for all employees - from everyone in the checkpoints, to the folks that work in HQ. It can help develop communication skills and also help understand why some folks are doing/saying what they are saying. As mentioned above, the reasonable restrictions issues and balance issues will be decided much higher up the ladder than I am.

Try this and fix problems later has become a default template for most things in life, not just the government. More and more people fix the obvious and worry about the peripheral concerns later... In some cases that is a positive thing - such as a plugging the hole in a leaking roof - not so much when fixing the whine of a fan belt with ivory soap (come on, where are my mechanics, I am sure most of you guys know that one). Large scale decisions should be thought out and most foreseeable issues beta tested out before implementation. In some ways, TSA is moving that direction, like with the Pre program, they did limited number runs on that, and have worked out a pretty good program to put in place (not perfect, but pretty good). Other programs have not been vetted so well at implementation.