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IP: F.A.A. Gives Computers Bigger Role in Airport Security
From: Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>
Date: Mon, 14 Jun 1999 05:55:54 -0400
Date: Sun, 13 Jun 1999 09:50:31 +0200 (CEST) From: Anonymous <nobody () replay com> Comments: This message did not originate from the Sender address above. It was remailed automatically by anonymizing remailer software. Please report problems or inappropriate use to the remailer administrator at <abuse () replay com>. Subject: F.A.A. Gives Computers Bigger Role in Airport Security To: cypherpunks () toad com Sender: owner-cypherpunks () toad com F.A.A. Gives Computers Bigger Role in Airport Security By MATTHEW L. WALD WASHINGTON -- It may not be obvious to passengers, but the Federal Aviation Administration is trying to close three weak spots in airline security: relying on human judgment to spot suspicious passengers, allowing checked bags to catch a connecting flight when the suspicious passenger doesn't, and permitting baggage screeners to grow complacent. But the remedies may still be at least two years away. On April 19, the F.A.A. published a proposed new security rule, which is open to public comment for 60 days, and the airlines' response was to ask to extend the comment period another 60 days. It would require that for all flights on planes with more than 60 seats, airlines use computers with profiling software to identify suspicious passengers instead of relying on airline personnel. The software was developed with a Federal subsidy, and most major airlines have been using it voluntarily since January 1998; the F.A.A. will not reveal most of the criteria used by the software, but one of them is whether the passenger paid cash for a ticket at the last minute. When this computer profiling began, civil-liberties groups and Arab American groups complained that it would be based on ethnicity or religion and thus violate some passengers' rights. But the Justice Department, privy to the criteria, ruled that the criteria were not discriminatory. Now the F.A.A. wants to make the automated profiling mandatory, it says, partly because it eliminates "the potential perception of personal biases." Also, the F.A.A. says, the computer can juggle more factors than a ticket agent can, and if the criteria are computerized, they will be easier to keep secret. The airlines have generally accepted profiling, which is integrated into their reservations computers. On domestic flights, the bags of passengers who meet the profile are either scanned for explosives or are "matched," meaning that they will not be carried on a flight unless the passenger boards as well. (On international flights, no bags are supposed to be carried unless the owner is on board.) There are loopholes, however. If the bag is checked through to a final domestic destination and the passenger is connecting on a different airline, the second airline may not continue with this "bag match" procedure. Even if the passenger is connecting on the same airline, the match may not occur on the second flight. The fear is that a terrorist might fly to a hub with a checked bag, "miss" a connecting flight, then catch another and be out of the country by the time the bag explodes. The new rule seeks to eliminate both possibilities, but the airlines are fearful that matching bags on the connecting flights would cause delays. One way to reduce the need for bag matching is to increase bag screening, and this is gradually happening, with the installation of additional sophisticated scanning machines that look for bombs in checked bags. But the airlines have sometimes been slow to start using these machines. Congress provided $157 million for such machines for the last fiscal year and the current one, and the F.A.A. is asking for another $100 million for the fiscal year that begins on Oct. 1. The initial impetus for the program, the belief that the explosion on TWA Flight 800 in July 1996 was a terrorist act, has been disproved, but the security program continues. A far bigger cost than equipment is the cost to the airlines from flight delays that bag screening or bag matching may cause. The F.A.A.'s proposed rule includes a lengthy cost-benefit analysis of why these expenses are still worthwhile, based on a hypothetical example of preventing the destruction of one Boeing 737 with 73 passengers, each person with a value of $2.7 million, plus $16.5 million for the plane itself, $12.5 million in property damage, $28.6 million for the investigation and $3.6 million for legal fees, for a total of $271.8 million. Also included in the analysis is the amount of business that the airlines would lose in subsequent weeks as fearful travelers stayed home. (The whole calculation, in the Federal Register notice of April 19, is available at www.access.gpo.gov/sudocs/ aces/aces140.html.) A simpler change already being made is a new method for testing the alertness and training of the security screeners who look at the monitors of X-ray machines or other kinds of scanners for hours at a time, watching thousands of bags go by. The traditional test method is for F.A.A. undercover agents to put a weapon or a bomb into a carry-on or checked bag and see if the screeners notice. But this has a high manpower cost; the carry-on baggage screeners quickly learn to recognize the testers, so the agents can run only a few tests at each airport. But the newest computers on airport concourses use "threat image projection," a technology that inserts the image of a weapon into a bag. "Every 50 to 100 bags, there could be a gun, a knife or an improvised explosive device," said Tony Fainberg, director of policy and planning for civil aviation security at the F.A.A. The computers are attached to X-ray machines that scan carry-on bags. The more frequent tests would measure not only the alertness of screeners but also the effectiveness of their training, as well as measuring how long a shift can be before screeners start to lose effectiveness, and how long the interval between training sessions can be.
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- IP: F.A.A. Gives Computers Bigger Role in Airport Security Dave Farber (Jun 14)