IP: The curious irrationality of airport security (Slate)

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

Slate


hey, wait a minute

Checking Out the Checkpoints
The curious irrationality of airport security.

By Malcolm Gladwell
Posted Thursday, April 11, 2002, at 12:42 PM PT


Not long ago, I took a flight on American Airlines from Seattle to Dallas,
and as I passed through the
security checkpoint, on the way to the gate, the metal detector beeped. I
don't know why. I had put my
change and keys in the plastic container. But it did. So I was frisked with
a 
wand. A security person
peered inside my bag. I had to take off my shoes so they could be examined.
Then I went to the gate
and was stopped again. The attendant motioned for me to step into a small
area next to the jetway. My
bags were, as they say in the security business, "dump-searched." Every
compartment was unzipped
and every toiletry examined. I took off my shoes a second time. Again I was
frisked and prodded with
a wand. 

To someone following behind me at the airport that day, my experience might
have seemed somewhat
reassuring. I am, after all, a man in the optimum terrorist zone of 20 to
40. 
My hair is a little long. My
ethnicity is uncertain: I'm definitely not a farm boy from Iowa. If you had
to do a kind of crude
racial/demographic profile of the passengers traveling that day from Seattle
to Dallasâ?²and it was, truth
be told, a fairly staid bunchâ?²you might have singled me out as most worthy
of special treatment.

But should that have made the other passengers on my flightâ?²or the rest of
usâ?²feel more secure? I'm
not sure it should. Most of the measures imposed since Sept. 11 don't, upon
consideration, make very
much sense, and we're a long way from doing the kinds of things that might
actually improve security in
a demonstrable way. My experience that day is, in fact, a good illustration
of what's still wrong with the
U.S. airport security system.

Let's start with what happened to me at the metal detectors. In a recent FAA
test of the effectiveness
of airport screening systems, 40 percent of explosives, 30 percent of guns,
and 70 percent of knives
planted by government agents made it through such security checkpoints.
Those 
numbers shouldn't
come as a surprise: Picking out weapons in luggageâ?²when, in 99.99 percent
of cases there are no
weapons in luggageâ?²is quite a difficult task. The new federal law
governing 
airport security personnel
mandates that they receive 40 hours of training. But the people who scanned
my bags seemed to me to
suffer, above all else, from boredom, and it remains unclear how 40 hours of
training can overcome the
structural tedium inherent in checking endlessly for something that is
almost 
never there. If screeners
are not sufficiently motivated now, just over six months after Sept. 11, how
on earth can we expect
them to be motivated two or three years down the road?

Were I actually carrying a weapon, in other words, the odds are pretty good
that it wouldn't have been
flagged at the checkpoint. In fact, it occurred to me as my bag was checked
just how easy it would be
for me to smuggle a weapon on board. I had, in my bag, a pair of dress
shoes, 
each of which was
supported by a shoe tree, composed of two blocks of wood linked by a long,
cylindrical metal bar that,
had I been so inclined, I almost certainly could have adapted into a knife.
No one, in the dozens of
occasions that I have flown in the last six months, has ever asked me to
remove my shoe treesâ?²or
even wondered why a slovenly, seemingly unpretentious man like me would be
traveling with them.

Then there was the second search at the gate. In theory that sounds like a
good idea: Supplement the
X-ray with a dump search. But why was that hand search also conducted at the
gate? Suppose I had a
gun that could only be found with a dump search. If I saw that I was in
danger of being exposed, I
could easily take out my gun and run aboard. After all, the only things
standing between me and the
plane at that point were an unarmed security officer and a flight attendant.
The logical place for a hand
search is at the security checkpoint, where there are X-ray machines,
explosives sniffers, and armed
National Guardsmen all close at hand. The other thing that was odd was that
I 
couldn't see my bag
being searched. I was off to the side, with the frisker between me and my
belongings. Surely one of the
reasons to search a person's bags is on the off chance that, unbeknownst to
him, a terrorist has slipped
a bomb into his luggage. If someone dropped a thermos full of plastique into
my suitcase, it might not
ring a bell with the security person, but it certainly would with me. Why
freeze me out of the process?

Why, in fact, was I even being searched in the first place? When I landed in
Dallas and got on my
connecting flight to Miami, I was pulled out at the gate a second time, and
so I asked the flight attendant
taking the tickets what about me was meriting this special attention. She
told me that the plane was still
15 minutes from departure, and I was one of the last passengers to board.
Under those
circumstancesâ?²when there is time and opportunity for a searchâ?²the
stragglers often get targeted.
Presumably this is what is meant by a random search, and the airlines have
all been ordered to step up
this kind of occasional scrutiny.

But how do random searches contribute to safety? The person who was searched
ahead of me at the
gate in Seattle was woman in her 70s, with bifocals and a slight stoop.
What, 
exactly, were the odds
that she would stand up, steady herself on the back of the seat in front of
her, and politely order us, in a
sweet old-lady voice, to stay calm? Would we even be able to hear her if she
did? At the security
checkpoint, I also noticed a pilot being frisked with a wand. Why? If a
pilot 
wants to crash a plane into
a building, after all, he scarcely needs the help of a weapon. When you are
looking for a needle in a
haystack, your odds of finding that needle are not measurably improved by
conducting random searches
of clumps of straw. The most absurd extension of this principle is the new
legislation's requirement that,
by the end of the year, all bags be screened for explosives. Quite apart
from 
the expense of buying all
those machines at $1 million each and the fact that explosives detection has
a massive false positive
rate, what exactly is to be gained by adding an enormous logistical
nightmare 
to perhaps the most
logistically challenged industry in the country?

What all this demonstrates is the folly of a system focused primarily on the
detection of weapons. The
hardest task facing any would-be terrorist is not getting his weapon on the
plane. That's just a game of
hide-and-seek, and the seeker's odds in that situation are never
particularly 
good. The real problem for
the terrorist is getting himself onto the plane. People about to commit
violent acts make mistakes. They
get nervous. They have to construct elaborate cover stories for themselves
and fall back on training that
may have been conducted months or even years before in a country far away.

Airlines do make some effort to profile potential terrorists. In the
security 
world, hijackers are grouped
into three categoriesâ?²crazies, crusaders, and criminalsâ?²and we have
useful profiles of the kinds of
people who fall into those categories. Right now, for example, the airlines
already have in place a
computerized profiling system that assesses your security risk when you buy
your ticket, based on
things like whether you used a credit card, how recently you bought your
ticket, and what your travel
patterns in recent months have been. (This is not, strictly speaking,
analogous to racial profiling: It's
more like the kind of analysis your credit card company does on your
purchasing patterns in order to
detect suspicious use of your credit card.) That information is currently
used to determine which
checked bags will be specially screened for explosives.

That's a good start. But it's only a start. That pool of people ought to be
the ones pulled aside for
special screening, and that special screening ought to be an occasion for at
least a little investigation of
the passenger. Where are you headed? What do you do for a living? The way to
stop terrorism is to
X-ray terrorists, not their hand luggage. This was the most troubling thing
of all in my experience that
day. No one, in the course of all that searching and frisking, ever asked me
a single questionâ?²except,
in the course of a body search, "Do you mind, sir, if I touch your back?" I
don't mind being touched.
What I mind is a security system that doesn't make flying more secure.


Malcolm Gladwell is a writer with The New Yorker magazine and the
author of The Tipping Point. An archive of his work is available at
gladwell.com. 


> --- Begin Message ---
>
>
> From: Wdimitr () aol com
>
> Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2002 00:15:38 EDT
>
> Slate
>
>
> hey, wait a minute
>
> Checking Out the Checkpoints
> The curious irrationality of airport security.
>
> By Malcolm Gladwell
> Posted Thursday, April 11, 2002, at 12:42 PM PT
>
>
> Not long ago, I took a flight on American Airlines from Seattle to Dallas, 
> and as I passed through the
> security checkpoint, on the way to the gate, the metal detector beeped. I 
> don't know why. I had put my
> change and keys in the plastic container. But it did. So I was frisked with a 
> wand. A security person
> peered inside my bag. I had to take off my shoes so they could be examined. 
> Then I went to the gate
> and was stopped again. The attendant motioned for me to step into a small 
> area next to the jetway. My
> bags were, as they say in the security business, "dump-searched." Every 
> compartment was unzipped
> and every toiletry examined. I took off my shoes a second time. Again I was 
> frisked and prodded with
> a wand. 
>
> To someone following behind me at the airport that day, my experience might 
> have seemed somewhat
> reassuring. I am, after all, a man in the optimum terrorist zone of 20 to 40. 
> My hair is a little long. My
> ethnicity is uncertain: I'm definitely not a farm boy from Iowa. If you had 
> to do a kind of crude
> racial/demographic profile of the passengers traveling that day from Seattle 
> to Dallas—and it was, truth
> be told, a fairly staid bunch—you might have singled me out as most worthy 
> of special treatment. 
>
> But should that have made the other passengers on my flight—or the rest of 
> us—feel more secure? I'm
> not sure it should. Most of the measures imposed since Sept. 11 don't, upon 
> consideration, make very
> much sense, and we're a long way from doing the kinds of things that might 
> actually improve security in
> a demonstrable way. My experience that day is, in fact, a good illustration 
> of what's still wrong with the
> U.S. airport security system.
>
> Let's start with what happened to me at the metal detectors. In a recent FAA 
> test of the effectiveness
> of airport screening systems, 40 percent of explosives, 30 percent of guns, 
> and 70 percent of knives
> planted by government agents made it through such security checkpoints. Those 
> numbers shouldn't
> come as a surprise: Picking out weapons in luggage—when, in 99.99 percent 
> of cases there are no
> weapons in luggage—is quite a difficult task. The new federal law governing 
> airport security personnel
> mandates that they receive 40 hours of training. But the people who scanned 
> my bags seemed to me to
> suffer, above all else, from boredom, and it remains unclear how 40 hours of 
> training can overcome the
> structural tedium inherent in checking endlessly for something that is almost 
> never there. If screeners
> are not sufficiently motivated now, just over six months after Sept. 11, how 
> on earth can we expect
> them to be motivated two or three years down the road? 
>
> Were I actually carrying a weapon, in other words, the odds are pretty good 
> that it wouldn't have been
> flagged at the checkpoint. In fact, it occurred to me as my bag was checked 
> just how easy it would be
> for me to smuggle a weapon on board. I had, in my bag, a pair of dress shoes, 
> each of which was
> supported by a shoe tree, composed of two blocks of wood linked by a long, 
> cylindrical metal bar that,
> had I been so inclined, I almost certainly could have adapted into a knife. 
> No one, in the dozens of
> occasions that I have flown in the last six months, has ever asked me to 
> remove my shoe trees—or
> even wondered why a slovenly, seemingly unpretentious man like me would be 
> traveling with them. 
>
> Then there was the second search at the gate. In theory that sounds like a 
> good idea: Supplement the
> X-ray with a dump search. But why was that hand search also conducted at the 
> gate? Suppose I had a
> gun that could only be found with a dump search. If I saw that I was in 
> danger of being exposed, I
> could easily take out my gun and run aboard. After all, the only things 
> standing between me and the
> plane at that point were an unarmed security officer and a flight attendant. 
> The logical place for a hand
> search is at the security checkpoint, where there are X-ray machines, 
> explosives sniffers, and armed
> National Guardsmen all close at hand. The other thing that was odd was that I 
> couldn't see my bag
> being searched. I was off to the side, with the frisker between me and my 
> belongings. Surely one of the
> reasons to search a person's bags is on the off chance that, unbeknownst to 
> him, a terrorist has slipped
> a bomb into his luggage. If someone dropped a thermos full of plastique into 
> my suitcase, it might not
> ring a bell with the security person, but it certainly would with me. Why 
> freeze me out of the process?
>
> Why, in fact, was I even being searched in the first place? When I landed in 
> Dallas and got on my
> connecting flight to Miami, I was pulled out at the gate a second time, and 
> so I asked the flight attendant
> taking the tickets what about me was meriting this special attention. She 
> told me that the plane was still
> 15 minutes from departure, and I was one of the last passengers to board. 
> Under those
> circumstances—when there is time and opportunity for a search—the 
> stragglers often get targeted.
> Presumably this is what is meant by a random search, and the airlines have 
> all been ordered to step up
> this kind of occasional scrutiny. 
>
> But how do random searches contribute to safety? The person who was searched 
> ahead of me at the
> gate in Seattle was woman in her 70s, with bifocals and a slight stoop. What, 
> exactly, were the odds
> that she would stand up, steady herself on the back of the seat in front of 
> her, and politely order us, in a
> sweet old-lady voice, to stay calm? Would we even be able to hear her if she 
> did? At the security
> checkpoint, I also noticed a pilot being frisked with a wand. Why? If a pilot 
> wants to crash a plane into
> a building, after all, he scarcely needs the help of a weapon. When you are 
> looking for a needle in a
> haystack, your odds of finding that needle are not measurably improved by 
> conducting random searches
> of clumps of straw. The most absurd extension of this principle is the new 
> legislation's requirement that,
> by the end of the year, all bags be screened for explosives. Quite apart from 
> the expense of buying all
> those machines at $1 million each and the fact that explosives detection has 
> a massive false positive
> rate, what exactly is to be gained by adding an enormous logistical nightmare 
> to perhaps the most
> logistically challenged industry in the country?
>
> What all this demonstrates is the folly of a system focused primarily on the 
> detection of weapons. The
> hardest task facing any would-be terrorist is not getting his weapon on the 
> plane. That's just a game of
> hide-and-seek, and the seeker's odds in that situation are never particularly 
> good. The real problem for
> the terrorist is getting himself onto the plane. People about to commit 
> violent acts make mistakes. They
> get nervous. They have to construct elaborate cover stories for themselves 
> and fall back on training that
> may have been conducted months or even years before in a country far away. 
>
> Airlines do make some effort to profile potential terrorists. In the security 
> world, hijackers are grouped
> into three categories—crazies, crusaders, and criminals—and we have 
> useful profiles of the kinds of
> people who fall into those categories. Right now, for example, the airlines 
> already have in place a
> computerized profiling system that assesses your security risk when you buy 
> your ticket, based on
> things like whether you used a credit card, how recently you bought your 
> ticket, and what your travel
> patterns in recent months have been. (This is not, strictly speaking, 
> analogous to racial profiling: It's
> more like the kind of analysis your credit card company does on your 
> purchasing patterns in order to
> detect suspicious use of your credit card.) That information is currently 
> used to determine which
> checked bags will be specially screened for explosives. 
>
> That's a good start. But it's only a start. That pool of people ought to be 
> the ones pulled aside for
> special screening, and that special screening ought to be an occasion for at 
> least a little investigation of
> the passenger. Where are you headed? What do you do for a living? The way to 
> stop terrorism is to
> X-ray terrorists, not their hand luggage. This was the most troubling thing 
> of all in my experience that
> day. No one, in the course of all that searching and frisking, ever asked me 
> a single question—except,
> in the course of a body search, "Do you mind, sir, if I touch your back?" I 
> don't mind being touched.
> What I mind is a security system that doesn't make flying more secure.
>
>
> Malcolm Gladwell is a writer with The New Yorker magazine and the
> author of The Tipping Point. An archive of his work is available at
> gladwell.com. 
>
>
> --- End Message ---