The TSA's Dumb Air-Security Rules Are Not Based on Science

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=tsa-dumb-security-rules-not-science-based

by marklabedz • 14 years ago

75 74 14 years ago

senjutsuka• 14 years ago

While we're at it, most fire investigation isnt either. We should change that since it often leads to imprisonment.

I was surprised by this. Googling turned up this article from 1998: http://www.tcforensic.com.au/docs/article9.html, and of course Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_investigation#The_New_Scie... . Wikipedia makes it sounds like science is making it's way into fire investigation, starting with the 2005 and 2007 experiments by the ATF, but it's not clear how many fire investigators have paid attention to the results. Thanks for pointing this out. I learned something new today.

crusso3• 14 years ago

> I learned something new today.

Same here. I've always wondered at the certainty of the proclamations of fire investigations. I assumed that the disconnect between what I thought could be determined after everything was burned to a crisp -- and what they claimed to know about how a fire started and progressed was a result of my ignorance... go figure.

sadga• 14 years ago

That article is interesting, but extremely violates Wikipedia's editorial policy. The wording is inflammatory and opinionated, not encycopedic:

"The bottom line was “The “old-days” of locating the point of origin of a post-flashover fire by relying on the “lowest burn and deepest char” are OVER![12]

When word of the ATF experiments reached the fire investigation community, people began to examine the data more closely, because an error rate over 90% was simply unimaginable! In fact, the poor results should have surprised nobody. "

raintrees• 14 years ago

If we assume the TSA is a political response, and we consider the statement "Politics is show business for non-pretty people"* then the TSA's policies being referred to as Security Theater seems much more expected.

*yes, I took a liberty to avoid such a negative emotional content word

mattgreenrocks• 14 years ago

It's a terrible headline that panders to readers' own bias. Most of politics isn't based on reason, but more squishy things. It doesn't take much nuance to figure this out.

hlreed• 14 years ago

I would think that the word politics would carry more negative emotional content than ugly.

crusso3• 14 years ago

> "Politics is show business for non-pretty people"

It's worse than that, since I'd categorize the TSA as part of the blob of bureaucracy that is one step removed from politics or real political (democratic) accountability.

Voters and politicians panicked after 2001 and acted to do "something". Unfortunately, it's been over a decade since that something was put into place and for at very least half that time we've known that it's a mostly misguided effort.

How long does it take for the US government to undo mistakes like this, if ever?

psadauskas• 14 years ago

The "War on Drugs" has been going on for over 40 years now, so there's your answer.

revscat2• 14 years ago

They do not undo mistakes, at least without vast efforts, up to and including bloodshed. Although I forget exactly who said it I am a reminded of a quote: "Bureaucracies never die, they just change their name."

rhizome5• 14 years ago

Perhaps the TSA could be said to be show business for people too ugly for politics? Just going with a theme, apologies to Woody Allen.

Sottilde• 14 years ago

Good article, although short and without too much actual research or science. Not a fan of the second page that only contains a few sentences, though.

jeremyarussell• 14 years ago

Okay so it wasn't just me.

mikeash4• 14 years ago

In other breaking news, the sky is blue, and water is wet.

jszielenski• 14 years ago

"Finally, there's the Federal Aviation Administration rule that all electronics, even headphones and e-book readers, have to be turned off during takeoff and landing, allegedly to prevent interference with the plane's navigation systems.

But the scientific evidence for this worry is sketchy. Some devices emit signals that could theoretically affect an aircraft's electronics. Yet “there have never been any reported accidents from these kinds of devices on planes,” FAA spokesperson Les Dorr told the New York Times last year. Once again, irrational fear, not solid science, is dictating policy for millions of travelers."

Actually, it is based on science. Cell phones flying by overhead while landing or taking off overload cellular base stations. So as a courtesy to cellular phone carriers, airlines require cell phones to be put into "airplane" mode. Digital Communications 101 son.

drcube• 14 years ago

What does that have to do with ebook readers, mp3 players or laptops?

dkl• 14 years ago

Some of these have cell radios in them.

brk2• 14 years ago

* Cell phones flying by overhead while landing or taking off overload cellular base stations.*

[citation needed]

I've heard this, as one of many theories, discussed about the rationale for this rule.

A plane typically has about 150 passengers and there is a narrow window of time during takeoff and landing when you can actually get cell coverage. I find it hard to believe that with the popularity of cell phones today that the towers would be overloaded by 150 phones (or, let's extrapolate to 1000 phones accounting for the takeoff/landing windows) moving rapidly across a couple of towers.

mikeash4• 14 years ago

I believe this dates from the bad old days of analog phones and relatively dumb networks. I've read accounts (reliable? not sure, but believable) of people getting billed several times for a single call made from the air, because multiple cells picked it up and they didn't coordinate among each other. I don't believe this is a problem today.

I fly small planes for fun and sometimes use my phone in the air to check weather. The biggest problem is that it doesn't work above about 5,000ft because the signal gets too weak. I never bother to turn my phone off, and neither do most of my pilot friends. I spent about fifteen minutes flying a plane with an instructor friend once while he chatted on the phone with his wife about when we was going to get home!

kalleboo• 14 years ago

The window isn't that narrow, I think it can still pose a problem. Last time I left my phone on by mistake in my bag, when I picked it up I had "Welcome to X country! Your roaming rates here are..." from 3 different countries, none of which were the starting or landing countries.

milesskorpen• 14 years ago

Seeing as the vast majority of travelers only turn off the screens of their devices, I somehow doubt this is the issue.

rogerbinns2• 14 years ago

I'm happy with the devices being turned off as most crashes happen during landing and takeoff. I'd rather people were paying attention to their surroundings, paying attention to the briefings and not having hard metal objects that would seriously hurt people should the plane suddenly decelerate. But if they agree with me then that is the reason they should give.

mikeash4• 14 years ago

To at least six digits of accuracy, no airline crashes happen in the US at all these days.

wonderzombie• 14 years ago

At least as far as situational awareness concerned, a decent book is just as impairing for many people.

Actually, in that case as well as safety, I don't see much difference between a book and a Kindle. But they can't go and whitelist one device without complaints, can they? Sigh.

yason2• 14 years ago

All of the 500-800 passengers aboard a B747 or A380 certainly won't all have their cellphones, laptops, tablets, and other devices completely shut. Ever. Some forget it, some don't pay attention, some deliberately leave theirs on.

In the average, there are always few devices on. Multiply that by a few hundred takeoffs and landing on a single busy airport. No planes have crashed so far because of that.

IIRC, some aerospace manufacturers have stated that they would allow electronic devices being on if only <insert your local aviation control body here> approved.

I much more gladly believe the cell tower explanation than any appeal to security.

dinkumthinkum4• 14 years ago

Nonsense. You're coming up with this reason, which is fine, whatever, but it has nothing to do with the issue. The cell phone issue IS because of an alleged safety problem. It's not like the CEO of Delta is doing a "solid" for AT&T. Really? That doesn't even seem serious. Also, many people don't really turn off their cellphones, if this were all the case it seems like we'd all be experiencing some pretty big problems right now making calls.

pavel_lishin4• 14 years ago

> So as a courtesy to cellular phone carriers, airlines require cell phones to be put into "airplane" mode.

False - I'm always told to actually turn my device off. Furthermore, why can I leave my cellphone on when I'm traveling via bus, or rail?

anamax5• 14 years ago

> Furthermore, why can I leave my cellphone on when I'm traveling via bus, or rail?

Neither of them rely on radio for essential communication/navigation.

I'm not asserting that electronic devices interfere, just that the possibility of interference distinguishes planes from buses and trains.

akamaka2• 14 years ago

For example, according to the TSA, the 11-inch model of the MacBook Air is fine to leave in your bag, but the 13-inch model must be removed.

There's nothing inherently unscientific about this rule. Presumably someone has calculated the volume of explosive that's worth checking for, and then another person has translated that into simple, practical rules that can be quickly taught to a large number of border agents.

smokeyj• 14 years ago

Then they should be checking volume, not the monitor size.

mseebach2• 14 years ago

Because carefully and individually checking the volume of each and every MacBook Air that comes through makes a lot more sense than realizing once and upfront that there are two major versions of the MBA, and the 11" one is below and the 13" is above.

glesica2• 14 years ago

Sure there is, but not necessarily (only) in the way that was originally implied. Science, generally speaking, involves observation and inference. A scientific approach to airplane security would therefore (to simplify greatly) involve looking at what has happened in the past to inform our decisions for the future.

In the past (2001), terrorists attacked airplanes using tactics and weapons we were unprepared for. It seems reasonable, then, to think that if there is another terrorist attack on an airplane it will follow this pattern: it will use tactics and weapons we are unprepared for.

So checking 13 inch Macbooks more closely than 11 inch Macbooks (assuming taking the thing out of its case actually does anything) just means that terrorists should find ways to put a sufficiently-powerful bomb in an 11 inch Macbook in order to be successful.

Our approach, therefore, is completely unscientific because it assumes that terrorists today will continue to use the tactics they used yesterday, or were planning to use yesterday, when we know from observation and inference ("science") that this is not the case.

Note that there have been several attempted attacks since 2001. None have been successful, and none of them, not a single one, was foiled, even partially or with assistance from, TSA. Each of these attempts exploited a weakness in the TSA processes. Seems like the terrorists are better at "science" than the TSA are.

akamaka2• 14 years ago

What you're discussing is strategy (the choice of where to deploy resources in a conflict). Some might argue that science can be applied to conflict, but Clausewitz for example makes a convincing argument that strategy is not scientific and will never be.

r00fus• 14 years ago

Or what about 2 11" MB Airs? Surely that's equivalent volume to one 13".

The arbitrary rules may help people gaming the system, but are completely exploitable when scratching even a bit below the surface.

It's a fucking farce.

dinkumthinkum4• 14 years ago

The simple fact that there are "fancy numbers" involved or even if some schmoe did a fancy calculation using "rithmetic" doesn't mean there's any science going on here. Is an 11-inch Macbook Air sized amount of thermite drastically less interesting than a 13 inch one; I mean come on. It's clear that many of these things are completely arbitrary, especially those distinguishing between laptop and tablets.

ImprovedSilence• 14 years ago

key word: "Presumably"...

kjhughes2• 14 years ago

I think that the public has moved beyond being comforted by security theater. Now, two other forces are propping up the absurdities: (1) bureaucratic self-preservation, and (2) leadership irrationality along the lines of "man, will I look bad if I support revoking [stupid TSA rule #1039237] and a terrorist then uses the opening in an attack."

mseebach2• 14 years ago

> leadership irrationality

Narrowly considering the rules of the game, it's not an irrational stance at all.

kjhughes2• 14 years ago

Sure, and narrowly considering the rules of the game, winning a pawn may appear to be rational ahead of being checkmated next move.

daenz2• 14 years ago

Sounds like the rules of the game are a problem. The desire to stay "in power" outweighs the desire to actually represent constituents accurately.

glesica2• 14 years ago

Doesn't hurt that quite a few politically connected companies seem to be making a boatload of cash from security theater.

rhizome5• 14 years ago

Maybe all government contractors should be required to be 501(c) registered. Nonprofits always when there are tax dollars being spent.

samspot2• 14 years ago

I didn't find this article to be very scientific. Although it claims certain rules are arbitrary it doesn't bother to point out what makes them so, which is what I was expecting when I clicked on this.

dinkumthinkum4• 14 years ago

It's kind of difficult to show why something is arbitrary, usually the lack of any evidence to the contrary is good enough. I mean the example of having a certain amount of liquid but as long as you call it baby formula, it is ok, seems to be so clearly arbitrary that only the most pedantic would demand further proof. :)

samspot2• 14 years ago

The baby formula is an exception that I'm fairly sure will only work if you have an actual baby with you. Since most terrorists aren't carrying infants it is deemed an acceptable risk. Based on what I know about breastfeeding laws it may actually be illegal to restrict people from carrying these items. So based on what we know I'd say this rule isn't arbitrary at all.

To me the better example of an arbitrary rule is laptop thickness. However we can speculate that someone has determined that objects greater than > 1 inch are more likely to carry explosives. We can argue that it's arbitrary, but aside from the TSA coming out and explaining the reasoning we will never know. And I'm not sure they are obligated to tell us.

revscat2• 14 years ago

I have a sneaking suspicion that the TSA's existence is based upon science, although the science in question is sociology and/or mass psychology.

jws• 14 years ago

Timely. I just cleared security where I was effectively given my choice of magnetometer, backscatter, or groping. I suppose under some reality that is more secure than assigning magnetometer to everyone. They should do it there.

(I'm not saying which airport. I like it this way.)

potatolicious• 14 years ago

I've been passing through SFO frequently. I take some minor schadenfreude in how uncomfortable some of the agents are when groping me.

If I have to bend over and take their stupid, unconstitutional rules, I'll look them in the eye while they rifle through my pubes, no sense letting them off easy.

pavel_lishin4• 14 years ago

My fiance will never forgive me if we miss our flight because I tell a TSA agent, "Why won't you look me in the eyes when you make love to me?"

physcab• 14 years ago

TSA's security rules are a mix of deterrents and science. I worked on explosive detection devices for the TSA during my PhD.

The banning of liquids and pastes are logical. There are some extremely volatile liquid and plastic explosives that would take your leg off if you dropped [1][2]. Or if they were used as primary explosives to ignite a more powerful secondary explosive. That could be disastrous if TSA allowed liquids in larger quantities.

As for the detection technologies that are currently out on the market, all I have to say is that every single one of them can be confused and circumvented, which is why they have seemingly arbitrary rules. For example, xray technologies can easily confuse plastic explosives with a piece of cheese, which is why you have to take shit out of your bag. MMW wave technologies are confused by water substances, which is why you have to do a pat down if an anomaly is detected.

My own technology that I worked on was primarily developed as a low-cost surface technique, so if you had explosive residue on your hands or baggage our detector would alarm.

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitroglycerin [2]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oa6fcun3kag

dinkumthinkum4• 14 years ago

So having multiple containers having one container as long as the carrier says it is baby formula prevents such an explosion? I'm not entirely certain that they stands up to the "mix of deterrents and science" test, though.

Corrado• 14 years ago

I don't think that anyone is denying that liquids can pose a threat. The article stated that by allowing everyone to bring some small amounts of liquides defeats the purpose almost completely. All I would have to do is get 5 of my co-conspirators to carry on 5 little contains each of some volatile liquid and when we get past security we pour them all together to make one big batch of nastiness.

This example, and many more, is why we say the TSA's security rules are useless and arbitrary. About the only way to ensure a risk free flight is to force everyone to fly naked, not allow luggage, remove the cleaning crew, etc... and I don't think there are any airlines that are willing to go that far. :/

pavel_lishin4• 14 years ago

Or just carry the five containers yourself, by carrying a bottle of shampoo, conditioner, moisturizer, suntan lotion, and toothpaste. All non-transparent containers - I've never seen a TSA agent sniff toothpaste to make sure it was actually toothpaste, and not superglue, or cocaine, or strawberry jam.

aplusbi• 14 years ago

Do you agree that the best way to dispose of liquid explosives is to carelessly toss them into a large trashcan in the middle of a large crowd?

danielweber• 14 years ago

That's not quite right. Very few people are found carrying guns through metal-detectors, but this doesn't mean that metal detectors have no place in stopping guns from planes.

The step that screens liquids isn't going to actually find explosive liquids; it is going to stop all liquids, so the bombers won't be bringing them through in the first place.

I can hear lots of good arguments that the restrictions on liquids doesn't pass a cost-benefit analysis, but once you make the decision to stop liquids, having a common disposal place really isn't the problem. Someone could just suicide-bomb the security line in the first place.

anamax5• 14 years ago

> My own technology that I worked on was primarily developed as a low-cost surface technique, so if you had explosive residue on your hands or baggage our detector would alarm.

(1) I just got back from DisneyWorld. One night the fireworks smoke drifted across where I was standing....

(2) The person who packaged the explosives need not be the person carrying them.

D_Alex• 14 years ago

"The banning of liquids and pastes are logical. There are some extremely volatile liquid and plastic explosives..."

What utter garbage. Solids, SOLIDS should be banned! Azides, fulminates, picrates and the like are all SOLIDS and extremely UNSAFE, they can take both your legs off and more. I propose that no single SOLID piece weighting more than 4 ounces should be allowed on board, though of course several such smaller pieces are not a problem.

yason2• 14 years ago

And did anyone ever think that there would be a sound rational basis for the operations of TSA? Good morning to scientificamerican.com, too.

The TSA is rolling on with its own mandate regardless of science and the opinions of thinkers, and they will do anything that they want and that can superficially be based on increasing "security"; that is, such claims that people are easy to persuade to believe if they're not left to think about it.

I don't know how they fit in the big picture: they represent some fears or some power that people have invited into this world. But I can be pretty sure what the true reason is that compels them to justify their own existence. Follow the money.

DividesByZero• 14 years ago

Things like the TSA are great illustrations of the pervasiveness of the surveillance-industrial complex at the beginning of this decade.

Security doesn't need to be a motivating factor, merely sufficient justification - after that things like back scatter body scanners, procedures that require more security staff and any other product or innovation the SIC comes up with can be shoehorned in.

They've worked out they can make money off of people's fear, and there's a neat little feedback loop where more security makes people more paranoid, more afraid leading to more security. Good business, if you can get it.

The TSA's Dumb Air-Security Rules Are Not Based on Science

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