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JFK Displays Actual Wait Times Using Beacons That Monitor Mobile Phones
- gorena 11y agoSerious question: if there is a 16 minute queue for "security", why wouldn't a potential terrorist just wheel up a carry on sized bomb and detonate it in the middle of the "security" line? Is this something that the TSA addresses (I assume not), or do they just ignore the possibility? All they've done is move the soft target further out.
- mpeg 11y agoAirport security is there to protect the planes, not the passengers.
- bosdev 11y ago* Airport security is there to protect the airline industry, not the planes or passengers
- saryant 11y agoSort of like how they take those super-dangerous bottles of water and toiletries and place them in a secure receptacle AKA a trash can.
- pyre 11y agoI thought the idea wasn't that they were volatile on their own, but components that could be assembled into a bomb once on-plane.
- vidarh 11y agoThat might have helped if they actually caught fluids in the carry on. In my experience (accidentally left bottles in carry-on several times; always found out myself after passing through security with no problems) they don't seem to do that.
- pyre 11y agoIt's inconsistent. I've had various things denied in carry-on (e.g. jar of jam, snow globe, etc). A TSA agent even told me that snow globes were not allowed even in checked luggage, which I found out later is false. I had to find some way to mail the snow globe to myself from the airport.
- matthewmacleod 11y agoSetting aside the effectiveness arguments for the moment, the point of preventing weapons on aircraft is now less about 'a terrorist might blow up an aircraft' and more about 'a terrorist might hijack an aircraft and turn it into a gigantic missile'. Obviously any place where there are large groups of people would be a target for attacks of this kind.
- harmegido 11y agoI think they're concern is not foremost for the safety of the passengers. The main concern is airplanes going into buildings. Of course, this is definitely an example of fighting the last war. On a separate note, the TSA really pisses me off. Consider that UPS saves millions by not taking left turns. Removing or adding very small inefficiencies at a very large scale has tremendous cost implications. I don't think these security lines add much security and I think they do that task at a much higher cost than most people think.
- digi_owl 11y agoIF you look at airport security, it is always about fighting the last war. The limitation on liquids comes a lone bomber bringing a liquid binary explosive onboard in the toiletry. the issue with shoes, again another bomber. matching luggage to passengers i believe is because of Lockerbie. And the list goes on and on.
- MBlume 11y agoI agree that planes going into buildings is the major security concern, but we fixed it. We've reinforced the cockpit doors and we've taught passengers not to cooperate with hijackers (the latter we managed within hours of the first attack)
- UnoriginalGuy 11y agoPlus panic buttons & guns in the cockpit, new procedures for aircraft leaving their scheduled route, and passenger's reaction to a hijacking (e.g. one "bad guy" with a switchblade is nothing against 300 people who fear NOT doing anything will endanger their lives).
- smackfu 11y agoAt a lot of more risky countries, they do x-ray / metal detector every passenger at the airport entrance. I assume that's to prevent targeting concentrations of foreign tourists.
- remarkEon 11y agoThis just moves the target from the indoor TSA queue to curbside.
- molotv 11y agoIn Newark, past the TSA checkpoints, the Tel Aviv gate has its own secondary screening with barricades, wands & pat-downs for everyone. I suspect that is because of actual threats and a desire for real security.
- remarkEon 11y ago-> ...why wouldn't a potential terrorist just wheel up a carry on sized bomb and detonate it in the middle of the "security" line? I have no idea. To me, by far the most dangerous part of flying is the queue at the TSA checkpoints, especially at airports with particularly large checkpoints (I'm thinking EWR and probably ORD). I think some airports address this (SEA, MSP, JFK...maybe) by spreading out the checkpoints among smaller groups of gates to keep the volume of people at those checkpoints down. This is just my speculation, however. I'd be curious to see how checkpoints have evolved over the last 14 years in terms of design and efficiency.
- 6d0debc071 11y agoI imagine the reasoning goes somewhat to the effect of: If a plane goes down, it's reasonable to expect that everyone on board will die. It's less reasonable to expect that the blast radius of a device that was sufficient to down an aircraft would be sufficient to encompass an equivalent number of people in the security line.
- forgottenpass 11y agoWhen it comes to designing airport safety, instilling the feeling of safety in travelers is a more important goal than actual safety. This is a sorta-open-secret. We can sit around and come up with thousands of possible attacks scenarios with less than 1% of the security that goes into preventing airplane hijackings. But that doesn't really matter. Airport security is primarily a political item, both responding to political pressures and fears, while generating entirely new ones.
- MasterScrat 11y agoFrom http://www.blipsystems.com/indoor-sensor/ http://www.blipsystems.com/indoor-sensor/: > When a device passes the sensors, its non-personal unique ID, called a MAC address, is recorded, encrypted and time-stamped. By re-identifying the device from multiple sensors, travel times, average speeds, dwell times and movement patterns become available. Aren't MAC addresses spoofed on most phones now?! I didn't expect a system like that to still be usable.
- pyre 11y agoIt just needs the MAC to stay consistent for the duration of your travel through the airport.
- digi_owl 11y agoEven if spoofed, a MAC has to be (locally) unique or else you run into all kinds of network issues. As for spoofed on phones, maybe if you have root. But i doubt it comes spoofed out of the box (at least i have never heard of such a thing).
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- macNchz 11y agoAs of last year iOS devices do randomize their MAC address when polling for nearby WiFi, specifically to foil this kind of tracking. Here's an interesting breakdown of what is actually happening: http://blog.airtightnetworks.com/ios8-mac-randomization-analyzed/ http://blog.airtightnetworks.com/ios8-mac-randomization-anal...
- vvpan 11y agoI hope it didn't cost more than hiring extra people to get the mega-lines through faster.
- crusso 11y agoThat definitely goes against my hacker instincts where if I can automate a daily task with the amount of time that it would take me to do it in a few days, I go ahead and automate it.
- joaq 11y agoYep, I think the same way. I always prefer to spend a lot of time upfront on something and automate it instead of doing it over and over later. I try to avoid repetitive tasks as much as I possibly can.
- RobotCaleb 11y agoOf what use is this information to the people standing in line? "Oh, it's 30 minutes. I guess I'll hurry."
- 0x0 11y agoMight be useful when deciding on whether or not to have another beer before heading to the departure gate ;)
- chaz72 11y agoYeah, I'm not sure the signs will help people, it's kind of out of their hands - but I like the idea of airport staff being able to spot bottlenecks more easily and shift resources where they can.
- burkaman 11y ago"It's 30 minutes, I'm definitely going to miss my flight home and I should call my family to let them know." "It's 30 minutes, my kid has time to go buy a snack and eat it before we go through security." "No, don't use the bathroom yet, the line looks long but it's only a 5 minute wait." "I really hate airports, but it's a little less frustrating when I can see the wait time." "The taxi line is 20 minutes long, maybe it's worth taking the subway instead." etc.
- paulsutter 11y agoWhat gets measured gets fixed. Presumably the TSA managers will be rated based on their wait times, and therefore accountable when they're too lazy to staff the right number of people. Last week I almost missed my flight at Oakland because they had everyone funneled through a single scanner. Two scanners were idle because they were "short staffed". That's not an accident or bad luck. That just means the manager was too lazy to do their job correctly.
- nkassis 11y agoI wouldn't call the manager lazy. It's more of lacking clear information that they need to make properly informed staffing decisions. I bet they have incentives tied to cost more than wait time. Instead of optimizing for cost and a gut feeling of need to meet a certain service threshold they can now use this data to predict capacity needs more accurately. Hopefully incentives are correctly set so they don't just ignore these new numbers.
- amenod 11y agoI wonder how long before they can do the same with cameras? A bit of computer vision and you have more complete data... Not sure if there is still need for better completeness though.
- joaq 11y agoShould be quite easy to implement, actually. Some stores have this kind of technology to track traffic. I think the problem is installing the cameras and the software, but that's trivial for an airport.
- beamatronic 11y agoSeptember 29, 2003 http://articles.latimes.com/2003/sep/29/nation/na-facescan29 http://articles.latimes.com/2003/sep/29/nation/na-facescan29
- csense 11y agoBased on the headline, I thought they were displaying the queue time on monitors held by life-sized mannikins of the former President. Read the article, was disappointed. It's still interesting tech though.
- joaq 11y agoAwesome, this kind of technology should be used in ALL waiting lines. I read that the average person spends months of their lives just waiting in lines. This is ridiculous and should be fixed. Every store should have an average waiting time and they should try to minimize it.
- forgottenpass 11y agoWhen a device passes the beacons, its non-personal unique ID—called a MAC address—is recorded, encrypted and time-stamped. Blip, you make me laugh. You know this will raise privacy concerns and say the sweet nothings that placate the general public, but inspire no confidence in people who know what those words mean. I'm not here to say that as a JFK traveler I'm unhappy with the privacy considerations. I just want to point out you're pretending your design is good on privacy when simple tweaks would show the security minded you gave half a shit. I don't mind this monitoring if it is limited to the uses described, your maneuvering simply makes me giggle. A MAC may not be in whatever bucket you're calling "personal" but is certainly more personal than "non-personal" implies. Encryption is effectively a "we're doing it right" buzzword to the general public. What are your authorized uses for the data? What's your KMI? What data minimization techniques are employed? Do you purge old records? Replace the MAC with an identifier that can't be tied back to MAC once the target has left the line? Hash MACs on entry in a way that is both time-costly to bruteforce and results in a different hash every day?
- omouse 11y agoAren't MAC addresses supposed to be globally unique? That's the most personal it can get, right?
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- riffic 11y ago"supposed to be", but not really. There are no measures to prevent MAC collision other than a manufacturer assurance they won't duplicate the addresses.
- heatish 11y agoYeah that same line made me laugh a bit as well. "Your non-identifying, SUPER personal, burned onto your phones hardware, is never going to change Mac Address is recorded as you walk by." I think the idea is a great one, it's unfortunate there isn't a better way (that I can think of atm) to do it, or like you said just some transparency on what they do with it. As simple as: "At the end of each day the encrypted mac addresses are completely erased from our system." Seems like they do keep the info though, it says the Cincinnati airport kept it and used it for data analysis. In the end, I think this kind of thing most people will be okay with foregoing a bit of privacy for. Edit: Interesting article on mobile MAC addresses down the comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10097882#up_10098108 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10097882#up_10098108
- Thriptic 11y agoAnother simple thing that could be done to increase efficiency is have notices upstream in the security line instructing people to remove their shoes / belts and store their personal items like phones before they get to the conveyor belt used to feed items into the x-ray baggage scanner (assuming this is still a relevant bottleneck). A lot of time is needlessly wasted by people who start this process when they first hit the front of the security line.
- jschwartzi 11y agoI'm not going to take my shoes of in a common area until I absolutely have to. I think it's a stupid law anyway, and my not disrobing early is a form of protest at the indignity.
- tedchs 11y agoNitpick: these are not "beacons", they are "sensors". The product page linked from the article doesn't even contain word "beacon". Beacons are unidirectional. But, beacons are hot right now, which presumably the author sought to capitalize on.
- vigneshv_psg 11y agoI am just curious. Wouldn't it be more easier to do this with specific devices than using the phones? Each passenger can be given a smart card along with the boarding pass (or embedded in the boarding pass). The sensors could merely check for the smart card at certain points and determine how long it took for the passenger to clear security, etc. The airline can then collect the smart card back just before boarding when they scan the boarding pass. Seems like a simple solution that would work without much privacy concerns.
- ISL 11y agoIt's not easier than using a thing they already have.
- vigneshv_psg 11y agoyes, but using a thing they already have comes with privacy concerns. it also depends on their wifi/bluetooth being in "discoverable" mode.
- hammock 11y agoI've seen this done in airports before, only using a plain laminated card that you carry through the line - the low-tech solution. The card was used by the TSA to internally track wait times
- morgante 11y agoSounds like a giant pain. Nobody (passengers or airlines) wants yet another card to carry around when we already have perfectly usable devices.
- anonymousDan 11y agoLondon Luton was displaying similar wait times when I traveled through it last week, and I was wondering how they did it. I thought they might be doing some kind of face recognition using the cameras at entry/exit to the hall.
- jazzyk 11y agoPerhaps, just perhaps... they should be spending money on additional stations to NOT have lines in the first place? You know, fight the cause rather than the symptom :-)
- duderific 11y agoThey will only spend enough money on staffing, to keep customer frustration just below the boiling point. You see that in every industry, not just at the airport. Although in industries with little or no competition (I'm looking at you, USPS), I would say have even less incentive to care about customer satisfaction.
- jonemo 11y agoOne of the photos shows the system in use at the DHS immigration line. Aren't there notices all over this place telling travelers that cellphone use is strictly prohibited before passing the checkpoint? It seems strange that the airport relies on people breaking the law to provide better service...
- a-dub 11y agoGood. I suspect that many people aren't aware that most smartphones in common/default configurations leak a unique identifier that can be passively sensed and monitored. Products like this will help raise awareness as to how privacy invasive simple consumer devices have become.