7 ms·

The problem with this article is that it fails to recognize the real threat model. The objective of a terrorist is not to blow up a plane, it is to scary people

by LukaAl 10y ago

The problem with this article is that it fails to recognize the real threat model. The objective of a terrorist is not to blow up a plane, it is to scary people and do this by killing and injuring the highest number of people while minimizing the risk of being detected. If this is the threat model, why a rational terrorist should try to put the bomb on a plane? The Brussel Terror Attack has shown exactly this[0]. Terrorist killing themselves at the check-in counter (but they could have chosen the security lanes). Obviously, we need airport security because the threat model is not only terrorists but also hijackers and smugglers (and non-rational terrorists?). Obviously, the risk of using the hijacked plane as a bomb, like in 11/9 is still a risk, but other measures like reinforced cabin doors are more effective for that. So, basically, the TSA is a failure in making people safer and but a huge success in making traveler life miserable. TSA Pre-Check is nothing but them keeping on with their "good work". [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Brussels_bombings#Brussels_Airport https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Brussels_bombings#Brussel...

literallycancer 10y ago
If the goal of terrorist organizations was to kill the most people, they would target critical infrastructure, like drinking water reservoirs or perhaps air traffic control towers, if they have a thing for airplanes. They will say they are trying to kill people to help their cause, but it's more likely that they operate as any other 'business'. They try to impress the 'investors' (e.g. Wahhabis with oil money), so they can get more resources and expand into other 'markets'.
kapitza 10y ago
Because the goal (or rather the means) of terrorists is to scare people. And it's much scarier to imagine your plane being blown up in the air. Reason has nothing to do with it. The number of deaths due to car accidents, even falling down the stairs, is much greater. The main impact of terrorism is the irrational fear, not the rational risk aversion. But it's much easier to stamp out terrorism by force, hard as that may be, than to convert human beings into rational animals. The goal of terrorists is to achieve power through violence. The gold standard would be the PLO, now the PA. The ANC also did extremely well with this strategy. There are two effective ways to combat terrorism. One is to surrender to the terrorists. Neither the PLO, nor the ANC, nor the IRA, is setting off any bombs these days. Works great especially if surrounded by a cloud of euphemisms. The other is to treat the terrorism as an isolated incident and counterattack on the political front. Consider the response to Timothy McVeigh or especially Dylann Roof -- textbook. Great stuff, America still knows how to do it. If terrorism is committed in the name of the Confederate flag, ban the Confederate flag and crack down on white nationalists everywhere. Even the peaceful ones. Especially the peaceful ones. No one ever said that the best way to defeat racist terrorism is to satisfy the legitimate grievances of moderate racists. But if the USG adopted this strategy, the GOP would probably grow a "militant wing" in well under a decade...
X86BSD 10y ago
I said this the moment TSA was created. "Wow fedgov! Thanks! You just made my job as a terrorist exponentially easier! Now instead of having to get through security to get on a plane and blow it up, you corralled all the people on multiple flights into a single file line in one place for me before security. Thanks! Now I can wait in line with my bomb on my body until I'm the next one to go through the scanners, then detonate as o take my shoe off. Taking out the security checkpoint, all your useless equipment, TSA personnel, and innocents. Thanks!"
- gcb0 10y ago
  and to add insult, everyone will die barefoot while the dammed terrorist can have their shoes on still.
- Johnny555 10y ago
  Now I can wait in line with my bomb on my body... No need to carry around all of that extra bulk and weight on your body when when you can pack it into a wheeled carryon bag. You don't even need to keep it under carryon size since the airlines don't (usually) screen for size until you get to the gate.
  - huffmsa 10y ago
    Why not go for broke and do both?
    - Johnny555 10y ago
      It seems harder to be inconspicuous with 40 lbs of explosives taped to your body than to wheel it around in a carry-on bag.
      - huffmsa 10y ago
        Have you seen the size of the average American? Throw on a staypuff marshmallow parka and you'd look like 40% of travelers this past week
TallGuyShort 10y ago
I've been very critical of the TSA, but if (since) that's the threat model, that actually highlights the benefit of security theater. As Schneier points out, there are essentially no terrorists. It's like trying to find a needle in a haystack, and it's arguably better to just let the needle go through than to screw up all the hay. But if the terrorists are mainly just causing fear instead of harm, doesn't it make sense to counter it by making people feel safer instead of actually making them safer, especially if you practically can't do the latter? Food for thought...
- hash-set 10y ago
  I don't feel safer when government puts a soft glove around its forceful nature, though. Look, we need to keep bombs off of planes, I understand that. But TSA isn't all that successful at it--they failed pretty miserable in their last penetration tests. TSA Pre-Check seems to me to be the acknowledgement by government that they went too far in the direction of inconveniencing frequent fliers and in true government fashion, they devised a heavy-handed system that kinda sorta deals with that issue except it costs you your privacy. I don't know what the answer is. I despise our increasingly totalitarian nation, though. I also despise the leadership that flies on private jets and never has to see a TSA line but who get to decide for us what is best.
- LukaAl 10y ago
  I thought about that. But if finding a terrorist is like trying to find a needle in the haystack, Schneier suggestion (as well as any other expert in security will tell you), the best solution is truly random search. If it is truly random, the terrorists have no way to predict if they will be checked and if it is frequent enough, it will be sufficient to change their behavior. As for the point of sense of safety vs. real safety (impossible) is a well taken one. But this false safety could be dispensed with much lower costs for the citizens (both in terms of money and inconvenience).
  - ethbro 10y ago
    > random search Or in other words, ignore concerns about profiling and implement an Israeli style security operation. I think it has a lot to be said for it. Profiling + politeness + a firm boundary on mandate (e.g. no drug convictions by airport security) doesn't seem that bad. Especially compared to what amounts to the same thing except with a vast security army of more poorly trained agents. Ethnically profiling selection without ethnically profiling assumption isn't a nuance I'd trust the average TSA agent to perform well.
candiodari 10y ago
If you want an even better example, try the Istanbul attack: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Atat%C3%BCrk_Airport_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Atat%C3%BCrk_Airport_atta... 3 Terrorists total. The attack went as follows : 2 terrorists queue up in an Xray machine line, and suddenly start shooting people. One of the terrorists is shot down and a few seconds later he detonated a suicide vest. What does an airport security line do at that point ? Well, of course it fails open. Security abandoned their posts and none of the security guards responded for minutes to the second attacker in the line walking around and shooting people. He walked right through, got on an escalator and continued shooting people for ~2 minutes. Eventually a security officer (one wandering around by himself, not identified) shot him from a distance, looked up close at the attacker, and ran away (the terrorist exploded shortly after that, I hope the guy made it out). A third terrorist blew himself up in what was essentially a security pre-check line outside the airport. Any chokepoint, of course, is a terrorist target at an airport. I've been to Istanbul airport. It's big, but not that big. In this attack 45 people died and 230 were wounded. There are plenty of far bigger airports where that number would have been way up. Thankfully I do think security personnel would not just immediately abandon their posts in the US when something like this happens. That of course means that TSA makes things worse in some ways and provides a target for terrorists unless they avoid making lines. Heh. "Somehow" that doesn't seem to be the conclusion they're drawing from this. In fact I am unaware of any official responses to these attacks.
- saluki 10y ago
  The choke points are definitely an issue at airports but also at sporting events, where masses of hundreds of people are crowded around a gate getting in to the stadium. I think they need to setup a maze system where passengers/fans queue in to a system where can be scanned as they go through and directed to lower and higher risk areas something bullet/blast resistant where people can be physically isolated from each other (and from gaining access) as they pass through security and everyone can be locked down (or automatically directed to exit the facility) if an event happens so there isn't a free run through security. And make it large enough where people can get in to the system quickly so you don't have large groups of people standing waiting outside. Something with lots of angled areas as you enter and get you isolated, scanned directed in to the facility or over to higher security area for further processing.
mlvljr 10y ago
Same happened in Moscows couple years ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domodedovo_International_Airport_bombing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domodedovo_International_Airpo...
logicallee 10y ago
>The objective of a terrorist is not to blow up a plane, it is to scare people and do this by killing and injuring the highest number of people while minimizing the risk of being detected. Let's talk about this. What kind of objective is this? For insight into the psychology of terrorists can I consider the psychology of "trolls"? (i.e. mostly harmless Internet trolls). Or people just generally trying to wreak havoc "for the lolz"? Or is it different? What I mean is that people like Chomsky accuse the United States of being "terrorists" in whenever he thinks the United States meets some technical definition -- but the United States has some kind of political goals and it's not an end in itself to just have a bunch of people "scared" or "killed and injured". The U.S. doesn't say, "hey could we scare a billion people!! Yeah let's do it!!" Which is precisely what you quoted as the terrorist's objective: "it is to scare people". So what is the actual motivation of terrorists? Why is it motivating to "scare people"? (For the same reason as trolls are motivated?) Some people ascribe religious motivations for it, but I read through the Koran (you can read it easily here[1], it should take you under an hour, it's very repetitive. Copied into a Word document in 10-point single-spaced font it's 180 pages but you can scroll through it very quickly) and I did not once see anything like "Thou shalt scare people" or "Thou shalt wreak havoc by killing and injuring the highest number of people." I searched for "scare" and did not see that word. So in effect I don't understand why you say the primary rational objective of terrorists is to scare people. It doesn't really make sense unless it's the same as Internet trolls. I'd like more insight. [1] http://www.archive.org/stream/thekoranalquran02800gut/koran10a.txt http://www.archive.org/stream/thekoranalquran02800gut/koran1... If you want to get it down to 181 pages to read quickly 1) open the above link 2) select all of it and copy it 3) In word select 10-point font, single (1.0 spacing), 3) paste it into word using the Paste dropdown button in the ribbon, to paste as text only which is the third dropdown option (alternatively you could paste it into some plain text editor and then select all and copy it again and then paste it into Word or I guess since it's .txt you could just download it). This will just paste the text but have a bunch of extraneous line breaks. Next do a search and replace for every instance of "^p" (without the quotes, which means new paragraph) with nothing or even better as a single space (since replaced with nothing, some words run together but this didn't bother me). this will substantially reduce the thing. If you did the single-spacing right you will get 181 dense but highly repepetitive and readable pages of the Qu'ran. I next used the scroll wheel (by pressing down on it) to begin scrolling through all of it and attempted to alight my eyes on each section enough to read it "at a glance" (like speed reading.) At 24 seconds per page (I timed it and this is what I considered a readable scroll speed) the whole thing should take you about 1 hour 16 minutes. I encourage you to do it! Just focus. Stop if you really need to focus on something. I read War and Peace this way. It's about some Russians. (I'm kidding, this last part is a woody allen joke.)
sandworm101 10y ago
The real error is that it assumes the primary role of TSA screening is to prevent attacks. Looking at the record, their primary job is to catch really stupid drug dealers, drunks, and people subject to federal warrants. That's the vast magority of arrests and is little damaged by pre-screening. Enforcement of terminal drink/food monopolies is just a bonus. This is security theatre. Trying to apply logic doesnt work. There was a report a few years ago, accidentally leaked, by TSA showing that 911-style hijacking was no longer possible. Nobody with small knives could ever take a cockpit, not with 100 post-911 passengers watching.

by LukaAl 10y ago

literallycancer 10y ago

If the goal of terrorist organizations was to kill the most people, they would target critical infrastructure, like drinking water reservoirs or perhaps air traffic control towers, if they have a thing for airplanes. They will say they are trying to kill people to help their cause, but it's more likely that they operate as any other 'business'. They try to impress the 'investors' (e.g. Wahhabis with oil money), so they can get more resources and expand into other 'markets'.

kapitza 10y ago

Because the goal (or rather the means) of terrorists is to scare people. And it's much scarier to imagine your plane being blown up in the air. Reason has nothing to do with it. The number of deaths due to car accidents, even falling down the stairs, is much greater. The main impact of terrorism is the irrational fear, not the rational risk aversion. But it's much easier to stamp out terrorism by force, hard as that may be, than to convert human beings into rational animals. The goal of terrorists is to achieve power through violence. The gold standard would be the PLO, now the PA. The ANC also did extremely well with this strategy. There are two effective ways to combat terrorism. One is to surrender to the terrorists. Neither the PLO, nor the ANC, nor the IRA, is setting off any bombs these days. Works great especially if surrounded by a cloud of euphemisms. The other is to treat the terrorism as an isolated incident and counterattack on the political front. Consider the response to Timothy McVeigh or especially Dylann Roof -- textbook. Great stuff, America still knows how to do it. If terrorism is committed in the name of the Confederate flag, ban the Confederate flag and crack down on white nationalists everywhere. Even the peaceful ones. Especially the peaceful ones. No one ever said that the best way to defeat racist terrorism is to satisfy the legitimate grievances of moderate racists. But if the USG adopted this strategy, the GOP would probably grow a "militant wing" in well under a decade...

X86BSD 10y ago

I said this the moment TSA was created. "Wow fedgov! Thanks! You just made my job as a terrorist exponentially easier! Now instead of having to get through security to get on a plane and blow it up, you corralled all the people on multiple flights into a single file line in one place for me before security. Thanks! Now I can wait in line with my bomb on my body until I'm the next one to go through the scanners, then detonate as o take my shoe off. Taking out the security checkpoint, all your useless equipment, TSA personnel, and innocents. Thanks!"

gcb0 10y ago
and to add insult, everyone will die barefoot while the dammed terrorist can have their shoes on still.
Johnny555 10y ago
Now I can wait in line with my bomb on my body... No need to carry around all of that extra bulk and weight on your body when when you can pack it into a wheeled carryon bag. You don't even need to keep it under carryon size since the airlines don't (usually) screen for size until you get to the gate.
- huffmsa 10y ago
  Why not go for broke and do both?
  - Johnny555 10y ago
    It seems harder to be inconspicuous with 40 lbs of explosives taped to your body than to wheel it around in a carry-on bag.
    - huffmsa 10y ago
      Have you seen the size of the average American? Throw on a staypuff marshmallow parka and you'd look like 40% of travelers this past week

TallGuyShort 10y ago

I've been very critical of the TSA, but if (since) that's the threat model, that actually highlights the benefit of security theater. As Schneier points out, there are essentially no terrorists. It's like trying to find a needle in a haystack, and it's arguably better to just let the needle go through than to screw up all the hay. But if the terrorists are mainly just causing fear instead of harm, doesn't it make sense to counter it by making people feel safer instead of actually making them safer, especially if you practically can't do the latter? Food for thought...

hash-set 10y ago
I don't feel safer when government puts a soft glove around its forceful nature, though. Look, we need to keep bombs off of planes, I understand that. But TSA isn't all that successful at it--they failed pretty miserable in their last penetration tests. TSA Pre-Check seems to me to be the acknowledgement by government that they went too far in the direction of inconveniencing frequent fliers and in true government fashion, they devised a heavy-handed system that kinda sorta deals with that issue except it costs you your privacy. I don't know what the answer is. I despise our increasingly totalitarian nation, though. I also despise the leadership that flies on private jets and never has to see a TSA line but who get to decide for us what is best.
LukaAl 10y ago
I thought about that. But if finding a terrorist is like trying to find a needle in the haystack, Schneier suggestion (as well as any other expert in security will tell you), the best solution is truly random search. If it is truly random, the terrorists have no way to predict if they will be checked and if it is frequent enough, it will be sufficient to change their behavior. As for the point of sense of safety vs. real safety (impossible) is a well taken one. But this false safety could be dispensed with much lower costs for the citizens (both in terms of money and inconvenience).
- ethbro 10y ago
  > random search Or in other words, ignore concerns about profiling and implement an Israeli style security operation. I think it has a lot to be said for it. Profiling + politeness + a firm boundary on mandate (e.g. no drug convictions by airport security) doesn't seem that bad. Especially compared to what amounts to the same thing except with a vast security army of more poorly trained agents. Ethnically profiling selection without ethnically profiling assumption isn't a nuance I'd trust the average TSA agent to perform well.

candiodari 10y ago

If you want an even better example, try the Istanbul attack: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Atat%C3%BCrk_Airport_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Atat%C3%BCrk_Airport_atta... 3 Terrorists total. The attack went as follows : 2 terrorists queue up in an Xray machine line, and suddenly start shooting people. One of the terrorists is shot down and a few seconds later he detonated a suicide vest. What does an airport security line do at that point ? Well, of course it fails open. Security abandoned their posts and none of the security guards responded for minutes to the second attacker in the line walking around and shooting people. He walked right through, got on an escalator and continued shooting people for ~2 minutes. Eventually a security officer (one wandering around by himself, not identified) shot him from a distance, looked up close at the attacker, and ran away (the terrorist exploded shortly after that, I hope the guy made it out). A third terrorist blew himself up in what was essentially a security pre-check line outside the airport. Any chokepoint, of course, is a terrorist target at an airport. I've been to Istanbul airport. It's big, but not that big. In this attack 45 people died and 230 were wounded. There are plenty of far bigger airports where that number would have been way up. Thankfully I do think security personnel would not just immediately abandon their posts in the US when something like this happens. That of course means that TSA makes things worse in some ways and provides a target for terrorists unless they avoid making lines. Heh. "Somehow" that doesn't seem to be the conclusion they're drawing from this. In fact I am unaware of any official responses to these attacks.

saluki 10y ago
The choke points are definitely an issue at airports but also at sporting events, where masses of hundreds of people are crowded around a gate getting in to the stadium. I think they need to setup a maze system where passengers/fans queue in to a system where can be scanned as they go through and directed to lower and higher risk areas something bullet/blast resistant where people can be physically isolated from each other (and from gaining access) as they pass through security and everyone can be locked down (or automatically directed to exit the facility) if an event happens so there isn't a free run through security. And make it large enough where people can get in to the system quickly so you don't have large groups of people standing waiting outside. Something with lots of angled areas as you enter and get you isolated, scanned directed in to the facility or over to higher security area for further processing.

mlvljr 10y ago

Same happened in Moscows couple years ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domodedovo_International_Airport_bombing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domodedovo_International_Airpo...

logicallee 10y ago

>The objective of a terrorist is not to blow up a plane, it is to scare people and do this by killing and injuring the highest number of people while minimizing the risk of being detected. Let's talk about this. What kind of objective is this? For insight into the psychology of terrorists can I consider the psychology of "trolls"? (i.e. mostly harmless Internet trolls). Or people just generally trying to wreak havoc "for the lolz"? Or is it different? What I mean is that people like Chomsky accuse the United States of being "terrorists" in whenever he thinks the United States meets some technical definition -- but the United States has some kind of political goals and it's not an end in itself to just have a bunch of people "scared" or "killed and injured". The U.S. doesn't say, "hey could we scare a billion people!! Yeah let's do it!!" Which is precisely what you quoted as the terrorist's objective: "it is to scare people". So what is the actual motivation of terrorists? Why is it motivating to "scare people"? (For the same reason as trolls are motivated?) Some people ascribe religious motivations for it, but I read through the Koran (you can read it easily here[1], it should take you under an hour, it's very repetitive. Copied into a Word document in 10-point single-spaced font it's 180 pages but you can scroll through it very quickly) and I did not once see anything like "Thou shalt scare people" or "Thou shalt wreak havoc by killing and injuring the highest number of people." I searched for "scare" and did not see that word. So in effect I don't understand why you say the primary rational objective of terrorists is to scare people. It doesn't really make sense unless it's the same as Internet trolls. I'd like more insight. [1] http://www.archive.org/stream/thekoranalquran02800gut/koran10a.txt http://www.archive.org/stream/thekoranalquran02800gut/koran1... If you want to get it down to 181 pages to read quickly 1) open the above link 2) select all of it and copy it 3) In word select 10-point font, single (1.0 spacing), 3) paste it into word using the Paste dropdown button in the ribbon, to paste as text only which is the third dropdown option (alternatively you could paste it into some plain text editor and then select all and copy it again and then paste it into Word or I guess since it's .txt you could just download it). This will just paste the text but have a bunch of extraneous line breaks. Next do a search and replace for every instance of "^p" (without the quotes, which means new paragraph) with nothing or even better as a single space (since replaced with nothing, some words run together but this didn't bother me). this will substantially reduce the thing. If you did the single-spacing right you will get 181 dense but highly repepetitive and readable pages of the Qu'ran. I next used the scroll wheel (by pressing down on it) to begin scrolling through all of it and attempted to alight my eyes on each section enough to read it "at a glance" (like speed reading.) At 24 seconds per page (I timed it and this is what I considered a readable scroll speed) the whole thing should take you about 1 hour 16 minutes. I encourage you to do it! Just focus. Stop if you really need to focus on something. I read War and Peace this way. It's about some Russians. (I'm kidding, this last part is a woody allen joke.)

sandworm101 10y ago

The real error is that it assumes the primary role of TSA screening is to prevent attacks. Looking at the record, their primary job is to catch really stupid drug dealers, drunks, and people subject to federal warrants. That's the vast magority of arrests and is little damaged by pre-screening. Enforcement of terminal drink/food monopolies is just a bonus. This is security theatre. Trying to apply logic doesnt work. There was a report a few years ago, accidentally leaked, by TSA showing that 911-style hijacking was no longer possible. Nobody with small knives could ever take a cockpit, not with 100 post-911 passengers watching.