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Matt Blaze: How unpredictable screening helps terrorists

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Re: Matt Blaze: How unpredictable screening helps terrorists

#51

Post by btilly »

tptacek wrote: post #36
ghshephard wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with your premise that a comparison can be made between SPAM and Sending-terrorists into the American Aviation system. SPAM is cheap because it is simply software than can be used to send out billions of copies. The number of possible jihad-motivated individuals that can be sent into the American Aviation system, between the screening, visa, and no-fly/selective screen lists (that you just _know_ are about…

You keep using this word "jihadist" as if the people on the flights have spent a year running obstacle courses and stripping down kalashnikovs in the camps in Waziristan. That's not who they'll put on the planes. For every AQ op that can shoot straight, somewhere in the world there are 100 shmucks that can put a pair of underpants on and board a plane. All AQ has to do is get better at taking mentally unstable people…

Ironically religious beliefs mean that Islamic extremists won't let people with a known mental illness become suicide bombers. So they have to filter for sane people then get them to act insane.

Re: Matt Blaze: How unpredictable screening helps terrorists

#52

Post by zmimon »

pedrocr wrote: post #37

The problem is that with non-random screening the terrorists can be much more efficient. They can get a pool of candidates together and send them on flights without any explosives on them. They can then find out which of the guys get screened at a rate less than chance and send those on the actual attack. That's why random screening is the best system possible because any other system would have to be perfect, otherw…

It seems to me that the right approach should always have a significant random element, not as a deterrent, but as a check on how well the non-random component is working. The random part will examine in depth to find anything that should have been found in the non-random part but wasn't (say, body searches to find large metal objects making it through the x-ray screen at the airport). Without that you would be blind to defects in the system.

Re: Matt Blaze: How unpredictable screening helps terrorists

#53

Post by tptacek »

btilly wrote: post #51
tptacek wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You keep using this word "jihadist" as if the people on the flights have spent a year running obstacle courses and stripping down kalashnikovs in the camps in Waziristan. That's not who they'll put on the planes. For every AQ op that can shoot straight, somewhere in the world there are 100 shmucks that can put a pair of underpants on and board a plane. All AQ has to do is get better at taking mentally unstable people…

Ironically religious beliefs mean that Islamic extremists won't let people with a known mental illness become suicide bombers. So they have to filter for sane people then get them to act insane.

Uh, what?

Re: Matt Blaze: How unpredictable screening helps terrorists

#54

Post by neilk »

pyre wrote: post #46
neilk wrote: post #43

The article hinges on the proposition that a failed attack still serves the terrorist network's purposes. Seriously, can you imagine a terrorist being briefed like this? "Well, if you succeed, you may shock the world and rally the Muslim nations to our cause, while drawing the Great Satan into an unwinnable war costing over a trillion dollars. If you fail... well, you're going to cause a lot of air travellers to be a…

Do you really think that they would tell the suicide bomber that he/she might fail?

It was just to demonstrate a certain absurdity. No, that conversation might not happen, but the point was that the terrorist planners have objectives beyond "cause mayhem". And that increasing airline security costs probably don't even rank on their scale of worthy goals.

In Afghanistan, al-Qaeda is bleeding the USA of billions of dollars every month. But the article suggests that merely inconveniencing air travellers -- to the tune of maybe a few hundred million a year, widely dispersed -- might rank as an acceptable second best to a terrorist.

Re: Matt Blaze: How unpredictable screening helps terrorists

#55

Post by CamperBob »

sethg wrote: post #19

the best terrorist strategy (as long as they have enough volunteers) Do they have enough volunteers? The Shoe Bomber and the Undie Bomber, compared with the team that pulled off 9/11, are a couple of amateurish mooks. If these are the best men that al-Qaeda can send against the United States, they must not have a very deep bench.

That's just it... the people who pulled off 9/11 were a bunch of amateurish mooks. A bunch of amateurish mooks with an 18 in the Luck department is still dangerous.

Just as in this case, there were any number of measures already in place that could have stopped 9/11, if they had only been followed. More rules are not the answer.

Re: Matt Blaze: How unpredictable screening helps terrorists

#56

Post by pyre »

neilk wrote: post #54
pyre wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really think that they would tell the suicide bomber that he/she might fail?

It was just to demonstrate a certain absurdity. No, that conversation might not happen, but the point was that the terrorist planners have objectives beyond "cause mayhem". And that increasing airline security costs probably don't even rank on their scale of worthy goals. In Afghanistan, al-Qaeda is bleeding the USA of billions of dollars every month. But the article suggests that merely inconveniencing air traveller…

al-Qaeda wants 'The West' to fear them. People get scared of air travel every time there is an incident, even if that incident is a terrorism attempt that was caught before it ever got off the ground. If al-Qaeda doesn't have some sort of media presence, then people will start to think that they are a non-issue. Maybe al-Qaeda doesn't really think of things in these terms, but I have a hard time believing that they are all religious fundamental crazies. For them to be so organized, some of them have to be thinking on a more practical level.

Re: Matt Blaze: How unpredictable screening helps terrorists

#57

Post by gojomo »

tptacek wrote: post #47
gojomo wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, consider that the greatest threat is not from people who hope to live and accept a strategic risk of death. Rather, the greatest threat is from people who believe that death is the ultimate success, for both their worldly and otherworldly aims. While a one-in-a-twenty chance of success sounds good from a terror chief's perspective, no suicide bomber wants a 95% chance of winding up in captivity, famous only as…

What AQHQ knows about the odds of success for a operation are and what some shmuck is told about the odds of success are two different and unrelated things.

Even granting that the bombers are gullible and unstable, and that "AQHQ" will oversell them on the chances of success, they can see the actual track record, and the mere act of training them sensitizes them to all the ways things can go wrong.

There's also a tradeoff between their naivete and effectiveness: a bumpkin who's never traveled internationally might believe whatever his handlers tell him, but is also more likely to draw suspicion or otherwise foul the mission.

Re: Matt Blaze: How unpredictable screening helps terrorists

#58

Post by gojomo »

tptacek wrote: post #36
ghshephard wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with your premise that a comparison can be made between SPAM and Sending-terrorists into the American Aviation system. SPAM is cheap because it is simply software than can be used to send out billions of copies. The number of possible jihad-motivated individuals that can be sent into the American Aviation system, between the screening, visa, and no-fly/selective screen lists (that you just _know_ are about…

You keep using this word "jihadist" as if the people on the flights have spent a year running obstacle courses and stripping down kalashnikovs in the camps in Waziristan. That's not who they'll put on the planes. For every AQ op that can shoot straight, somewhere in the world there are 100 shmucks that can put a pair of underpants on and board a plane. All AQ has to do is get better at taking mentally unstable people…

Theoretically, yes. But why hasn't AQ gotten better at this "flood 'em with attempts" strategy so far?

Perhaps even most fanatics and angry unstable people prefer to shoot at soldiers than take a 99-in-100 chance of winding up in infidel custody, famous only in failure.

Re: Matt Blaze: How unpredictable screening helps terrorists

#60

Post by ghshephard »

sorbus wrote: post #48
ghshephard wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The good news for our side, is that these people have to be simultaneously stupid enough to blow themselves up, yet bright enough to make it through security. This is why El Al's approach to security (personal interviews with all passengers) is effective - you'd have to be close to genius level to get through their screening without triggering a (real-world, not TSA-Pansy) pat-down and luggage check - at which point,…

Or they could send someone through multiple times, giving them a prepared briefcase each time, but only put a bomb in it the last time, but telling them that there was a bomb each time; eventually, even an idiot will get used to it, and stop triggering their screening. Hell, depending on what sort of records they keep, they might eventually interpret his nervousness to just be who he is (dislikes flying, say), and wa…

If my (discredited by most on HN, but I still hold to it) theory regarding El Al security screening is correct, they aren't principally looking for people who are nervous, or acting guilty (though they'll pull those people aside as well) - rather they are trying to identify individuals that fall within the category of people that might bomb El Al, and then pull them aside for selective screening.

Your average Muslim individual would have little chance convincing a screener they were an observant Jew, and would always fail regardless of how many times they attempted.

By the time they had learned a patter that would get them through security, they would probably be bright enough to say "Hey, why am I wasting my life by blowing myself up? I should probably _run_ operations instead of being in them"

The supposed success of El Al isn't (in my opinion) that they can stop a broad community of attackers, rather it is that they are effective in profiling quickly, and passing through 95% of the passengers quickly, and only subjecting 5% to selective screening.

I'd be interesting in hearing of the experiences of any Palestinian or Muslim passengers that have flyed on El Al for anecdotal confirmation of this.

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