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Time to Close the Security Theater

blogs.forbes.com

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Re: Time to Close the Security Theater

#31

Post by seabee »

bdunbar wrote: post #25
bluedanieru wrote: post #2

Better yet, it needs to be replaced with a competitive market for air travel in which the airports, the airways, and the airliners are in private hands. Some might object that private firms will have incentives to cut corners on safety. It is a legitimate concern, but competitive mechanisms tend to weed this out. Ugh, how are they going to 'weed this out' exactly? Seems to me competitive pressures would lead private…

Seems to me competitive pressures would lead private firms to do exactly what the TSA is doing i.e. give the appearance of being serious about security. In the marketplace competitive pressure leads to better service, not worse. LASIK has gone from a novelty for the rich to a treatment everyone can afford, for example. Possibly counter examples exist, but I can't think of any offhand. Perhaps after I've had my mornin…

I think you're missing that enforcement by government inspection tends to go against the "unrestricted free market" ideal, that customers will vote with their feet and not patronize unsafe businesses.

(In reality customers are never that well informed to make such a decision.)

Re: Time to Close the Security Theater

#32

Post by Symmetry »

bluedanieru wrote: post #6
fleitz wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plaintext passwords solve the problem of being able to recover your password by email with out clicking some link bs. (Which are equally hackable with the crappy passwords that most people use.) Surprisingly, lots of people would prefer this to ultra secure one way hashes. The market provides what people want, not what makes them most 'secure'. If you don't like that forbes stores your password as plaintext you're fr…

I do not reuse passwords site-to-site, however that nullifies almost none of the risk in storing passwords in plaintext over storing hashed passwords. Perhaps you can explain why you think that if you disagree. At any rate, that the market provides "what people want" (this is not always an uncontroversial statement) is precisely why airport security can not be deregulated. People tend to undervalue security until it'…

People tend to undervalue security until it's too late.

This seems unclear to me. Surely, in being disproportionaly exposed to failures of security, as opposed to people getting away with insecure practices or the inconvenience of good security procedures, security professionals are going to have a distorted view of the costs of security? People tend to be very bad at multiplying in the process of making moral judgements[1], and its very hard to give equal weight to the sum total of traveler inconvenience our airline security policies cause relative to the risk of terrorist attacks. And there's no reason to think that the TSA takes into account the >100 people killed each year by their policies [2]. If you think that airline passengers aren't going to allow another 9/11 that's probably more deaths right there than the TSA could plausibly claim to be preventing in terms of airline bombings.

I don't think private airline security would be perfect and it probably would go a bit too far towards lax security, but it would almost certainly be much better than what we have right now.

[1] As an example, people will pay almost as much money to save the lives of 10 starving orphans as they will to save 1 starving orphan. No, I didn't get that reversed, and if you've ever studied psychology you shouldn't find that too surprising.

[2] http://aem.cornell.edu/faculty_sites/gb78/wp/JLE_6301.pdf http://ur.umich.edu/0405/Nov22_04/09.shtml http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/usnews/constitution/... http://patrick.wagstrom.net/weblog/2010/11/24/do-the-tsa-new... and relatedly http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/11/16/5477568-are-... and previous HN discussion http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2049894

Re: Time to Close the Security Theater

#33

Post by vaksel »

bruce511 wrote: post #10

The power to end the TSA lies with the public. The responsibility to end the TSA lies with the public. The public need to make enough fuss, so the media reports the fuss, so that more public become aware of the issue. The key points to identify; a) The TSA does not make flying safe. The FAA makes flying safe. The TSA allegedly keeps bombs off planes but going by their press releases they've never actually done this.…

no the power lies with the politicians...it's just too small of an issue for the general public to make it a deciding voting issue. Most people travel once a year(if that) so they don't really care about it

Re: Time to Close the Security Theater

#34

Post by brown9-2 »

vaksel wrote: post #33
bruce511 wrote: post #10

The power to end the TSA lies with the public. The responsibility to end the TSA lies with the public. The public need to make enough fuss, so the media reports the fuss, so that more public become aware of the issue. The key points to identify; a) The TSA does not make flying safe. The FAA makes flying safe. The TSA allegedly keeps bombs off planes but going by their press releases they've never actually done this.…

no the power lies with the politicians...it's just too small of an issue for the general public to make it a deciding voting issue. Most people travel once a year(if that) so they don't really care about it

Who elects the politicans? bruce's point is that if the public cared enough, the public could end it.

Re: Time to Close the Security Theater

#35

Post by khafra »

bdunbar wrote: post #25
bluedanieru wrote: post #2

Better yet, it needs to be replaced with a competitive market for air travel in which the airports, the airways, and the airliners are in private hands. Some might object that private firms will have incentives to cut corners on safety. It is a legitimate concern, but competitive mechanisms tend to weed this out. Ugh, how are they going to 'weed this out' exactly? Seems to me competitive pressures would lead private…

Seems to me competitive pressures would lead private firms to do exactly what the TSA is doing i.e. give the appearance of being serious about security. In the marketplace competitive pressure leads to better service, not worse. LASIK has gone from a novelty for the rich to a treatment everyone can afford, for example. Possibly counter examples exist, but I can't think of any offhand. Perhaps after I've had my mornin…

Your friends can tell you how well their LASIK worked, and how much it cost, as soon as their eyes heal. This allows market forces to do what they do pretty well.

Anti-terrorist security measures have neither of these advantages. It's very difficult to find out how much they cost; especially if you include indirect costs to travelers. It's also very difficult to determine how effective they are since, to a first approximation, terrorists attacks don't happen even with lowered security.

Re: Time to Close the Security Theater

#36

Post by wtvanhest »

Without TSA we would have lowered the bar on airplane hijackings and opened the door to lower level threats that could easily bring down a pressurized cabin at 35K feet:

Idiots with firearms or other dangerous items on planes. Simple criminals looking for media attention. Robberies like D. B. Cooper.

We just need better technology for TSA to make it faster and less invasive. It will happen. In the mean time, relax and enjoy the fact that you can get from SFO to NYC in less than 6 hours instead of 7 days by car.

Re: Time to Close the Security Theater

#37

Post by siculars »

I'm all for what the Author is getting at here. My one nit to pick is the following:

"Some might object that private firms will have incentives to cut corners on safety. It is a legitimate concern, but competitive mechanisms tend to weed this out."

What does that mean? We need to have a security incident before one private firm is replaced by another? Flying is the kind of business where you need to be spot on every single time or people will surely die. TSA is obviously not the way but neither is simply saying that market forces and capitalism will solve the problem.

Re: Time to Close the Security Theater

#38

Post by white_devil »

bruce511 wrote: post #10

The power to end the TSA lies with the public. The responsibility to end the TSA lies with the public. The public need to make enough fuss, so the media reports the fuss, so that more public become aware of the issue. The key points to identify; a) The TSA does not make flying safe. The FAA makes flying safe. The TSA allegedly keeps bombs off planes but going by their press releases they've never actually done this.…

The power to end the TSA lies with the public. The responsibility to end the TSA lies with the public. The public need to make enough fuss, so the media reports the fuss, so that more public become aware of the issue.

Really? Just like the power and responsibility to prevent Greece from imposing further utterly useless austerity measures on its citizens lies with the Greek public? The riot police would beg to differ.

If the public anywhere was actually properly informed and asked to make a decision on any of the insanity going on all around the world, then yes, you could make that claim. But as long as we have no say in anything, you're just spewing out seemingly righteous but empty rhetoric.

Re: Time to Close the Security Theater

#39

Post by jbellis »

siculars wrote: post #37

I'm all for what the Author is getting at here. My one nit to pick is the following: "Some might object that private firms will have incentives to cut corners on safety. It is a legitimate concern, but competitive mechanisms tend to weed this out." What does that mean? We need to have a security incident before one private firm is replaced by another? Flying is the kind of business where you need to be spot on every…

Very next sentence: "It is important to remember too that just because competitive markets might not provide the best of all conceivable worlds doesn’t mean that government intervention can."

Re: Time to Close the Security Theater

#40

Post by robriggen »

maeon3 wrote: post #8

The problem with airport security in America is that they search for "Dangerous Items", not "Dangerous People". A dangerous person is allowed on an American flight if he/she doesn't have any dangerous items with him. In my opinion, a motivated group of guys could take a plane hostage with nothing but car keys, ju jitsu and some creative thinking. I'm not saying searching for the dangerous person is superior to search…

Don't forget that they aren't even able to find the dangerous items. Their system frequently allows box cutting razor blades onto airplanes. How do I know? It happened to me: http://bit.ly/if5XDR after experiencing a traumatic "enhanced" pat down procedure.

After my incident I went to both of my Senators and my Congressman (in person) and recounted my story. I also followed the TSA procedures for reporting civil abuses, which incidentally was a completely worthless excercise.

Their written response to my Congressman's letter to them was, "We followed procedure".

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