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The attacks of September 11, 2001, changed everything, especially in air travel. Since that day, the U.S. government has spent billions on technology, enacted rafts of new rules and turned flying into a far more upsetting, complicated procedure than it needs to be.
If it were all based on science and reason, critics might not be calling these new procedures “security theater”—an elaborate show to convince people that the authorities are doing something rather than nothing.
Take the Transportation Security Administration's rules about carry-on electronics, for example. Laptops have to come out of their bags and lie flat in a plastic tub—but not tablets, phones, Kindles, cameras or portable game consoles. Why the distinction?
The TSA says that it's not just about detecting explosives: removing bigger gadgets also unclutters your bag for better x-ray examination. Even so, on close inspection the rules get arbitrary very quickly. 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.
Then there are the airport checkpoints, where the old metal detectors are being replaced by millimeter-wave and backscatter scanners. They are supposed to be able to find nonmetal weapons and other contraband—not just objects made of metal. Many people consider these machines invasive (they can see through your clothes), overpriced (at least $160,000 apiece) and, in the case of the backscatter machines, a potential cancer risk.
They also require twice as many employees to operate and far more passenger preparation (you can't have anything in your pockets, not even your wallet or boarding pass). And they are much slower—the TSA says screening takes “less than a minute,” but that's about 60 times longer than it takes to walk through a metal detector. As a result, some airports now suggest checking in two hours before a domestic flight. How many millions of dollars in productivity are we losing as a result?
With these machines, we trade convenience for security. But look—if we're going to adapt a “security at any cost to convenience” policy, why not prohibit all luggage and require everyone to fly naked?
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.
My field is technology, so I really shouldn't go into the other absurdities of TSA rules. I shouldn't mention how you can't have more than 3.4 ounces of liquid in a container, but you (and the group you are with) can bring lots of those little containers. Or how a full container of liquid is okay if you say that it's baby formula. Or that you have to throw away a seven-ounce toothpaste tube even if it's 80 percent empty. Or how kids who are 12 years old and younger no longer have to remove their shoes.
Or how all of this is focused on preventing a terrorist attack on a plane of 100 people—while far less attention is paid to far more populated targets, such as train stations, theaters, sports arenas and, yes, airports.
The TSA is not completely unaware of its public image, and it's making erratic headway in improving passenger experience. Airport scanners no longer send naked pictures of you to an offsite screener (software does the analysis now). And the TSA precheck program (currently used by a couple of airlines and 15 airports, with more on the way) gives low-risk travelers a special line, where removing shoes and coats isn't necessary.
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39 Comments
Add CommentAgreed!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe TSA's zeal to protect us is untempered by practical consideration. They are bureaucracy administered by a political appointee and seemingly immune to the desires of the flying public.
Amazing Sci-Am almost reads like Reason.com now, could Sci-Am become libertarian.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThats wishful thinking.
It is worse than this. Flight 93 and later similar events showed that attempts to duplicate what happened on 9/11 would not be possible because the passengers themselves would not sit still while the plane was being hijacked. So the entire screening process was created on a clearly false premise. The only reason I can see for having done this at all was to take advantage of the situation to transfer more taxpayer money to the big "campaign donors".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt would make more sense to have a few professionals monitoring passengers at security checkpoints instead of an army of robot-like TSA agents who need all those specific nonsensical rules. Of course, now that the TSA is unionized they are a permanent fixture and costs will just keep going up.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAre there any experienced fliers who can picture airline travel without any security impediments at all?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAirline travel once had zero security save for the captain looking over the passengers and refusing to allow the occasional drunk to board the airplane.
Hijacking became a problem because passengers reckoned the cost of allowing the hijacker to divert the aircraft was more acceptable than tackling the hijacker and risking a gunshot wound. So, they didn't fight. Instead, corporate government saw a golden opportunity to offer the illusion of security in exchange for accepting a new authority governing yet another little aspect of your life and invading your personal privacy.
How did that work out?
If September 11, 2001 taught us anything, it's that security doesn't work. So, why do we put up with it? Why do we tolerate more failure at the cost of our personal freedom and dignity?
The point of the security theater is not to make anyone safer. It's to make you believe that you need this sort of nonsense to protect you from other members of your own community. The whole point is to get you to trust the corporations and government to protect you from your neighbors and your fellow travelers. The real goal of security theater is to sell paranoia.
That's the brilliance of it. You'll exchange the trust and human connection you may have with your fellow travelers and put your faith in a gang of complete strangers just because they're wearing uniforms.
Think of what this has done to your brain.
Other than the Department of Defense, doesn't the TSA alone have the single largest budget of any department? All for security theater.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYesterday a friend of mine was stopped at a TSA check point because, and this is middle age technology, they couldn't understand what a portable typewrite was. YES she had to remove it and four people had to look at it.
Really? REALLY!
I think another point on this is, yes the screeners maybe be unionized but they are still making less than the person flipping your burger at McDonalds.
The TSA makes the most sense as a low-wage government jobs program.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe TSA and its antics make America look dumber than it normally does on the world stage.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMy English department at a state university from time to time would initiate a requirement. Each of them was reasonable, but all together they drove our students crazy. Something similar has happened with security on flights with the addition os restrictions that make little or no sense
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt would be fascinating to see what comments this article would attract if published on FoxNews and MSNBC. Not much of what government does has anything to do with facts and reason.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSome of these rules are absurd. I had to throw out a small bottle of organic milk for our 2 year old just before boarding a 14 hour flight from Chicago. The reason was that it could be dangerous liquid. So I told the TSA supervisor, and he wants me to empty it right there in the mid of 100s of people and he is not worried about that (given that he thinks it could be dangerous!) :)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe airlines did NOT charge for a ticket for our 2yo as she was a infant, but TSA though she was NOT a infant as she was walking on her own feet :-) Awesome!
Definitely a bunch of non-sense, but unfortunately; until something has been changed, what are you gonna do, fight with security so that you risk missing your flight and not getting to your destination on time? And it's not only the TSA on the US side...fly out of Korea and they'll make you take stuff out of your carry-on luggage that you bought AT the airport or during your flight.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe appear to be a nation of cowards.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGeorge W. Bush was afraid to go to VietNam, and his administration was afraid of American freedom. So we have this.
The Marlboro man is now hiding behind skirts. It is just tragic.
Understand, any idiot trying to hijack a plane now would be killed by a line of passengers waiting to get in a kick. No one is going to get by with a little razor blade or shoe bomb. We watched 4 planes crash and folks now know it's serious. Self-preservation will overcome reluctance to act and once more than one brave soul is in motion, five more will find some courage.
We have vulnerable subways, water supplies, natural gas pipelines, ferries, malls. None of them have screeners, and few have serious protection.
TSA is simply a federal bureaucracy gone wrong. They need to go. The number of outrages and insanity is just too large to let them keep doing this business-as-usual thing.
If we let it continue, we deserve each and every groping we get.
I see a paradox.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe TSA people are (unconsciously) acting as allies of the more radical part of the environmental movement, which wants to make flying utterly unappealing.
Turn every airport into a "security check hell", and this will be accomplished quite nicely ...
PS: When I have to go to Paris (from Amsterdam) I'll take the train. Nowadays this is just a little more time consuming, and a lot more pleasant.
Last week’s threat is usually the one being addressed…and usually poorly and inappropriately. A passenger with explosive shoes, take your shoes off. Plastic guns or knives, body scans. Ingested explosive in the gut—why not enemas for all passengers? With billions of dollars being spent every year on “security” what happened to the proactive approach?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy were preparations not made to prevent the hijacking of planes or to limit the successful use of these planes as kamikaze weapons not taken before the tragedy of 911? This use of hijacked passenger planes was predicable, and predicted years before. It was portrayed in movies and novels before 9/11/2001. A plane was hijacked with the stated intention of the hijacker to crash it into the White House, in 1973. Did the government learn from this failed attempt by a deranged and stupid would be terrorist? Apparently not!
For the President to make the extreme decision to shoot down a hijacked commercial plane on its way to even greater tragedy is exceedingly difficult. But did the protectors of our nation and our safety not have what if scenarios in place so that this decision would not have to be thought out with all its potential consequences in the short time between awareness of threat, but before realization and terrorist fulfillment. Apparently not, or not implemented?
How many cell phones, laptops, ipads are left on in every plane. Did you ever leave your phone on in the plane, “by mistake?” In the tens of thousands of flights every day for many years has this ever caused a “significant” problem? If they are on anyway, why not permit them to be on? Recently a commercial passenger airline pilot was caught using his laptop, instead of flying the plane. I guess he wasn’t worried about electronic interference.
I have to turn my laptop off now—we are getting ready to land—and I am not the pilot.
If a terrorist were to cause an incident with a "body cavity" device, every US airport would have new screening procedures, with a proctologist on duty at every US airport.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEl Al Airlines [Israel flag carrier] has an excellent reputation with proven security practices and procedures that work .... unfortunately these involve "profiling", and will not pass muster under current US law. But then again, nobody ever said the government operates in a logical, reasonable, and common sense fashion.
Our problem is that so many of our government functions are always outsourced to private companies. They are not interested in much beyond coming up for a reason to sell the taxpayer more stuff. So we end up with a system that we don't need, and since we consider it important to gut the government, TSA security agents aren't exactly geniuses, either. We get what we deserve.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJust wondering if members of Congress have to go through security. It seems that in the past many didn't. They fly back and forth to DC a lot. That could make a difference. I once cried for two thousand miles after what TSA put me through at our small regional airport. By the way, the small regional is also being enlarged with stimulus money, and the number of flights per day has been drastically reduced.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThank you for writing this article. Almost all rational Americans standing in TSA security lines are thinking the same thing right now.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is infuriating that a consensus can agree, but still be powerless to change the system. Who are the people in power that are in favor of the TSA's current security policies and procedures? Can we vote them out of office? Can someone fire them?
Martin Wirth has hit the most important nails on the head, so no need to go there again.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut David Pogue, you are incorrect that Pre-Check is going to improve anything. As some of us have been pointing out for a year now -- and as passengers are experiencing firsthand -- Pre-Check is no guarantee of anything. You MIGHT not have to take your shoes off, you MIGHT not get scanned, you MIGHT not get groped. It's all -- always -- up to the whim of the TSA.
More important, it's ethically indefensible. It's the embodiment of "All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others."
I read this earlier this morning, and while it's a great article, one thing about it seriously, seriously bothers me:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this[quote]The attacks of September 11, 2001, changed everything[/quote]
I wish people would stop using this phrase. This is probably the single worst-offending collection of words in the English language in terms of justifying massive violations of civil liberties whilst simultaneously acting as a get-out-of-argument-free card for those who would have us cowering in fear of our own shadows.
"You can't say that in A POST NINE ELEVEN WORLD!" (Not sure countries other than the US really care all that much.)
"That used to be true, but NINE ELEVEN CHANGED EVERYTHING." (Really? Everything? Pretty sure the sky's still blue, the grass is still green, water's still wet and coffee is still the sweet black nectar of the gods.)
"Have you forgotten about NINE ELEVEN?" (No. Believe me, I wish I had, but when it keeps getting brought up...)
The fact that this author is saying it grants undue validity to everyone else who trots it out to try to prop up invalid arguments in support of TSA, DHS, the PATRIOT Act, and other US abominations of the last 11 years. If we're going to have any measure of success in defending our freedom from those who would see safety prioritized above it, we need to stop giving the impression that 9/11 is a magical event that renders the Constitution null and void. 9/11 DID NOT change everything. The government is trying to change everything and use 9/11 as an excuse. There is a massive difference here.
I wonder how many people absolutely have to fly. What if vacationers chose drive-to destinations, or business people attended virtual conferences (the technology is readily available)? What if the travelling public made it clear that they would avoid flying until the TSA harassment stopped?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe airlines would face bankruptcy. Presumably, airline execs would then run to Washington for help. If constitutional rights won't do it, maybe commercial interests would prevail and stop this nonsense.
One final thought. There is an easy way to stop further attacks. Leave the Muslim world (Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan ...) alone and the Muslim world leaves America alone. Or do you think that plane hijackers go on suicide missions for kicks?
So often, among the most important aspects of an article go completely unnoticed.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe tagline for the article says the mountain of new "security" hasn't made flying safer. And they're right. Because it wasn't hazardous before and there was never a threat to guard against!
Because September 11 was engineered by the government. Nothing like it ever happened before. The pace of high profile attacks across the globe was non-existent before September 11, but was staccato afterward. It gained the movement absolutely nothing and was obviously unwise.
And small commercial jet lines, using Learjet and such carriers, still do not require such clearances before being used!
It's just another case of the New World Order enforcing the totems of its attempted enslavement agenda. Just like students being evicted from the World Trade Center site and recommended for massive penalties for throwing trash in the reflecting pool, effectively eroding the unquestioning slavish acceptance of the "solemnity" evinced by the "official story" lie about the events of that day.
Which doesn't mean there is a danger. The secoind the public begin to recognize it's all a lie by the NWO to eliminate all liberties, the NWO will fabricate another "attack"!
To hb at 05:23 PM 6/26/12:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI've been urging a boycott till I'm blue in the face. I stopped flying in September 2010, just before the Reign of Molestation began. And I love travel more than I can say. But principle is more important than my personal desires. Too bad so many of my fellow Americans don't see it that way.
Money talks, and if all those of us who CAN stop flying would do so, we'd bring the airlines to their knees. Two to three months. Then things would change.
The airlines are complicit. They are complicit in this abuse. They get special treatment for their employees while the hoi polloi get Uncle Sam's fingers up their a**es. If the airlines lost money, things would change so fast your eyes would spin.
Economic boycotts work. The civil rights movement wouldn't have succeeded with marches and demonstrations alone. MLK, et. al. knew that. That's why they organized the bus boycotts.
But most Americans are fine with the bullying, harassment, intimidation, and sexual assault (even of their children, which blows my mind) -- "just get me to my flight on time!" And so the abuse will continue.
A couple of politicians were stopped by TSA by accident. Shortly afterward, TSA instituted their "trusted traveler" program so political insiders do not have to put up with the nonsense like the rest of us. Just another way the political elite are becoming more and more isolated from and indifferent to the situation of most Americans.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTSA is a failed agency whose incompetence and corruption poses a larger threat to airline security than it prevents.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGermany banned the scanners because the 54% false positive rate and the failure to detect hidden items 44% of the time resulted in a pat down, adding 8 to 30 seconds to the process. At an installed cost in excess of $00K only two items were found by TSA in 2011 using scanners, the rest, over 50,000, were found by x-ray belts and walk through metal detectors.
TSA also claimed the images were suitable for Readers Digest in 2010. In August, 2011 Denver TSA area director Pat Ahlstrom, said the scans " were graphic, no doubt about it." The MMW scanners added a software to hide the image shown to the public but the Rapi-Scan backscatter x-ray units continue to produce a naked image of all passengers including children and pose a health risk.
Two weeks ago CBS 3 reported that a priest who was removed from the ministry over child molestation allegations now is a TSA Supervisor at PHL.
A month ago, TSA molested an elderly couple and robbed them of $300, molested three children, a ten year old with a diabetes pump, a four year old who hugged her grandma and a seven year old with cerebral palsy, twice!
There were a total of 91 TSA workers arrested in the last 18 months including 12 arrested for child sex crimes, over 25 for theft, ten for smuggling and one for murder. Even Kip Hawley, the last TSA Director, has called for its overhaul.
This abuse is not free. This taxpayer expense has effectively amounted to a subsidy of the airline industry borne by many who seldom if ever fly. An ticket includes a $2.50 security fee, which is less than the cost of one passenger screening.
Based on the 2011 TSA budget of $8.1 billion and 712 million passengers, the total cost per screening is $11.38 with the taxpayer contributing $8.88 of that for every airline passenger boarding an aircraft in the US.
TSA adds an additional $43.86 to each household tax return and the security subsidy costs taxpayers an average of $1,133 per flight. We pay TSA $8.88 per passenger for TSA to strip search old women, grope children and harass us at checkpoints.
Despite this record, the TSA apologists continue to say that this crime and abuse by TSA is somehow improving airline security. TSA has aided Al Qaeda in altering our way of life and stripping us of our liberties and Pistole has been their willing accomplice.
It’s past time to replace this agency with a sensible and effective system and prosecute those responsible for this travesty.
There's plenty of science involved in TSA policies. It's just psychology and sociology, not physics or chemistry. Do you get upset at slow people ahead of you in line, instead of at the TSA who isn't providing enough staff and equipment to keep the lines short? It's working. Do you go through the naked scanner because you're intimidated by the threat of "enhanced patdowns that have always been the rule", instead of calling your Congress member to tell the TSA to stop bullying? Science at work. Does going through all the security theater make you worried about terrorists, and want a stronger government to protect you? (Still political science, and surprisingly bipartisan in practice.)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'd say it's more about 'control' than anything else'
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe more of this sort of thing we're conditioned to put up with, the more 'They' can get away with.
"Those who sacrifice essential freedom for temporary safety
deserve neither freedom nor safety". - Ben Franklin.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAgreed, it's The 'Peter Principle' in action.
Some years ago I thought about a visit to the States to see some of your many places that are of interest to me.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHowever since all the ridiculous security screening procedures now operating I now have no desire of ever doing so.
Perhaps if I arrived on a Ship the security may be more rational. Must enquire about that.
The opening sentence of this article says:-
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe attacks of September 11, 2001, changed everything,
NO, IT DID NOT!
As a British / Israeli citizen,
I was already aware that terrorist organizations were trying to undermine my way of life,
i.e. the IRA (supported by the Boston Irish community?) against the UK, and the PLO, Hamas, etc, here in Israel.
Yes, September 11 did change things,
but what it changed was how America viewed the world.
It also showed how naive and insular the USA had been when criticizing the British actions in Northern Ireland, and the Israeli profiling of Arab airline passengers, etc.
Unfortunately America has been able to bully most the Western World to accept their paranoid airport security rules instead of adopting some of the sensible (but politically incorrect) methods used by Israel security.
I'm an optimist, but I can't help feeling that the TSA, and their like, are falling into the trap of preparing for the last war, instead of using a little bit of brain power and doing some constructive lateral thinking about what the future threats may be.
It seems that every time I travel via airline, there is another set of rules or procedures. It is not until one is standing in front of some detector of some sort that one is informed of the new protocol. While standing in line to be screened, it would be nice to while away the time looking at display that informs me of what the new procedure is that is in effect. Instead of same advertisement that I had seen the last time I was standing in the same line, why not the new rules?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI quit flying when the TSA started to get intrusive. Anyone that has had a bad experience with the TSA is responsible for their own torment. Say no and walk away. Demand that the airlines refund your ticket at full price and pay the cost of a taxi across country plus any lost income from the delay. Sue if you need to.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe most important thing to do is ALWAYS vote for the challenger in any federal level House or Senate race. Remember that the TSA and Patriot Act were bipartisan. Neither party is free of guilt.
As an air transport professional, I was really hoping that a SciAm article regarding air transport security would offer some supporting evidence to their viewpoints. I was sorely disappointed to see that this article only used broad brushstroke phrases about how measures are "ineffective" without citations.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe most egregious statement was how electronics regulations are ineffective because "there have never been any reported accidents from these types of devices". This seems to suggest that we should wait for an accident, which is verified to be caused by electronic interference, before adding safety regulations. If we did adopt that strategy, and there was an accident, it would be an unacceptable tragedy. The only way to allow electronics on planes is through a validation process, which unfortunately is expensive and lengthy, especially for older aircraft types.
I've heard enough fact-defecient rants on security measures in other publications, and am disappointed to see Scientific American following their lead.
I've only flown several times, but I found the security measures to be very fair and not nearly as unpleasant as they are made to be in the media and in discussions such as this.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMr. Pogue's comment about TSA scanning amounting to "security theater" is certainly correct. However, for a scientific magazine to publish a writer who seems to fully accept the foundation myth for the terror society, that Muslim terrorists committed group suicide and somehow completely destroyed the World Trade Center, is ludicrous. There is no scientific basis for Mr. Pogue's opening statement that "The attacks of September 11, 2001, changed everything,..."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe debris of those three buildings fell at nearly free fall acceleration rates directly into the path of most resistance. Further, all three buildings came down symmetrically into their own footprint--falling all the way into the lower basements. In the North Tower 80,000 tons of steel somehow magically gave way just at the falling debris reached each floor so that none of the debris had to slow down. How can even one steel-frame building designed to absorb and survive airplane strikes and office fires collapse at all, much less the first three ever in a single day in a manner that demonstrates no resistance from the undamaged lower floors?
Newton's laws of motion didn't change on that day. Mr. Pogue's notion that our security changed significantly on 9/11 is pure security theater and he--as a writer in a magazine supposedly devoted to science which has failed for over a decade to challenge the obvious scientific problems in the official myth-- only succeeds here in becoming a highly visible actor on that stage.
Yes, they do. Our junior Senior, Rand Paul, pitched a fit when the TSA wanted to search him a few months back. I thought it was ironic, because he was on his way to a "pro-life" conference. Interfering in the relationship between a women and her doctor in the name of "life": OK. Getting search by the TSA: Not OK.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI don't think that we have to wait for an accident to to see if electronic equipment interferes with airplane equipment. You should be able to test a plane _on the ground_ to be able to see if there is any interference.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am curious if this is one of the rules that was set up in the early days of cellphones, when the devices really were interfering with a lot of electronic equipment in hospitals and the like, which have never been reviewed or checked with newer equipment.
I've seen a lot of "procedure creep" happen in the corporate world, too. The problem is that it is a lot easier to just keep adding procedures and requirements than to stop and check and see if the old ones are still necessary. Often what is really needed is to go through and re-design the whole process, but no one wants to do that due to the time and politics involved.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe other issue that contributes to "procedure creep" is applying a procedure too broadly. A job in finance I once had was terrible for this. Client A would have a problem and we would set up Procedure B to deal with it. Management would then insist that Procedure B be applied to all clients, even though the problem was demonstrably particular to Client A and for the rest of the clients Procedure B was a waste of time. We would end up implementing Procedure B for all clients out of fear. Sounds a lot like the TSA and much of the US's security policy in the last 11 years.