Airport security: great theatre, but we’re
doing the terrorists’ work for them

As Australia readies for new see-through – and mandatory – airport scanners from 1 July, international security guru Bruce Schneier has put the entire issue of “security theatre” in context with some apt examples. He explains that national transport authorities are actually doing the terrorists’ work for them.

Airport security: great theatre, but we should refuse to be terrorised

By Bruce Schneier

Preamble: The Economist recently ran an online debate about airport security: ‘This house believes that changes made to airport security since 9/11 have done more harm than good’.

Defending the motion was Bruce Schneier, an IT guru (he works for BT) and noted author and critic of “security theatre”; against the motion was Kip Hawley, who helped build the USA’s Transport Security Administration,who is also an author and now consults privately on security matters.

For the whole "Economist" debate: http://www.economist.com/debate/days/view/824

Here’s a precis of part of Mr Schneier’s arguments:

In previous statements, I made two basic arguments about post-9/11 airport security:

1. we are not doing the right things: the focus on airports at the expense of the broader threat is not making us safer, and
2. 2, the things we are doing are wrong: the specific security measures put in place since 9/11 do not work.

Kip Hawley doesn’t argue with the specifics of my criticisms, but instead provides anecdotes and asks us to trust that airport security – and the Transportation Security
Administration (TSA) in particular – knows what it’s doing.

He wants us to trust that:

• a 400-ml bottle of liquid is dangerous, but transferring it to four 100-ml bottles magically makes it safe:
• the butter knives given to first-class passengers are nevertheless too dangerous to be taken through a security checkpoint;
• the no-fly list: 21,000 people so dangerous they’re not allowed to fly, yet so innocent they can’t be arrested;
• the deployment of expensive full-body scanners has nothing to do with the fact that the former US Secretary of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, lobbies for one of the companies that makes them;
• there’s a reason to confiscate:
• a cupcake (Las Vegas),
• a 3-inch plastic toy gun (London Gatwick),
• a purse with an embroidered gun on it (Norfolk, Virginia),
• a T-shirt with a picture of a gun on it (London Heathrow), and
• a plastic lightsabre that’s really a flashlight with a long cone on top (Dallas/Fort Worth). At this point, we don’t trust America’s TSA, Britain’s Department for Transport, (Australia’s Transport Department: added by ed.) or airport security in general. We don’t believe they’re acting in the best interests of passengers. We suspect their actions are the result of politicians and government appointees making decisions based on their concerns about the security of their own careers if they don’t “act tough” on terror, and capitulating to public demands that "something must be done".

I promised to discuss the broader societal harms of post-9/11 airport security. This loss of trust – in both airport security and counter-terrorism policies in general – is the first harm.

Trust is fundamental to society. There is an enormous amount written about this; high-trust societies are simply happier and more prosperous than low-trust societies. Trust is essential for both free markets and democracy. This is why open-government laws are so important; trust requires government transparency. The secret policies implemented by airport security harm society because of their very secrecy.

The humiliation, the dehumanisation and the privacy violations are also harms. That Mr Hawley dismisses these as mere "costs in convenience" demonstrates how out-of-touch the TSA is from the people it claims to be protecting.

Additionally, there’s actual physical harm: the radiation from full-body scanners still not publicly tested for safety; and the mental harm suffered by both abuse survivors and children: the things screeners tell them as they touch their bodies are uncomfortably similar to what child molesters say.

In 2004, the average extra waiting time due to TSA procedures was 19.5 minutes per person. That’s a total economic loss – in America – of $10 billion per year, more than the TSA’s entire budget.

The increased automobile deaths due to people deciding to drive instead of fly is (estimated at: ed) 500 per year. Both of these numbers are for America only, and by themselves demonstrate that post-9/11 airport security has done more harm than good.

The current TSA measures create an even greater harm: loss of liberty.  Airports are effectively rights-free zones. Security officers have enormous power over you as a passenger.

You have limited rights to refuse a search. Your possessions can be confiscated. You cannot make jokes, or wear clothing, that airport security does not approve of. You cannot travel anonymously. (Remember when we would mock Soviet-style "show me your papers" societies? That we’ve become inured to the very practice is a harm.) And if you’re on a certain secret list, you cannot fly, and you enter a Kafkaesque world where you cannot face your accuser, protest your innocence, clear your name, or even get confirmation from the government that someone, somewhere, has judged you guilty.

These police powers would be illegal anywhere but in an airport, and we are all harmed — individually and collectively — by their existence.

In his first statement, Mr Hawley related a quote predicting "blood running in the aisles" if small scissors and tools were allowed on planes. That was said by Corey Caldwell, an Association of Flight Attendants spokesman, in 2005. It was not the statement of someone who is thinking rationally about airport security: it was the voice of irrational fear.

Increased fear is the final harm, and its effects are both emotional and physical. By sowing mistrust, by stripping us of our privacy – and in many cases our dignity – by taking away our rights, by subjecting us to arbitrary and irrational rules, and by constantly reminding us that this is the only thing between us and death by the hands of terrorists, the TSA and its ilk are sowing fear. And by doing so, they are playing directly into the terrorists’ hands.

The goal of terrorism is not to crash planes, or even to kill people; the goal of terrorism is to cause terror. Liquid bombs, PETN, planes as missiles: these are all tactics designed to cause terror by killing innocents. But terrorists can only do so much. They cannot take away our freedoms. They cannot reduce our liberties. They cannot, by themselves, cause that much terror.

It’s our reaction to terrorism that determines whether or not their actions are ultimately successful. That we allow governments to do these things to us – to effectively do the terrorists’ job for them –- is the greatest harm of all.

Return airport security checkpoints to pre-9/11 levels. Get rid of everything that isn’t needed to protect against random amateur terrorists and won’t work against professional al-Qaeda plots. Take the savings thus earned and invest them in investigation, intelligence, and emergency response: security outside the airport, security that does not require us to play guessing games about plots. Recognise that 100% safety is impossible,
and also that terrorism is not an "existential threat" to our way of life.

Respond to terrorism not with fear but with indomitability.

Refuse to be terrorised.