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Security quotes of the week

[Posted June 3, 2015 by jake]

It's been fourteen hours since a few provisions of the Patriot Act have expired, and the world hasn't come to an end -- at least so far.

— Bruce Schneier

At $8 billion per year, the TSA is the most expensive theatrical production in history.

— David Burge

Frustrated NSA Now Forced To Rely On Mass Surveillance Programs That Haven’t Come To Light Yet

— A headline from The Onion

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Security quotes of the week

Posted Jun 7, 2015 20:08 UTC (Sun) by IXRO (subscriber, #39871) [Link]

Doesn't that 95% failure rate actually mean that people testing airport security are very competent?!
I'm always relaxed when flying, assuming that criminals who outsmart airport security would rather do some Wall Street frauds rather than die together with me on the plane.

I may be misinformed and not understand America well, though...

Security quotes of the week

Posted Jun 8, 2015 0:23 UTC (Mon) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]

> Doesn't that 95% failure rate actually mean that people testing airport security are very competent?!

it could mean that, or it could mean that the people they are testing are not very competent.

so let's look at other information.

When the press has tested the security, it has almost always failed.

Adam Savage (of Mythbusters) talks about how he checks his bags for 'strange stuff' before flying, but has accidentally left things like 12" razor blades in his jacket pockets and only realized when checking things for his flight back.

Many other people can attest to things getting through security routinely that should be caught if the security was effective.

Shortly after 9/11 I flew with a large, bright orange super sharp pencil in my shirt pocket (at least as much of a weapon as the boxcutters that were used on 9/11)

I've also gone straight from working a 4th of July Fireworks show (with a lot of gunpowder used, and residue on my cloths) to the airport and flown across the country, having to go through security (with the explosive detecting swabs) three times with nothing being triggered.

The evidence is petty overwhelming that it's not that the testers are so good, it's that the people who are being tested aren't that good.

Security quotes of the week

Posted Jun 8, 2015 0:52 UTC (Mon) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

> I've also gone straight from working a 4th of July Fireworks show (with a lot of gunpowder used, and residue on my cloths) to the airport and flown across the country, having to go through security (with the explosive detecting swabs) three times with nothing being triggered.
My friend works in a lab with the picric acid which is a real-life military explosive. He told me that he got swabbed many times and they never got a positive reaction.

On the other side, airports tried to use 'puffer' machines in the past and they failed miserably. These machines actually _worked_ and their sensitivity led to a huge number of false positives (duh).

Security quotes of the week

Posted Jun 8, 2015 7:44 UTC (Mon) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]

Analysing compounds properly is non-trivial. It can take time, and needs controlled conditions and regular, careful maintenance to avoid contaminants being an issue. Trying to make machines to detect compounds reliably with neither of those things, and without lots of false positives, leads to machines that essentially do nothing useful.

Wait, they do do something. All those expensive, useless machines sitting at airports - now part of the standard, required equipment - help divert money from the public coffers to those private companies which had the best lobbyists, and offer the juciest consultancies and directorships to retired members of the civil service (military and police officers, government managers, politicians).

It is a very sophisticated scam. A widely distributed conspiracy to defraud the tax-pater, so diffuse that its participants can genuinely claim they felt they were acting in the public interest, even while ignoring that these great expenses have not shown to be of benefit to the public and though they benefit personally from this expenditure.

(See also various other private-public complexes, e.g. military-industrial, and even parts of the public-service--charity sector in the UK and (particularly) Ireland).

Security quotes of the week

Posted Jun 8, 2015 15:52 UTC (Mon) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]

I think the 95% figure is the number of times they were able to successfully smuggle weapons through the airport screeners without being detected, that security only worked at best 5% of the time in blocking guns and explosives and whatnot from being carried through flights by the testers.

This means that if there have been any attempts to smuggle weapons on a plane, they would have had a 95% chance of being successful so really the only factor protecting planes is the same one which existed before the TSA, and will exist if the TSA disappeared overnight, not all that many people really want to or can cause this kind of trouble. There just isn't that many attacks, certainly not enough to justify the expense of $8 billion a year to maybe only stop 5% of them. Mostly this is just a way for snake oil equipment salesmen to rake in the taxpayers money by fostering and praying on an unreasonable fear.

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