Airport security idea

December 26, 2009

My recent thoughts turned to airline security last night after learning of the flight coming in to Detroit in which a man tried to blow up the plane. (link and link, though I’m sure there’s thousands more now).

I’ve never subscribed to the theory that our US airport security did all that much in terms of preventing actual threats.  I’m old enough to remember pre 9/11 flying, and the security measures don’t seem to be doing that much better at stopping potential violent threats.  In the past two years I’ve flown to San Francisco, Miami, London, Copenhagen, Sydney, Shanghai and probably a couple other places I can’t recall right now.  Most of these trips had several layovers, so I’ve seen security measures at many more airports than just these.  A few things initially surprised me soon after 9/11, but fail to surprise me now:

1.  How differently my carry-on bags are treated during screening every single time I travel, even at the same airports.  I travel with a wide variety of stuff – often a laptop, ipod, chargers, cables, headphones, microphones, video camera, small microphone and other assorted electronic goodies.  Sometimes I pack them in checked luggage, but often there’s not room (or I don’t quite trust TSA bag handlers to not take something of value).  So it comes on as hand-luggage.  A couple of times the cabled mess has triggered a thorough hand search of all the bag contents.  While annoying, I understand their need – it’s not clear what the materials are, and if something’s unknown, it’s better to check it out.  Annoying, but reasonable.  Why that particular mess of cables and such doesn’t trigger the same response at different airports is what’s troubling to me.  Each checkpoint area seems to be having their own guidelines as to what is ’suspicious’ and what isn’t.  To be certain, it may be the experience and judgement level of those involved, but based on the behaviour I witness of security checkpoint personnel (see below), I’m not convinced that’s the reason.

2.  How lax the staff appear at various screening areas.  I don’t particularly want hard-nosed drill sergeants barking orders at me, but I also don’t want people falling asleep.  It seems I generally find both extremes at security checkpoints, which annoys me.  I’m not saying these are the *only* people – there’s also typically a mix of seemingly decent, diligent people staffing these areas.  But that’s not enough.  I’ve watched my bags going through x-ray machines, showing a vast array of weird cables and devices (I travel with a lot of weird stuff!) and watched as the person sitting at the x-ray machine simply let it pass right through *without looking at the screen*, either with their head turned while talking to a colleague, or eating.

I’ve observed that behaviour at least 4 times over the last 12-18 months of travel.  Coming up with extremely conservative numbers, those particular screeners might be letting 3-5% of the baggage go by essentially unchecked.  If 5% of the bags can get by unchecked at a checkpoint, what’s the purpose of having it?  The only substantive answer I can arrive at is “theater for the masses”.

My idea centers on this carry-on bag checkpoint process.  Specifically, my idea would be to have the bag images be fed to an internet site and allow multiple people to judge whether something was ’suspicious’ enough to warrant a hand investigation.  However, the speed of this might not be enough to work in real time.  So, the next step would be to associate a passenger picture with the bags specifically at the checkpoint, and if it’s determined through the ‘crowdsourced’ site that a particular bag should be inspected, the bag’s owner could more easily be tracked down in the airport.

While this seems like it might be a lot more work, personally, I’d trust the accuracy of dozens or hundreds of people of varying backgrounds giving their votes on a bag rather than one person who might not even be *looking* at the bag to pass judgement.

Lastly, is there a way to *report* on TSA or security staff who appear to be negligent at their post?  I’d try to take pictures, but I suspect I’d be labelled a terrorist rather than someone who’s simply trying to report on someone not doing their job (which, incidentally, is supposed to be about securing my life and safety).

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