[Infowarrior] - Schneier: The Two Classes of Airport Contraband

[Richard Forno]

September 23, 2008
The Two Classes of Airport Contraband

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/09/the_two_classes.html

Airport security found a jar of pasta sauce in my luggage last month.  
It was a 6-ounce jar, above the limit; the official confiscated it,  
because allowing it on the airplane with me would have been too  
dangerous. And to demonstrate how dangerous he really thought that jar  
was, he blithely tossed it in a nearby bin of similar liquid bottles  
and sent me on my way.

There are two classes of contraband at airport security checkpoints:  
the class that will get you in trouble if you try to bring it on an  
airplane, and the class that will cheerily be taken away from you if  
you try to bring it on an airplane. This difference is important:  
Making security screeners confiscate anything from that second class  
is a waste of time. All it does is harm innocents; it doesn't stop  
terrorists at all.

Let me explain. If you're caught at airport security with a bomb or a  
gun, the screeners aren't just going to take it away from you. They're  
going to call the police, and you're going to be stuck for a few hours  
answering a lot of awkward questions. You may be arrested, and you'll  
almost certainly miss your flight. At best, you're going to have a  
very unpleasant day.

This is why articles about how screeners don't catch every -- or even  
a majority -- of guns and bombs that go through the checkpoints don't  
bother me. The screeners don't have to be perfect; they just have to  
be good enough. No terrorist is going to base his plot on getting a  
gun through airport security if there's decent chance of getting  
caught, because the consequences of getting caught are too great.

Contrast that with a terrorist plot that requires a 12-ounce bottle of  
liquid. There's no evidence that the London liquid bombers actually  
had a workable plot, but assume for the moment they did. If some  
copycat terrorists try to bring their liquid bomb through airport  
security and the screeners catch them -- like they caught me with my  
bottle of pasta sauce -- the terrorists can simply try again. They can  
try again and again. They can keep trying until they succeed. Because  
there are no consequences to trying and failing, the screeners have to  
be 100 percent effective. Even if they slip up one in a hundred times,  
the plot can succeed.

The same is true for knitting needles, pocketknives, scissors,  
corkscrews, cigarette lighters and whatever else the airport screeners  
are confiscating this week. If there's no consequence to getting  
caught with it, then confiscating it only hurts innocent people. At  
best, it mildly annoys the terrorists.

To fix this, airport security has to make a choice. If something is  
dangerous, treat it as dangerous and treat anyone who tries to bring  
it on as potentially dangerous. If it's not dangerous, then stop  
trying to keep it off airplanes. Trying to have it both ways just  
distracts the screeners from actually making us safer.