[Infowarrior] - No Rest for the Airport Security Weary

[Richard Forno]

QOTAA: "Echoing the opinions of many security experts interviewed,  
Andrew R. Thomas, editor in chief of the Journal of Transportation  
Security, said that since 9/11 two things have made aviation safer:  
reinforced cockpit doors and the conviction of passengers to bring  
down terrorists, as evidenced by the action taken on United Flight 93.  
“Any substantive measures put in place by T.S.A. since 9/11 are  
effectively window dressing and have done little to reduce the overall  
risk to the system,” he said in an e-mail message."


September 27, 2009
Practical Traveler
No Rest for the Airport Security Weary
By MICHELLE HIGGINS
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/27/travel/27prac.html?_r=1&hpw=&pagewanted=print

LIKE millions of other men, women and children who each day pass  
through the dizzying maze called the airport passenger screening  
system, Jim Adams, an executive at a natural gas company in Dallas,  
has gotten the drill down pat: taking off his shoes, stripping himself  
of jacket, belt, watch, cellphone and loose change, making sure his  
3.4-ounce tubes of toothpaste and shaving gel are safely sealed in a  
quart-size plastic bag, unpacking his laptop, discarding that half- 
finished bottle of water — all while glancing nervously at the clock,  
wondering if he is going to miss his flight.

But several weeks ago, a new step was added to that routine: trying to  
prove to suddenly skeptical security agents that he actually was the  
person his boarding pass and photo ID said he was.

A rule that is being phased in this year requires that the names on  
IDs and tickets match perfectly; it’s not permissible to have an ID  
that reads “John Smith,” your legal name, and a ticket as “Jack  
Smith,” the name you use in everyday life.

Mr. Adams, 63, says he has routinely had to wait 30 minutes or more  
for a Transportation Security Administration official to check his ID  
and enter his name in a logbook. It’s happened more than a dozen  
times, and he has never been told exactly why he is being singled out.

“In the early days it was anything sharp or pointed,” he said. “Now  
it’s gotten really personal. It’s me. It’s not my fingernail clippers  
or pen knife.”

Mr. Adams said, however, that he was able to avoid additional security  
screening and subsequent delays on two flights this month for which he  
used his full name, James L. Adams Jr. He said he still hadn’t  
received a response from the Transportation Security Administration  
about his problems on earlier flights.

Even for people who pass through security with less difficulty than  
Mr. Adams, the airport security system has made flying increasingly  
miserable in the eight years since 9/11. Many of the measures  
instituted the last few years, like the limitations on liquids and the  
requirement that you take off your shoes, were almost knee-jerk  
reactions to specific scares and were left in place as a matter of  
course.

As rule upon rule has been added, passengers have learned to cope with  
the long lines, bag checks, physical pat-downs and carry-on  
restrictions that border on the absurd. But now there is a fresh  
opportunity for change. This month, the White House said that  
President Obama planned to nominate Erroll G. Southers, a former  
F.B.I. special agent, to head up the Transportation Security  
Administration, which has been without a permanent head for eight  
months.

Mr. Southers, who is now the assistant chief for Homeland Security at  
the agency that operates Los Angeles International and several other  
airports in that region, will, if approved, face the formidable  
challenge of balancing the yin and yang of airport security —  
passenger convenience and safety.

Until now, passenger convenience has largely been ignored. After 9/11,  
a litany of sharp objects was banned from carry-ons. After Richard  
Reid tried to ignite explosives hidden in his sneaker on a flight from  
Paris to Miami in Dec. 2001, travelers were told to remove their shoes  
for screening. And after British officials foiled a plot to blow up  
planes with liquid explosives in August 2006, liquids, gels and  
aerosols were banned, though later allowed as long as they were packed  
in tiny bottles and in plastic bags.

And just when passengers think they know the routine, the  
Transportation Safety Administration adds a twist. Earlier this month,  
for example, it began screening certain powders in carry-on luggage.  
And screeners recently started asking passengers to place shoes  
directly on conveyor belts rather than in bins, giving officers a  
better view of shoes as they come through.

It’s hard not to ask: Is all this necessary? Is it making us any  
safer? And will it ever get better? Based on interviews with a range  
of security experts, the answers increasingly seem to be no; not  
really; and not for a while.

Giovanni Bisignani, the chief executive of the International Air  
Transport Association, urged the Obama administration to deliver broad  
policy changes in security in a speech delivered to airline leaders in  
February.

“I am not convinced that we are much wiser or any more efficient with  
many of our processes,” Mr. Bisignani said. “As travelers, our shared  
experience is hassle, and as industry players, it is bureaucracy and  
cost. It is time for both to change.”

Of course, if we look back at the state of security before 9/11, it’s  
clear that we have made progress. People without a ticket can no  
longer waltz through the airport and up to the gate. Technology,  
including explosive-detection devices, has gotten better and is more  
consistently applied to checked and carry-on bags alike. Passengers  
are more consistently screened by a more stable security work force  
with less employment turnover. And at times, even the lines seem to be  
moving a hair faster.

A case could also be made that because there have been no successful  
attacks against a United States commercial flight since 9/11, the  
system is indeed working. But inconsistencies, contradictory rules and  
flat out screening failures continue to provoke skepticism among  
passengers and security experts alike.

“My wife was recently shocked to discover that she had accidentally  
taken a large pair of scissors in her knitting bag on a recent trip,  
and they were not discovered in either the outgoing or returning  
trips,” said Walt Ciciora, an electrical engineer from Southport,  
Conn. “That concerned us.”

Echoing the opinions of many security experts interviewed, Andrew R.  
Thomas, editor in chief of the Journal of Transportation Security,  
said that since 9/11 two things have made aviation safer: reinforced  
cockpit doors and the conviction of passengers to bring down  
terrorists, as evidenced by the action taken on United Flight 93. “Any  
substantive measures put in place by T.S.A. since 9/11 are effectively  
window dressing and have done little to reduce the overall risk to the  
system,” he said in an e-mail message.

“I think we do a lot of things that are foolish and silly,” he said in  
a separate telephone conservation, “and there doesn’t seem to be a  
mechanism in place to pull back and evaluate what’s working and what’s  
not.”

The Transportation Security Administration disagrees.

“We are constantly looking at the risks that we see and the procedures  
we have in place and ensuring the resources we have available to us,”  
said the acting administrator, Gale D. Rossides. “The dollars we are  
investing, the people we’re employing, are focused on the highest  
priorities.”

And there are multiple layers of security in place so that if one area  
fails and, say, someone sneaks a knife onboard a plane, there are also  
locked cockpit doors to thwart hijackers.

Each week, as evidence that it is getting the job done, the agency  
posts on its Web site (www.tsa.gov) a tally of passenger arrests and  
banned items, including firearms, found at checkpoints. For the week  
beginning Sept. 7, for example, 11 passengers were arrested “after  
investigations of suspicious behavior or fraudulent travel documents,”  
40 firearms were found at checkpoints, 6 “artfully concealed  
prohibited items” were discovered, and there were 30 incidents that  
involved a “checkpoint closure, terminal evacuation or sterile area  
breach.”

“It would be terrific,” Ms. Rossides said, if passengers could one day  
walk through a checkpoint without having to open their bags or take  
off their shoes and jackets. But she made it clear that those wishes  
were hers and not necessarily on the government’s agenda.

“That’s my vision,” she said, “not T.S.A.’s or D.H.S.’s vision, but my  
vision — where the industry can create the kind of technology where it  
is much easier on the traveler and still provides T.S.A. with the  
detection capability. The innovation in the labs and the industry will  
get us there.”

Removing any of the security measures, even the most criticized and  
ineffective, would be a risky political decision for the Obama  
administration, opening up the White House to second-guessing. Undoing  
a long-established rule will inevitably provoke skepticism about the  
reasoning behind the decision. Therefore, if any of the procedures are  
to be changed, they must be proved to be ineffective or replaced and  
improved — not merely eliminated.

All this takes time and testing, whether it is to demonstrate what  
little gains in safety come from collecting lip gloss and moisturizers  
at checkpoints or to develop technologies that make screening safer  
and more efficient. That means passengers are likely to be stuck with  
the current airport screening process for several years.

Is any relief at hand? Well, you may one day be able to walk through  
security without having to relinquish your water bottle or your jar of  
moisturizer, but that day may be at least two years away, at best.

Advanced X-ray machines now being rolled out to airports could be  
programmed to distinguish between hazardous and benign liquids,  
enabling passengers to carry full-size tubes of hair gel and to keep  
their Gatorade bottles in their bags. Currently, 78 of the more than  
450 airports nationwide where the Transportation Security  
Administration maintains security have the new X-ray machines, which  
offer multiple views of carry-on luggage as opposed to one top-down  
look. The agency expects to have contracts in place by the end of  
fiscal 2010 to buy enough machines to cover the rest.

But beyond the rollout of the machines, there is another integral step  
that must also be completed: software must be developed and installed  
to differentiate between liquids. And neither the agency nor the  
software manufacturers will even hint at a timeline.

Kip Hawley, a former head of the Transportation Security  
Administration, said Washington needed to make this happen sooner  
rather than later. “I don’t think they need to make massive changes,”  
he said. “They just need to hit the accelerator.”

BUT speeding things up isn’t an easy task, he acknowledged, partly  
because of resistance from passengers themselves. Take those full-body  
screening machines, the kind that provide a stark image of the naked  
body, and which Mr. Hawley said could be the answer to the current  
jacket, belt and jewelry strip down. Yet, while they might eliminate  
much of the annoyance of going through security, many passengers have  
objected to them because they found the machines personally invasive.

Earlier this year, in fact, the House of Representatives approved an  
amendment, still making its way through Congress, to limit the use of  
the machines to secondary screening and to require that passengers be  
offered a pat-down search in lieu of such screening.

If the increasingly cumbersome screening process has proved anything,  
however, it’s that travelers are a highly adaptable species. And when  
the facts show that the benefits of a particular security method  
outweigh the privacy issues, many are willing accept it.

“I equate this to E-ZPass for vehicles,” said Chris Grniet, a vice  
president at the Kroll Security Group. “Everyone said this will be an  
invasion of privacy,” and certain people still will not do it, he  
said. But those who embraced the system no longer have to slow down  
for tolls.

Another factor that cannot be ignored is that passenger numbers and,  
consequently, security checkpoint volume are down because of the  
economy. But as a recovery and passenger traffic pick up, the system  
will be under enormous pressure. Lines will grow, waiting times will  
rise, and screeners will face added pressure to speed things along.

“The procedures are not being reduced; if anything they’re being  
added,” said Brian Michael Jenkins, an international expert on  
terrorism at the Mineta Transportation Institute. “The number of  
T.S.A. screeners are not going up, so either the line gets longer or  
we get smarter. Or we invent the X-ray for a man’s soul.”